Dr Allan VickersPrint Page

The memorial commemorates Dr Allan Robert Stanley Vickers who worked for the Royal Flying Doctor Service for 35 years. 

With the prompting of the Reverend John Flynn, Vickers joined the Aerial Medical Service of the Presbyterian Australian Inland Mission and between 1931 and 1934 was medical superintendent at Cloncurry, North Queensland. In hazardous flights to outback locations which lacked proper landing facilities, Vickers averaged approximately 40,000 kilometres a year in his de Havilland 50 cabin biplane (DH50) which was equipped with a battery-operated portable transmitter. After financial support for the mission had been eroded by the Depression, in 1933 he began a publicity and fund-raising drive that led to the formation of an independent body, the National Aerial Medical Service of Australia.

He was recalled by the Queensland section of what was, after 1942, the Flying Doctor Service, and established its second base at Charleville in 1943.  He was chief medical officer there from 1951 to 1954. 

In a recent issue of the "Balonne Beacon" there appeared a drawing of a proposed new Flying Doctor Base at Cliarleville. The new base will include one building for School of the Air Operations, another larger building for the actual Royal Flying Doctor Base, and the other building planned is a residence for the Senior Radio Officer. No estimate of the total cost or proposed commencement date was given. A set of ornamental gates will be built at the base in memory of D. A. Vickers, who was the first Flying Doctor and virtually the father of the Charleville Base. Manager of the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Queensland, Mr. G. Daniels, told the paper that the State Council was firm on their plans to go ahead with the Oharleville Base.
Western Herald (Bourke, NSW), 31 January 1969.

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