The great Australian outback flying mail service

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For people living in some of the nation's most remote and disadvantaged communities, a weekly air delivery service is a lifeline.

As the single-engine Cessna touches down, a cloud of red dust billows out behind it. The pilot — an affable 27-year-old named Harvey Salemeh — turns around and grins.

"Welcome to Tjuntjuntjara."

Further down the runway, there is no terminal or ground crew waiting on the tarmac, if you could call it that. Instead, there are a handful of parked four-wheel drives waiting for the plane to come to a stop.

Although it is equipped to seat 10 including the pilot, this morning's flight is not carrying any passengers.

Instead, there is a mix of cardboard boxes, sealed crates and packages in plastic wrapping stowed in its undercarriage.

This is how mail is delivered in some of Australia's most remote communities dotted across the outback.

Forget the next-day delivery, the collection card under the door, or even the post office. Out here, it is a weekly air service that drops off and picks up.

If you do not turn up on time, you will miss it.

The remote mail service covers a massive region stretching across Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory.

Each week, Cessna Caravans — propellered American planes first manufactured in the 1980s — make their way from community to community along a route stretching thousands of kilometres.

Their pilots lead double lives. In Mr Salemeh's case, he splits his time between Alice Springs, where he lives, and Kalgoorlie, where his employer owns a house.

The service is subsidised by the Federal Government to deliver regular mail, as well as vital medical supplies and water samples to and from small Indigenous communities, some thousands of kilometres from anywhere.

Similar to the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the mail service also ferries patients to regional centres such as Kalgoorlie, seven hours' drive east of Perth, for non-emergency treatment.

In communities such as Tjuntjuntjara, where in the rainy season the roads can flood for weeks on end, the arrival of the plane is a lifeline.

"It's very unusual but this year we had three years' worth of rain in two months and we were cut off twice," says Vicki Taylor, who manages the local health clinic.

"In one case, we'd started running out of food so we had to get food flown in from Kalgoorlie."

"The plane is the only help we can get," says Tyson Stephens, an Aboriginal nurse.

Tjuntjuntjara — or simply 'Tjun-tjun' — is a vibrant community of about 150, most of them southern Pitjantjatjara people moved off their traditional lands during the Maralinga nuclear tests in the 1960s.

"The best part of living in a community like Tjuntjuntjara is the community. You know everybody, they know you," Ms Taylor says.

"When you go away and you come back, everybody says 'Hello, how are you?'"

The wet season can create other problems too. A morning downpour can make it hard to navigate without the help of air traffic control towers.

"There have been times I've arrived overhead and I can't actually see the airstrip because of cloud or heavy rain," Mr Salemeh says.

"[It's hard] trying to figure out a way to get into it."

But look out from the cockpit on a clear day and you can see far into the distance — the dense patterns of silvery-green and red scrub, the marbled pink salt lakes.

Ilkurlka, another regular stop, is a further half-hour's flight away. Its airstrip, like Tjuntjuntjara, is a long strip of red gravel.

On today's run, there is only one package to deliver in Ilkurlka.

But after 15 minutes idle on the ground, Mr Salemeh checks his watch and motions towards the plane. No-one has shown up.

"That's really unusual," he says.

At every remaining stop, locals greet Mr Salemeh warmly. They briefly chat about the weather while brushing away flies. Many know him by name.

"My favourite part of the job is definitely meeting new people," Mr Salemeh says. "You start forming a friendship there."

At Warburton, the plane is refuelled by a jovial man named Steve, who pulls a long hose from the side of the runway up a ladder and onto a nozzle on the plane's wing.

The township of about 450 is one of the largest in remote WA, and is home to the only surfaced airstrip anywhere on the route.

Its location along the Great Central Road — an unsealed artery that cuts north-east all the way to Uluru — is at the nexus of three states' borders.

"Sometimes you get a bit of confusion because people in Western Australia think you're in the Northern Territory," says local shire president Damien McClean.

"[But] I have to say the remote air service support scheme is a tremendous reflection on governments on both sides who have sustained it over the years.

"You could not live out here without it."

In cities such as Perth or Sydney, you could expect items ordered online to arrive within a day or two via Australia Post.

In remote communities, that can stretch out to a week if you are lucky.

Recently Mr Salemeh has noticed a lot of parcels from the online discount store Catch of the Day.

"If your supplier delivers through [private couriers like DHL or Toll] you may never see the goods," Mr McClean says.

"But with Australia Post, it's usually not a much longer wait than if you're in an urban area. Instead of overnight, it's probably seven days, which is great."

Like many services in the outback, including remote clinics like Ms Taylor's in Tjuntjuntjara, it is often a one-size-fits-all situation.

Where resources are stretched and help is often too far away, circumstances can call for a bit of quick thinking and resourcefulness.

"On odd occasions we've taken dogs in [the mail plane], or puppies, where they've needed to be taken to an RSPCA for fostering or rehoming," Ms Taylor says.

Of the passengers Mr Salemeh does take on his plane, some are paying customers. But many are patients from remote clinics.

While there are fly-in-fly-out specialists who visit remote communities, medical appointments on the whole have to be made in Kalgoorlie or Perth.

It can be a harrowing experience for some Indigenous people taken far from their families for a treatment they do not always fully understand.

In Warburton, Spinifex man Ivan Frazer takes the seat two behind the pilot for the ride back to Kalgoorlie.

"They really should get [patients] back where they're from and they should have their treatment in their own community," Mr Frazer says.

He says many Spinifex people in his community feel helpless and cast adrift in the health system.

"It was too far for me to travel today," he says. "Oh yeah, [others in Warburton] got the same problems.

"And they're going through this."

There are few greater ways to understand the vastness of the Australian interior than by the delivery of mail from a small aircraft.

"We're 1,000 miles from Kalgoorlie and 1,000 from Alice Springs," says Mr McClean.

"It used to be very remote. Now with the internet, TV, phones, it's not nearly as remote as it used to be."

And with a regular airborne delivery through rain, hail or shine, that is unlikely to change.

The population serviced by the remote mail program is admittedly very small and unevenly spread across the country.

Yet ask anyone who uses it and they will tell you life would be very different without it.

Topics: indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, indigenous-policy, air-transport, regional, wa, forrest-6434, kalgoorlie-6430, beadell-6440, newman-6753, alice-springs-0870