The further from the moderate and temperate coastal regions you go, the more sparsely populated the landscape becomes. As you head further northwards in South Australia the landscape changes from the usually green and cool south (but actually now they are having a drought and just the croplands, vines and orchards get watered, so things are looking a little thirsty) to the rugged semi-arid to the dry Red Centre of the famous Outback.

In these places you want to know where you are, where the next fuel is and when the next food and water stop will be. This holds true for now and it did in yesteryear. Either that, or you need to be an expert in pretty much everything to ensure your survival! Or just live off the land like the Aborigines do. Or otherwise die a slow painful, and pretty pointless death!

One of Australia's most iconic public services is the Royal Flying Doctor Service (www.flyingdoctor.net). Have a read of some of the Real Life Stories and see what a difference this unique service has done for people and the impact it has had on communities it serves. It is very very impressive!

Since most people do not have any medical skills, it is a flying medical service that first came into being in 1914 when vast tracts of Australia where not within, what the RFDS founder Father John Flynn called, "the mantle of safety".

In most countries, the countryside can be divided into three distinct categories - urban, urban-rural and rural. Urban is the cities and rural is the country side, although relatively near to the urban centres. But in Australia, there is a fourth category - remote. Because the country is so vast, there are places that fall outside of the usual categories. In the remote regions, it is not unusual for children of station owners and managers to learn to fly before they can drive. It makes sense when the station that they live on can be up to the size of an English county! So it is easier, and cheaper, to get people to hospitals than for hospitals to be built and staffed in remote areas.

Hence, the need for the RFDS. Today some parts of remote highways are actually designed with sections that can be used as landing strips for their aircraft. The rural and remote areas of Australia are replete with stories and tales of legendary exploits of pilots and medical staff doing what they can to medical help to those in need. 80 years on and the service is still going strong!

You realise the necessity, and importance, of these services when you head out into the bush (rural) and then out into the Outback( remote). Here towns are small, and disappearing as the youth move to the "big cities" or the original reason why the town was established has long changed or stopped occurring. One night's stop was Quorn (no, not the place where they make soy based quasi-meat products for veggies who ACTUALLY like meat, but just can't get round to admitting it!) where the Monday morning traffic was a bloke on his bike and the trucker who stopped overnight (it took us ages to cross over!). Maybe he crashed in the Hotel TransContinental?

The hotel was massive and took up practically the entire block opposite the almost defunct train station. Before WWII, the train was the fastest and cheapest way to connect the northern parts of Australia and South Australia to the southern coastal cities. Quorn was an important junction at the base of the Flinders Range with huge workshops, staff quarters, water and coal bunkers. It was here you could go further south or west. Come WWII, it become even more important as the town become a major staging point for troops and supplies. So the town grew and since every growing town needs supplies, people piled in and the town prospered tremendously. No doubt, the Hotel Transcontinental was a rip roaring place to be and spend a fun-filled night in the bar downstairs.

But not now; maybe never again. Most people have packed up and gone elsewhere and who could blame them! To try and revive the railway, the tourist steam train makes a once weekly journey up from the nearest major town, Port Augusta (itself hardly a tourist mecca! No power station should ever make it onto a the tourist draw card, unless there is not much else to go on.).

But as you head further north on the Stuart Highway (this highway runs right up the centre of the continent. When you get to the junction to head north, the sign board literally points to either Perth or Darwin - both of which are about 2000kms away! There are no need for any more elaborate directions than these!), you start out into the Red Centre of the Outback. As you head north, signs implore you to ensure that you have enough fuel, water and food to last, at least 5 days, should you break down or require assistance! Where else but Australia? So remote is this area, that our night stop near Quorn with the three vehicles that passed while we were having sundowners( drinks and olives, under our ever handy F£$K OFF flynets), made our night stop off in the Outback seem like a cemetery with only the newly shawn sheep for company(and the flies that didn't bother us in Quorn!)

Every developed nation has some sort of weapons testing ranges. They need to be far removed from civilian populations as to keep them from harm should something go wrong and far from prying eyes. The Brits were so paranoid that a space rocket town was built 15kms away from the test centre headquarters. None essential personnel were housed here and never allowed to come into sensitive areas. That town, Pimba, now exists as the "gateway" to the rocket and weapons museum just down the road. The reality is that Pimba houses 35 souls and is really a large petrol sation with a resto attached!

The British must have loathed giving up the Woolmera Rocket range because there is absolutely nothing like it anywhere in the British Isles. It is literally MMFA* and not much in between (but before the advent of satellites, it was here that the first manned space flights were tracked when those in the northern hemisphere lost the spacecraft over the horizon). If you were so inspired, you could head out to the museum and wander around the rockets that were tested and developed here that helped propel mankind further to "boldly go where no man has gone before". Prepare the Apollo bomber for warp factor 5, Ms Waterfield......engage!

From the cockpit of the bomber the stars near looked closer or clearer from an Outback desert sky. Who needs to go to space when you can get a pretty darn fine view from here? Sheep and beer and all?!

*Miles and Miles of F$£king Australia (an adaptation on the same from a previous blog from Africa )