FROM TV FAN TO FLYING DOCTOR!

Dr Kiri Oates reckons the real-life outback version is just as action-packed and exciting as the popular ’80s drama series

- Dan Proudman

When she was growing up in England, Dr Kiri Oates’ family were huge fans of The Flying Doctors, and religiously watched actor Andrew McFarlane as he flew in to save the day as handsome Dr Tom Callaghan.

“The show gave a level of expectation – I would be like, ‘No, I would be removed if I chose to amputate on a kitchen table,’” laughs the real-life hero, who moved from the UK to Dubbo with her partner Jason two-and-a-half years ago to join the world-renowned Royal Flying Doctor Service.

But reality proved fiction was closer to fact than Kiri had ever imagined with several call-outs, where early prognosis included plans to perform amputations on patients trapped in car wrecks and on badly injured young boys in remote communities.

Based in Dubbo, the emergency medicine and retrieval registrar spends some of her time in the local hospital’s emergency department and her other shifts on site at the service’s base at Dubbo Airport.

Kiri, 33, can be put on retrieval duty, where she may fly across the state – and even interstate – for jobs. It includes day and night shifts.