As part of their 16 day tour of Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga, one of the royal couple’s first visits was to Dubbo in regional New South Wales around 400km northwest of Sydney.
Dubbo is a growing city and home to Taronga Western Plains Zoo as well as an observatory. As part of their visit to Dubbo, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex unveiled a new propeller plane, a Beechcraft King Air B350, to join the fleet of the Royal Flying Doctor Service. The plane was dedicated to the Dubbo & Region Supporters Group who raised money for the RFDS.
The Royal Flying Doctor Service is this year celebrating 90 years of operation following the first Flying Doctor flight on the 17th May 1928 in Queensland. The Dubbo RFDS base, which was established in 1999, is currently undergoing a multi-million dollar upgrade to include a medical and flight training facility, and visitor education centre. The expansion will cost around $14 million and is expected to open in mid-2019. The site hopes to attract around 50,000 tourists annually and hundreds of trainees will undertake aeromedical and flight training each year. The new building will also house telehealth units.
During the Dubbo visit, the royal couple spoke with Royal Flying Doctor Service staff who displayed some of the equipment used on board RFDS aircraft and spoke about their experiences. Harry and Meghan also met with former and current patients of the service.
The Royal Flying Doctor Service in NSW has recently welcomed another couple, two doctors from the UK who have settled in Broken Hill with their two young children. The two experienced doctors will be part of a service covering around 640,000 km2. The Queen’s first visit to Australia in 1954 incorporated a visit to the RFDS base in Broken Hill which is when the service received the prefix of ‘Royal’.