There are few areas of medicine more specialised than eye surgery, but it is in that field — which is also highly competitive — that Kristopher Rallah-Baker has made history.

Dr Rallah-Baker has become Australia's first Aboriginal ophthalmologist after completing his training with a stint in outback Western Australia.

Every year, barely more than 15 Australian doctors complete the five-year vocational training program to become an ophthalmologist.

"I think there's a lot of humility that comes with being the first in the field," he said.

"I guess some people would suggest that I'm a trailblazer.

"I see myself as doing a job and being a role model for other people to follow a similar path both Indigenous and non-Indigenous."

Intricate ophthalmology 'elegant surgery'

Dr Rallah-Baker said he wanted to be an ophthalmologist since starting medical school. He saw the intricate and sometimes difficult nature of the work as "elegant surgery".

"Some people think that ophthalmologists are just surgeons, but we actually do quite a lot more and a lot of the diagnostic stuff can be quite complex, inflammatory disease and vasculidities, diabetes.

"So it covers a broad area of medicine."

Dr Rallah-Baker examines a patient in the Outback Vision van. ( ABC News: Andrew Seabourne )

First federal Indigenous MP provides inspiration

Dr Rallah-Baker, who is also the vice-president of the Indigenous Doctors' Association, said that 20 years ago, there were very few Aboriginal doctors let alone specialists.

There are now more than 300 doctors, but Dr Rallah-Baker said he'd like that figure to be 3,000.

He has drawn inspiration for his path from fellow Jagera man, the late Neville Bonner — Australia's first federal Indigenous parliamentarian.

Neville Bonner was the first Indigenous Australian to become a federal MP. ( ABC News )

"Neville Bonner was a remarkable man," Dr Rallah-Baker said.

"My Mum was very good friends with him in Canberra. She has this story of him holding me in his arms on the steps of Old Parliament House when I was a tiny baby so I don't remember Uncle Neville but … certainly very fond stories of him.

"[When] Neville went into Federal Parliament he was criticized by a lot of people, and by some he was seen as not doing the right thing by entering a large mainstream institution.

"But he was a trailblazer and he continued with what he was doing and he was convinced that it was the correct path.

"And his legacy is now we have a number of very, very fine federal politicians who are Indigenous."

Diabetes 'more aggressive' in outback

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists' vocational training program involves all of the tasks that an ophthalmologist would do — surgical work, clinics, observation and diagnosis.

Dr Rallah-Baker completed his last six months with Outback Vision, an outreach service of the Lions Eye Institute.

He said he found he seemed to have a deeper connection with Indigenous patients.

"There is a slight difference in the level of interaction. I think a big part of that is an instant understanding that there's a common history and there's a common story there," Dr Rallah-Baker said.

"And that's not to say non-Indigenous people don't have that understanding, there's some fantastic, fantastic non-Indigenous ophthalmologists out there who just understand it.

"But the privilege of being an Indigenous doctor is that the engagement is totally understood.

"That we've come from dispossessed peoples, we've survived genocide and it's just there, it's just understood and that opens up a whole discussion that otherwise may not necessarily be opened up."

The Outback Vision Van services communities across WA. ( ABC News )

While overall blindness rates are coming down they're still high in the Indigenous population, with diabetes a leading cause.

"The diabetes tends to be more aggressive than it is in metropolitan areas," Dr Rallah-Baker said.

"It comes down to diet, it comes down to access to services and also access to basic things, like fresh fruit and vegetables. It can be quite expensive out there.

"Often I'll find people who don't quite understand what diabetes is actually doing. Sure it's affecting their kidneys, but whatever's happening in your kidneys is also happening in your brain, also happening in your heart, and of course it's happening in their eye."

Dr Rallah-Baker said he hoped to be doing more work in remote and indigenous ophthalmology in the future.

"The pathology in rural-remote [areas] is a lot more extreme than what you'd see in metropolitan areas. And that's an access issue," he said.

"It's improving a lot, particularly with projects like the one I'm working with here in Western Australia, but there's a fair degree of disease burden out there.

Push for Broome clinic

Outback Vision's Angus Turner said the program had benefited from having Dr Rallah-Baker.

"We do a lot of cultural awareness and cultural safety training so that we are aware of approaches and ways to treat people, but having Kris along is our next level," Dr Turner said.

He said bringing down the rate of blindness in Indigenous communities was the ultimate aim, and having a permanent base in the north-west would help.

Dr Turner says the outback program has benefited from having Dr Rallah-Baker. ( ABC News: Glyn Jones )

The institute is working on a proposal for a permanent base for its Outback Vision outreach service in Broome, and wants government support for it.

"We are advocating and lobbying for the north-west of Western Australia to have a base for eye care right from prevention involving the schools and education through to optometry and the specialists," Dr Turner said.

"There are 100,000 people living up there, and compared to the cities and the rest of Australia they should have three specialists but there are none."

Dr Turner said there would be considerable savings for governments in the long term.