Gidgee's metal art unites RFDS and military service

When Morven's favourite PVC bag manufacturer received her RFDS ambassadorship a year ago, she set about strengthening the connections between the aerial medical retrieval service and Australia's servicemen and women.

"I think it's something that often overlooked when people talk about the RFDS, the war connection that got it started," she said.

Reverend John Flynn, working in rural Victoria under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church, established the Australian Inland Mission in 1912, and his work inspired Victorian pilot Lieutenant 'Cliff' Peel, who had been studying medicine at Melbourne University when he enlisted for service in World War I.

In November 2017, just before he was sent to France, Peel wrote a letter to Flynn that would become the inspiration for the RFDS, explaining how he had seen a missionary doctor visiting isolated patients using a plane.

Peel accompanied his letter with cost estimates, and by 1928 Flynn had gathered enough funds to launch the experimental Aerial Medical Service in Cloncurry.

One of its backers was Gallipoli veteran and WWI Flying Corp gunner Hudson Fysh, the founder of Qantas, which supplied the fledgling medical organisation with its first aircraft.

Kylee's own journey with the RFDS started on Wolgra Station outside Urandangi, when her father, Jim Currie, aged 17 at the time, had a nasty riding accident when a horse rolled on him.

He was recorded as being the first patient to be airlifted from the new strip at the remote community, to Cloncurry where he spent two months recovering in hospital.

"He obviously enjoyed the experience so much that he went on to road test the service several more times during his life," Kylee quipped. "We heard Dad's story a hundred times over the years, and each time he expressed his immense gratitude to the RFDS."

It was when she moved to Quilpie in the 1980s, working as a woolclasser, that she gained a true understanding of why her father sang its praises so much.

While RFDS medical boxes were an essential station item and airstrips were always maintained, she was sometimes called in to be a voluntary ambulance driver or back seat scrub nurse.

"I took on both roles on more than one occasion, operating well and truly outside my scope of practice, which was a basic first aid certificate," she said.

Purchasing a shearing run in 1995, Kylee and husband Mick attended, ran, helped organise and worked behind the scenes at hundreds of events in support of the RFDS.

Then in 2003 when Gidgee Smiths Bags was established, she began putting bags in planes, donating products for auctions, raffles and prizes.

She now acknowledges her passion for advocating for the RFDS and rural mental health services has only been possible thanks to both her business development and by her recognising and accepting her own mental health needs.

"I continue to proactively use these vessels to help others in positive ways," she said. "In our 'Unwind with Wire' creative mental health workshops, we get to start conversations and connect consumers to services such as those offered by the RFDS."

It's her metal art work that she's using to create the idea of an Anzac Trail, from her home at Morven to Quilpie, where she spent 22 years, and where she's created poppies and a slouch hat for a remembrance garden.

"And Quilpie has the most amazing Anzac service ever," she said, noting the Rick Milosevic Memorial stationed to the east of the town.

She lists the Anzac artwork already commemorating our war service, starting with the war memorial sculpture she and Mick created at Morven, and the Vietnam nurses museum unveiled in Morven yesterday.

"I'm looking at sculptures around the museum," she said.

"Charleville has quite a bit already but Lex Winton is recognised as a local fighter pilot in the museum there so possibly I could do a plane sculpture there, pointing to the trail.

"I'd like to do something for the Light Horse too.

"If you want to get on board and you have some artistic talent, let me know."

Kylee hoped that when it eventuated it would become another tourist attraction for the region, saying if people didn't think outside the box, the west's small towns would die.