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Canteen Creek left high and dry

By Graham Ring - posted Friday, 20 July 2007


This meant that the Croc Festival would receive no cash support from council, and that the event’s organisers would be offered only the secondary and distant venue of Blatherskite Park, rather than the centrally-located showpiece oval, Traeger Park.

This was bad news for the kids in Canteen Creek. Coming hard on the heels of the Prime Minister’s unprecedented and expensive intervention into the lives of Indigenous Territorians, the demise of the Alice Springs Croc Festival should prompt a lot of head-scratching and a few hard questions.

Consider that the federal government has at long last decided to spend a small fortune on providing some desperately needed assistance to remote Aboriginal communities around Alice Springs (they’ve gone about it in a very clumsy and ill-informed way of course, but that discussion can wait for another time).

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Whether it’s conscience or political expediency, the Prime Minister and his Minister for Indigenous Affairs have finally arrived at the blindingly obvious conclusion that steps must be taken to protect Aboriginal kids who are at risk of abuse and neglect.

Meanwhile, Croc Festival has been chugging away for 10 years. They’ve been spreading the good word to Indigenous children and their families that the best way out of these difficulties is to stay in school, develop some skills and make career decisions: not sufficient in itself, but a hellava good start. People with jobs have incomes and choices.

It’s simply incomprehensible that in these circumstances further funding could not be found to support the Alice Springs Croc Festival.

The duck-shoving will start shortly. Doubtless the feds will blame the territory and the territory will blame the feds. The Alice Springs Town Council will disappear down the burrow. And the students at Canteen Creek will simply miss out.

The kids don’t know yet. They’re on holidays, and won’t be told until they get back to school. No doubt they’ll understand the complexities of budget restrictions and multi-tiered governments.

I’m sure they’ll go about their business with a newfound respect for the ways of the whitefella world.

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First published in the National Indigenous Times on July 12, 2007, Issue 133.



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About the Author

Graham Ring is an award-winning writer and a fortnightly National Indigenous Times columnist. He is based in Alice Springs.

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