When our daughter was at school, she was friends with a girl whose father had been property manager on a cattle station at Cloncurry. By 2016, the census people estimate that Cloncurry will have a population of 5,600 - so you can imagine how many people were there about 10 years ago! Cloncurry is also the birthplace of the Flying Doctor.

There are some spectacular places out Back of Beyond - I found these holiday snaps of Lawn Hill Gorge while doing a search for photos of the Cloncurry area: this is Lawn Hill

This is the Gorge itself:

- and this is another set of holiday memories about the Matilda Highway which connects some of these outback towns and settlements.

Our friends often tell us stories about the number of times they had to call on the Flying Doctor Service - it seems that working on a remote station is just about the most dangerous occupation on earth - if it's not a snake bite, it's a fall from a horse, an accident with an axe or boning knife, fencing wire recoiling at the speed of light, losing the odd digit or limb in machinery ... and that's not counting all the "normal" accidents and illnesses that occur.

Listening to them really makes you realise what a difference these doctors and nurses have made to those who live so far out. The RFDS claims that "ninety minutes after being summoned, night or day, a doctor of the Royal Flying Doctor Service can attend a patient anywhere in the most remote parts of Australia. This quick response to a call for help from the sick or injured covers an area of more than six million square kilometres, four fifths of the Australian continent."

Travel to Australia

The Outback