The world's craziest work commutes

When a tourist is bitten by a snake in the Outback or an isolated cattle rancher is thrown from his horse, Dr Minh Le Cong soars out from his base at Mount Isa, in Queensland, Australia, in a Super King Air B200 twin-engine turboprop to offer aeromedical retrieval.

The 43-year-old senior medical officer spends some days on emergency response and others flying out to small clinics in remote communities with a pilot and a nurse. He is part of Australia’s elite team of Royal Flying Doctors, an iconic not-for-profit organisation funded by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments, as well as public donations.

Cong's medical services include everything from primary health care and vaccinations to antenatal care and mental health promotion in destinations within a 500 km radius of Mount Isa that are as disparate as a tropical island in the Gulf of Carpentaria and an Aboriginal Outback village.

"We go to very remote parts of Australia and one thing that I tell new doctors is that this kind of work in this environment is unforgiving,” he explained. "Unlike in an emergency room in a big city hospital, there is no panic button to hit on the wall when things go wrong. There is no backup out here. You are the backup.”

Flying to work is the best part of his job, Cong said, but the landing is a whole other animal. There are obstacles like kangaroos on unsealed airstrips, risks like touching down at night on runways lit by kerosene lamps, and bizarre weather phenomenon in the summer months that make the ascent and decent not only turbulent and nausea-inducing, but also dangerous.

Cong, who got into this line of work out of a sense of moral duty, is the first to admit that his daily commute is on the extreme end of the spectrum. But he’s not the only worker in the world battling both mother nature and human nature in the name of a hard day’s work. From a flying dentist in Alaska to a miner who marches into an Indonesian volcano, click the images above for a look at five of the world’s wildest — and in some cases, most dangerous — commutes. (Credit: Royal Flying Doctor Service)

(BBC)