By Bill Day and Sally Mitchell
DARWIN — A determined group of pensioners and their carers are making a stand against the Darwin City Council (DCC) policy of harassing homeless Aboriginal people.
In the last council elections, Mayor George Brown ran on a platform of ridding the city of "itinerants". He stated, "I reckon if you just keep shifting them around, constantly harass them so they can't settle, they will get sick and tired of it and maybe some will go back to their communities".
Bob Bundawabi, Dulcie Malimara, Tommy Yalmur and Billy Cooper have lived and worked in Darwin for over 15 years. For the past four years, they have camped in bush at Lee Point, on the city's outskirts. In July they were evicted and moved to Fish Camp, under the airport flight path.
There is no water supply, sewerage or electricity. Water is obtained from the service station, a 20-minute walk away. Now the group have lodged a complaint with the NT Anti-Discrimination Commission. They claim that, as citizens of Darwin, they have the right to be represented by the council. They claim that since the white invasion, Aboriginal people have camped around Darwin, with the permission of the Larrakia people (traditional owners of Darwin).
The council refuses to make more land available for town camps until the three existing Aboriginal town camps are fully utilised. The group claim that the policy is discriminatory because the existing camping areas were won after a long struggle by other cultural groups with their own plans for development. The council appears unconcerned that many different language groups are being forced to live in the same poorly serviced camps.
Fish Camp is situated on what DCC refers to as an urban Aboriginal living area between Kulaluk and Minmarama Park. These low-lying mangrove areas were not surveyed for town development last century and are where the Larrakia people obtained some of their land back through a struggle in the '70s. However, these areas are not legislated for under the Land Rights Act NT (1976).
Aboriginal people there have their own councils but still have to pay rates to DCC. However, DCC refuses to provide water, roads, park maintenance or garbage collection, because it is "Aboriginal land". Community Development Employment Program workers must carry out these tasks from their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission funding.
The people at Fish Camp want to return to the site they have occupied for the last four years.
Dulcie Malimara told Green Left Weekly, "I've been in Darwin since I was 17. Council came round and said that this place was being taken over by navy or army. They say that we can't stay down at the beach because they're going to build houses down there. They wanted us to move into Minmarama, Knuckey's Lagoon or Fifteen Mile, but we don't want to go there. Too many fights going on. We need a house, shower and toilet. They are the important things. We don't want to stay here. We want to go back to Lee Point.
"That's my uncle over there. He can't do anything. Also my brother. He's blind. We've got to go and get the water and carry it back. I can't do anything because I'm stuck with the old people — mainly old Bob and old Tommy. My son-in-law has a car. He shifted all the things here. It's very hard. We need water. We need some place to wash. We rang up city council . We asked them to come and collect the dogs. They didn't come. We've got too many here — nine or ten. It floods when it rains here. Big mob water runs under the tarp but we got our beds up higher. It worries me all the time — old people. Bob, he's all right . He goes to Danila Dilba [Aboriginal medical service]. He has a shower there but the rest of us, nothing.
"Our Darwin government, they welcome tourist people from overseas but they don't welcome us because we full-blood Aboriginals. We all belong to this land, our country, and we are full citizens."