Wake Up Time

PREFACE

This book is the story of a journey through some remote areas of the Northern Territory, as well as an analysis of the confronting, sad, scary and puzzling life of Indigenous Australians in remote communities.

The stories within Wake Up Time are based on observations gathered during extensive travels through the outback, in particular during a journey in 2013 to Alice Springs, Uluru, Willowra, Ali Curung and Kakadu.

In addition, a selection of relevant documents ranging from newspaper articles to official annual reports are analysed to complement the observations. The main question is: why have the billions of dollars spent on Aboriginal issues not closed the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and what should be done about this?

Wake Up Time considers whether two major issues are in the way of finding solutions to the problems in remote communities.

The first issue is the alleged system of compensations and royalties payments by mining companies. Does this system exist? If so, what are these payments and what is the role of the mining industry and of the federal government in the equitable distribution and use of these payments? Have they lead to appropriate solutions?

The second is the question of whether the present legal distinction between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is beneficial. This policy appears to be a hangover from the days of the White Australia policy, something still engrained in legislation that is counterproductive for all Australians. Has our appreciation, and support, for an ancient and very much alive Indigenous culture led us to an acceptance of inappropriate legal distinctions and exceptions regarding race?

Finally, Wake Up Time questions the proposed changes to the Australian Constitution, to be decided in a referendum due in 2016. Should we maintain the formal distinction in the constitution regarding Aboriginality? Will the foreshadowed changes to the Australian Constitution, eliminating some racial clauses and adding a new one, help the integration and future of people living in remote communities?

In Wake Up Time you will be taken on a fascinating journey through the Northern Territory, introducing you to the complexity of a major human problem which has to be solved for the benefit of the entire Australian Nation.

If the narrative illuminates some of these matters  then the title of this book will be justified, indicating that it is indeed...

...time to wake up!

Jaap Vogel

WELCOME TO THE RED HEART

It’s hot as always, here, at the camp grounds of the National Transport Hall of Fame and Old Ghan Museum in Alice Springs. It is 33 degrees, no wind and flies by the zillion. A couple of camels are chewing their cud next to the gypsy cart they have pulled through the central deserts for the past two years. Behind our bus are some retired vintage carriages of the old Ghan.

It’s the seventh time I have made it to The Alice (as it is never called by the locals) and it’s also been my longest stay. When I leave next week it will be three months since I arrived. It was in 1992 when I visited central Australia for the first time and I have come back time after time. I have continued my journeys to and through the outback from my home in the Gold Coast hinterland.

At the end of 2011 I sold hearth and home, bought a bus that was converted into a motor home, named it The Spirit of Curiosity and started a new life as a 24/7 full-timer on the road with my partner and two dogs. Here I am, travelling the continent in search of the soul of the land, far beyond the black stump.

There is nonstop diversity in the dry, endless deserts with their wedge-tailed eagles, camels, thorny devils and dingos, their mountain ranges and gibber plains, their dry rivers in the south and croc infested wetlands in the north. There are ghost towns and stories of men and women striking it rich in search of gold, or perishing on a lonely track after a breakdown. The Territory has it all.

Aboriginal people and their culture provide endless intrigue. The Aboriginal presence is a magnet. There’s a fascination in seeing the remnants of the world’s oldest living culture not on display in a museum, but alive in the real world. That real world, though, is often far from pleasant. With very poor health, low life expectancy, low education, high unemployment and a lack of future, the living conditions of many thousands of Indigenous Australians do not meet the standards of a modern, civilised society.

What has puzzled me most is why Australia has not managed so far to find a fair and equitable way out of this situation. By the way, in this book the term Aboriginal is used as it is the most common word used to refer to the First Australians and because it does not include Torres Strait Islanders.

Talking to numerous born and bred Australians has not given me any real insight into, or clear understanding of, the situation. Most Australians are thoroughly weary of the problem and manage to keep it as far as possible from their dining tables. In a geographical sense that’s easy to do as it’s all very far away indeed from the main Australian cities.

Along the East Coast the Indigenous problem is a topic to be avoided; in the Northern Territory it is something to be coped with. Politicians face a lack of respect by a world community that summarizes and simplifies the analysis. According to the world community, Aboriginal people are victims of an unfair invasion of their continent and have been the victims of degrading, racist policies. True as those past events are, is the present situation forever to be laid at their feet? Present reality demands much more careful thought.

In trying to resolve this complexity I have decided to try to find answers to the many related questions I have collected over the past twenty years.

In the past few months we travelled from the East Coast to Alice via the southern route, from Brisbane through Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Port Augusta, Coober Pedy and Alice Springs.

In Coober Pedy, a small mining town in the north of South Australia famous for its underground dwellings, our free campsite was located in the desert, eight kilometres south of town. Despite being only one kilometre from the highway, the spot we had generated the thrilling sensation of seamlessly merging with the endlessness of the outback.

Our two Labradors, Boris and Zilla, could freely run around and enjoy the desert with all its smells and flavours. Midway through the third night the dogs, sleeping outside, barked and woke me up. It was a dingo disturbing their sleep. When I stepped outside the dingo fled and the silence returned for the rest of the night. The next night the same thing happened again, this time with two dingos. When on the third night three dingos showed up we decided to take the dogs inside the bus for the rest of the stay. We were clearly not in the Gold Coast hinterland anymore. Coober Pedy is in wild desert country and living in this region is very different from living on the east coast.

Coober Pedy is no longer a thriving town as the famous opal mining is effectively extinct. It is only for tourists that opal mining is still in any sense alive. One solitary mine is open for visitors and there are several opal outlets in town. Almost all the thousands of small mines and shafts are abandoned. Tourism only flourishes during the three Winter months when grey nomads, as older retired tourists are often called, and a few other visitors travel north to seek shelter against the cold before returning south to avoid the wet. There is nothing else in Coober Pedy, nothing else to keep the town alive.

Aboriginal people hang around on the streets and footpaths. Except for the very few who are buying groceries, most of them do not seem to have any goal. If they interact, it is mainly with their own people. A weird and sad impression of loneliness and discomfort surrounds them.

Time for shopping, it’s not my favourite pastime, but it has to be done.

He looks at me, very shy.

An old guy, tall, black, a bit scruffy, is bending over the open freezer with meat. He seems a little helpless.

How much? he whispers.

He hands me the chicken mince and I read him the price and quantity: 500 grams, $7.50.

Mmm… expensive, he mumbles. And that? pointing at the beef.

I guess that his eyes are gone or that he has left his glasses at home. But the price of the beef is reduced and has been written in very large figures….

After yet another few packs I realise…. he can’t read!

Finally he decides to take the kangaroo tail. My wife always likes that, he says. With a thank you and a smile he turns around and finds his way to the register.

Illiteracy is something I have hardly ever experienced. In Cuba, a rather undeveloped country that I visited recently, illiteracy is practically non-existent. But here, in remote Australia, it is common among the blackfellas. Nationwide thirty percent of Aboriginal adults lack basic literacy skills[1]. Many speak a local language that does not exist in a written form. By year seven, just fifteen percent living in very remote Indigenous communities can read at the accepted minimum standard, 47 percentage points behind their urban Indigenous peers and 74 percent less than non-Indigenous students.[2] One can only fear what that percentage is for elderly people in those communities.

After packing our groceries in the car we drive around town and end up in Umoona, the Aboriginal community of Coober Pedy. It looks very similar to Aboriginal suburbs elsewhere in the Outback, with broken fences, houses in very poor condition, gardens littered with rubbish, elderly people sitting on what used to be verandas and kids and dogs running around in this rather disgusting mess.

Umoona is home to more than 100 Indigenous people.

Officially, the community is dry: this means that no alcohol is sold, bought or used there. In the Coober Pedy Regional Times of 6 June 2013 one of the elders describes his own house in the community as a pigsty and by the looks of it that describes all other houses as well. In the same newspaper we read that the South Australian Government announced plans to construct a $3.4 million Transition Accommodation Centre as part of new efforts to stimulate and support South Australia’s housing and construction industry. It will be a centre where Aboriginal families from remote communities outside Coober Pedy can find shelter for a maximum of twenty-eight days while alcohol addicted family members receive treatment in the already operational Sobering Up Centre.

The Sobering Up Centre helps local, drunk, Aboriginal people to sober up and it provides facilities for a good night’s sleep for their wives and children.

Local Aboriginal people of the Umoona Community are strongly against opening up the Sobering Up Centre to Aboriginal people from elsewhere. They also oppose the establishment of the Transition Accommodation Centre, because, so I read in the same newspaper, transients are not from here. They fight with the locals and make a mess and need to move on. They want the proposed location of the centre to be declared alcohol dry, because they are concerned about the murders, rapes, stabbings, stealing etc.

Other locals of Coober Pedy also object to the centre. They reckon that the centre is mainly meant to support the local liquor shops (Coober Pedy has three bottle shops for less than 1500 residents).

They wonder how children can be safe when they are travelling with their alcoholic parents who are encouraged to come to a town with three liquor shops.

In the same newspaper they suggest that the government has other intentions in mind than only the best interests of Aboriginal people when setting up these kinds of projects. Judging by ongoing published statistics it would appear that without perpetual aboriginal victims of violence, not only would the liquor industry suffer, but many of Australia’s 150,000 Social and Community Services (SACS) workers would be out of a job. They are strengthened in that feeling because the South Australian government itself states, according to the Coober Pedy Times of 14 March 2013, that the building of the centre is mainly meant to stimulate and support South Australia’s housing and construction industry."

Is it too cynical to wonder whether the major problems in Aboriginal communities are maintained by professionals providing services which address those very problems? Is it like a pesticide company selling products to kill pests that a related company introduced?

On 20 July 2013 a story in the Coober Pedy Regional Times continues: "A $367,000 Federal grant that allows $260,000 to employ a person for two years to work with the District Council of Coober Pedy and government service agencies to implement nearly 100 recommendations contained within the town’s newly