The delight that work alone can give

Robert “The Prof” Bedford provided medical services in South Australia for over 20 years, despite having no medical qualifications

In the early 1980s, a national newspaper ran a feature soliciting nominations for “the most boring town in your state”. The winner for South Australia was the Eyre Peninsula township of Kyancutta. This generated the expected reaction from parochial inhabitants, who came up with a long list of interesting aspects of the district, including the notable and exciting fact that the township straddles the Eyre Highway, that great semitrailer-populated road connecting the west of the Australian continent with the east. Doubtless much of this list was facetious, but Kyancutta does in fact have a fascinating history, however dull it might have seemed by the end of the 20th century. It was the home of one of the earliest inland meteorological reporting stations; it had Australia’s fifth officially recognised aerodrome; and it housed an outstanding and unique natural history museum. All this, and much more, was the work of one man, Robert Bedford, who was known to three or more generations of farming families as “Beddie” and “The Prof”.