Melissa Sweet

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  • Independent journalist and health writer; Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney; Founder of Croakey.org. PhD candidate, University of Canberra
The facilities were poor and some inmates were subjected to unsuccessful experimentation with a “vaccine” that used arsenic compounds. Hospital Ward Dorre Island/State library of Western Australia

What do the newspapers really tell us about the lock hospital histories?

Melissa Sweet, University of Canberra; Kerry McCallum, University of Canberra, and Lynore Geia, James Cook University

The lock hospitals inflicted incalculable traumas on Aboriginal people, wrenching them away from families and country.
In the SBS documentary series Who Do You Think You Are?, Peter Garrett traces the history of his grandmother, who worked in the “lock hospitals” as a nurse. Screenshot/Who Do You Think You Are/ SBS

Acknowledge the brutal history of Indigenous health care – for healing

Melissa Sweet, University of Canberra; Kerry McCallum, University of Canberra, and Lynore Geia, James Cook University

Hundreds of Aboriginal people were incarcerated on Dorre and Bernier islands for “venereal disease” between 1908 and 1919. The lock hospitals were penal rather than therapeutic institutions.
Social, environmental and economic forces affect a person’s health. Sander van der Wel.

The growing movement to increase health equity

Melissa Sweet, University of Canberra

It’s a story that wouldn’t normally make the headlines. A middle-aged man in a central Queensland town found himself stacking on a lot of weight unusually quickly. His blood pressure was on the rise, and…

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