Day 272 | Getting to grips with Alice: only 4 more weeks of work, yippee

They say Perth is the world’s most isolated city but in reality Alice has to rate highly in the away-from-it-all stakes: 1500km either way, north or south, Adelaide or Darwin.

Alice is a big country town, 30,000 people here, not many are locals, if you are born here the usual inclination is to leave, everyone seems to be from somewhere else.

From the outset it’s pretty clear that Alice is an “us” and “them” kinda town.

Divided. Splintered.

Heading to the supermarket on Day One middle aged aboriginal people were being herded from the shopping centre by the Sudanese security guards, slowly, not quietly. The cause of the eviction was not apparent, causing disturbance perhaps, but it’s become a common enough event.

The divide is readily apparent in the warm autumn evenings outside the Todd Street bar strip, Boze, ie, Bojangles, Rock Bar, (you might question whether 2 bars is in fact a strip but it’s where the night time action is), the whites drunk and noisy on one side, the aboriginal people sitting or wandering in family, or peer groups looking across from the block sized park outside the Town Council offices. There’s been a huge influx of people for a big footy game, interstate teams, often with no accommodation, well, it’s pleasant enough weather to cross Leichhardt Terrace and sleep in that dry river bed, or under the bridge if it rains, it’s a big event and they stay a week or more.

Ain’t much of a mix.

From my seat in the Rock Bar there didn’t seem much of a difference except for this: the indigenous people live their lives outdoors, discussions, sometimes rowdy, disagreements, altercations therefore take place in public. Alcohol sometimes a major issue.

The rest of us have the good sense to hide our unrest, distress, bottles, violence, behind closed doors. Apparently that’s civilisation.

Another divide is between the blue collar, Tradies, which might include anyone working in business, not necessarily Bogans, but a goodly proportion seem to be, and the more progressive, liberal types who armed with East Coast university degrees, BAs and MAs, tend to work for government agencies which are plenty thick on the ground in this town. I heard over 25% work for the government.

There’s a fair one way traffic in antipathy from the Bogans to the Welfare Workers, seen to be on cushy jobs driving their government issue white Toyota Land Cruisers and providing Rheumatic fever education programs, vocational training in areas like Certificate 4 in forklift driving, or facilitating production in the huge Aboriginal Art Industry. There’s sure plenty of those white Toyotas with government stickers on the doors driving around town.

The Bogans are probably more numerous but to some extent the heyday of the tourism industry has gone, the high Australian dollar a killer there, Uluru’s biggest year was 2002, the numbers have dropped from the half million visitors a year by a big 20%. Local businesses are closing and tour providers are amalgamating to survive.

With the Federal Government Intervention initiated in the dying days of the conservatives in 2007, and its boost by the current mob, that Commonwealth money is pouring in and seems to be what is sustaining the town. The Welfare Workers are on the ascendent.

There might be 10,000 aboriginal people living permanently in town, many in “town camps”, hidden from public view, basically squatting in compounds in what is regarded by the middle class as substandard conditions, there’s a huge push by the Federal Government to provide a better standard of accommodation, ie, reliable cooking and bathing facilities, which is perversely providing employment to the Tradies. There’s another almost 50,000 people in the hinterland, stretching out 100s of kilometres to the state boundaries, which Alice services.

A big Asian community. Did I mention the Sudanese?

Where do I fit?

Mark me down as none of the above.