Outback town's flight for survival

One of the Royal Flying Doctor Service's Mount Isa planes on the air strip at Urandangie. 

Photographer:  Paul Sutherland

There's a small community a few hundred kilometres south of Mount Isa that has no electricity except for a few generators, no water infrastructure, and numerous health problems.

Only around 100 people live in the town, which is serviced by the local pub, which acts as a hairdresser, shop, chemist and post office.

The Indigenous community of Urandangie, near the Northern Territory border, has been called the 'Town the Government forgot' - but the Royal Flying Doctor Service continues its medical runs there, providing a vital service for this remote area.

Doctor Rachel Moulden has been a primary care doctor visiting Urandangie with the RFDS for the past two years.

Her task is to provide any medical services the local people might need, including general checkups and minor operations.

“We fly over the top of Urandangie so they can see us, because they’ve got no mobile reception so we can't call,” she says, looking out the window at the tiny community below - a mere dot on the vast landscape.

“If they see us, hopefully someone will come and pick us up at the airstrip.”

The plane touches down on the rough dirt airstrip – a smooth landing.

But then again, it should be; RDFS pilots are some of the best trained in the country, and can land a plane in almost any condition.

A mud-speckled ute is idling on the side of the airstrip.

The group of doctors, nurses and mental health specialists unload the medical supplies from the plane, and jump in the tray of the ute for the quick trip to Urandangie.

There's not much to the town – a handful of houses sprinkled around the landscape, a small park, and a pub on the corner of a dusty road.

The makeshift medical clinic is usually set up in the pub, but the owner has gone to Mount Isa for the day to buy more food, so the RFDS team sets up in a dilapidated hall, which is used as a sleeping quarters when road workers are in town.

Dr Moulden and the team begin setting up for the first patients.

“It’s a very difficult place for people to live because there are no facilities out here,” she says, unpacking medicine, medical gauze and other equipment.

“Water is always a problem; a lot of people get sick because of infected water.

“The only electricity we have is through generators, so people don’t have fridges where we can store medicine like insulin, or where they can store food.

“It’s an area of Australia a lot of people wouldn’t imagine that we have.”

One of the first patients is Sylvester, a toddler with a number of infected wounds in his feet and legs.

His mother and brothers sit and wait as Dr Moulden and the nurses take to his sores with a scalpel.

“Little things can get infected and turn into large abscises,” she says, over whimpers from Sylvester.

“They’re pretty tough out here, so they let things get pretty severe.

“When we leave, it really is up to the people to dress these wounds, and they’re not trained so it makes it hard.”

There are a number of medical concerns for the people of Urandangie.

Scabies are common, and because of poor hygiene conditions, they often become infected.

Infections can spread easily between the children.

“There’s a lot of heart conditions out here, with issues such as rheumatic heart fever, which we don’t see in major cities,” Dr Moulden says.

“I had never seen rheumatic heart fever in my 15 years as a doctor in Melbourne until I came to Urandangie.”

The locals certainly seem appreciative of the work the RFDS do for them.

One local says the community is so isolated that ambulances won’t travel there.

“They know that we are it for them for medical services, there’s really nothing else.”

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