The inland mission
John Flynn was born at Moliagul, in Victoria, on 25 November 1880. By 1912 he was the first superintendent of the Australian Inland Mission, and in 1926 he designed and built Adelaide House in Alice Springs.
The pedal radio
Alfred Traeger worked with Flynn from 1926. His pedal-operated generator powered a radio transceiver, and the first pedal sets were introduced in Queensland in 1929. In 1933 he added a typewriter-style Morse keyboard to the sets.
A lasting legacy
The service was renamed the Flying Doctor Service in 1942 and became the Royal Flying Doctor Service in 1955. Flynn died on 5 May 1951. His ashes lie near Alice Springs beneath a boulder from the Devils Marbles, and he appears on the Australian twenty-dollar note.



