Down The Road hosted by Jake Whittaker with Ian Winks

I suppose, you know, all these years with ABCRA, what keeps you coming back and being a part of the community?

I've always been involved in committees and I've probably been the chairman of quite a few of them.

And while I was on the board for so long, I wanted to be sure that whoever took my place was going to do an equal job to what I've done or a far better job.

And there was never anyone putting their hand up.

And just when I did find the fellow to take over, they owned a marina stud at Hebel.

And just when he was prepared to take over, The Halls, who were the chicken kings from Middle Merrin, came and bought the place, so it took David Hammond out of the equation.

So there I remained on the board of the ABCRA for a few more years.

But I've met people.

I've always said that I could walk into a hotel somewhere on the east coast of Australia, and there'd be someone that I'd know or someone that would know me, and someone said, gee, Winksy, you know a lot of people.

I said, oh, yes, I've got a lot of mates.

And he pulled me up and he said, no, you haven't.

He said, the fingers on one hand would be the number of mates you would have.

And I said, you're being a bit bloody unhealthy there, Wilesy.

He said, well, I'm going to put it to you this way.

You get jailed in Darwin.

There's 10 grand on you to get you bailed out.

How many phone calls could you confidently make to have someone turn up with 10 folding fellas to get you out of jail? And I thought, you are pretty right.

There might not be a few phone calls I could confidently make.

But no...

The main reason we were so fond of keeping Rodeo and Camp Duff going, we relied heavily on sponsorship and support to keep our health services active.

And the Flying Doctor's always been a very, very big part of southwest Queensland or western Queensland, saved a number of lives.

And we were in an area where we had a bush nursing centre, of which there was only five in Queensland.

Bolin was one.

And in the early days, we used to have to pay the sister's salary.

So we had to generate enough money to have money in the bank to be able to have someone go in fortnightly to pay the sister.