‘Wrapped in culture’: NSW birthing centre next step in long road to better maternity services for Aboriginal mothers

Waminda midwife Melanie Briggs says the new centre will use cultural practices Indigenous women cannot access in the mainstream medical system. Photograph: Tamara Dean/The Guardian

Melanie Briggs is gazing out at a grassy field, swatting away mosquitoes as we walk through the brush and scrub on a sunny autumn afternoon on the New South Wales south coast. We come to a stop amid the knee-length grasses where the tall eucalyptus trees reach up to the blue sky. Here she unfurls her vision for women giving birth on country.

“I can see the first birth here,” she says. “It will happen at night.”