I FLY TO Wadeye with wary curiosity. People say the generation of elders there has lost all authority, that adults live in fear of the kids; I want to see for myself and I want to learn about the Women’s Uprising.

The ‘uprising’ is my own term for the quiet subversion of modern obstetric arrangements by outback women. Time and again (in my capacity as a District Medical Officer for remote Central Australia) I have dispatched Flying Doctors to remote locations to retrieve women in obstetric emergency.