Beltana in 1853 with the benefit of the aborigines of South Australia particularly in view. The Smith of Dunesk mission was something of a diversion from Mrs Smith's intention as the main focus was on white settlers. The first Presbyterian manse was purchased in 1898, having been rented by Rev Robert Mitchell for four years before that, and served as the manse subsequent missioners including for Reverend John Flynn, later of the Australian Inland Mission and the Flying Doctor Service, in 1911. It became the Beltana Australian Inland Mission nursing home in 1919. The nursing home continued until hospital facilities became
John T. Flynn the role of the so-called "merchants of death" (munitions manufacturers and bankers) in leading to U.S. entry into World War I. By 1936, Flynn had publicly broken with Roosevelt. He was already drawing comparisons between the centralist features of the New Deal on the one hand, and Benito Mussolini's policies on the other: "We seem [he wrote] to be not a long way off from the kind of Fascism which Mussolini preached in Italy before he assumed power; and we are steadily approaching the conditions which made Fascism possible." Flynn was one of the founders of the non-interventionist America First