Features
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
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
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
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
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
A future history of the Free Aboriginal Territory
By Blair McFarland Greetings, students and Kowabunga! As can be gleaned from the set reading for this annual lecture, the biohistory of the Free Aboriginal Territory (FAT) is interwoven with its general history. It will be surprising for those who have not made a study of the early colonial history of the FAT that once vast amounts of the land were seriously degraded and incapable of supporting life. Extinctions of native biota were common. This was due to the imposition of inappropriate cultura...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
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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