Dobbo Chats - RFDS (12 March)

0:00Welcome back to Rural Queen's Land Today on the Resonate Broadcast Network, Ben Doven with you this morning and it is the 12th of March, a Thursday morning across Rural Queen's Land Today. Look, yesterday the Royal Flying Doctors Service had a day of giving and I mentioned it at the top of the show yesterday and I was lucky enough to be asked to speak down at King George Square where they were having a huge morning tea to raise awareness for the Royal Flying Doctors Service. See when we talk about people throughout Rural and Regional Queen's Land we all know about the RFTS and for those of you who don't understand why I'm so passionate about it, I thought I would share and give you some insight this morning on just exactly why they are so important to me and why yesterday was such an important day. See back in 2006 I was living at Mandara, I was playing rugby for the Condomine Cods and

1:08I was also married with a 1 year old. We were living at a property called Warren Gimba just out of Mandara and life was great. Head footy in Roma, had a few headaches, came home, had the Sunday in bed, everything was going all right and then bang. I'm up at the Grove Short Horns with GDL doing a bull inspection, having a look at their bulls and I lost my speech and my face dropped. I thought I had bulls pausing. I thought, you know what, something got right. Daytime in Mandara medical isn't the greatest thing we had an ambulance but a blog by the name of Damien Crump drove me to the hospital in Miles. They kept me there for observation, no real idea what was going on. This is 2006 and then I got flowing out to Tuumba and I spent overnight there and me

2:15not having any idea, felt a little bit better so I checked myself out. My brother and lure at the time, Glen Lader drove me home and I was back there and not great. Well things went south from there. I had a massive episode in the middle of the night where I lost all my speech. I couldn't comprehend where I was. Thank God firstly we had Scott and Amory apples down next door neighbors because hen came across and absolutely said I was no good, no doctors around and so away we went. Quite unbelievable what happened. Quite unbelievable what happened then. From there the ambulance driver drove me to the Miles condomine airstrip and you got to remember by that stage the Miles condomine airstrip and it wasn't fenced. There was no gas. So this kangaroo is lined everywhere and this brave pilot cleared the strip three times

3:15before he landed the plane. He was on route back to Brisbane but he picked me up and took me back to Tuumba. I had a brain bleed and was very lucky to survive it and if it wasn't for the raw flying doctors on those two instance never charging me, it didn't cost me a cent. I was three hours away from a hospital of any sort that could do the testing and from there I was able to manage it, get back on my feet and I'm talking to you today. So there's an enormous amount of respect and debt that I owe the raw flying doctor service because the pilot, the nurses, the doctors, people who coordinate that flight change my stars forever and I've never forgotten that and I don't ever want to forget it. Now the big thing to come out of that for everybody is that I am now an ambassador for the

4:18raw flying doctor service. So yesterday was their day of giving and can I tell you it was a special day. The problem is that no one in the city fully understands what the raw flying doctor is. So as much as most of us know about life flight and also about the wonderful work of the raw flying doctors, people in the cities don't have any comprehension. So the raising awareness is the biggest one. I want to give a big shout out to Mrs. Gina Reinhart from Hancock Ag and to Adam Gilley who is their CEO, who yesterday wrote a check for $750,000, remember they only wanted to have a $300,000 fundraiser out of the city and they were going to match $1 for $1.00. Well they made well in excess of millions yesterday and the thing about it is that they're raising

5:19awareness. The raw flying doctor service do wonderful things and you know there's people who go are, they will have gone away from their principles, no they haven't. They absolutely 100% are still to this day helping rural and regional coins landers. Whether you're in the mining communities, whether or not you're in rural, whether or not you're in critical care, they are there. I've walked through the hangars, I've walked through the offices, I've seen how they go. This is an amazing organisation and we looked to where we should put our money or put your money towards the raw flying doctor service and their day of giving yesterday was quite unbelievable. I am an ambassador for the raw flying doctor service and for the heart of Australia and for Queensland gives but I am terribly proud to say that yesterday was a unbelievably important

6:28day to sell the message to the city. Plenty of Ag companies, here it's plenty of Ag companies donate, there are plenty of people who donate and I just want to say that I am beyond proud to be a part of it and yesterday was a special day and rural Queenslanders should be proud of what the work that the raw flying doctor service is doing. We'll take a break, come back, still plenty more to get through. This is rural Queensland today, you're with Ben Dolvin across the Resonate Broadcast Network.