It was during the third year of her nursing degree at UNE, in the late 1980s, that Sarah Brown's life changed forever. Her final practicum was at Moree Hospital working with an Aboriginal liaison officer by the name of Stella.
"I already had an interest in Aboriginal health, but that experience sealed the deal for me," says Sarah, who for the past 17 years has been the CEO of Purple House, a ground-breaking Indigenous healthcare provider in Central Australia. "Stella welcomed me into her life and helped me to understand the importance of relationships, culture and connection in health and wellbeing."
While working with the Aboriginal Medical Service in Adelaide, Sarah went on to complete a Graduate Diploma in Educational Studies (Aboriginal Education) at UNE, before heading to Batchelor, in the Northern Territory, to teach Aboriginal health workers.
That was a laugh; they taught me far more than I could teach them.
"I was travelling out to remote communities three weeks in every four and I absolutely fell in love with them. The strength of culture and language ... the opportunities to work with people who were living in poverty but had really clear ideas about who they were and what they wanted for their families and their future," Sarah says.
Sarah's career took an unexpected turn in 2003, when she was approached by a group of Pintupi-Luritja leaders with a tantalising opportunity. Dismayed by the high kidney disease mortality rates and dislocation of families during treatment, they wanted dialysis delivered on country. An auction at the Art Gallery of NSW had raised $1 million to launch the Western Desert Nganampa Walytja Palyantjaku Tjutaku Aboriginal Corporation and they wanted Sarah to come onboard as project manager.
"I had literally never seen a dialysis machine in my life but I had visited Kintore and knew that people would have a big challenge ahead," says Sarah. "By this stage I'd moved from the desert and was nursing on Cape Barren Island, in Bass Strait, to give my kids some time by the seaside, but it was a unique opportunity for Aboriginal people to design a new model of care and I wanted to be a part of that."
So Sarah's family returned to Alice Springs and she "chucked her lot in", working out of the corner of her lounge room to make the dream of remote dialysis a reality. Pride and confidence in the project soon grew.
People finally had some hope; they were not poor old dialysis patients living on someone else's country anymore.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Founded on family (Walytja), country (Ngurra) and compassion (Kuunyi), the Purple House model turned traditional Indigenous health delivery on its head. Administered by a board of 12 Pintupi-Luritja directors, it today provides dialysis in 18 remote communities, a mobile dialysis truck and allied health support.
Sarah has been CEO for 17 years, and while she claims she is "much better at making cups of tea and having a chat", she's clearly a driving force behind "the Starship Purple House" and its incredible success. The Australian Financial Review clearly thinks so, having named her one of their BOSS True Leaders in 2018.
"We've had some terrible times over the years when we thought we would not find the resources to keep going, when we had to advocate and push and be complete ratbags to help people survive," Sarah says. "But I've grown and learnt lots of new skills along the way.
"You walk in here (the Alice Springs headquarters, which hosts a dialysis and GP clinic) sometimes and it's like we're having a party, not like people have end-stage renal failure. I’m useless at taking holidays, because I suffer from extreme fear of missing out. I couldn't imagine doing anything else."
But becoming so much a part of communities brings responsibility and - sometimes - heartache. "Our care is about ensuring quality of life, and sometimes that involves stopping dialysis and helping people to die on country with the people they love around them," Sarah says. "You build very close relationships with patients who become part of your family - and sometimes you lose them. There are still people I miss terribly, who fought hard for dialysis on their country."
Sarah credits several of her UNE lecturers for helping her to get her head around Aboriginal health, both-ways education and the importance of understanding different world views.
"My work has given me huge faith in humanity, about the importance of doing the best for each other," she says."Things will get better, gaps will close, but a lot of that will be because of the resilience, resourcefulness and compassion of Aboriginal people."
