A man has revealed how he went from watching ‘The Flying Doctors’ on a dreary day in England as a child to living out his dream as an Outback hero after moving his family to the Australian bush so he could follow his dreams.
Dr Andy Caldin, 39, left school when he was 15, becoming a carpenter to make ends meet before finally realising his passion for medicine stretched beyond the silver screen.
And he couldn’t be happier.
‘We used to watch the show in England and think it was amazing,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘And now I get to be the one to fly around out here and help people in their hour of need.’
Dr Caldin (pictured third from left) with his family Isaac, 13, George, 18, Poppy, 11, Alexandra, 46, and Rudy, 3 after moving to Australia so he could be a flying doctor
Dr Caldin, pictured inside a plane used during emergency extractions in the Outback
Dr Caldin, back right, overseeing new colleagues as part of their simulated training
Dr Caldin has been working in the medical field in some form since he was 21 – when he joined the Ambulance Service after working for six years as a carpenter and sign fitter.
‘I realised I had a thirst for knowledge and decided to go to university, no one in my family has ever been to university,’ he said.
He graduated as a doctor aged 32 – and 11 months ago he convinced his wife Alexandra, 46, and four children George, 18, Isaac, 13, Poppy, 11 and Rudy, three, to move to Dubbo in Australia’s bush.
‘We absolutely love it here, we love the Australian people,’ he said. His wife is a stray-at-home mother – looking after the household, children and Andy when he isn’t flying through the outback.
‘We do 24-hour on calls when we are in Dubbo – and out in Broken Hill we do 12-hour on calls.
‘Family balance can be difficulty in this job, there’s no getting around it.
‘I am away from my wife and kids a lot but I am doing a job I really love – and I am lucky she is at home keeping the household together.’
The doctor has come across some devastating accidents since he relocated to the bush – with motorbike crashes among some of the most damaging he’s seen.
Dr Andy was the first of his family to go to university in the UK, a path he took after leaving school aged 15 to become a carpenter
Dr Caldin remembers watching The Flying Doctors series as a child – and remembers thinking how amazing the heroes were
The Flying Doctors was a very popular show – especially in the UK where the audience is not used to Australia’s vastness
‘It is nice to be able to arrive somewhere out here – where there are often no ambulances so we are the only care available and just know we are helping people in their time of need.
‘We arrive at a property at a time when everyone is frightened and scared and we help them and make them feel like it is going to be okay.’
The doctor says the sheer size of Australia still shocks him especially when he sees it from above.
‘We landed on this station and from the air all we could see was vastness and nothingness.
‘I was talking to the farmer there and I said something about how hard it must be to live out there – and he really put it into perspective for me.
Dr Caldin has been working with the Royal Flying Doctors for about a year and has been involved in emergency scenarios as well as giving medical instruction over the phone
Peter O’Brien and Rebecca Gibney from season two of the television show
‘He said ”Yea but it can be hard to live in the middle of Sydney too – you can be all alone in the middle of the city”.’
While a lot of the doctor’s work revolves around soaring into properties to help in emergency situations and farming accidents he works closely with the clinics as well.
‘We will get a phone call from one of the little clinics and direct the nurses there on what to do for the patient.
‘The clinics even have cameras so if we need to we can actually see the patients.
‘One woman wrote to me recently to thank me for the call, she said my calming voice coming down the line made her feel like there was a doctor there with her in the room.’
Dr Caldin as a child – before his love for learning and medicine brought him to the other side of the world
And there is a great network of doctors who help keep the people in the Outback’s isolated communities healthy.
‘We have a lot of GPs who go and help the communities – we work hand in hand with them– and there are also dentists and mental health workers – it is just not me on my own we have a team,’ he said.
Over the last three weeks Dr Caldin’s newest colleagues worked to get up to speed with what it is like to be a flying doctor in Australia’s harsh and vast Outback.
The doctors were put through their paces – as they ‘rescued a severely injured farmer and his mate after they became stranded, pulled a man from under a tractor and saved a patient from the deadly bite of a brown snake’ in a range of simulated exercises.
‘Our training is about teaching the doctors to expect the unexpected,’ said RFDS Senior Medical Officer and lead trainer Dr Peter Brendt.
‘They are all advanced clinicians but they’ve previously worked in hospitals with big teams and medical testing equipment available.
‘In the Outback we are usually hundreds or thousands of kilometres away from the nearest hospital, without access to different specialists.’
The 39-year-old has been a doctor for seven years but was working with Ambulance crews in the UK from the age of 21 – pictured here during a simulated exercise