Nurse Karen Barlow quietly watches a towering rural dad comfort his young son, who has a broken arm after jumping on a bunk bed with his rambunctious brothers.

As the father and son travelled with the Royal Flying Doctor Service from their remote town for treatment in Dubbo, western NSW, Ms Barlow was moved by their deep connection.

“The little boy was a foster child and they were trying to adopt him,” she said.

“The dad leaned over … and held that little boy’s hand all the way.

“This little kid did not take his eyes off him. It was beautiful.”

Barlow, a senior flight nurse, also cared for another rural family whose young daughter had suddenly fallen ill and was on life support on a flight to Sydney.

The girl had always been happy and well.

“Her dad said, ‘If you offered me a million dollars yesterday to bet I’d be doing this today, I would have knocked it back’,” she said.

These are the poignant moments that will stay with Barlow as she retires after 27 years with the aeromedical service.

Raised on the land, she was a founding member of the Dubbo base after starting her career in midwifery, acute care and emergency medicine.

The NSW service’s 14 aircraft cover roughly three million kilometres each year, providing about 90,000 instances of care across air retrievals, remote clinics and telehealth.

Nationally, crews had contact with 345,000 patients in 2023/24, with about 33,000 flown for treatment.

A quarter of a century working with rural and remote patients has shown Barlow how small towns come together in difficult times.

“If someone’s hurt, or someone’s in need, that community wraps them up and does everything they can,” she said.

Of course, greeting royalty is a pretty notable career highlight too.

“Twice, darling,” she said.

Barlow met the King and Queen during their 2012 visit to the Longreach base, while they were Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall.

The medical crew had waited in a hot aircraft before meeting the couple, and they were drenched in sweat as they came face-to-face with royalty.

The Queen assured them she could relate.

“She said, ‘I nearly had to call you; the humidity was so bad, I thought I was going to collapse’,” Barlow said.

“If she rung, we would have come.”

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex visit the Royal Flying Doctors in Dubbo. Photo: AAP

Six years later, Barlow met the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, when they visited Dubbo soon after their wedding.

The prince, who worked as a cattle hand on an Outback station during an Australian gap year, was curious about how the service worked and how it recruited nurses, Barlow said.

“They were both really nice,” she said.

Now though, leaving “the best job in the world” won’t be easy.

“You’re going to pick up people that are probably having the worst day of their life,” Barlow said.

“Your job is to make them feel better, to reassure them – some of these people have never even flown before.

“They trust us to treat them; it’s quite humbling.”

-AAP