Remnants of the National Trachoma and Eye Health Program are still visible in the quiet streets of Bourke, almost 800km northwest of Sydney.
Forty years after the ground-breaking program set out to eliminate trachoma and treat other eye conditions in rural and remote communities across Australia, the work of Fred Hollows and his team is still making an impact.
More than 100,000 people from 465 communities were screened over the three-year project in 1976, restoring the sight of hundreds, and instilling good eye healthcare.
As a result of the program, the number of Aboriginal people suffering avoidable blindness halved.
June Smith, a resident of Alice Edwards Village - an indigenous reserve in the northwest regional NSW town of Bourke - was one of the people Hollows assessed.
A teenager at the time, Ms Smith remembers Dr Hollows fondly.
"He must have looked at hundreds of people's eyes at the village," she said at a special yarning circle in Bourke for the anniversary of the NTEHP.
"We lived in tin huts and dirt floor, but that never worried him. He was that good. He would come into our homes and sit down and have a yarn."
Wearing glasses now, Ms Smith makes sure to keep up with the eye appointments, and instills the same awareness in her grandchildren.
"Today my grandchildren still see the eye specialist and they all wear glasses. Just about all of them and I do too, so I still bring them along, so that's a good thing," she said.
Hollows travelled with a core team made up of mostly indigenous workers and community members who were integral in the program's success.
"We had Aboriginal people in frontline jobs. That was pretty rare back in the day," Rose Murray, a field clerk on the team, told AAP.
The team worked hard to gain each community's trust, with an indigenous member of the team visiting first, to ask permission to set up.
The locals warmed to the team quickly.
"Because we concentrated on the children, on trachoma itself, and then afterwards we got to the adults, that was an interest," Ms Murray said.
"Everyone in the community wants their children to be well and healthy, and they want to know what's going on, so that was like an open door."
In honour of the 40-year anniversary of the program's creation, around 20 former members of the program's team, with friends, family and colleagues of Fred Hollows, have gathered in Bourke to reminisce and see the work being done for indigenous eye health.
The doors of Bourke Hospital and the Dubbo Aboriginal Medical Service were thrown open, giving the program's team a chance to see the state-of-the-art conditions the community now enjoys.
On its final legs on Friday, the tour also coincided with the 23-year anniversary of Fred Hollows' death.
His widow, Gabi Hollows, led a heartfelt tribute to Dr Hollows on Thursday at his gravesite in Bourke cemetery.
"Fred had absolutely no distinction on how he should treat his patients. Everyone was equal," she told AAP.
There were just two Aboriginal controlled medical services at the start of the trachoma program, and 13 by the time it finished.
There are now hundreds around Australia.
NTEHP's key achievements (1976-1979):
* Number of Aboriginal people suffering avoidable blindness halved
* Visited 465 committees across Australia
* Screened 100,000 people (62,000 were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander)
* More than 1000 surgeries
* 27,000 treated for trachoma
Current sate of indigenous eye health:
* Six times more likely to go blind than non-indigenous Australians
* 94 per cent of vision loss is preventable
* Australia only developed country in the world to still have cases of trachoma
AAP hv/tr/aab
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