As a 10-year-old, Brett Reynish had been out mustering cattle with his father on a remote 40,000-acre station in south-west Queensland when trouble struck.
His father was thrown from his horse and landed heavily on the ground, breaking a vertebrae in his neck.
After a long, uncomfortable road ambulance trip back to Longreach, the Royal Flying Doctor Service provided the much-needed medivac to Brisbane, where a full recovery resulted.
"I guess that's when, as a young bloke, that seed was first sown that this would be a really rewarding thing to get involved in," Mr Reynish, now a Dubbo-based pilot for the service, said.
"It's in situations such as that when you realise that out there in the bush, a service like this changes people's lives every day.
"The people in the bush are our biggest supporters."
He had flown in from Dubbo to the ACT under leaden skies in the service's King Air 350 long-range "heavyweight" aeroambulance for the annual Canberra Airport open day, his aircraft joining a dozen others on the tarmac where people queued patiently in the rain to talk to pilots and aircrew, and glimpse inside the machinery.
More than 35,000 free tickets had been distributed for the big event but the rainy weather deterred the aviation dilettantes and only drew the most hardy souls, some of whom queued for more than 40 minutes to troop through the dark and cavernous interior of the open day's star attraction, an RAAF Hercules C130J.
In the eyes of many young children, the time-worn 25-year-old cargo lifter - one of 12 ageing aircraft soon to be systematically replaced by the latest versions - was as exciting as an fighter aircraft.
Canberra's Wolfe Capra-Burke and his older sister, Io, could barely contain themselves after alighting from the Hercules.
"There's a car parked in there with straps all over it," Wolfe said, wide-eyed.
"And there's seats that go up and down, and all sorts of other cool stuff."
For its procurement process, the RAAF made a worldwide search for a medium-sized multi-role cargo aircraft to replace the current C130J fleet but found nothing else was so proven and remarkably versatile.
Those that fly them, too, also love them.
Flight Lieutenant Lachlan S, who can't reveal his surname for operational reasons, has racked up 1600 hours in the C130J, flying missions all over the world.
"We've done drought relief, search and rescue, medical evacuations, short-range and long-range operational missions; you name it, we've flown it - in much worse weather than this," he said, smiling broadly and moustache bristling in the autumn drizzle.
"The longest stint I've had in the cockpit of one of these was 12 and a half hours; we were out off Lord Howe Island, keeping an overwatch on a couple of blokes in a sinking yacht, the Aviva, back in 2022," he said.
"The NSW police boat was coming to rescue them out of Sydney but these blokes were in trouble a long, long way out in the middle of nowhere; they were very pleased we were keeping an eye on them."
He said that he knew he wanted to be a pilot from a very young age when his parents took him on a tour of a huge US aircraft carrier docked in Brisbane.
"So I see all these kids' eyes light up and remember just what that feeling is like," he said.
Another popular aircraft at the open day was a RAAF Pilatus PC-21, one of the Roulettes aircraft.
"It's an amazing thing to fly; it's like the Ferrari of the skies," instructor Josh Tamm, based out of the Central Flying School in Sale, Victoria, said.
