What does a white English hairdresser know about building houses in the Northern Territory in a remote Aboriginal community?

It's a question Kelly Wright asks herself as she sits surrounded by flat-packed equipment and planks of wood on a lot near Jilkminggan, a remote community south-east of Katherine.

She is 3,600 kilometres of highway from the hair salon she owns at Bondi Beach.

The two locations are snapshots of very different countries on the same continent, but Ms Wright has made a remarkable leap over the tyranny of distance.

Partly funded by the charity she founded, the hardware will in coming days be erected into culturally sensitive housing, the first built in the small community of 300 in nearly two decades.

Map Jilkminggan is more than 3,600km from Bondi Beach

The structure is the result of collaboration between Ms Wright, the Jilkminggan Community Aboriginal Corporation (JCAC) and local elders over the past 18 months.

"[Back] then I didn't know very much; now I know a lot," Ms Wright said.

"I could build a house in the Northern Territory, which is what we're going to do over the next couple of days."

Op shop opportunity

In 2016 Ms Wright's salon connections helped hoist the Jilkminggan op shop, then a small social enterprise opened by local women, into the national spotlight.

A callout for donations to the op shop's clothing drive on her salon's Facebook page went viral.

The post promptly attracted more than 20,000 shares and in subsequent weeks so many boxes of clothes that many are waiting to be unpacked to this day.

Ms Wright was invited into the community following the surprise success and she became determined to continue working with locals based on what she saw there.

"I fell in love with a little girl called Alima; she was 18 months at the time and so was my son," she said.

"I couldn't believe, I couldn't cope with the fact that she was born in the same country as my children and not afforded any of the same opportunities."

In Jilkminggan, as in many of the Northern Territory's remote, predominantly Indigenous communities, infrastructure is so poor as to make ordinary aspects of life in major cities — jobs, amenities, phone service — seem like luxuries.

The hairdresser helped a clothing drive for the op shop go viral in 2016. ( ABC Radio Darwin: Jesse Thompson )

Ms Wright was especially taken aback by the poor state of housing, in which some basic design principles seemed non-existent.

She said she saw this as an important stepping stone to addressing broader issues.

"Fundamentally, a house is the basic route of creating a sustainable community," she said.

"It can fix health, it can fix the living conditions in order to be able to focus and go out and do a full day's work in any capacity."

Housing conditions poor

According to JCAC director Helena Lardy, many houses in Jilkminggan are both poorly serviced and chronically overcrowded, with up to 20 people sleeping under the same roof.

"Privacy is very low; a lot of things get used so everything starts breaking down, like your plumbing, things like that," Ms Lardy said.

"It's very well-used and it just needs so much more attention which it doesn't get at the moment."

The 2016 clothing drive was so successful, some donations are still unpacked two years later. ( ABC Radio Darwin: Jesse Thompson )

Working with Ms Wright, Ms Lardy has been consulting with the community to ensure the new housing fits their needs, which in this instance were related to grassroots drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

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It has also been placed a few minutes' drive out of town, far enough for the noise and distraction of community life to fade out.

In the NT, new and upgraded housing in remote communities is funded by the Government, but its remote housing program has been beset by several controversies alongside uncertainty as to where the rest of its $1.1 billion funding will come from.

Jilkminggan was previously named as one of 24 communities to have additional living spaces built onto existing homes under a subsidiary program called Room to Breathe, but it has since been removed amid ongoing lease negotiations.

Instead, funding for the new house was raised with the help of Ms Wright's well-connected clients after an early attempt at crowdfunding failed.

The community has also been granted money by the Department of Health for the rehab centre.

"Because of the community's engagement and desire to want to have an outreach program like this, we are working with them to provide the actual structure based on their design and their concept," Ms Wright said.

Flat-packed housing arrives

This week, the new housing arrived in the community flat-packed and carried by a single shipping container.

The modular housing, designed in collaboration with sustainable architect Ken McBryde, means the structure was mostly complete before it arrived in the community, but CDP workers piecing it together will gain experience constructing the house for future projects.

Helena Lardy has been consulting with community members about their infrastructure needs. ( ABC Radio Darwin: Jesse Thompson )

The one-bedroom structure will sleep families of four to six — sometimes more, if nearby disused school demountables are also used.

And for Ms Wright, it may stand as a monument to the second time a well-connected individual has influenced material change on issues that are by no means close to home.

"I think it really goes back to communication — it's the only way that we can move forward and try to make a little dent or a little change in what we do when working with communities on their housing."