CWA NSW Renews Rural Health Reform Push: 36 Years Remote, 179km From Help

For health system leaders and policymakers, the Country Women's Association of NSW's renewed reform push is a stark reminder that Australia's rural health crisis is measured in kilometres as much as dollars. Vicki Hemley's 36 years in remote NSW, and her routine task of clearing kangaroos from an airstrip 179 km north of Broken Hill so the Royal Flying Doctor Service can land, illustrate a care model still built on emergency retrieval rather than accessible primary care. The CWA's campaign puts workforce distribution, service design, and telehealth infrastructure squarely back on the NSW reform agenda.

The Country Women's Association of New South Wales has renewed its campaign for structural reform of the state's rural and regional healthcare system, anchoring its case in the daily realities of residents such as Vicki Hemley, whose access to medical care can hinge on clearing kangaroos from a remote airstrip before a Royal Flying Doctor Service plane touches down. Hemley has spent 36 years living and working in remote NSW and for the past 15 years has helped run Packsaddle Station, a pastoral property 179 kilometres north of Broken Hill, where she regularly prepares the airstrip used by RFDS aircraft, including during late-night emergency retrievals. "It's always that huge relief when you see that Flying Doctor plane come in," she said. Her experience, reported by the Western Advocate and Daily Liberal on September 9, 2026, is one of the realities behind the CWA of NSW's renewed push.

“

For health system leaders and policymakers, the Country Women's Association of NSW's renewed reform push is a stark reminder that Australia's rural health crisis is measured in kilometres as much as dollars.

The story crystallises a structural problem that has defined Australian rural health policy for decades: in vast, sparsely populated regions, the default pathway to care is often an aeromedical retrieval rather than a nearby clinic, GP, or hospital. For communities around Broken Hill, itself hundreds of kilometres from major tertiary centres, the RFDS functions as both emergency responder and de facto health safety net, with remote property owners acting as unpaid airstrip managers, first responders, and logistics coordinators. The reliance on volunteer-maintained airstrips underscores how far routine care can sit from where people live, and how thin the margin of error becomes when weather, distance, or a single missing clinician disrupts the chain.

The CWA of NSW's intervention matters because the organisation is one of the state's most enduring rural advocacy bodies, with deep networks across agricultural and remote communities. A 'renewed' push implies the association has previously raised these issues and is now escalating, suggesting frustration that incremental measures have failed to close the access gap. While the specific policy platform is not detailed in this report, reform demands of this kind typically converge on a familiar set of levers: incentives to attract and retain doctors, nurses, and allied health workers in regional postings; expanded telehealth and virtual care; better resourcing for small rural hospitals and multipurpose services; and sustainable funding for aeromedical providers such as the RFDS.

For clinicians and health administrators, the human detail in Hemley's account carries clinical weight. Reliance on emergency retrieval means chronic conditions are more likely to present late, preventive care and screening are harder to deliver, and continuity of care is fractured across fly-in services. A woman living 179 kilometres from Broken Hill who must prepare a dirt airstrip for a flying doctor is effectively experiencing a care model built around crisis response rather than population health, with measurable consequences for morbidity, hospital avoidance, and health equity between metropolitan and remote NSW.