“I am 5000 kilometres from home, and 1500 kilometres north of Perth. I am about to drive hundreds of kilometres, alone, with a phone that might die, through the most ancient part of the world, which may or may not have phone reception anyway. I haven’t driven a car for twelve months, and I don’t know how to change a tyre. I have nothing on me aside from an old stethoscope and a suitcase full of ill-considered clothing.”

Put Your Feet In The Dirt, Girl is a memoir by Australian doctor and author, Sonia Henry. Not yet thirty-five, a published author, and on the cusp of qualifying as a GP, Sonia exits what turns out to be a bad relationship with a manipulative cardio-thoracic surgeon. Her escape to Europe foiled by COVID 19, she heads to a small mining town in Western Australia’s desert where she will be the only doctor.

“I didn’t leave Sydney because, as a medical professional, I had a keen interest in serving remote Australia, or due to a particular passion for the health of First Nations Australians. Back then, at that very low point, it was for entirely selfish reasons that I ran away. Remote areas can attract saviour types, friends of mine who live out there have told me, but I can assure everyone that the only person I had any intention of saving, in the beginning, was myself.”

Over the next twelve months, she meets many good and decent souls, makes firm friends, and sees some incredible places. There are some hiccoughs with new quarantine regulations:
“‘Do you think I can arrest you for getting food?’
‘You tell me. You’re the policeman!’
‘I’ll turn a blind eye just this once,’ he says generously. ‘But don’t do it again.’”

She has to battle with poor connectivity in telehealth programs, before she is even able to treat patients face to face. As a single white female doctor, she encounters some bizarre (and often amusing) requests, but she finds herself providing at least as much psychological care for her depressed patients, as medical care, all with insufficient equipment and resources.

In the Pilbara, she comes to realise is that, despite the obscene profits made by the mining companies, only a miniscule fraction is spent on the physical and mental health of the mining employees. She is expected to provide care under extremely challenging circumstances, with very little support. Sufficiently severe cases, emergencies, depend on an under-resourced Flying Doctor Service to get them to better care, with delays of hours or days often being the norm. Frustrating and sometimes heartbreaking.

From there, after a break at Broome, Sonia heads to Central North West NSW, where she learns that, despite their dire need, the First Nations people only ever get second (or third) rate health care. As politicians pontificate about Closing the Gap and Welcome to Country, the lack of resources available to anyone living remote from the coastal cities, demonstrates that this is merely lip-service.

After a fleeting visit to her parents’ home with a newly adopted pup, in remote Northern Territory Sonia discovers why doctors stay for such a short time: doctors are sent to these isolated communities without experience or training in their special needs; language problems hamper communication with patients; solutions are devised that don’t help those with the problems; non-First Nations staff seem more intent on ticking boxes than giving effective care.

Government legislation on First Nations issues results in the quality of living is so appalling that people become desperate and violence ensues, making living there as a single white female doctor dangerous, “finding myself in places where sleeping behind a cage is widely seen as normal, even desirable.”

“There are the good people, who are overworked and undervalued; and there are the sociopaths, the borderline criminals, the self-righteous bullies and the mentally unhinged, who gravitate to the positions no one else wants, entrench themselves and contribute in no small degree to the malaise that haunts Indigenous communities. Sorely lacking are recognised training programs for people who aspire to work in a community, or screening criteria to weed out the mad, bad and incompetent who prowl the grey zone of Indigenous service delivery”

As Sonia tries to find herself by what seems like “just driving till the road ran out” she concludes “You can feel beauty and suffering simultaneously in this place.”

She has some unique or unexpected experiences: bad spirits plaguing her dreams are seen off by an aboriginal healer; she learns to shoot; she wonders if an array of unusual blood results will be the foundation of a ground-breaking research article; she meets a ringer with a taste for Russian literature; she gets to visit a cattle station; she treats an unusually infected dog-bite; she attends a Tupperware party; and in Broome, her glass front door explodes.

Often laugh-out-loud funny, at times reflective, always insightful, Henry’s memoir raises some uncomfortable truths for white Australian. A thought-provoking read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Allen & Unwin.