1.01 Will to Survive by Tony Morphett
Summary: Chris Randall arrives in Coopers Crossing to take up her new position as a doctor for the Royal Flying Doctors Service. Much to (nearly) everyone's surprise, she's a woman, and the patients around the district do not exactly welcome the new "Doc" with open arms - she's a woman doing "a man's job" and therefore regarded with much suspicion. All new doctors are viewed with great suspicion, but with her being a woman, she gets it even worse than usual. With Tom busy in the operating theatre, she flies out with nurse Kate and temp pilot Ray to see a man whose leg has been crushed - two days ago (it's a big station). The weather deteriorates, the man hasn't looked after his airstrip and it makes it unsafe to take off. As he can survive with an operation, they go back to the house and Chris performs the operation... an amputation. The other part of the plot centres around a man who's wife left him ("shot through" as they say), and who has two older and two younger sons. One of the older ones lives in the City, where he's gone to study, so the other one is left to look after his younger brothers. The father has given up, drinks too much and has landed himself with some sort of ulcer - it's him that's under the knife keeping Tom busy.
