The Indigenous population is relatively small, geographically dispersed and heterogeneous. For example, housing conditions range from improvised shelters to typical suburban homes, and the communities in which people live range from extremely remote communities with no or few facilities, to large capital cities such as Sydney and Melbourne.

It is likely that there are also heterogeneities within the Indigenous population with respect to health, but demonstrating this requires adequate data, which is what the rest of this lecture is about.