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Greg Spice - Medical Student's report of his time in the Kimberley Region
In April this year, Greg Spice a third-year Aboriginal medical student supported by the Mary MacKillop Foundation spent four weeks in the Kimberley region in the far north of Western Australia, working with the Derby Aboriginal Health Service (DAHS). Here he reports:
As part of the third year in the medical degree at Sydney University, all students spend four weeks working in a rural location. As I had wanted, ever since I lived there in the 1960s and 70s, to return to the Kimberley, I obtained agreement from my medical school and from the Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Service (KAMS) to work at the Derby Aboriginal Health Service (DAHS).
I had spent a lot of my childhood and early twenties in the Kimberley, and although it is not my country (I am from the south of WA), I love the area and have strong ties there. In the 1960s I and my brothers and sisters went to Derby Junior High School. At that time the southern section of the Gibb River Road was being constructed to transport cattle to the port of Derby for export from stations to the north. My dad helped to build this road, which is something I’m proud of.
After attending senior high school down south, I came back to the Kimberley and worked as a geological assistant, for a company that eventually found the Lake Argyll Diamond deposit. We used to camp in tents on the Drysdale and King George Rivers during the dry season. Each day in a helicopter we would fly across and explore different areas of the western Kimberley from the coast to the Fitzroy River-Halls Creek Road. My experiences during this time have remained with me ever since and have been the main motivation for wanting to return to live and work in the Kimberley when I graduate from medical school.
Which brings me to Derby, and the Derby Aboriginal Health Service: The DAHS is controlled and staffed by Aboriginal people, with support from a smaller number of non- Aboriginal staff. It has been operating since 1998. As well as providing curative clinic-based treatment to our people, there is a lot of emphasis on preventative and public health programs such as women’s and children’s health, maternal health, men’s health and management of chronic diseases. The service is very proactive, and this is reflected in the improving health indicators for the communities DAHS serves. A new dialysis service is also currently being set up, with one of the doctors from DAHS being trained to oversee the service. The professionalism and caring way the DAHS goes about its work, and similarly its Broome-based umbrella organization, the Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Service, really opened my eyes to the progress that has been made in the provision of health services by Aboriginal people for Aboriginal people in Western Australia.
At DAHS I was attached to work with both doctors and Aboriginal Health workers. I was in awe of the skills of the Aboriginal Health Workers who routinely carry out procedures that I am still quite apprehensive about.
The DAHS and KAMS provides clinical and public health services to quite a few remote communities outside Derby and Broome, which are accessible by road or by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. I visited the Bidyadanga community south of Broome on one occasion. With a visiting physician specializing in cardiology (who I had met years earlier when he was a student in a Public Health class I taught at Sydney Uni) I helped conduct a clinic. This time, he was the teacher and I the student. Bidyadanga is a large community in need of a permanent doctor, but is still currently dependent on weekly visits from KAMS. I didn’t know it at the time, but the Sisters of St Joseph have a close connection with the Bidyadanga community.
On two other occasions I traveled by road to Jarlmadangah Buru, a beautiful community set in a range of hills about 100 km to the north east of Derby. We provided vaccinations and held general consultations at the local clinic which is run by a community elder.
Jarlmadangah is the sort of place more Australian’s should know about. It is a place where Aboriginal people in their own country run a well-organized, dignified community where tradition and modern life are compatible. It seemed to me that the people of Jarlmadangah respected themselves, one another, and their country; and above all, respected and followed the way of their elders. There was no grog. It’s probably no coincidence then, that the physical and mental health indicators for the community were extremely good.
On another occasion I flew with the Flying Doctor Service to the remote community of Dodnum for a clinic. At Dodnum I met one of the elders, Maisie, who is a carer for a demented elderly Aboriginal woman who lives at the community. I think of Maisie most days. You can see thousands of years of our story in her eyes.
Greg Spice
