The $20 Note

Flynn, wishing to throw a mantle of safety over the outback communities, saw the potential of the ‘flying doctor’ and pedal radio. In the course of time, it was his adoption of these outstanding innovations to the work of the AIM in the outback that led him to become a figure of international significance. He was transformed from being simply a church leader to a figure of both national and international importance.
 

By the 1950’s, the ‘flying doctor’, now the Royal Flying Doctor Service, was acknowledged by the former Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies as being “perhaps the single greatest contribution to the effective settlement of the far distant country we have witnessed in our time”. Flynn had become the most famous and significant Presbyterian in Australia’s history because he had made a major contribution to the building of the nation and the development of a national Australian consciousness.
 

When the Reserve Bank of Australia issued a series of new polymer notes in the 1990s, the Reverend John Flynn was honoured by placing his portrait on the $20 note. The background design reflects his contribution to the welfare of settlers in the outback, particularly his founding of the Australian Inland Mission and the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
 

The background design features the fabric bi-plane ‘Victory’, a de Havilland DH 50 which flew the first Flying Doctor mission from Cloncurry, Queensland on 17th May 1928. Below the plane is a stylized etching of the pedal radio transceiver invented by Alfred Traeger in 1929. It enabled the people of the outback to call on the Flying Doctor for assistance. Also depicted is the body chart created by Sister Lucy Garlick in 1951. The body chart is still being used today as it enables patients to describe the region and intensity of their pain or injury. On the right of the $20 note is a picture of a Flynn Boundary Rider or Patrol Padre named Coledge Harland mounted on a camel-one of five Flynn purchased in 1913 so that his Patrol Padres could travel the outback to minister to the people there.