and his arrival at the base in Cooper's Crossing. The miniseries also introduced Nurse Kate Wellings (Lenore Smith), who remained for the rest of the series. The regular series began in May 1986, introducing Tom's assistant Dr. Chris Randall (Liz Burch), as well as pilot David Gibson (Lewis Fitz-Gerald), mechanic Emma Plimpton (Rebecca Gibney) and local police Sergeant Jack Carruthers (Terry Gill).McFarlane left midway through the first season, though he would return later. His replacement, Dr. Geoff Standish (Robert Grubb), remained for the rest of the series (over 200 episodes).
The series had a short-lived Spin-Off titled R.F.D.S., set out of Broken Hill, New South Wales. This series was remade by the Seven Network in 2021 as RFDS.
The Flying Doctors provides examples of:
- An Arm and a Leg: On Liz's first solo assignment, she's forced to amputate a patient's leg to save him when the weather makes airlifting him to hospital too dangerous. It leads to some trouble when the pilot claims that he would have taken the risk if he had known that there was a possibility of amputation.
- Boomerang Bigot: Violet Carnegie is one of the most outspoken critics of having a female flying doctor in town.
- Character Death:
- David Gibson, the base's main pilot, is killed after a crash in the final episode of the first season.
- Dr. David Ratcliffe dies in a climbing accident while attempting to rescue another person who fell. This was just after the character had quit working at the clinic to pursue other goals in life.
- Disposable Fiancé: Liz Drever, Tom's love interest in the miniseries, who leaves him for New York by the end because of the lack of opportunities in Cooper's Crossing.
- Fish out of Water: Most of the doctors, including Tom and Chris. The only one who actually came from Cooper's Crossing before leaving for medical school was Rosie Lang.
- Frontier Doctor: Cooper's Crossing isn't exactly a metropolis, and a lot of what the flying doctors do is in far more remote settings with even less equipment. And the homesteaders are just as ornery as the ones in The Wild West.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: Chris is hit with this after the Jim Spencer amputation, to the point that a woman almost refuses to let her perform a tracheotomy on her daughter.
- My Local: The Majestic hotel, run by Vic and Nancy Buckley.
- Quickly-Demoted Leader: Dr. Harry Sinclair is in charge of the base in the miniseries, but is due for retirement and wants Tom to take his place.
- Retool: Something between this and a Spin-Off or Sequel Series, R.F.D.S. in 1993, set in Broken Hill and with only two returning characters (neither of them medical personnel). It lasted 13 episodes.
- Stay in the Kitchen: Chris gets a bit of this upon her arrival, to a perhaps uncommon degree for 1980s Australia though not so much for an isolated outback town.
- Tragic Bigot: One episode has a WW2 veteran rallying a campaign to prevent a Japanese business venture from setting up shop in the area, which is eventually revealed to be because he hates the Japanese for his brother's brutal death in the war. Never mind that the businessmen in question were born decades after the war, it's a grudge he simply can't give up, and it's not resolved at the end of the episode, the business venture is simply forced to cancel its plans as they had no interest in trying to purchase land in a hostile area.
- Very Special Episode: "Return of the Hero", in which a decorated war hero returns to town and ostracised when it's revealed that he's dying of AIDS.
- Welcome Episode: The miniseries for Tom, "Will to Survive" for Chris. To a lesser extent, "Return of the Hero" for Geoff.
- Wrench Wench: Emma Plimpton, who becomes the local mechanic.
