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
The memories are always there
Geoff Shaw was among hundreds of Alice Springs people who commemorated Anzac Day today. “I march every year to pay my respects to all the people who lost their lives in the various wars that Australia attended and to the friends and men I lost in Vietnam,” he says. But like many Australian war veterans Geoff doesn’t need a special day to remember the experiences that changed his life forever. “It’s with me 24 seven,” says Geoff. “I feel sad to the extent that I’m back here al...Read more
More truancy officers
The Territory Government will employ eight more truancy officers in an attempt to get more Aboriginal children to school . The new positions will be funded out of a new six million dollar education package. Much of the funding will be directed to the Territory’s Every Child Every Day policy, under which the number of truancy officers in Alice Springs had already increased by three this year. Education Minister Chris Burns told the ABC Radio’s Nadine Maloney this morning the investment will b...Read more
Leslie loved Alice, and vice versa
One of Alice’s most well-loved characters and the town’s first and only woman mayor, Leslie Huggins (formerly Leslie Oldfield), has died, aged 71. Leslie came to town in 1968 expecting to stay for 6 months when she got her first job at Connellan Airways. She didn’t return to her home state of Victoria until 1992, after marrying Alan Huggins. That same year she had lost her third election for Mayor to former top cop Andy McNeill, but according to local historian Alex Nelson, had already tak...Read more
Councillors decline committee chair jobs
Four new Alice Springs Council members who swapped preferences as they campaigned on “law and order” issues have refused nominations to serve on committees on the new Council, which had its first meeting last night. ABC News reported that incumbent councillor Brendan Heenan was elected deputy mayor by five votes to four over Steve Brown, one of the so-called “gang of four”, who received the highest number of votes for councillor. Mr Brown also came second in the mayoral v...Read more
Beer doesn’t compete, say drinkers
By John Boffa, People’s Alcohol Action Coalition A study funded by the NT Government has provided yet more evidence of the need for a floor price on alcohol that would see at least some drinkers choose beer over strong, damaging fortified wines. The ‘Message in a Bottle’ survey of 103 ‘long-grassers’ by the Larrakia Nation Aboriginal Corporation, funded by the NT Department of Justice, found that nearly half drank at dangerous levels, six or seven days a week. As The Australian new...Read more
Burning Issues 3: A pastoral meditation
It seems more than mere months ago that the threat of fire – and the reality – almost overtook law and order as the apparently major shared preoccupation of Centralians. Spurts of rain and cool weather spared us a summer as tense and fiery as the Spring was. For that we are all truly thankful, but let’s hope not complacent. In fact, our sudden change in fortunes highlights the biggest problem with dealing with fire in the post-buffel reality of modern Central Australia. Top End seasons are...Read more
Two killed in single vehicle smash
A man and a woman were killed when their car hit a pole and burst into flames in Alice Springs on Saturday night. The Northern Territory News reported the driver of the car had sped away from police after the police had noticed the car going the wrong way around a roundabout and turned on their emergency lights to warn the driver. For safety reasons, the police did not pursue their vehicle when the driver accelerated and received an emergency call a few minutes later saying that the car was in f...Read more
Voices in the wilderness
Occasionally hammering the floor with a home-made walking stick to drive a point home, his long white beard flowing freely, Peter Latz had the air of an old testament prophet as he spoke at the Desert People’s Centre recently. The occasion was a symposium on religion and language. Latz’s subject matter – the remarkable life and times of Central Australia’s first Aboriginal missionary Moses Tjalkabota (pictured) – seemed to dictate an almost evangelical approach. But the impression was ...Read more
What’s the buzz, bee-eaters? Good news and bad …
It’s been amazing to see how much effect a couple of inches of rain have had on the countryside around Alice – not to mention educational. Could we learn something from this? After a relatively dry summer, the rain has perked up the place to a surprising degree, and it’s not just the euros lapping it up. Around town (including our back yard), citrus are bursting into autumn flowering, while many natives are also blooming for the second time in less than a year. This had led to ...Read more
Memo Club: just a memory?
A Territory Opposition member says crime and anti-social behaviour contributed to the demise of Alice Springs’s oldest social club. The Memo Club In Todd Street closed its doors this week after going into voluntary receivership. ABC News reported Country Liberals MLA Adam Giles says crime is so bad in the town that people are too scared to visit pubs and clubs at night. “I think it is a reflection of the current state of both the economy and the situation of law and order in Alice S...Read more
Vote for grog control: PAAC
By John Boffa, Peoples Alcohol Action Coalition (PAAC) . Voters should be aware of which candidates in this Saturday’s Alice Springs Town Council elections are opposed to reforms that would reduce the town’s extremely high alcohol consumption. They should remember that two of the five Mayoral candidates – Eli Melky and Samih Habib Bitar – last July voted to ask Coles, Woolworths and other supermarkets to reverse their decisions to withdraw cask wine and not to sell extremely chea...Read more
Candidates for punishment
By David Havercroft The Alice Springs-based coalition Right To A Home supports the Alice Springs Town Council’s passing last week of a motion to address the need for more supported short term, emergency-type accommodation in Alice Springs. Right To A Home acknowledges this as a positive sign from the Town Council, given the hardships (including financial) that the enforcement of some of its more recent (2009) by-laws has had on people who are homeless. The punitive measures introduced by the ...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
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