What it is like to work for the Royal Flying Doctor

At the end of the runway, on a remote cattle station, a woman had gone into premature labour.

The plane had taken off from Charleville - itself, by no means a metropolitan centre.

The last census had the population in the town, nearly 750 kilometres west of Brisbane, at just over 2500, but in terms of medical access, it was a sight better than a sprawling station in the middle of nowhere.

The flying doctor's emergency team was onboard, prepared to lend aid and get their patient back to specialist care in Brisbane. The Royal Flying Doctor operates 79 such planes covering the most remote areas of the country.

In the scheme of things, a mission such as this one could have been par for the course, but it was one of the first experiences in the field for a medical student who grew up at Singleton, NSW.

Jared Lawrence didn't think he would go into medicine until he had almost finished school. He grew up on a cattle farm in the Hunter Valley, his dad was a mechanic, and his sisters went on to study Agriculture at the University of New England.

Lawrence grew up playing rugby and thought he would go into the family trade - take an apprenticeship, maybe, or find work in the mines. But when he suffered a knee injury on the field towards the end of high school, he suddenly found himself spending a lot of time talking to his GP.

"I had to come into Newcastle all the time to see the specialist," he said.

"And I got talking to my local GP about the need for healthcare in the bush and why people aren't coming back after they finish university.

"I sort of saw it as an opportunity; I always saw myself living in the country, and I thought this was a way to give back."

Lawrence, who is now in his final year of medical studies and is based at the hospital at Gosford, NSW, still keeps in contact with his GP, who offers him advice and mentoring when he needs it.

For his placement - a few weeks in the field where he got to learn hands-on - he knew he wanted to go west of the big city. If he was going to become a doctor, it was always going to be a country doctor.

"I looked at the map and found the most remote location I could find," he said.

"I thought it would be an awesome opportunity to see what happens in remote medicine."

The hospital at Charleville is equipped to conduct x-rays and ultrasounds, but for anything more serious than that patients need to travel for more specialist care. Some - farmers, mostly - travel hundreds of kilometres just to get to Charleville. It was there that Lawrence found a local GP willing to take him under wing.

The town relies on the Royal Flying Doctor to connect patients to the care they need, but the isolation of country life means many common health issues go untreated or are treated late.

"I think even growing up in the country, I didn't realise how dependent the outback is on the flying doctors," Lawrence said.

"And I think it's, you know, I know, dad being a farmer, the farmer presents to the doctor a lot later than the average.

"It's hard to get the farmer to the doctor, so we need to provide a service that they can access easily."

As part of his placement, Lawrence spent a few days shadowing the airborne doctors in their work.

It was how he found himself landing in a small plane, on a dusty airstrip, bringing care to a woman countless kilometres from the nearest hospital.

The flight landed in Brisbane with just enough time to get the mother and unborn child into the hands of specialists who could safely deliver the baby, but it was a formative experience for the young doctor on board.

"Without the flying doctors, the baby wouldn't have survived, and their mum may not have survived either." Lawrence said.

During the harvest, Lawrence spends his time on the header to pay his study expenses. There's more traffic in Gosford than he's necessarily used to, and walking down the street without running into someone he knows is a novel experience.

While some young doctors might aspire to city life, the kid from Singleton likes the idea of coming home to a country town where everyone knows everyone and the local GP cares for generations.

He's looking forward to his final exams this year, then two years as a junior doctor before he's fully qualified. It's a long, hard road, but the outcome is worth the work.

"It can be quite sad," he said at one point.

"The people producing our meat and vegetables for the supermarkets don't have access to first-class medicine. It's something I want to work on in my career."