In the Northern Territory bush, motherhood often begins with a journey. One that pulls women thousands of kilometres away from home, across the red dirt, floodplains, and sky. Each year women from remote communities and outstations make their way to Katherine Hospital to give birth; sometimes with a partner or support person, but often alone.
Katherine Hospital is the referral centre for the Big Rivers Region, with a landmass the size of Victoria. From Borroloola to Lajamanu, the WA border to the Gulf, women are routinely flown or driven in during the final weeks of pregnancy. The Territory’s patient travel subsidy policy currently only funds a support person for first-time mothers or high-risk cases, so many women often have no choice but to leave behind their children, families, and support networks to wait (sometimes for weeks) in hostels or temporary accommodation in town until labour begins, and then to birth alone.
And yet, they show up. Quietly, fiercely, and with deep resilience. “This is the norm for so many bush women,” says Dr Saunders, a rural GP Obstetrician registrar working in Katherine. “They leave their lives behind, navigate a system that isn’t always built for them and honestly, they do it with such strength.” But Katherine’s maternity unit offers something rare in this remote context: a well-staffed, stable team of committed female rural GP Obstetricians and trainees.
Under the leadership of Dr Jasmine Banner, the unit has built a model of care that exemplifies the best of rural medicine: community-based, flexible, and deeply relational. Each GP Obstetrician is responsible for a specific area or group of communities, providing antenatal care on Country through regular outreach trips to each community by a known provider.
This continuity extends to opportunistic antenatal care in town, and often when the same women arrive to give birth. This model places rural GPs, true generalists with additional obstetric training, at the very heart of maternity care. Unlike specialist Obstetricians, who typically meet a woman for the first time when she is in labour, rural GP Obstetricians walk with women through every stage, from preconception, pregnancy, labour, postpartum, and even on into early childhood.
In many cases, they’ve been there before: delivering siblings, treating extended family, and knowing the names and stories behind each new arrival. That continuity matters. For women arriving alone in labour, seeing a familiar face—someone who knows their story—can be a small but vital anchor. The model also feeds back into the wellbeing of the workforce.
“It’s a way of practicing medicine that brings meaning,” says Dr Saunders. “You’re not just a pair of hands for the delivery. You’re part of that woman’s pregnancy story from the beginning, during her labour, and after. It’s the kind of care that makes you want to stay.” While the women remain the true heroes of this story—strong, adaptable, and far too often alone—the Katherine team stands as a powerful example of what’s possible in rural maternity care when systems are shaped by relationships.
The partnership with Royal Darwin Hospital Obstetricians provides support for high-risk cases and backup when needed, but the strength of the model lies in the day-to-day connection between these rural clinicians and the communities they serve. In a system that too often demands so much from bush women, Katherine’s model doesn’t remove the distance but it does try to meet them halfway. With familiar faces. With continuity and with care that remembers.
Access to quality child and maternal healthcare in remote and regional communities remains one of Australia’s most pressing challenges. In Read more