Third-world life in the heart of a first-world city

Updated

As Mindy sweeps her tiled floor, the only part of her three-bedroom home that offers any relief from the Australian Top End humidity, she points to a rusty crack at the bottom of the wall.

"That's where the snake came up — two metres, three metres," she says.

Rats and snakes don't need to be creative to get into this house.

House is probably a stretch. Tin shack is more accurate.

"My mum's paying $240 fortnightly for a shit hole," her 41-year-old daughter Rosemary interjects.

"It's 2018 and there's still tin sheds here."

Mindy has raised three children at this town camp. Known as One Mile Dam, it's just spitting distance from Darwin's CBD.

While she doesn't have any grandchildren of her own, she's played surrogate 'nan' and carer to more than a dozen family members' children here.

At 59, she's growing weary. Her eyes cloak a sad soul.

In the past couple of years she's lost both her son and her husband, Dave Timber, who spent many years vehemently fighting for this land to stay in Aboriginal hands.

He was also the glue that held the place together.

One Mile Dam has long been an open community, a permanent home for about 10 but a temporary home for dozens of homeless people and visitors from other areas, including renowned Indigenous actor David Gulpilil.

When Mindy's husband died unexpectedly of a heart condition, she found herself reluctantly trying to fill his shoes.

I wanted to give up but I can't. It's too strong, this place, it's holding me back.

Aboriginal people were granted a special-purpose lease in perpetuity over this crown land in 1979, after an eight-year battle.

The idea was they could live without fear of being moved on.

But as the CBD encroaches, with its pricey, high-rise apartments a stark contrast to their impoverished shacks, residents question why they're living in third-world conditions in the 21st century.

They hope to be part of the solution but say they are being blocked by a four-decade-old lease that no-one is taking responsibility for.

"Put your shoes on, naughty boy," Mindy scolds.

Mindy and Rosemary share the care of Jay, a four-year-old family member who keeps them on their toes.

With a cheeky grin, Jay runs and leaps through the air, landing on his nan's lap with a thud.

"Jay boy," she moans, a look of pain quickly replaced with an adoring chuckle.

The chairs on their concrete verandah face a leafy dam crawling with frogs and green ants, a shady spot where Jay used to play and swim.

Mindy warns him away from the water.

Last year, the waterhole was filled with dangerous levels of sewage flowing from a busted pipe.

Not long after, Jay had to go to hospital after a cut on his foot became badly infected.

"That dam, it smelled for months," Mindy says. "It stunk, I couldn't stand it. Even inside, it was smelly with the fan."

Rosemary became sick and her asthma became more extreme when she was around the camp.

The NT Government was made aware of the issue and the broken pipe was fixed.

But months on, nothing was done to clean the water.

Rosemary questions whether the neighbouring golf club would've been expected to put up with faeces floating around their waterhole.

If it was another white man's block of land, they would've jumped up and down, and cleaned the place.

"Probably in one day they'd have the dam cleaned."

The impoverished living conditions here have been put on the backburner by consecutive territory governments.

There are seven sheds on the block. In the back two, power and water has been cut for more than a year.

Most of the tin shacks were built 30 or more years ago and are long overdue for major repairs, if not a complete rebuild.

"If we go and give up they'll be satisfied," Rosemary says.

We know that they want this land but we're not going to move.

These claims aren't new.

Former NT government development minister Dave Tollner at one point called for One Mile Dam's closure, and was quoted as saying it was a "hell hole".

The Timber family is demanding answers from the current Labor Chief Minister, Michael Gunner.

When he was shadow housing minister, Mr Gunner called on the then-Liberal government to pick up the slack for One Mile Dam funding and claimed, "These residents have a right to normal living conditions".

Since winning the 2016 election, his Labor Government appears to have put those concerns on the backburner.

Mr Gunner and Housing Minister Gerry McCarthy both declined to be interviewed.

In a statement, the Housing Minister said: "Aboriginal Development Foundation has held a Special Purpose Lease over the area since 1979."

The Aboriginal Development Foundation was an umbrella organisation run by one man, Bernie Valadian.

But in 2004 he wrote to the territory government surrendering the lease out of his name.

Since then, nothing has been done to move the lease into anyone else's name, and without anyone taking charge of the lease, residents have been unable to apply for funding to improve their living conditions.

Mr McCarthy says the camp is on Larrakia land and that the Government is currently in talks with Larrakia people about the site's future.

However, heads of Larrakia Nation Aboriginal Corporation and Larrakia Development Corporation say official talks with the Government are yet to begin — but both would welcome the land being returned to Larrakia people to manage.

The lease transfer hold-up continues to add an air of uncertainty about what is planned for One Mile Dam.

Mindy claims that before her husband died he'd fielded inducements to leave, including housing elsewhere, by people from previous governments.

They really want this land, that mob. We know that they want to push us out.

"My old man said … 'I'd rather stay here'."

We can't verify these claims.

But as nearby construction begins on the $39m Barneson Boulevard development — which will create a new entry to the capital and its billion-dollar waterfront development — the land's lucrative potential is clear.

It can be hard to get attention for this sort of topic in Darwin. The Northern Territory has the nation's largest rate of homelessness.

Many long-grassers — the term used to describe Aboriginal people living rough — have come from remote parts of the Top End and find a second home in the city.

Some come here to get away from their problems, others to escape alcohol restrictions placed on their own communities.

It's part of the bigger problem of Indigenous disadvantage across Australia.

The NT Government receives more GST allocation per capita than any other state or territory — more than four times the national average — largely due to its Indigenous population and the difficult nature of servicing remote communities.

Anthropologist Bill Day believes the Government has little incentive to change that.

"As long as you have this poverty of Aboriginal people in the territory, it is a weapon to put forward to the Commonwealth as an argument for GST grabs," he says.

"I accept that they have this additional cost but you only have to look around at Darwin to see where this money is being spent and who is missing out, particularly if you visit the tiny community of One Mile Dam."

After helping with the initial land rights campaign, he's closely followed One Mile Dam's struggle, which he says is now a symbol of resistance against Aboriginal loss of land in Australia.

This has happened in every major city, he says. As development spreads, first nations people find themselves pushed out.

I well remember a photograph from China of a little house stuck in the middle of a huge development. They refused to move. One Mile Dam is becoming that picture.

"This small Aboriginal community is going to be squeezed by huge development.

"Certainly people buying this property won't want to have One Mile as neighbours. But that's no reason they should move."

With doubts over the future of the lease, Mr Day says it's more important than ever for the community to be pro-active and hold on to the little land it has left.

Part of that burden falls on Mindy.

When asked what she wants to happen, she doesn't have grand demands.

A new brick home, to replace the tin shed.

An inside toilet and shower, replacing their outside bathroom.

"I get up really late and go outside in the rain," Mindy says. "You don't know who is hiding there.

"Even my granddaughter, I have to go and wait outside with her. I'm scared of men especially. They might do something to you."

But Mindy has also begun to think about a bigger vision for the future.

She and Rosemary would like to be part of the creation of a hostel on the site, designed and run only for women and children.

When men are around there's more likely to be "humbug" — the word they use to describe trouble.

The hostel would become part of a broader effort, they say, to prevent another lost generation.

"There are women and children out in the street and the kids end up in welfare," Rosemary says.

"It's the 21st century and we don't want to have that happen again. If we do something from stopping welfare from stepping in, we look after our own people and they see we are doing something to help our own people instead of blaming the system."

They admit they would need help, and security, to ensure it's run properly.

Rosemary doesn't think it's an extravagant ask.

"You've got people from all over the world coming here," she says.

"The Government's met a lot of needs for people who don't even belong to this country and they just become Australian citizens, and we are the native people of this country.

We still don't have our rights, and this here is in the heart of the city.

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Topics: aboriginal, housing, darwin-0800

First posted