This is Alice Springs: Mparntwe

This episode is the third part of a three part series. If you haven't yet, start with Children of the Intervention and then listen to the Coppers. Also, it contains some strong language.

Most of us have lived in his camps all their life. I've moved out, I've come back, grew up in Charles Creek.

So you got some kids on your own, yep, what are your hopes and dreams for them?

They've got brains, they do go to school all the time. Yeah, I've got my eldest daughter and who's almost finished year twelve, and she's straight into her health worker's course straight after school holidays and the other ones in year ten and yeah, she's pursuing what she wants to do now through the VET courses through school.

I'm at Charles Creek Camp, just on the edge of Alice Springs. It's its own little community at the bottom of a hill. I'm talking to her an a while we talk. Her kids are playing nearby, still in their uniforms, just home from school. They're burning off that last bit of energy before dinner and settling in for the night.

It was horrible. Like I've just finished the season being an under seventies coach for the girl's side into Alice. It was a bit hard because we had to bring our training times earlier just so the kids could be home before the certain time, which was silly because none of my girls was involved with any of the rubbish that was going on around town and it really affected our training ways. So yeah, it was pretty stupid that we got affected from it really bad.

So it's kind of the typical thing that happens in the territory is that everyone gets tired with the same brush because you know, a certain number of people are playing up and then everyone has to suffer as a result.

Is that the way you feel, Yep, exactly the way I feel. It's you know, it's not our problem. It should be brought upon their guardians, their parents or whatever with whoever's doing wrong.

Yeah, and so no one's talking to each other. I mean, that's what it seems to me. No one's actually you can sort of like enforce the law. You can bring in curfews, you can bring in the interventions through the army and stuff, but actually no one's actually sitting down and talking with people to find out what the problem is and what the solution is.

Yeah, that'll be right if we could do that. But no one's game enough to get out and talk about it.

So, yeah, it must be pretty exhausting.

Yeah, it is being locals and lived all our life.

So yeah, do you see a long term future here for yourself and your family at the moment? No, So where would you.

Go somewhere out of Alice Springs?

Hopefully it's not so much the crime wave that's driving Renee out of Alice Springs. It's been the response to it. People who are trying their best are looked on with suspicion. It's tiring having to prove yourself time and time again to do the little things, go to the shops, drive a car, raise a family. Every Aboriginal person here is under the same pressure. The thing that needs fixing is not Renee or her family, but they continue or trespassing

Thank you everyone. What an incredible group of dedicated, hard working Territorians. How good is it to be Territorian tonight?

There's a new government in the territory and its leader has promised solutions. Earlier this year, Lea Finiguiaro became the new Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. She won on a landslide, almost completely wiping out the Labor Party from parliament, reinstalling the Country Liberal Party to power.

As a born and bred's second generation Territory King, the granddaughter of Italian migrants, I grew up living in an iconic territory. Childhood camping, fishing and playing outside I always knew the territory was a special place, and I was lucky to be a Territorian growing up here.

The new Chief Minister's just turned forty, but she's been in Parliament for thirteen years. She's clp through and through as much a part of the political establishment as you can get here. The dawn of this era looks strangely like the old one. It's another territory and looking back at this place as they remember to get back to those times. The new Chief Minister will be implementing her tough on crime agenda.

Territorians have stood up against nearly two decades of escalating crime and economy going backwards, and the erosion of our once iconic lifestyle. But tomorrow is the start of a new day.

And a new shutter.

She's promised to lower the age of criminal responsibility to ten, tightening already type by all laws. Skills will have truancy officers, and there's the threat to restrict government benefits for parents of kids who misbehave. Police will be given more powers to search kids as young as ten if they're considered suspicious.

CLP are proposing on the issue of you with crime to reducing the age of criminal responsibility back to ten from twelve years of age. Yes, what experts have said that this is a good idea? And what have they said?

Well, the experts of the CLP listen to are the everyday territories who are out there sick and tired of being victims of crime. We had Holo promises.

So they're her solutions. But what about the locals. Before we came to Waller Springs, we called a lot of people, elders, lawyers, health workers, a lot of people who have been fighting over decades to try and improve the plight of people living here. Blair McFarland's name kept on coming up, so we set up a meeting with him. We meet him at the Olive Pink Botanical Gardens, the desert gardens, nestled at the base of one of the hills of the East McDonald Rangers. The sky is blue and the morning

Yes, I'm Blair McFarland. One of my things is that I'm twenty twenty four inty Australian. Every year I say that, so you know, I've got a little bit of generally sort of acknowledged cred in case you've never heard of me, which, of course the vast majority of.

Will never have. Blair arrived here in the mid eighties from Melbourne and fell in love with the place and the people. Petrol sniffing was a sporadic problem when he arrived, but by the start of the New millennium the problem became more and more prevalent, until it turned into an unrelenting wave with no sign of stopping.

It's an issue that's plagued remote indigenous communities for decades and its effects are devastating.

Petrol sniffing is on the rise. In the top of.

Two thousand and two, Blair established the Central Australian Youth Linkup Service KALOS to support young people sniffing petrol. Blair himself had first hand encounters with people he'd attempted suicide as a result of sniffing. One man he saved went on to save another from a similar attempt.

Blair McFarland is the manager of KALUS.

He's speaking with Kathy van Extell.

And so the youth are raming around with a real feeling as like nobody cares about us. It's definitely contributed to a feeling of unease on the street in our springs, like a lot of people are really concerned about it, like they're nice kids around it.

Through KALs, he advocated for the Low Aromatic Fuel Act in twenty thirteen, which resulted in a ninety five percent drop in petrol sniffing. It was as close as you could get to ever solving a complex problem in this part of the world. But this is different. This crisis is much worse.

It's really quite different because basically a petrol snipper is like a zombie, you know, they sort of they stumble around, They've got a can against their face. They that didn't seem to see anything. So that's what it was like. Then, I they're doing themselves serious damage. But now it's really contrasting to that. And then now is a bunch of kids with ADHD fas D global developmental delay. They're hungry, they're wired, they're sort of their traditional authority systems have

But no one in politics is talking about that, like they're only thinking as far ahead as the next electoral cycle will allow.

I think that there are so many players here operating in their own on their own agendas, that it's actually what a mathematician will call a chaos field, a field where there are so many decisions being made that it's really unpredictable in which direction things will go. And that's I think what you're feeling here. There is no plan,

Lowering the age of criminal responsibility back to ten.

I know what, let you do six that'll be moore. Fut this is crazy.

What do you got to say about it.

Oh, it just it's a crazy, desperate, foolish thing that in no way affects you know, what's making those kids criminal. If they wanted to do something about that whole scene, you'd put a lot more resources into diagnosing and treating all of those things.

His view echoes experts who say, not only does tough on crime not work, it's a potential breach of human rights when it comes to kids in prison or detention or whatever you want to call it. What the state's doing is swapping one culture for another one where the cycle of crime and punishment becomes the norm. Throwing children in detention and placing them in previously banned spit hoods can and will have psychological and cognitive impacts on kids development.

Yeah, I think the referendum made Aboriginal people even more cynical than before. About what's the point because I think a whole lot of Aboriginal people became really this enheartened but the whole voting thing and didn't vote. Like in the electric I ran and there were six and a half thousand people registered to vote and two and a half thousand voted.

Blair ran as a Greens candidate in the recent election and lost. Green threw a rare breed in the territory, perhaps his last attempt to force change in Alice Springs and beyond. So Blair, what needs to be done?

I don't know what.

I don't know.

I've tried everything, nothing nothing works.

Blair contributed a lot more than most, but ultimately change here is going to come from somewhere else. After the break one man in his family in the middle of the desert, trying their best to help the children of him Bantua break the cycle. It means Ruby and I are going on country.

There's the biggest forces you've ever seen.

So have we seen Amy you the other day? Just over there, we just picked up a baby printy about that big. His head was stuck in a cairn, so we surrounded.

Can you describe where we are? I mean we're surrounded by rocky escarments with McDonald Ranges.

East of McDonald Ranges. I think this is the Onulia side of the Banto country. And over here there's a great significance of connection to this country. That's the three caterpillars. And Jelka is my great great great father, and he's not too far from here.

We've come here at a cracking time of day, late afternoon, the sun low over the McDonald Rangers on the horizon. I'm with Damien, the fellow who's been our unofficial tour guide. We're out at his favorite place, the place where he tries to make a difference to what's happening here. His generosity helped us a great deal for this series. But now we're at his outstation, the spot that made us want to speak with him in the first place.

All what you see is what I've accumulated out of my own pocket. This machiney, I've only bought that cheap, but it's done in me some some world of greatness.

There's caravans for smokeo and to shelter from the weather. There's fences, gates and pens, and there's horses and this fellow's name.

There's a malon.

She's a mayor. How much I know about horses.

That's my melon chopsticks.

This is my my big ouse. He's a big fella many answers.

Sixteen sixteen nuns. That's big funny and the other one's other side of the DJ and groom up the back.

That's the biggest source of ever scene in my life.

He's a most gentlest one.

Yeah right, he's raised all the emma, melon and chopsticks. I looked after by kids who come here from town, kids who spent time in detention, or kids with substance issues. Damien calls the program all rounder.

I've got a young black that I'm training justin and he's getting ready to race again, so he's probably going to raise chopstick or this big follow you. So we'd get kids out of here. Numbers of thirty twenty nine different different young fellows, different ages. We could either be doing identifying bush medicine or trees to make bush tools out of.

We do.

What do you call it? A cultural conversation. Half of the group might want to do the horses, like brush them down, and we'll get the other half prepared to saddle, and then we'll switch so they both get two learning sessions out of one day, and that could be the mechanics, or that could be the fencing, or that could be the cooking or the artwork or the fitness side of things. So we break it down for the one day, but split it in two.

So by the time the kids have come through the program, what will I know how to do that they didn't know how to do before I got eat. Well, here's the thing.

When you talk about pioneering days, everything was built on how much skills you had and how useful you could be on country. So we tried to give them all those skills. So I for job presented itself. They'll be trained in multiple ways, so a job wouldn't sort of cause them any fear to apply for one. Or We normally aim to explore their talents and expose out of talent and push them into that sort of workforce because then they'll stick at it because they love doing it.

All round. Her is a working work in progress, and Damien's reasons for starting the program a deep.

The origin behind it is my dad is a cattleman and a person before him grew up in a home starting generation and very resilient. Yeah, took on different skill set because that's what was required back in the day.

As a kid, Damien's dad, Dennis, was forcibly removed from his family and sent to Darwin. Somehow he escaped and returned to his country, where he became a ringer on a cattle station. Through years of skilled and hard toil, he went on to become one of the first Aboriginal owners of a cattle station. I've seen footage of Deennis. Damien looks and sounds just like him.

I was raised and bush on cattle stations seeing my dad doing it, but to be creative was the key for me in life.

Damien, like many of us do, worked a series of jobs, many of them a long way from his true passion, but in aid of his people. Nonetheless, well we're doing Before you started the program.

I was an officer Bailey facility called Sodwish and we're trying to keep him from not getting locked up and keep him from coming back. And then I heard about his other programs that's been delivered, but his kids were still re offending. But they was receiving so much funding every year. And come to think about it, where's all his money going? Because there's a lot of money getting

To find the path forward, not only for himself but his community. Damien would be guided from within. He could look to his own flesh and blood for the trail out of the mess. He would look to his own father. Dennis passed away a couple of years ago, but his name and memory, Levonne Damien has called the land we're on r DK outstation after result Man Roy Dennis Kunos. It means that every kid that gets a helping hand here will have Dennis to think as much as Damien.

I don't think there's too many programs like mine. I think it's pretty unique how it was designed and where the origin comes from.

I've done a little bit of work. Most of my work's been pretty good.

I'd like to expand. I like to have young people out here full time, just caretaken for the animals and getting a wage. At some point in time, eventually I can run a little bit of cattle. I can introduce that cattle industry back in to these young people's lives, giving them an opportunity to chase cattle in the yard, brand them and mark them, and just teach them a

I was mesmerized by the setting and what Damian was doing, but there was one question I was dreading, would.

You like to go for iron?

Not a chance? I mean, it's not that I'm not a fan of horses. It's that I fear that they won't be a fan of me. Damien's son, Bison, is of a similar mindset. He's been with us all day, but he's quiet and shy, especially around the animals. Do you ride the do you want anything? Bison?

I don't know for animals.

Yeah, he'm hered my big one that was last year.

Yeah.

This plug lives up and down. Yeah, but he occasionally come down and visit check out. I'm doing check out the program doing so.

Bison's eighteen, but he's a young eighteen. Despite his shyness, he's been warm and friendly with us and has a dry sense of humor, well aware of his surroundings and mindful of what he has to say. What's it? What's it like living in al Springs?

Slip messed up there?

You're eighteen?

Yea?

And what do you want to do with your life from here? I haven't got to that point yet. It's a big question. What about what your old man does?

Nah, I don't know, to ride horses and stuff.

You feel lucky that you've got someone like your dad as a as a role model. That's kind of you know, been a bit of a beacon for you and your siblings.

Yeah, pretty much.

In my mind, Bison was an example of a kid on the right path. If he played his cards right, he could stay at arms distance from the system, avoid becoming hoovered up by it, and part of the cycle. He has a loving family. His dad's a local leader and a role model. The outstation is an oasis in a desert of disarray, somewhere where you can point to the chaos elsewhere and know from where you stand you can keep it at bay. I thought he was one of the lucky ones. But it's wrong to assume any

One time I came here because my dad was forcing me to come leave water for the horses, and I didn't.

Yep, but I took the wrong track.

And I just got stuck upshit on the other road.

But as we drove on, Bison started telling me something that complicated all that.

So when were you up in Darlin?

I was coming back Wednesday.

Oh really, why were you up there?

Call issues?

Yeah, as a.

Youth, So wait were you You weren't in don Dale or anything.

No, oh you were yeah, oh shit for nine months?

What was that like?

It was a little bit scary at the first part of it.

It took a while that to sink in. This young fella that we're getting to know a gentle soul had just spent nine months, fifteen hours up the road in the infamous don Dale US detention facility. He says he felt pressured into crimes that landed him there.

These people period, like people they don't like that. They'll be with that forcing stuff, you know, like forcing you to do this, forcing you to do that. That'll bring that like be weird onto you, you little female lague, you know, like you're scared, you know like that, and I like get more tempting. But that's more behind me now.

Yep. In don Dale, Bison quickly learned to keep his head down and they even get rough.

With you m first times. But I'm a little bit like a kind to them, yeah, cause I'm a wrong way from home and that's what I was thinking. I springed a little bit long way from me, Yeah, yes, right, small in town like.

Bison's story is a reminder of the importance of programs like All Rounder and perhaps it wasn't a coincidence that Damien started the program around the same time Bison was sent to don Dale. Three generations of arunder Man, Dennis, Damien and Bison, somehow working together. The giant caterpillars that formed the McDonald Rangers in arunder culture can be seen

Hello, Hello, Hello, Later, as the sun fell lower and the dust became redder, I was drawn by the side of Trimeria, Damien's youngest, just thirteen months old, blonde hair, olive skin, and.

A cheeky smile. We would have dubbed a creamy back on order yorder country, But this is her land and it's where she's meant to be.

So how long has he been looking for?

Then it just started?

Yeah, he's good. Look at a couple of days now.

As she tolls her way through the same dust, her ancestors plaguing through the millennia. It reminds me of what we've seen during our time. Here are more her problems than anyone else's. Even though she's born into a loving family with strong role models and big hearts, the fact that she's born and will be raised on her land means she will face a battle to become whatever she desires, a problem that children the same age but born elsewhere