and ERWIN CHLANDA
The Hard Light of Day by Alice Springs author Rod Moss today won the Prime Minister’s non-fiction award worth $80,000 and the huge prestige attached to it.
The book chronicles the lives of Aboriginal people at the White Gate community, a squat on the eastern edge of town.
Mr Moss (pictured above at White Gate) was at the National Gallery in Canberra to receive the award from Ms Gillard.
He spoke to the Alice Springs News minutes later.
“I’m just a bit bewildered,” he said. “I’m in esteemed company. I’m one of them now, apparently.
“I don’t think I’m suffering any chemical imbalance but if feels unreal.
“I’m a stranger, an outsider here, surrounded by other writers with their own coteries of literary people.”
Did he shake the Prime Minister’s hand?
“Yes, she has a warm little mitt. She has a capacity for mingling. Her speech felt very genuine.”
Mr Moss said neither Ms Gillard nor Arts Minister Simon Crean referred in their speeches to the contents of the books winning awards or short-listed.
Mr Moss is a teacher, noted painter and long-time resident of Alice Springs.
He says “part two is happening already,” a continuation of the subject from where the book left off in 1998 “to last week”.
This was prompted by the response to the book, previously culminating in the Chief Minister’s NT Book of the Year award earlier this year.
But the sequel may “not see the hard light of day,” he quipped.
Judges Brian Johns AO, Colin Steele and Dr Faye Sutherland say in their comments the book “draws a picture of Aboriginal Australians living in The Centre that we have rarely experienced on such a moving level.
“Rod Moss, with unflinching, knowing vision, reveals the harsh realities of the day to day lives of Aboriginals with devastating force and insight.
“Nothing is spared – the pain of chronic ill health, the alcoholism, the mutual violence, the aimlessness of the dislocated and the impoverished.”
They say the book is enriched by Moss’ paintings and photographs.
The author’s friendship with tribal elder Arranye “is the spiritual backbone of the book, starkly realistic, yet both enriching and encouraging, transcending the often desperate circumstances.
“There is humor and there is hope,” the judges say.
25 years of love and anguish: Review of the book by KIERAN FINNANE
White Gate residents: We will not go, it’s home. By KIERAN FINNANE.
Rod Moss wins Prime Minister's literary award
Alice airport could close in major flood
4.5% downturn expected this year but investment continues
By KIERAN FINNANE
The Alice Springs Airport could not be guaranteed to remain open in the case of a major flood cutting access to the town through Heavitree Gap.
Mayor Damien Ryan put the question to the airport’s general manager Katie Cooper when she made a presentation to council on Monday night about the airport’s contribution to the Alice economy.
If Heavitree Gap were cut off by major floodwaters, road and rail links from the south would be severed. It seems also that air links could be restricted or could cease because of the difficulty of getting airport staff from their homes in town to their workplace.
Ms Cooper told councillors that the intention would be to maintain staffing levels and operations, but she could not give a “100%” guarantee. For example, if the flood occurred in the middle of the night, getting people to the airport “might be a challenge,” she said.
Meanwhile, Ms Cooper said the Alice airport contributes 0.4% to the NT GSP (gross state product). Slow steady growth of annual passenger movements is forecast: from 630,000 in 2009, projected to grow to 940,000 by 2029. A decline of around 4.5% on previous years is expected this year, however. The 20 year old facility was built to cater for up to two million passenger movements a year, so there is room for much more rapid growth, which Ms Cooper said NT Airports is bent on chasing.
She said bringing in scheduled international services is unlikely on the basis of current usage, but NT Airports “actively seeks partnerships with airlines,” with representatives attending the global route conferences each year. Charter flights from overseas have gone into abeyance.
Again Ms Cooper said NT Airports is keen to make use of the facilities to receive them. Currently the aircraft tug and other facilities are in storage, costing the airport money.
Ms Cooper said one of things “against us” is the high Aussie dollar, although that’s a country-wide problem. She said more positive stories about Alice as a destination “would be useful,” mentioning as “not very helpful” the recent London Times article, describing Alice as “cursed by alcohol” and as a town “where even the security guards live in fear”.
Slow growth aside, investment in the airport is continuing and commercial opportunities for its assets are being sought. The Alice airport now has its own iPhone app, the second airport in Australia to have one, following Darwin (also owned by the NT Airports). $8m is about to be spent on apron overlay, following the $10m runway overlay in 2009.
She also mentioned the Remote Towers trial (of the air traffic control centre operating from Adelaide) as representing a “significant investment” by Air Services Australia. This is expected to start at Alice Springs in late 2012.
On the boneyard, announced to fanfare in May this year, she said Asia Pacific Aircraft Storage is out looking for clients. She is hoping that work will start on building the facility later this year, with the airport apron overlay possibly offering an advantage of asphalting “synergies” for the boneyard project.
She said it is not clear how the tourist potential of the facility could be managed, given that it will have direct access to the airport runway, but she said some of the USA boneyards have “quite a big tourist market”. She did not know how may jobs would be involved in the boneyard operations.
The airport is continuing to work with the NT Government on the extension of the Kilgariff subdivision into airport land. An MOU exists and a further agreement is being worked on. Ms Cooper described this as a “long-term project”.
Fly-in, fly-out desert knowledge
A branch of the desert knowledge movement, that supposedly quintessential Central Australian drive to transform the governance and economy of the vast desert regions, seems to have turned into a fly-in, fly-out operation.
Jan Ferguson, the CEO of the Remote Economic Participation CRC / Ninti One, which was spawned by the earlier Desert Knowledge CRC, now reportedly lives and works in Adelaide, and so does the Communications Manager, Linda Cooper.
Neither returned phone calls and emails from the Alice Springs News in the past few days.
Board member Harold Furber, one for the founders of the desert knowledge movement, asked about the apparent new arrangements, says: “I find it very hard to comment.”
Mr Furber, together with others, has worked tirelessly to bring the movement to fruition: “It was a Central Australian idea,” he says.
Two other branches, Desert Knowledge Australia and the Desert People’s Centre, are still firmly rooted in the Alice Springs.
The Remote Economic Participation CRC’s Donna Anthes (General Manager Operations) and Tammie Boehm (Executive Officer) are still based here.
We put to Mr Furber that a true headquarters of an organisation would be where the CEO works.
He repeated his earlier statement: “I find it very hard to comment.”
Ninti One notably has a massive Federal Government contract to cull feral camels, mostly by shooting them from helicopters.
PM will be asked to help Alice's flagging tourism industry
The Town Council is writing to the Prime Minister to ask for financial assistance for the tourism industry in the Centre. While councillors voted to take this action back in May, it has now become more urgent with the grounding of Tiger flights.
Alderman Samih Habib Bitar at Monday’s meeting appealed to councillors to use what lobbying power council may have to help get Tiger back in the air on the Melbourne-Alice route.
Ald John Rawnsley went further, asking whether council should not send a delegation to government to ask for a financial assistance package, given the “particularly rough time” the town has had from the impact of the high Australian dollar and the negative national and international publicity around high levels of crime and anti-social behavior. (Clarifying later for the Alice News, he said the delegation would be to the Territory Parliament, with a package to be funded by both the Australian and Territory governments.)
Councillors were reminded by Director of Corporate and Community Services Craig Catchlove that they had already resolved to send a letter to the Prime Minister, asking for special assistance. In fact, he said a letter had gone out, although an enquiry by the Alice Springs News revealed that it is still in draft form. It will be sent this week, almost two months after council’s resolution.
At Monday’s meeting Ald Habib Bitar suggested council should approach Virgin Blue to see whether they could reinstate flights to Alice.
However, Ald Jane Clark argued loyalty to Tiger is warranted if they get back up and running. What must be avoided, she argued, was a return to Alice being serviced by only one airline. She criticised Qantas for originally excluding Alice from its special deals for stranded Tiger passengers.
She had had two children caught in Melbourne by the Tiger grounding and had been facing having to pay two $900 one-way airfares to get them home. She said there were definitely no special deals for passengers to Alice “until enough people kicked up a fuss”.
A one airline situation would represent a “real danger for the tourism market”, said Ald Clark. She said council should establish a “lobbying position over the next couple of months” to ensure that other airlines service Alice Springs.
Deputy Mayor Ald Liz Martin took up the theme of the damage being done by negative publicity about Alice Springs.
She said media were responding to “negative people in the community”; that this was endangering investment in the town; and that the impact was going beyond the town, being felt all along the gateway routes into the region.
Mayor Damien Ryan requested the CEO to have a report prepared, drawing on “knowledgeable people in town”, to provide direction for councillors on the issue. CEO Rex Mooney said that the report would be ready for the end of month meeting.
Speaking later to the News, Ald Martin said “good news messages” need to get out about all the wonderful natural and man-made attractions of the town and the region. If the government funds became available, they could be used to “subsidise” publicity in niche publications not normally targeted by tourism marketing campaigns. These would be the monthly subscription publications relating to fields where there are attractions of special interest in the Centre, such as art, sport, road, rail and air heritage, said Ald Martin.
Ald Murray Stewart is on annual leave and was absent from Monday night’s meeting. However, he was the initator of the original motion to write to the Prime Minister. He told the News that in his view Alice Springs and its tourism industry in particular had experienced a calamity as a result of deteriorating activity on the streets and the publicity around it. Just as the Australian Government had stepped in to offer assistance to Queensland to help its tourism industry get over a difficult period, so they could do for Alice Springs, he said. He said the town’s troubles are not of the same magnitude or tragic nature as Queensland’s but there is certainly an economic downturn.
He favoured using any government assistance to “drive new tourism events”, and also used that word “niche”. For example, there could be “a celebration of great Australian voices”, not only in song, but also spoken word, like the wonderful recitation of iconic Australian poems by actor Jack Thompson.
“We should zero in on two or three unique events and time them for the shoulder periods of our tourism season when the weather is still OK,” said Ald Stewart.
To climb or not to climb?
Whenever you mention that you’re going for a trip to The Rock the conversation always seems to head in one direction – are you going to climb it? Have you climbed it before? It’s as though this meager act reflects upon your personality, yet alone moral self.
This past weekend I drove down to Uluru to fly from the airport that is controversial for industries dependent on tourism in Alice Springs, to Sydney.
On the way my friend and I managed to sight a running emu, two side by side dancing eagles, almost step on a whip snake and break down on the side of the road for several hours – all classic, camping in the bush stuff. Nearly every car that passed us as we tampered with the axles, knobs and bolts, was a deluxe, state of the art campervan, four-wheel drive, or tour bus. I marveled at their chic steel beauty and wondered, with an unintended absence of political correctness, where the beat-up camp cars from the Indigenous community were.
When we finally got the engine sorted and moving again it wasn’t long until the out-of-proportion inland island that is Uluru greeted our eyes.
We arrived at the campsite next to the resort and were shocked to find the grounds almost empty. I thought it was tourist season! However, as we headed into the park the long line of climbers – to quote Lindqvist, more like dots on an Aboriginal painting than conquerors – showed us where the action was.
Growing up in Alice, where land rights issues are at the forefront, I was aware even when I was in primary school that Uluru was holy ground for the Aboriginal people of that area, the Anangu. I’d only been there once until hitting adulthood and in all frankness the only image I remember is the Coca Cola icy-pole dangled before my nose, then clasped between teeth that couldn’t believe their luck. I wasn’t allowed sugar as a kid, so to have something so sweetly devilish in my clutch was far more impressive than what looked like a huge anthill. Still, I remember swearing loudly and quite ignorantly to a fellow playmate that I’d never ever climb it and very forcefully telling her that her dad was a “big meanie” for even attempting the trip.
Now that I’m an adult, however, I find many of my good friends and family have tackled Ayers Rock, trailing the track to the top. I also hear some around town proclaim
that many of the traditional owners don’t mind if white people hike up its surface. Information at the park’s very own Culture Center claims that it was customary for the men to put a sacred stick at a certain place at the very top to instigate ceremonies. It could then be argued that no one knows the answer, that the information has perhaps crossed lines.
I remember reading once that Uluru was restored to its original owners in 1985 on the condition that they immediately leased back the whole area and made it accessible to tourists. The only Aboriginal people I saw in my two days there were a beautiful young woman walking around the art gallery with her baby. I felt too self-conscious of my tourist appearance to ask her how she felt about the expanse of resort and shopping center having no reflection of, what I presume is, her culture, merely tacky furniture and outdated carpets.
Walking around the base of ominous landmark on Saturday and looking in at the keyholes and cavities covered in ocher paintings, I painted my own image of the Anangu singing and dancing beneath the shadows of their sacred home. I had to wonder what benefit a title is when you can’t inhabit what you own. It was lucky I was wearing sunglasses because I actually cried.
In reality what you hear is a mishmash of languages and accents from around the world. All genuinely excited voices of warmth, but alien in feel to the landscape. I was trying to dampen the pompous ‘know it all’ in me and come to some kind of closure whilst still there, so I asked a rather puffed man at the trail’s edge how he felt about hitting the ground. “Are you going to ask me how long it took me?” he smiled. “45 years. I’m serious!” He went on to tell me how he had started when he was only five on a trip around Australia with his parents and had made it back with his girlfriend to complete the ascent now that he was old enough. The pride and joy in his face was lovely and I couldn’t help but smile back.
Now I’m confused. I don’t know what’s ‘right’. I still haven’t climbed it and won’t until I know where I stand in this ethical debate. Maybe I’ll never know. I guess this is what life asks of us all the time – to come to our subjective decisions and face the reactions to the choices we make. Photo by OLIVER ECLIPSE.