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Around 1984/1985 Crawford Productions decided to make a new series. So they made a mini series about the Royal Flying Doctor Service, RFDS. They produced 6 episodes which of course was a big success so Crawford made another 221 episodes which was seen by people all over the world, over 50 countries have showed it by now. Some countries choose to dub the episodes with their own languages, but Sweden didn’t. RFDS are well known in Australia, but only there. So the show spred information about it all over the world. The last season of the series was taped in 1991 but many countries haven’t showed all the episodes yet, Sweden is one of them. In many countries like Germany, U.K and the Netherlands the show had big fanclubs, I think the one in the Netherlands still exists. Even if the TV stations stopped showing The Flying Doctors many years ago the show has still got many fans who together keep the doc’s flying.
SO WHERE DID THEY TAPE IT?
In Coopers Crossing of course but the real name of Coopers Crossing is Minyip. It takes about 3 hours to drive from Melbourne. Minyip is northwest of Melbourne. The population of Minyip is 560 and the small town is better known as Coopers Crossing. The road sign even says both Minyip and Coopers Crossing. The town was established in the 1870s and the mainstreet includes two grand old pubs. There’s a craft and souvenir shop in the main street that sells Flying Doctors paraphernalia.
The pictures inside the pub is shot in the studio in Box Hill, and the airport is the RFDS base in Point Cook, Victoria. The hospital scenes was actually shot in a real RFDS base in Broken Hill, which you can find in the far west of New South Wales.
THE SPINN OFF SERIES RFDS
After the big success with "The Flying Doctors" Crawford tried to make a spinn off show, with the name RFDS. Some of the characters from The Flying Doctors should appear in it and it should be taped it Broken Hill. But most of the "FD" fans didn't liked it at all, it didn't had the magic so after a few episodes they didn't taped any more.