PEOPLE OF THE COAST • Tash Richardson
TASH RICHARDSON At 14, she was learning to fly a plane before she could drive a car. A VISIT TO THE ROYAL FLYING DOCTOR SERVICE, WHEN TASH WAS JUST 13 YEARS OLD, WAS THE MOMENT SHE KNEW WHAT SHE WANTED HER CAREER PATH TO BE.
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n a tour of the RFDS base in Broken Hill, Tash watched the flight crew and paramedics in action; she walked around the planes and the mechanics working on the innards of a King Air; heard from the pilots about the far-flung and, often, very basic runways the planes had landed on, and the people the crews they had helped save. As someone who’d been diagnosed with a chronic lung disease as a child, Tash had already seen her fair share of the inside of hospitals, and it had made her interested in helping others, perhaps as a paramedic. ‘The idea of flying was exciting, but here was an opportunity to fly and also be able to help people,’ Tash says. ‘I knew then, that
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I wanted to become a pilot with the Royal Flying Doctor Service.’ She asked her parents for an introductory flight for her next birthday and, on the day of her 14th birthday, the family drove to the Warnervale Aero Club where Tash took her first flight. Her instructor could see how thrilled his passenger was when she was allowed to take the controls during their flight, and asked if she’d like him to do a loop-the-loop.’ ‘It was the coolest thing I’d ever experienced,’ Tash says, grinning broadly at the memory. From then on, she was up at the Warnervale Airport most weekends, taking flying instructions and getting her flying hours up. She took her first solo flight after her 15th birthday, and officially got her recreational licence at 16.
