In 1917 stockman Jimmy Darcy was badly injured on a remote station in Western Australia and carried 30 miles over 12 hours to Halls Creek, which had no hospital or doctor. The postmaster, who had only basic first aid training, reached a Dr. Holland in Perth by telegraph and, following Morse code instructions, operated on Darcy’s bladder with a pocket knife on the post office counter. The surgery worked, but Holland’s journey by cattle boat, Model T, horse-drawn carriage and on foot took 10 days, and he arrived the day after Darcy died of undiagnosed malaria and a ruptured appendix.

John Flynn, sent by the Presbyterian Church in 1912 to assess the needs of the outback, founded the Australian Inland Mission and used Darcy’s story to rally support. Lieutenant Clifford Peel wrote to him from the trenches of France proposing medical aircraft, and engineer Alfred Traeger built a pedal-powered radio. On May 17, 1928, a de Havilland biplane named Victory, leased from a young Qantas, flew 85 miles from Cloncurry to Julia Creek, launching the world’s first comprehensive air ambulance service.

• How a roughly 50 watt pedal radio reached distant bases by bouncing shortwave signals off the ionosphere
• Qantas charging two shillings per mile, and about 20,000 miles flown on 50 flights in the first year
• The 1951 body chart and numbered medicine chests that let doctors guide treatment over a crackling radio
• Why pressurized Pilatus PC-12 and PC-24 aircraft matter for patients with trapped gas, explained through Boyle’s law
• Today’s service: 81 aircraft, more than 73,000 kilometers a day and about 800 patient contacts daily