Will the spiral be unbroken?

Twenty two years ago I jointly bought a three bedroom house in Alice Springs for $75,000. This week in the property I read about a single bedroom unit  at the “lower end of the market”  for $250,000.

Will the spiral end in the new suburb of Kilgariff? Or will we simply create a two-tier system, with Kilgariff, 10 km from the centre of the town at the bottom level?

In the third part of an interview about population and housing in Alice Springs Dean Carson , a demographer from Charles Darwin University, considers how Central Australians could interrupt and even reverse the spiral that has turned a basic need – shelter – into a crippling financial burden.

As a special bonus, I include in this post a recording made of  a short  speech in Alice by Queen Elizabeth II when she visited Alice Springs in 1963. I’m always found it an inspiring antidote to the tendancy to want to “normalise” Alice Springs. (I use the word advisedly). -D.R.

Elizabeth in Alice. Some views have not changed!

Elizabeth in Alice (click to listen)