Veteran aircraft engineer Doug Briggs is celebrating 25 years of service for the Flying Doctor, 19 of which have been in Alice Springs.
Doug was born in Papua New Guinea and grew up on a mission station in the country’s highlands, a region renowned for its spectacular mountains, dense jungle and heavy rainfall.
The lack of road access thrust him into the world of aviation from an early age.
“We had no phones, so the arrival of a plane into our mission station connected us with the outside world,” he said.
“I remember at a young age the sheer joy and excitement standing at the end of the grass airstrip with my younger brother, leaning into the full blast from the propellor wash and smelling the Avgas burning as they hurtled down.
“Our fruit and veggies were flown in, and I used to love seeing what the mailbag had for us. In essence, those bush planes were our lifeline."
At the age of eight, Doug started boarding school and got his first taste of being in the air. He was immediately hooked.
“As a little tacker, I had to fly to boarding school. It was fly-in-fly-out every term – about 30-minute flights in a Cessna 206,” he said.
“The pilots used to let us sit up the front and ‘have a fly’ and it was unreal – the fact you could go up, down, sideways, unlike driving on a road.
“The theatre of it all – the noise, wind rush and the marvel of how the things actually flew is what got me hooked.”
Doug moved to Australia at 14 and lived on a farm with family in rural Queensland before completing trades school in Victoria.
He joined the RFDS Engineering team in Alice Springs in 1999 before doing a stint at Jandakot Base in Perth, returning to Alice Springs in 2017.
“I’ve got lots of special memories – the variety of the unscheduled work, the characters, many a laugh and friends made from the Kimberley to Kalgoorlie, Perth to Alice,” he said.
“My heart is in serving remote towns and communities though our work behind the scenes. You have a sense of purpose at the RFDS and that’s why we do what we do.”
For the past five years, Doug has been Senior Base Engineer at the Alice Springs Base.
His team manages six aircraft (five Pilatus PC-12 and one PC-24 aircraft) that collectively travel more than 2 million kilometres a year, conducting more than 4,000 landings.
“Alice Springs is home and there’s nothing like the surrounding landscape, red sand and blue skies. The people here and our Alice team are second to none,” he said.
“We’ve got a great bunch of guys who are happy to go the extra mile. A solid and committed team with a can-do attitude.”
When it comes to his work, Doug is fervent in ensuring RFDS aircraft are maintained to the highest standard to support the life-saving work of its medical crews.
Admittedly, he carries this mindset home:
“That’s just me. I’ll either do it the best I can, or not at all.”
“I drive the missus nuts – the garden beds have to be perfectly straight and the caravan has to be dead level.”
While reflecting on the last quarter century, Doug’s focus remains on developing the team’s expertise and mentoring the next generation of aircraft engineers.
“It has been a great journey with many highs and lows – that’s how life flows,” he said.
“It’s a double whammy as its also our 25th Wedding anniversary later this year and I want to thank my beautiful wife for her unwavering support, raising all four of our children in the Alice, especially being so far from family.
“I want to especially thank the team for making this one of the best bases anyone could work in.
“I look forward to welcoming more apprentices on board. It’s a vision we must continue to pursue. We must continue to grow our own local people.”
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