Fiona Stanley arrives at South Beach Cafe at 11.30am on the dot, beaming beneath her orange sunhat. She’s bright-eyed and buoyant, perhaps owing to her morning laps at Fremantle pool, a twice-weekly ritual. In the warmer months, she swims here, at South Beach, a calm, protected bay on the Indian Ocean.
“I’m an addicted ocean swimmer,” she says, as we toddle up the pathway to the beach beneath a row of Norfolk Island pines. “But I’m so much fitter since I joined this swim group. We swam almost 2.5km this morning!”
At South Beach today it’s 19C, though it feels warmer. The water is glass-flat; the sky, a cloudless blue dome. Mothers with babes in arms are splashing about in the shallows, and high up in the pines, magpies sing their languid warble.
“Now, I must tell you about this,” Stanley says, as we kick off our shoes and plunge our feet into the sand. She’s proudly clutching a book calledFirst Knowledges Health: Spirit, Country and Culture, which she co-authored. Part of an eight-book series, it explores how Indigenous approaches to healthcare can solve today’s problems – detailing cultural rituals such as birthing on Country and end-of-life care. “I just love, love, loved writing this,” she says smiling.
One of Australia’s leading experts in epidemiology, child and maternal health, and Indigenous health, the book is a convergence of everything Stanley has spent her life fighting for.
She is vivacious company – quick to laugh, warm with strangers, her mind firing off in many directions at once. As we walk, she stoops to collect a discarded bottle-top from the sand, stashing it in her pocket mid-sentence. She’s nearing 80, but the same relentless energy that defined her career is still there, bubbling under the surface.
Birthing on Country has become a national movement, says Stanley, holding up the book. “It’s about offering warm, family-centred care delivered by Aboriginal midwives, often in hospitals or clinics, supported by the best western diagnostics but under an Aboriginal-controlled umbrella.
“The outcomes are amazing. It’s halved preterm birth rates in Aboriginal births. It’s halved infant mortality. But the thing that really got me is that it reduced children being taken into out-of-home care by about 40% … What is that saying? That’s saying, ‘I’m a good mother. You can’t take my baby away.’”
Stanley is best known for founding the Telethon Institute for ChildHealthResearch, which became internationally recognised for showing that folic acid taken before and during pregnancy can prevent spina bifida. She also helped establish the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth, and was instrumental in setting up Aboriginal-controlled health research units.
That drive, she says, stems from both childhood idealism and hard-earned experience. Stanley grew up in Sydney in a prominent scientific household – her father, Neville Stanley, helped develop Australia’s polio vaccine before the family moved to Perth in 1956. As we stroll along the shoreline, she recalls a vivid dream she had at age eight. “We had this little boat on Sydney harbour,” she says. “So in my dream, I’d sail to these beautiful islands, vaccinate the locals, then sail off again. I had no idea what I was doing – but I knew I wanted to help.”
But the path became clearer years later, during her early days as a junior doctor at Princess Margaret hospital in Perth. “There was an Aboriginal boy, maybe four or five, who’d come in from a remote community,” she says. “He had severe diarrhoea and dehydration. And he died in my arms.” She pauses. “I was 25. And I remember thinking, I don’t know if I can keep doing clinical work. I need to understand how we prevent this.”
Soon after, she joined a volunteer medical team travelling to remote Aboriginal communities acrossWestern Australia. “We went from the Eastern Goldfields to Mount Margaret, to every mission, reserve and camp … all the way up to Kalumburu,” she says. “I saw the conditions. I saw the racism. I saw the consequences.”
Stanley is the first to acknowledge that those early efforts weren’t perfect. “It was a group of white do-gooders,” she says wryly. “Very paternalistic, especially back then.” But in those formative years, she was working alongside Aboriginal leaders such as Eric Hayward, a Noongar writer and health advocate, to challenge structural racism. She recalls one trip to Narrogin – “one of the most racist towns in WA” – where a local doctor had refused to treat an Aboriginal child without upfront payment. “The mother raced the kid to Katanning and it died on the way,” she says. “So Eric and I got that doctor struck off the register.”
We take a seat on a low limestone wall overlooking the beach. A mother strolls past with a baby on her hip and Stanley lights up. “Oh my God, that baby is so cute,” she calls out. “How old?”“Seven months,” the woman replies.“He’s adorable. Just adorable,” Stanley says, before turning back to me. “You know,” she says, “the earlier we intervene in a child’s life, the better. That’s why I care so much about birthing on Country. Non-Aboriginal women benefit from these methods too – everyone benefits.”
The conversation takes a casual turn as we talk about life since she retired in 2011, about being a grandmother, about her fondness for yoga and long walks, and the death of her husband Professor Geoffrey Shellam, who passed away in 2015. She speaks of him with tenderness – her intellectual equal, a fellow scientist and the person she bounced ideas off for decades.
“My husband became the professor of microbiology at UWA [University of Western Australia], which was my father’s chair,” she says, laughing. “After he died I moved down to Fremantle. And now I’m a Freo tragic, I love it here.”
But, of course, Stanley has had a lot more on her plate than swim club and yoga. She still holds various academic and board positions, and advocates for many causes.
“I’ve also got more freedom now,” she says with a rebellious grin. “I’m not running an institute any more. I’m not dependent on government money. So I can say what I like.”
She’s outspoken about the dangers ofthe North West Shelf extension, describing climate change as “the biggest threat to human health”. Her disappointment over the failed voice to parliament referendum is equally fierce. “We know Indigenous-led services work,” she says. “It’s not just moral – it’s evidence-based.”
For Stanley, these issues are all part of a bigger picture: rethinking what health really means, and who gets to shape it.
The real challenge, she argues, is getting policymakers to think beyond hospitals and specialist care. “If we want better health outcomes, the last thing we need is more doctors and more hospitals,” she says. “We need to invest in social supports, early intervention, community-led programs.”
She points to the United States as a cautionary tale. “They spend more on health than anyone else and have the worst outcomes in the developed world,” she says. “We need systems that keep people well, not the systems that pick them up after they’re broken.”
Before we know it, our hour is up and it’s time for photography before Stanley whizzes off to another meeting. The photographer, Tace Stevens – a Noongar and Spinifex woman – introduces herself, and Stanley’s face softens.
“Where’s your mob from?” she asks instinctively.“My father is from Cundeelee mission,” Stevens replies.
Stanley’s eyes well with tears. “That was one of the first places I ever visited,” she says quietly. “It changed me.”
After the photoshoot, she gives both of our hands a squeeze before striding back to her car. On to the next thing.
First Knowledges Health: Spirit, Country and Culture, co-authored by Fiona Stanley, Shawana Andrews and Sandra Eades, is out now (A$24.99, Thames & Hudson).