90th anniversary

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHELE MOSSOP. ALAMY.

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he call comes at 05.20: Code Two, cardiac arrest, female, 54.

“That’s very young, and she doesn’t have any preconditions.”

Flight nurse Derani Burns, of the Royal Flying Doctor Service,

had just spoken to the medics at the small hospital at Tumby Bay,

just north of Port Lincoln in South Australia.

Rain blows across the tarmac in lurries at the RFDS base in Adelaide

as we set out in the crisp early darkness. Above the clouds the sky is still

a blanket of stars as Derani busies herself, logging the mission, thinking

ahead about the patient and prepping me for what to expect.

Derani, 41, was born and raised in Adelaide. She has been a nurse and

midwife for nearly 20 years – the last nine of them with the RFDS. →

The Royal Flying Doctor Service turns 90 this year. To celebrate,

The Weekly’s Michele Mossop joins lying midwife and

intensive care nurse Derani Burns for a life-saving day

in the skies above regional South Australia.