Features
Town camp housing: “We don’t want disasters”
Territory Opposition Housing spokesman Adam Giles says he’s “not surprised” to hear that 65 of the new houses built in Alice Springs two camps during the past two years need repairs, although Territory Alliance says the faults are “cosmetic” and not structural. It may be too soon for alarm bells, but it’s a reminder of the historically proven need for vigilence when it comes to building on Aboriginal communities. Last week Alice Online ran the first part o...Read more
New town camp houses ‘buckling and cracking’
Materials used in 65 new houses built in Alice Springs town camps are beginning to “buckle and crack” and will have to be repaired, ABC Alice Springs has reported. But Territory Housing says the faults are “cosmetic”. The ABC report said that the fault has been discovered in three quarters of the new houses, which were built under the Federal Government’s Alice Springs Transformation plan. The company would have to strip back the walls on the affected homes before...Read more
Delisted heritage site: “community can have screen”.
Developers say they will destroy the town’s drive-in screen by the end of the month unless someone takes it off their hands. The ABC has reported that real estate agent David Forrest, one of a syndicate of local business people who want to turn the site of the drive-in into an accomodation complex, has offered $15,000 to help move the screen. The Drive-In, developed in the early 1960s, was recognised as a heritage site by the Government, but Heritage Minister Karl Hampton decided to revoke...Read more
Green gong for Parsons Street plan
The brief for the redevelopment of Parsons Street –adopted in principle by the Alice Springs Town Council as part of its CBD revitalisation project – has won a prestigious international “green” award. “Green Dot Awards” for “excellence in green products and services” are given annually by the Farmani Group, which sponsors charities and organises international awards for art, photography and design. Revealing The Spirit of Parson’s Street is a concept...Read more
Roadkill’s ‘bittersweet’ story
Bill Lowe from Land for Wildlife has asked travelling folk to take a slightly closer look at roadkill; while it’s always a sad sight, it can bring good news of a sort. As Bill reported on the Land For Wildlife blog, he received “bittersweet” tidings from Dave Price in the form of a photo of a roadkilled Spectacled Hare-wallaby Lagorchestes conspicillatus he and wife Bess Price had spotted just north of Rabbit Flats on the Tanami Road. Bill reports: Initially they thought it m...Read more
House-fixing and myth-busting with Paul Pholeros
I and many others were enlightened and inspired by two talks at this week’s Connecting the Dots conference in Alice Springs: one by Nobel Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus and the other by Healthabitat’s Paul Pholeros. For two days delegates at the conference, organised by Infrastructure Australia, explored the vexed issues of how to improve the poor state of houses, amenities, roads, communications and just about everything else on Aboriginal communities, especially in remote areas. A...Read more
Close the grog gap
By John Boffa from the People’s Alcohol Action Coalition. Our River of Grog’ 236 two-litre wine casks collected from a small section of the Todd River bed between the Schwartz Crescent and Wills Terrace causeways, Alice Springs, on 27th Jan. 2012. Photo: David Hewitt, PAAC. As the Senate Community Affairs Committee receives hundreds of submissions on Minister Macklin’s Stronger Futures Bills, the Alice Springs People’s Alcohol Action Coalition (PAAC) is calling on the Federal Gove...Read more
Lawyers call for independent probe into death
A friend of an Aboriginal man who died in custody last month has told reporters the man was pinned down by police after taking a drunken swing at one of them, and “struggled to breathe” before he was carted to police cells. There have been reports in interstate newspapers following the funeral of Terrance Briscoe, 28, an Anmatyerre man who was found unconscious in the Alice Springs Watchhouse after being arrested for drunkenness on January 4 and pronounced dead shortly afterwards. Police hav...Read more
What a knock-out!
I had an unexpected visitor banging on the front door, just after I had reluctantly crawled out of bed. Just one loud knock; who could it be, at 7.30 am, I wondered grumpily. I opened the door with slight trepidation. No sign of the knocker, until I looked down to notice a smudge of grey feathers on our front steps. Trepidation ongoing, I gently scooped the apparently lifeless visitor on to my hand, where it lay on its back, legs in the air. Now I could see much more than shades of grey: an oran...Read more
Satyasankalpananda Saraswati, 1951-2011
Friends and family have recently celebrated the life of a Central Australian doctor and yogi whose long personal struggle with illness and its accompanying revelations led her to champion a spiritual approach to life. Satyasankalpananda Saraswati – known mostly as Satya – inspired many with her courageous life and her contributions to the yoga community both in Alice Springs and internationally. She will also be remembered for her commitment to Aboriginal health and was instrumental in the e...Read more
The missionary times: look again, says Strehlow
It’s not hard to see why John Strehlow chose to put the grandmother he never met at the centre of his epic volume The Tale of Frieda Keyser. If the missionaries of Central Australia have been neglected and undervalued by posterity, their wives have been more so, despite the huge sacrifices they often made for the people of the Centre. As I discovered when I caught up with Strehlow recently, he and his book are imbued with a 21st century mission of their own: to address widely-held assumptions ...Read more
Things can get better
The manager of an Alice Springs Club who featured in a national stories about last summer’s crime wave has praised the police for ensuring a “massive reduction” in the number of break-ins over the same period this year. In an article in The Australian last February Ms Sullivan described how thieves had smashed their way into the bar to steal alcohol 13 times between December and February. She said she had spent “tens of thousands” on special screens for the club&#...Read more
Recent Features
- Town camp housing: "We don't want disasters"
- New town camp houses 'buckling and cracking'
- Delisted heritage site: "community can have screen".
- Green gong for Parsons Street plan
- Roadkill's 'bittersweet' story
- House-fixing and myth-busting with Paul Pholeros
- Close the grog gap
- Lawyers call for independent probe into death
- What a knock-out!
- Satyasankalpananda Saraswati, 1951-2011
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