For families in rural Australia, accessing essential healthcare is a challenge that goes far beyond booking an appointment. In small towns like Griffith, NSW—over 570 kilometers from Sydney—basic medical services, including specialists and allied health professionals, are often unavailable or severely under-resourced. Long waitlists, costly travel, and the strain of navigating public transport with unwell children create significant barriers to care.
Ines D’Ambrosio, a mother of three, knows this struggle all too well. Her daughters, Amilah and Liliana, have complex neurogenetic conditions that require ongoing specialist treatment. Yet, in Griffith, accessing vital services like speech therapy can mean waiting years for an available provider. Ines’ family spent six years on a waitlist before securing an appointment—an unacceptable delay for any child needing early intervention.
Even when treatment is available, getting there is another battle. Without access to direct medical transport, Ines and her children relied on a grueling 12-hour journey by bus and train to Sydney—a trip that was physically exhausting, financially draining, and overwhelming for Amilah, who also has autism. The overstimulating environment of public transport and commercial flights made each trip a distressing ordeal.
But rural families shouldn’t have to endure such hardships just to receive basic healthcare.
In 2022, a physiotherapist referred Ines’ family to Angel Flight, since then volunteer pilots and drivers now help cut their journey time down to just one to two hours, making specialist visits more accessible and far less stressful.
“Having a disability is not nice but with Angel Flight a dreaded specialist appointment hundreds of kilometers away becomes an adventure for my daughters and something exciting to talk to their friends at school about,” says Ines
“It takes the anxiety and financial pressure out of each trip and makes it leisurely instead of a long and boring ordeal for me and the children.”
During COVID-19, the service became even more essential, reducing the family’s risk of exposure to illness, which could have jeopardised their ability to attend the very appointments they had waited years for.
Ines’ story is not unique. Across rural Australia, families face impossible choices between forgoing treatment or enduring exhausting, expensive travel. The gaps in the rural healthcare system leave thousands of families struggling to access the care they need, highlighting the urgent need for investment in specialist outreach services, telehealth expansion, and better rural transport solutions.
Until systemic changes are made, organisations like Angel Flight, who remain unfunded by government are a lifeline—bridging the gap between remote communities and the healthcare they deserve.
