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Flynn loved talking about his plans, and enjoyed smoking his familiar pipe long into the night chatting to a
friend. He presented an ordinary every-day appearance on a platform, and he spoke in warm tones, never declaiming
or shouting. He was a persuader and an encourager. In the cities he stayed at hotels and commercial travellers’
clubs, for during his whole lifetime he never owned a home of his own. He carried a substantial canvas swag when
he was in the bush and his quart pot was well blackened.
By 1913–15 his camel padres were on the bush tracks through Central Australia and the Pilbara with a packhorse
patrol at Pine Creek and a T-Model Ford patrol at Cloncurry. This was the beginning of a so-called ‘boundary-riding
ministry’ to all-comers. At the time of Flynn’s death in 1951 there were seven motorised patrols covering the total
bush area. In the Northern Territory Flynn founded nursing services at Maranboy (1917), Victoria River Downs
(1922), and Alice Springs (1926). Other nursing homes operated by the Australian Inland Mission under Flynn’s
superintendency were Oodnadatta (1912), Port Hedland (1915), Halls Creek (1918), Beltana (1919), Birdsville
(1924), Lake Grace (1926), Innamincka (1928), Esperance (1930), Dunbar (1938) and Fitzroy Crossing (1939).
Three hundred and fifty-four volunteer trained nurses had served during Flynn’s lifetime at these bush hospitals.
Many of these nursing sisters married men of the outback, fulfilling another of Flynn’s visions of ‘a brighter
bush’.
Complex technological difficulties faced Flynn as he researched his radio and flying doctor dreams. However,
when he took Alfred Traeger with him to Alice Springs in 1926 his hopes rose. After four years of failures,
experiments at Hermannsburg and Arltunga became the first successful steps toward the subsequent invention
by Traeger of the pedal wireless. Three years later, Traeger and Flynn had a series of pedal wireless sets working
successfully at strategic outposts in the Queensland outback, in daily contact with the Flying Doctor Radio Base
VJ1 at Cloncurry. Meantime, Flynn had been in regular contact with the federal government, the British Medical
Association, his life-long adviser, Dr George Simpson, Hudson Fysh of newly formed Qantas in Longreach, the
H V McKay Charitable Trust, and the Australian Inland Mission board in Sydney. After frustrating negotiations the
dream took wing when on 17 May 1928 Dr Kenyon St Vincent Welch, with Captain Arthur Affleck at the controls,
took off into the Cloncurry sky in a Qantas DH-50 ambulance aircraft on an emergency medical trip to Julia Creek.
Thus was born the Flying Doctor Scheme, which from that date became a permanent service, completing Flynn’s
‘Mantle of Safety’. Flynn from the beginning consistently declined to employ doctors who also wanted to fly the
ambulance aircraft. His policy was ‘one man, one job’, thus guaranteeing a permanent pattern of aerial medical
service where doctors could constantly treat patients while the plane was in flight.
Flynn developed quite outstanding abilities as a propagandist, pamphleteer and cartographer. His magazine
The Inlander (1913–19), illustrated by his own photographs, maps and charts, was his well-planned medium for
reaching the ears and purses of the public, the church and the government, and several issues contain articles on
Flynn’s own research into the social and environmental aspects of development in the Northern Territory.
Flynn faced a period of controversy in 1934–35 when claims by a well-meaning party within the church were
made against him for not treating Aboriginal patients in the nursing homes on an equal basis with white patients.
The Australian Inland Mission board met the criticism as realistically as possible and at several nursing homes
additional wards were built to provide the simple kind of nursing facilities required for Aboriginal people who
came from bush camps for treatment. In 1972, well after Flynn’s death, the controversy was revived in a book by
Dr Charles Duguid of Adelaide, and public statements were made which labelled Flynn as a racist; but Flynn
was a man of his generation and lived at a time when social philosophies relating to Aboriginal self-determination
were not developed. He was sure of the specific task allotted to him and that work among the very deserving
Aboriginal people was part of the defined charter of a well-equipped sister department of the Church. Furthermore,
the logbooks of the Flying Doctor Service from the earliest days reveal overwhelming evidence of Flynn’s practical
policy of giving medical care to all people irrespective of colour and creed.
During the years 1935–39 Flynn devoted his major time to the expansion of the Flying Doctor Service.
Contrary to the opinion of church leaders he now planned to transfer his successful scheme at Cloncurry to a larger
Australian voluntary organisation so that the whole service could be developed on a national basis. He himself
worked with legal advisers formulating articles of association for the body known as the Australian Aerial Medical
Service, which later came to be called the Flying Doctor Service of Australia, and even later the Royal Flying
Doctor Service. This was Flynn’s final triumph in the field of flying doctor and pedal radio services, for in the face
of considerable opposition he persuaded the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church to agree to the transfer
of the Australian Inland Mission Flying Doctor Scheme to the new national, non-denominational, non-profit,
voluntary organisation, which now operates fourteen highly successful bases throughout the Australian continent.
In 1932 Ion Idriess wrote a book titled Flynn of the Inland. Flynn was surprised at the title and the story,
because Idriess had collected the material for the publication while Flynn was overseas on a much-needed vacation.
But the name and some of the myths of the book were to remain and Flynn, reluctantly and with good humour,
found himself a legendary figure. At the age of 52, when his friends had come to regard him as a confirmed
bachelor, he married his secretary, Miss Jean Baird on 7 May 1932 in the Presbyterian church, Ashfield, Sydney.
Quiet, reserved and efficient, Jean Baird was a daughter of John Mair Baird and Catherine Baird, nee Blanch both
descendants of farming families in the Clarence River district, New South Wales. In June 1933 Flynn was made
an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). In September 1939 he was elected to the highest office of
the Presbyterian Church, Moderator-General, and for three years presented himself on all official occasions in the
traditional court dress and breeches, much to the delight of his friends in the bush.
On 9 May 1940 the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on him by the Presbyterian College
within McGill University of Toronto, Canada. One of the last dreams of Flynn was to extend his Mantle of Safety