The following is an excerpt from an article by the late journalist and lifelong BCA supporter Helen Caterer OAM which was published in the Walkabout Magazine in June 1960. Helen also wrote a book ‘Australians Outback – 60 years of the Bush Church Aid Society’. The full version can be found on the National Library of Australia website.

Missioners of the Church of England Bush Church Aid Society spend months of each year travelling over their wide territories. In their luggage they carry portable communion sets, tiny fonts, and radio transceivers. Their standard equipment includes four-inch boards to help when their panel vans get bogged in desert of sandhill country.

A Bush padre must be a resourceful man. He holds services in station homes and shearing sheds, shows films and coloured slides, takes Sunday School and religious instruction in tiny outback schools. Sometimes he is called in to help muster sheep, to put in a new cupboard in a hospital or act as a family counsellor. 

His story, and the work of the Bush Church Aid Society has become widely known, not only in Australia but in America. Last year the United States Episcopal Church invited the former Organising Missioner of BCA, the Right Reverend TE Jones, now Bishop of Willochra, to lecture on the work of the church in the outback.

Although he is an Englishman, the bishop knows more about the outback than most Australians. For 25 years as Organising Missioner, he travelled hundreds of thousands of miles by air across the loneliest parts of Australia. In his present diocese, spread over 300,000 square miles, in the north of South Australia, he is still in close touch with it.

During his years in BCA, TJ as he is affectionately known, developed the Society into an Australia-wide organisation with the most complete aerial medical service in the Commonwealth and an annual expenditure of £45,000. With headquarters in Sydney, the Society now provides spiritual medical and educational assistance in many outback areas of the Commonwealth. It also runs the Flying Medical Service with headquarters at Ceduna in South Australia.

Two radio officers operate the radio control station of the Flying Medical Services, and the South Australian Correspondence School runs a radio school in cooperation with BCA.

Two flying doctors, and twenty-two triple-certificated nurses look after six outback hospitals, and two pilots fly modern aircraft. Sixteen young missioners work in vast parishes all over Australia.

The heart of the Bush Church Aid beats strongly at Ceduna, a junction of interstate roads, 516 miles from Perth, a centre for a vast outback whose aboriginal name means ‘meeting place’.

The Flying Medical Service Radio Control Station is a landmark on the eastwest road just outside the town. A map on the wall marked with blue pins shows the 122 outposts where radio transceivers are installed. Farthest west is one at Forrest, Western Australia, and the 200,000 square miles covered by the network extend north almost to Oodnadatta and south to a lighthouse off Kangaroo Island.

George Cameron, the radio engineer, also drives the ambulance, owned by BCA which takes people to Hospital after they have ben brought to Ceduna in one of the Society’s planes.

Allan Chadwick, the senior pilot, has been with BCA for 22 years. He is well known in the flying world and his skill and kindness is remembered by everyone who has flown with him. Recently he was awarded Australia’s top civil flying award for his work.

Dr Merna Mueller and Dr R Chambers, the two doctors in BCA attached to Ceduna play regular visits by air to Coober Pedy, Kingoonya, Cook, Tarcoola, Mulgathing Station, Coorabie and Penong, bringing medical assistance to people who live hundreds of miles from a doctor.

In 1959, FMS planes flew 30,000 miles on 103 flights, including 31 emergency flights. The doctors saw 2,800 patients at outstations. They held 11 outback clinics each month. During the year 950 medical calls were given over the air, and 6,300 telegrams were dealt with at the radio control station.

A new BCA medical centre, comprising a modern pharmacy, consulting rooms and surgeries for doctors and dentist office and residence has been opened in Ceduna.

The six hospitals run and staffed by the Society as part of the Flying Medical Service are outstanding in service and equipment.