Everything you always wanted to know about The Flying Doctors. Dedicated to Lenore Smith and Christopher Stollery.
 

Fan club day, Nijmegen, January, 17, 2004

I woke up at 7 am. My first thought was to stay in bed, but I managed to get to the shower and then I felt quite more active (I'm going through this fase every morning). My train left at 9.19 and, this is a little miracle in the Netherlands, there were no delays. I met Roos at the station of Nijmegen at 11.11. Together we walked to the Kolpinghuis where all would take place. Bit by bit people entered the Kolpinghuis and I thought the day was well visited. We heard of a fan club day were only 7 people showed up, but this was not the case whatsoever today!

The program started with Anouk, Marleen and Marianne telling about their visit to Australia and the actors they had met. They talked to Christopher and Lenore, but also to Robert, George, Terry, Sophie and Andrew. I felt a bit jealous as I wished I had been there too, talking to Lenore and Christopher, but well, which Flying Doctor fan wouldn't have been jealous?? We found out that Chris is busy with many theatre productions, while Lenore actually has made a turn in her career and is now working as a personal assistant. She sometimes does some acting work on stage, though. Robert was starring in Mama Mia, a show that is actually on the road right now in the Netherlands as well. Terry has his own theatre cafe and according to the stories, it must has been a great evening visiting his show. We saw a couple of video fragments of Robert in Mama Mia, Andrew on the DVD of the mini series, Terry in his show and David fishing in a travelling show on television.

During the break I talked to Roos and I admired her collection of The Flying Doctors. I left my collection at home, because it didn't fit in my bag and most of my collection is on the internet at this site. Roos had most of the fan club magazines from the early nineties and I felt so sorry that I was never a member of the fan club. I was too young that days and I didn't know at all about fan clubs.

We saw the episode The Wrangler's Daughter, because of Miranda Otto starring in it. She's now married to Peter O' Brien. It was a nice episode; I'd never seen it before. I bought new pictures of Lenore, Christopher and Robert. A quiz took place and three fan club day visitors (not me) had to answer very hard questions about episodes. Then a video about Coopers Crossing/Minyip (which actually was the only part not that great because it all went very, very slow...) and as an ending of the day we saw all kinds of video fragments of Lenore, Robert and George in the late eighties/early nineties. Time flies when you're having fun and so it certainly did this day.

Time to catch a train again at 5.15 pm. This time to Arnhem, to a friend of mine, so luckily not all the way back to the south.

I thought it was a very nice fan club day. We got a lot of information, you had the chance to buy some great looking pictures of every cast member and my compliments to the organisation, because it was really great! The room was decorated with pictures of actors and all Australian looking things as a flag, pictures of koalas and some tasty Australian chocolate-thingies on the tables (I think I ate a bit too much of that). Of course being a Flying Doctor fan is different these days then when it was when the series where actually still on television. Well, for me it is. Then I was 11 years old and I wanted to be just like Lenore (not being a nurse, but being an actress in Australia). Now, of course, I'm over that, and what stays is just an interest for the show and the actors, who were once so dear to me.

Hopefully there will be many fan club days like these from now on! See you all next time; looking forward to it!

Picture


Robert and Lenore