Whose problem??

I arrived home on the day that the Alice Springs Coroner released his findings on yet another Aboriginal death in police custody. The police involved were castigated on a number of accounts but all remain serving officers. Their shortcomings were not criminal offences apparently. But what of moral shortcomings? The law has nothing to say there.

And now, early in the week that I'm finally finishing writing about this trip, the front page of The Age was full of a report of the catastrophic effects of alcohol on the Aboriginal population around Fitzroy Crossing, ranging from deaths, including suicide, to half of all eight-year-olds suffering from Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.

Jabiru Court House

 












A three week visit to the Kimberley region is, almost by definition, superficial. Yet when police stations, courts and legal aid offices were so prominent in small outback towns, alarm bells rang for me. It's not the “Aboriginal Problem” but the “Aboriginals' Problem” ... and that is us, we Europeans who have trampled on a 40,000+year old culture, expecting those people to conform to European culture and yardsticks within the space of a mere two centuries. Failure to comply is being punished, mercilessly in most cases. I don't know what the answer is but what we are currently doing is wrong, and it isn't working.

Alice Springs - Day 9, 20 May 2012

Flying home, like flying to Alice, makes you aware of how vast Australia is. Largely uninhabitable but, oh!, what a fabulously beautiful place it is.



Small section of Lake Eyre!

Living in the “leafy eastern suburbs” I don't come face to face with the aboriginal “problem”. On this trip I did. To see indigenous people wandering around aimlessly, some of them drunk, made me think we're going to need to keep saying Sorry for many years to come.

One human intervention that was really impressive - use of solar power. Many houses have panels on their roofs and there are at least two fields of panels supplying one third of the power needs of Alice Springs. More of us should copy this initiative.

Back when I was at school, the geography class went on the “Central Australia Trip”. I've finally been lucky enough to catch up with them.

Sturt's Desert Rose
Floral Emblem of the Northern Territory