Not a lot has changed since I last looked at Elliott/Kulumindini six years ago—it is still stuck in an administrative worm hole. Services from all levels of government fall between the jurisdictional cracks often because Elliott is equidistant from the major Northern Territory service and administrative centres of Darwin and Alice Springs.
While the settlers may have struggled to find a suitable name for Xanthostemon paradoxus, it is unsurprising that local Aboriginal language groups have no shortage of names—and uses— for this tree.
Lois Nambajimba: Then I heard people singing out they was crying. Then saw those people shaking. I saw that woman first that one that died. I saw that woman first drop and then shake.
The neck is stretched out, the head thrown back, the legs straight and stiff. The fits are brought on or made worse by the slightest touch, sound or light. Finally, one dreadful seizure follows another, until they are continuous and death ensues.
A look at all things northern... and some of the myths behind them.
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It was late November 2010, one of those red-hot November days that only the Western Desert can turn on. Over six hundred people travelled for days from far and wide to bury young Jampijinpa at the small town of Nyirripi, a four-and-a-half hour dusty drive west from Alice Springs on rough dirt roads.
It is a matter of some sadness to the Court to have been involved in a matter which has so many unsatisfactory and unsavoury actions of the police force of the Northern Territory ... It may be that the defendant can be described as a serial pest. He may be provocative and cheeky and a trouble causer. He is 19 years old. He is not Jack the Ripper.
I am aware that it is not normal in a maiden parliamentary speech to raise contentious issues, but these are not normal times. Let us talk about traditions. Let us look at the traditions of the Country Liberal Party and the people who run it. These people know their traditions well and the most hallowed of them is to raise issues of race at every possible opportunity, and there is no better opportunity than at election time.
To set the record straight - there is no "Marion Dam" at Tennant Creek. There is however, a "Mary Ann Dam" (known as Tingkkarli to the Warumungu traditional owners and native title custodians) situated just through the gap north of the town. Construction commenced in 1979 and Mary Ann Dam was opened by local MLA (and later NT Chief Minister) Ian Tuxworth in 1981.
There is one thing today we cannot imagine. We cannot imagine that the descendants of people whose genius and resilience maintained a culture here through fifty thousand years or more, through cataclysmic changes to the climate and environment, and who then survived two centuries of dispossession and abuse, will be denied their place in the modern Australian nation. We cannot imagine that. We cannot imagine that we will fail.
All up the bill for lawyers alone in the Brett Cattle Company matter might be $12 million plus loose change and walking around money.
