A Dr Odlum was the Broken Hill Section's first doctor and he used a Fox Moth aircraft chartered from Australian National Airways and flown by a Captain Annear. A radio base was established in October, 1938, 8km east of Broken Hill, with a direct telephone link with the doctor's home for after-hour calls.

The section bought its first aircraft in 1940, a second-hand twin-engined De Havilland Dragon biplane at a cost of $8,000. Sydney pharmacist L M Pattinson donated half the amount.

A second Dragon was bought in 1945 for $100 from the War Disposal Commission. Both aircraft were replaced in 1952 by De Havilland Drovers. In later years the section used British Beagles, Australian-built Nomads and then in 1987 switched to Beechcraft King Airs, which cost more than $2 million each.

But a colourful character named Dr Clyde Fenton was actually our first flying doctor. He bought an old Gipsy Moth, registered Uniform November India (UNI), back in 1934 for 500 pounds that he borrowed from his mother and Sydney MP Thomas Murray.

Based at Katherine in the Northern Territory he flew the plane in all weathers and at night, following rivers, creeks, railway lines and roads. He later crashed on 1,000km flight to Victoria River Downs to treat a woman who had been badly gored by a bull.

He scrambled out bruised and dazed but otherwise unhurt. It took more than three years to repair UNI in Darwin and it was then bought by a flying school at Camden run by the Macarthur Onslows before they sold it in 1951 to former Canadian Air Force officer Bill Campbell-Hicks.

He took it to Condobolin to start a flying school where more people became pilots but he later sold it to Mt Hope grazier Cliff Wright and for 32 years it was used to spot stray sheep and cattle on his 18,000-hectare property.

Mr Wright owned it until 1988 when he sold it to the Katherine Aeronautical Museum after Katherine MP Mike Reed saw a story of mine in the SMH about the plane's history and organised a public appeal.

An RAAF Hercules flew the moth to Katherine after a huge farewell shindig at Mt Hope attended by farmer families from miles around. I was invited to the party and the Katherine delivery flight in the Hercules. Dr Fenton had other planes but continually had to fight officialdom and red tape to pioneer aerial medical services in Australia. But his one-man effort eventually became the Northern Territory Aerial Medical Service.

With petrol prices rocketing again, how many people know Orange once had a wartime shale oil industry right on our doorstep. Rusty weed-tangled machinery and the ruins of a handful of old brick and concrete refinery buildings are all that's left to remind people of what was there.

Back in the 1940s the now ghost town of Glen Davis in the picturesque Capertee Valley, on the western fringe of the Blue Mountains, was producing annually up to 31 million litres of crude oil and 17 million litres of good grade petrol.

The venture was set up in 1936 to create jobs after the Depression and to give the country an alternative supply of fuel should another war break out in Europe. It was closed in 1952, most of the land and equipment was sold and the 2,500 residents packed up and left. About 20 people live there now. But Glen Davis and the Capertee Valley has just had a new role as a film set. From March 1 to the middle of May it had an influx of more than 230 people producing Channel 7s new show SAS that premiered on air this week with 650,000 viewers. The show has also used nearby Lake Wallace and the railway bridges out of Lithgow. Glen Davis through the years encountered all sorts of problems and was never able to make a profit even though its shale oil was top quality and gave a good yield averaging about 250 litres a tonne.

In 1951 when Glen Davis petrol was costing six shillings (60 cents) a gallon to produce compared with two shillings (20 cents) for imported fuel, the Federal Government decided to cut its heavy losses and closed the enterprise the following year despite a 27-day stay-down strike by miners in a last ditch stand to keep it going. It's interesting a steel bridge from Glen Davis was brought to Orange to span Forest Rd on the then Gnoo Blas race track. The bridge was later taken down and part of it was put across the creek next to the Moulder Park netball courts. It's still there.

Finding a woman sobbing because she'd locked the keys in her car and couldn't get in, a passing soldier assures her he can help. She looks on amazed as he takes off his shirt, rolls it into a tight ball and rubs it against the car door. Magically the door opens.

"That's so clever," the woman says. "How did you do it?"

"Easy," says the soldier. "These are my khakis".

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