Three-dimensional printing using recycled water bottles is an unlikely enterprise to be found in a remote corner of Arnhem Land, but it’s among a suite of potential ventures being explored to boost development in Indigenous Northern Territory communities.

Also on the table is an expansion of a crocodile egg harvest and hatchery program, and a high-end bespoke furniture company targeting the overseas market.

On Monday a team of government officials led by Len Notaras, CEO of the NT department of health, visited the remote communities of Ramingining and Milingimbi to inspect the ventures in his role as their designated community champion.

The community champions program is the brainchild of NT chief minister Adam Giles, initiated after his change of heart in axing the Aboriginal affairs portfolio shortly after taking office.

The program has an $18m budget over three years, with $3.25m set aside for community grants.

The 13 NT government-appointed champions are primarily department heads assigned to one or two remote communities each – along with a senior government employee – to assist in economic development. They use their position to act as facilitators, working with community leaders to “create an autonomous sustainable future” as Notaras explained to Guardian Australia upon his appointment in June.

“If we can get people involved in training and education and in particular jobs or any opportunity that particular communities might have, then we can help develop it,” he said.

“With a five year plan we can help those communities stand tall and provide examples for other communities.”

In the coastal town of Milingimbi on Monday, schoolchildren had been learning to use 3D printers as part of the Arnhem Land Progress Aboriginal Association’s (Alpa) Plastic Fantastic community program. Shredded milk and water bottles are converted into the printing material which the children turn into their own custom name tags.

Name tags designed and 3D-printed by school kids in Milingimbi, East Arnhem Land. Photograph: Helen Davidson/The Guardian

Plastic Fantastic promotes recycling and will seek to further child engagement and education by tying the classes to school attendance. Remote school attendance strategy officers, who help get children in the community to school every morning, are being trained in the technique. From next year students in Milingimbi and Ramingining with 100% attendance and good behaviour can be rewarded with an afternoon in the workshop, learning from the officers.

The 3D printing also has the potential to address supply issues in the remote community. For now it’s about education, but the future is in printed-on-demand fishing lures and plastic parts for cars, and not having to wait weeks for items to arrive on the barge.

Notaras and other delegates heard of the extensive and unique challenges in pushing for social and economic development in remote Arnhem Land. The East Arnhem Council covers nine communities, five of which are on islands.

Getting resources and produce in and out is a logistical art, and land-based travel is restricted to the dry season. Milingimbi has no permanent police presence – something community leaders and social workers would also like Notaras to assist with. Ben Waugh, the director of council services, suggested crime data for the community was essentially meaningless as much went unreported, and there was little relationship with officers who were only seen when something bad happened.

Nearby at the Milingimbi Men’s Shed a trainee carpentry program churns out 100 pine beds ordered on government contract for post-cyclone Galiwin’ku and prototype furniture for the fledgling company Bukmak (“everybody” in Yolngu).



Once the skills of the Indigenous workers – employed through the federal remote jobs and welfare program – are finessed they will turn local timber into high-end luxury pieces. Hundreds of tamarind trees brought down by February’s dual cyclones will also become special pieces.

The end products will be expensive. The prestige price tags are partly necessary due to the cost of shipping items out, but will also be justified by the target market, said Chris Hayward, the general manager of Alpa enterprise and community services. Hayward could already picture the beautifully designed dresser, custom-made from cyclone-timber and sitting in a New York loft, while its owners describe how they sourced it “all the way from Australia’s remote Arnhem Land,” he laughed.

Asked what further help they need from the community champion to progress, Hayward answered “any.”

“Contracts, little things to help buy equipment,” he added. An improved procurement policy which prioritised local businesses for government contracts has made a big difference, but more is needed. Milingimbi has a portable wood mill and is one year away from milling its own locally-sourced timber, Hayward said.

A bumpy four minute plane ride away in Ramingining, Indigenous rangers nominated anyone but themselves to jump into the crocodile pen and pick up one of the half-metre juveniles to show the visitors. The task fell to ranger coordinator, Jacob Bar-Lev , who stood in the ankle deep water as 50 frantic baby crocodiles splashed about his feet. One is grabbed, its jaw full of razor sharp teeth secured with a hair tie, and held up to show the cameras.

The operation is not overly high-tech.

In the swampy surroundings of the 1,000-strong community, rangers trek out in the hunt for crocodile nests. The nests are mounds of dirt and scrub, and it takes a team of at least two: one to harvest the eggs while the other holds a big stick and keeps an eye on the mother.

“It’s sometimes a bit dangerous,” says senior ranger Otto Campion.

“We have to record everything – nesting materials, GPS, water temperature, air temperature – but in some dangerous areas we just collect the eggs and get out quick,” he tells Guardian Australia.

The eggs are then taken back to the incubator – where temperature is regulated by a piece of wood that holds the lid open – hatched, and raised in solar heated pens until they are about a metre long, then sold to the crocodile farms for $2.50 per centimetre.

Currently the croc hatchery has two pens holding a total of 100 crocodiles, and if Notaras can secure the $400,000 needed it will soon expand to 20 pens and 1,000 crocodiles. This will increase employment, income, and investment in other ventures, including a community garden to grow and sell fresh produce irrigated by the hatchery grey water. The croc numbers are reduced, as are the buffalo – a pest in these parts – hunted by rangers and minced for croc food.

“In just one project we’ve got about five opportunities,” Notaras told Guardian Australia.

“You’re creating a real initiative to work and have real ownership over a project that will make some money for the local community.”

Notaras ended the Ramingining meeting with the undertaking to using his position as community champion to push along the croc hatchery extension, the produce gardens, and a third idea of his own: to send disaster response professionals from the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre (NCCTRC), to assist the community with training and preparation ahead of the forthcoming cyclone season. At the same time they could screen for vaccinations in the community – with the permission of Ramingining leaders.

Both visits to Ramingining and Milingimbi included meetings with representatives of the Indigenous community, the East Arnhem Council (EAC) and local employees and community workers.

“It’s not reinventing the wheel but rebuilding on something already existing in the community,” Notaras told Guardian Australia after visiting the croc hatchery.

Notaras stressed the need for initiatives to engage the younger generation and ensure “ownership, pride and an income” for the future, noting – as did others – a generational gap in employment and training.

“I think we’ve got a good chance of making this work and making it work in a big way,” he said.

Notaras assured those in the community meetings he had the ear of the chief minister, who with less than a year before an election was very keen to get runs on the board from his project. Those on the ground expressed hope that this would not be a case of fly-in-fly-out promises, but would deliver real outcomes for communities.