ON one of my first visits to Mungalawurru, a small Aboriginal community ninety kilometres northwest of Tennant Creek, a senior man asked if he could use our Toyota LandCruiser’s high-frequency radio. His relative was in hospital and he wanted to know how the man was faring. The extended family gathered around the car as Alyson Wright, a researcher from the Central Land Council, made contact. The doctor informed everyone that the patient was awake and recovering, but his leg had been amputated. Although I didn’t ask the cause, nearly all major amputations among Indigenous Australians (98 per cent, according to one study) are associated with diabetes.

That day our radio was the only means by which the residents of Mungalawurru could contact the outside world. The one payphone in the community was out of order – a regular occurrence – and there are no home phones. A few people own mobile phones, but they must drive halfway back to Tennant Creek to make the call, along an unsealed road, to the old Warrego gold mine where you can pick up a bar or two of reception on some handsets. There was only one laptop among the twenty-two permanent residents of Mungalawurru, but it wasn’t connected to the internet…