  We present our search for flares from M dwarf stars in the SkyMapper Southern
Survey DR1, which covers nearly the full Southern hemisphere with six-filter
sequences that are repeatedly observed in the passbands $uvgriz$. This allows
us to identify bona-fide flares in single-epoch observations on timescales of
less than four minutes. Using a correlation-based outlier search algorithm we
find 254 flare events in the amplitude range of $\Delta u \sim 0.1$ to 5~mag.
In agreement with previous work, we observe the flaring fraction of M dwarfs to
increase from $\sim 30$ to $\sim $1,000 per million stars for spectral types M0
to M5. We also confirm the decrease in flare fraction with larger vertical
distance from the Galactic plane that is expected from declining stellar
activity with age. Based on precise distances from Gaia DR2, we find a steep
decline in the flare fraction from the plane to 150~pc vertical distance and a
significant flattening towards larger distances. We then reassess the strong
type dependence in the flaring fraction with a volume-limited sample within a
distance of 50~pc from the Sun: in this sample the trend disappears and we find
instead a constant fraction of $\sim$1,650 per million stars for spectral types
M1 to M5. Finally, large-amplitude flares with $\Delta i > 1$ mag are very rare
with a fraction of $\sim 0.5$ per million M dwarfs. Hence, we expect that
M-dwarf flares will not confuse SkyMapper's search for kilonovae from
gravitational-wave events.
