Dave Richards
Website: http://www.aliceonline.com.au
Dave has been stamping (and treading gently when appropriate) around the Centre since 1978 when he came here because it wasn't Queensland. Since then he's worked for every newspaper in town and some out of town, including The Australian, The National Times, The Age and The Sunday Mail in Brisbane. Dave also had a stint writing feature articles about "cross-cultural chaos" in the now-defunct HQ Magazine. In the nineties Dave got writer's block and branched out into radio, originally working in the newsroom of the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association and then for twelve years as a producer for ABC Local Radio. Somewhere in the middle of that stint, Dave decided a website about Alice Springs was a great idea, and is still harping on it. He left the ABC in 2007.
Contributions
Reward ‘offensive’: Mayor
A reward offered for evidence that Peter Falconio, who disappeared near Barrow Creek in 2001, is alive has been described as “offensive” by Alice Springs Mayor Damien Ryan, reports BBC News. The BBC reported: Mr Falconio, who worked in Kent and was from Huddersfield, was ambushed with his girlfriend Joanne Lees while they were driving along a desert highway between Alice Springs and Tennant Creek in northern Australia. Ms Lees told police she was bound, gagged and bundled into a pick...Read more
The hospital they didn’t want
With the ever-spreading Alice Springs Hospital near the end of its latest growth spurt, it’s fascinating to learn how ambivalent townspeople were about the idea of a hospital in the first place. As Max Griffiths related in last month’s Doreen Braitling Memorial lecture, some Central Australians actively campaigned against the town’s first hospital, Adelaide Hospital. Fate intervened rather brutally to reveal the value of professional nursing care. Max, who succeeded Fred McKay and John Fly...Read more
The secret life of white-plumed honeyeaters
White-plumed honeyeaters are very partial to rivergums, a fact that explains why they are so perpetually present in our back yard. I have always assumed there are large numbers of them, but I wonder if perhaps they create that illusion by moving fast and chirping a lot. The huge gum in our back yard appears to be the jealously guarded centre of their universe, to which only short visits by other birds are tolerated. Recent events suggest that our particular honeyeaters may be permanent residents...Read more
Crime levels not new: police commissioner
The Minister for Central Australia says he’s “disappointed” by Northern Territory Police Commissioner John McRoberts’ announcement that he won’t dispatch any more police to Alice Springs. Mr McRoberts has told media that current levels of crime and social dysfunction in Alice Springs are “not new” and have “been around for 30 years.” ABC News reported that Mr McRoberts has asked Alice Springs residents to “have faith” in a mult...Read more
Troublemakers not welcome at Yuendumu either
Yuendumu residents claim reports of another “riot” and a scalping of a young man have been exaggerated, according to ABC News. Current Affairs reporter Tom Nightingale reported a man was in hospital with brutal head injuries after a fight broke out on Saturday morning. But the man’s uncle, Yuendumu resident Harry Nelson, had said that police descriptions of injuries “similar to scalping” were grossly inaccurate. “He wasn’t scalped at all. He was hit by really nasty weapons ...Read more
Mandatory treatment plan would cost hundreds of millions
By John Boffa of the People’s Alcohol Action Coalition The NT’s Country Liberals Opposition must build on worthwhile evidence-based alcohol policy put in place by the NT Government in recent years, rather than throw out the baby with the bathwater. It’s easy for the Opposition to indulge in simplistic politicking about the NT’s undeniably high serious assaults rate. The Country Liberals then claim, without demonstrating any evidence or logic, that their proposed ‘new approach’ to...Read more
Misbehavers “not welcome”: police commissioner
Northern Territory Police Commisioner John McRoberts has foreshadowed a crackdown on the parents of truants and warned troublemakers from out bush they are “not welcome in Alice Springs”. The NT Police Commisioner will arrive in Alice Springs this weekend to begin co-ordinating an “all of government response” to issues of crime and social dysfunction in the town at the request of Chief Minister Paul Henderson. The move follows the rape of two European tourists at gunpoint during the week...Read more
Police have arrested a 17-year-old male following the rape of two tourists in Alice Springs yesterday and are still looking for at least two more suspects, reports Gail Liston at ABC Alice Springs. Police say two European women were raped at gunpoint after being disturbed while they were sleeping in their car. They are looking for a car like the one pictured....Read more
That famous Whitegate mob again
Less than two years after winning the Prime Minister’s award for non-fiction, Alice Springs writer and painter Rod Moss has earned another national accolade with the acquisition of his painting Ukaka Band at Whitegate by Parliament House in Canberra. The painting shows three members of the Ukaka Band playing at a shed on the Whitegate camp, which was the central location of Rod’s book The Hard Light of Day. Rod says he was both shocked and thrilled by the purchase of the painting, wh...Read more
Tourism shot
Darwin-based demographer Dean Carson says the tourism industry in Central Australia has been declining since the 1990s and is unlikely to recover as the town moves to a new economic base, reports ABC News Alice Springs. CASA and the Zen of Tourism, Alice Online...Read more
CASA and the zen of tourism
Demographer Dean Carson from Charles Darwin University has a point when he says Alice Springs is moving away from a tourism-based economy – but I suspect there’s a lot more to it. Just about every academic opinion gets routinely oversimplified for the sake of radio news, so it would be unfair to judge Dean’s views via its passage from media release through the 8.30 news to the morning talk show. But the story of the Central Australian Supported Accommodation (CASA) service’s art program ...Read more
Return of the man from Oodnadatta
The unchanging ambience of ever-gracious Adelaide House, some spirited pretending and three co-operative camels assisted time travellers on a journey to meet one of the Centre’s most generous souls in Alice’s annual Heritage Festival this month. It’s a hundred years since Plowman, like many others of his ilk, was persuaded by the legendary John Flynn to work for the Australian Inland Mission, which he did as a volunteer up until 1917. Stationed in Oodnadatta, which was then...Read more
Recent Features
- The hospital they didn't want
- The secret life of white-plumed honeyeaters
- Crime levels not new: police commissioner
- Mandatory treatment plan would cost hundreds of millions
- Misbehavers "not welcome": police commissioner
- That famous Whitegate mob again
- CASA and the zen of tourism
- Return of the man from Oodnadatta
- The memories are always there
- More truancy officers
Tags
alice desert festival alice springs alice springs desert festival alison anderson angela-pamela arid lands environment centre bess price budgies Bush Christmas Cake bush food recipes bush foods bush foods recipe bush law bush law documentary bush tomatoes bush tucker central australia central australian history Dick Kimber environment explorers fiction heritage alice springs high rise History housing indigenous indigenous affairs john mcdouall stuart justice Nelen race relations rain riots Todd River town planning traditional law traditional punishment Udjerlah's Song uluru violence water wildflowers wild foods yuendumu
Alice Springs Weather
 4.2°C |
| Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | Tue | ||
 | | |  | | |  | |
| 21° | 23° | 24° | 23° | 24° | 24° | ||
| 8° | 9° | 10° | 10° | 10° | 10° | ||
| Data powered by |  |