Royal Hotel, Birdsville linked to pedal generators, the others being placed at 4 head stations in far western Queensland and at the Aboriginal Mission at Mornington Island, with base station VJI established at Cloncurry. For the first 18 months, communication was by Morse code, but the system proved enormously popular, and soon revolutionised outback communications. Importantly, Birdsville became reliably connected to the station properties in the Diamantina district, and with the new Aerial Medical Service, established by Flynn in 1928 under the auspices of the AIM, and based at Cloncurry. In 1934, nursing sisters Edna McLean and Amy Bishop of the AIM's Birdsville
Cloncurry, Queensland sites, including: Cloncurry was widely regarded as holding the record for the highest temperature recorded in Australia at on 16 January 1889. Recent investigations have revealed that this temperature was measured in an improvised screen made from a beer crate and that it equated to 47–49 °C under standard conditions. The highest temperature ever recorded at Cloncurry's current weather station is , well short of the now widely disputed 1889 temperature of 53.1 °C. The average annual rainfall is , almost all of which falls In the months of December to March Because of the area's extreme solar conditions, Cloncurry