Officials from the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages are on a road trip to issue birth certificates for the hundreds of people in the Northern Territory who do not have them.
Consultations with remote communities identified a lack of formal identification as a significant barrier, especially for Aboriginal people, when it came to accessing essential services.
A birth certificate is the principle document required to prove one's identity, and obtain a Medicare card, a passport, and to enrol children in school.
Since the registry took their services on the road in August 2017, more than 500 people have received new or updated identity documents.
Deputy registrar-general Wendy Endenburg said the mobile service was also a chance for people, some of whom were in their 70s and 80s, to correct misspelt names, and fill in missing details.
"A person might have been using a name for the last 20 or even 50 years, but they're not registered by that on the birth certificate, so we're able to do the change of names," Ms Endenburg said.
"We've had quite a few elderly ladies — they know what their name is, but it's not registered on their birth certificate.
"We're doing a lot of adding fathers to the birth certificates, just doing a lot of corrections that they wouldn't even know about if we weren't there and could explain it to them on the spot."
'I want my children to have IDs'
When women from remote areas fly into Darwin to give birth, they often return home without having filled in all the paperwork.
At a mobile registry day in Wurrumiyanga on the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin, resident Jane Puantjimi lined up to obtain birth certificates for her two children, aged 14 and 17.
"It's important so they'll have no problem when they grow up and they want to get new ID for themselves," Ms Puantjimi said.
"They need it maybe for when they go to the disco, to the nightclub."
That circumstance is familiar to 19-year-old Alastair Portaminni Lynch.
He found it hard to replace the small amount of ID he had after he lost his wallet, and said many of his friends were in the same boat.
"Not many people have IDs — a lot of teenagers after they turn 18, they can't get it until a year or so later," he said.
Printed for free and on the spot, registry staff are able to cross-check existing government databases as an identity check.
In the absence of any existing ID at all, registry staff are also able to accept letters from community leaders that confirm a person's identity.
It is a scheme that is still in the trial phase, and the NT Attorney-General will soon decide whether or not to make it a permanent fixture.
