Remote As Ever

Medical work in remote Aboriginal settlements is the focus of this memoir by David Scrimgeour, a doctor who spent the late 1970s practising in the Western Desert region of Australia. Far from towns and conventional services, he became involved in the Homelands movement and in the push for health services controlled by Aboriginal communities.

Those years showed him how firmly Aboriginal people sought to govern their own affairs, and how often government policy worked against that aim. The book is full of disputes and forceful characters, and it makes clear that the prospects of these communities, along with the wellbeing of the people in them, are still unsettled.