When Australia's last groups of nomads walked out of the desert, David Scrimgeour was the first doctor to examine them.
The Pintupi Nine emerged from the Gibson Desert in 1984, almost 200 years after European settlement began on the nation's east coast, and were thought to be the very last Aboriginal Australians to live as hunter-gatherers.
It turned out they were the second last. Two years later another family — known as the Richters — came out of the Great Victoria Desert, marking the end of a millennia-old chapter in the nation's history.
Again, David Scrimgeour was their doctor.
His primary concern was managing their looming health risks.
Throughout history, first contact with white settlers had immediately been followed by illness and death among Aboriginal people, who had not developed immunity to the infectious diseases brought by the newcomers.
Dr Scrimgeour recounts his experience with the Pintupi Nine and the Richter family in his new book Remote As Ever: The Aboriginal struggle for autonomy in the Western Desert, which will be released this week.
But he emphasises how these final first-contact experiences were markedly different from most others.
"[The contact] hadn't been made by non-Aboriginal people," he said.
"The contact was between Aboriginal people themselves – it was between Aboriginal relatives.
"So it was able to happen in a very culturally appropriate way."
While the new arrivals were in excellent physical health, Dr Scrimgeour said relatives and community members were proactive about minimising their exposure to infectious disease.
"They made sure they had access to good health care, through their own health systems," Dr Scrimgeour said.
"And [they] made sure they had, in effect, a quarantine, by being just within their family members, family groups … where there was less contact with the wider Australian society."
While he said most of the newcomers did get sick, and developed a fever, cough and conjunctivitis about a week after contact was made, none became seriously ill.
He recounted the experience to the ABC at Tjuntjuntjara, a remote community in the Great Victoria Desert, where members of the Richter family still live.
Social movements on country
Red dirt first got under Dr Scrimgeour's skin during a chance visit to Alice Springs.
At the first opportunity, the Melbourne-trained doctor made his way back to the red centre and soon found himself in the middle of two defining moments in Aboriginal history: the homelands movement and push for Aboriginal-controlled health care.
The first came as elders led the way back to country after spending years in missions and new settlements.
Throughout Dr Scrimgeour's career, he saw this happen across four particular groups – the Pitjantjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra people who moved out of Warburton and Ernabella missions, the Martu of the Great Sandy Desert who established Pumnu, Kunawarritji and Parnngurr, the Pintupi people who moved out of Papunya and Haasts Bluff to Kintore and Kiwirrkurra and the Spinifex people who moved from the Goldfield's Cundeelee mission to establish Tjuntjuntjara.
At the same time, a push for Aboriginal autonomy over health care was occurring on a national scale.
"As people [were] moving out to establish communities back out in their country, this movement of the Aboriginal community-controlled health service extended out into remote areas as well," Dr Scrimgeour said.
While the remote communities he worked in secured control over health care, he said not every remote community was able to.
An important lesson
Dr Scrimgeour is a big believer in this model of health care and hopes his book will show how important autonomy is for Aboriginal communities — particularly, he said, as government policies have ebbed away at the pride people felt when the communities were first established.
"I think it's important that that the Australian public generally are aware of how people did get out here to these communities," he said.
"And how important taking control of your own life is for people's health."
He also believes learning the local language – he learned Pitjantjatjara, which has similarities with other languages used throughout the vast region — was crucial.
"If we're contributing to language decline, we're contributing to cultural decline," he said.
"I think it is very important that we, as non-Aboriginal service providers in places like this, recognise the fragilities and do what we can to ensure that the cultural motivations of the people out here are being fulfilled."
'Caring for country movement'
Dr Scrimgeour said there was now another social movement taking place in remote Aboriginal communities that gave him hope for the future.
He described it as the "caring for country movement", which was underpinned by ranger programs.
He believes funding local people to undertake ecological and cultural work on country not only helps the environment but also people's physical and spiritual health.
"Caring for country is good for the health of the people," he said.
"It's good for the health of the country.
"It's good for the health of the whole country of Australia."
