The Flying Doctors – Public Property: Opening titles

The first few minutes of a show matter far more on television than in features. Anyone who has gone to the effort and expense of buying a movie ticket is not likely to walk out because the opening titles are boring but that person, watching television, might well reach for the remote before the drama proper has even begun. The title sequence for The Flying Doctors is designed to make an audience sit up and take notice. The stirring theme and spectacular images promise colour, adventure, heroic deeds, attractive and intelligent characters and positive attitudes; altogether, an entertaining and even uplifting experience. As long as what followed was faithful to most of this promise most of the time, audiences were hooked.

Garry McDonald, who with Laurie Stone composed the theme and scored all 221 episodes, recalls with pleasure the 'very decent budget’ they were given, which enabled them to use the best musicians available, including the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. He acknowledges this was probably due to Hector Crawford’s personal passion for music and in particular for orchestral work. It is unusual even today for an open-ended television series to make original music a budget priority but in this case the investment proved its worth for both parties. The theme became a valuable promotional tool, instantly identifiable with The Flying Doctors and, for many overseas audiences, with Australia itself.

The work of the composers McDonald and Stone penetrated international markets far more quickly than might otherwise have been expected and opportunities flowed their way as a result. The duo won the combined APRA-AGSC award for Most Performed Work Overseas two years in a row, in 2005 and 2006, an indication of their standing in the music industry today. In 2008, 15 years after the show’s demise, they were approached by VARA, public broadcaster for the Netherlands, seeking their consent to the use of The Flying Doctors theme in a dramatised documentary, Fan (2009), about a young Dutch woman who is obsessed with the television series and star Liz Burch.

The Flying Doctors – Public Property synopsis

The Flying Doctors is based on the work and lives of the men and women of the outback medical service established in 1928 by the Reverend Dr John Flynn. The drama is located somewhere in the Australian outback in the fictional town of Coopers Crossing, inhabited by warm-hearted, often eccentric and occasionally narrow-minded local characters.

In this episode, unmarried and very pregnant Joylene (Rowena Mohr) arrives in town to meet likeable larrikin Bruce Hayes (Mark Neal) with whom she has been corresponding. Her pregnancy comes as a complete shock to Bruce, whose plans to marry his 'mail-order bride’ are well known to everyone in town. He is far too concerned about being made to look a fool to feel any sensitivity for Joylene’s plight. Love, however, blooms in unlikely places and waiting in the wings is Bruce’s elder brother, the shy and reserved Clive Hayes (Peter Curtin), who falls for and eventually marries Joylene. Running parallel to this story is an incident surrounding the town’s annual dry boat race; the 'dry’ referring to the lack of a river for the boats, not the lack of beer for the contestants.

The Flying Doctors – Public Property curator's notes

The Royal Flying Doctor Service offers adventure, action, medical drama and human interest stories in abundance, all in the exotic context of the Australian outback. Audiences globally responded to the romance of good-looking and dedicated doctors and nurses being ferried about by equally good-looking and intrepid pilots all over a vast, spectacular landscape; but it would be a mistake to suggest that for this reason alone the show was a success.

In Australia, where budgets are always very tight and distance presents a huge obstacle, the problems faced by the production team were formidable. Minyip (population 500), a little town in the Wimmera wheat belt region of Victoria and the site of the fictitious Coopers Crossing, provided exteriors for much of the series. Interiors were shot on a number of permanent sets in the Channel Nine studios in Melbourne and later at Crawford Productions’ own studios at Box Hill. The distance between Minyip and Melbourne is around 305 km, the longest between studio and location of any drama being made in the world at that time.

For a one-off project like a mini-series or a feature this wouldn’t matter so much; shoot everything you need to in one location, then move everyone on to the next. For an ongoing series, it meant working at least two crews under a turnaround of four or five directors (each director with a two-hour block to complete in four-five weeks including pre- and post-production) and rationing out a cast of regular characters who were wanted everywhere at once. Scheduling must have been a nightmare.

This fifth episode from the first season, Public Property, is neither the best nor the worst of The Flying Doctors. It shows the strengths of the series as a whole as well as some early signs of the problems that were to come later. Life in a small, isolated community is astutely observed: the lack of privacy; the suspicion of outsiders; the tolerance of drunkenness and public brawling in the name of 'tradition’; the assumption that anyone may be called on at any time and on any whim to help with anything from a fete stall to a genuine emergency.

There is an abundance of humour including references to popular characters of the time such as a local Mad Max (Brian Mannix) and Hurtle (Max Cullen) in training, Rocky Balboa style, with 'Advance Australia Fair’ accompanying his run. And observing life from the bench in front of the pub are the Two Old Codgers (Frank Otterson and Herb Krause), the script department’s tribute to The Muppet Show (1976–81).

The Great Desert Boat Race is based on the real-life Todd River Boat Race held annually in Alice Springs. Half the population of Minyip appear to be part of the shoot, only too happy to help the television show that brought an element of excitement and injection of funds to the town and put it on the world map. Maurie Fields, who plays Vic Buckley the publican, calls up old banjo-playing skills from his vaudeville days and the question of who was to stay behind to man the radio at the Base seems to have been conveniently forgotten as the entire RFDS staff are in attendance.

After three successful years, ratings started to fall. In 1989 Channel Nine was ready to axe the show but Crawford’s was able to save it by stripping back much of the serial element that had built up over time and replacing it with the medical-outback stories that had been the show’s dramatic point of difference in the first place. With a revived focus, The Flying Doctors went on to delight audiences worldwide for another four years.

The Flying Doctors had many incarnations. This first season was launched in mid-1986, following the success of a six-hour mini-series in 1985. It ran for seven years, during which there were major cast changes, with some newer cast members becoming became better known than the original cast. Robert Grubb joined the show in episode 17 (1986) as Dr Geoff Standish, replacing Tom Callaghan (Andrew McFarlane). Other notable regular characters who still have a worldwide fan base include Rebecca Gibney as the local mechanic Emma Plimpton, Peter O’Brien as pilot Sam Patterson, Brett Climo as Dr David Ratcliffe and George Kapiniaris as DJ the base radio operator.

The series eventually ended in 1993. In 1994 an attempt was made to resurrect it as RFDS, retaining only the characters of Vic and Nancy Buckley (Maurie Fields and Val Jellay) from the series. The location was moved to Broken Hill where the Buckleys, publicans at Coopers Crossing, had supposedly re-located. The Flying Doctors had been shot on 16mm, while this 'revamp’ was shot on videotape; a decision made, almost certainly, for reasons of economy. It lasted barely a season.

Notes by Anne Lucas