Canteen Creek left high and dry

The remote Indigenous community of Canteen Creek is a speck on the map, about 270km to the south-east of Tennant Creek. The town sits in a valley on the edge of the Davenport Ranges, and is reached by a bone-juddering 180km journey along a dirt road from the Stuart Highway turnoff.

This is Alyawarr country, and it is home to 250 to 300 people, depending on the time of year. Enrolment at the Canteen Creek school runs at about 80.

The Creek crew first visited the Alice Springs Croc Festival in 2005, when a group of 26 girls made the journey in to perform a dance called Breaking down the Barriers. But only the kids who attended school regularly got to go to Croc Festival - that’s the rules.

In 2006, the primary school boys joined the girls to make up a troupe of 30 who made the trip west to put on a production of The Lion King. A video of this performance won a Silver Award at the national Wakakirri Story Festival.

This year, the Canteen Creek contingent bound for the Alice Croc Festival was to number 36. After looking on for two years, the high school boys were keen to get into the action this year. This was a crucial development. Quite simply, the importance of engaging young Aboriginal men in positive community activities of this kind can’t be overstated.

Teachers and students spent two 90-minute sessions each week over a 10-week period, preparing an extravaganza entitled Canteen Creek Carnivale: Dare 2B Different.

The theme of the piece is to stand up and be strong for yourself, rather than just following the crowd. Sadly, it seems that no one will get to see it. Barring a miracle, the Alice Springs Croc Festival, scheduled for late August, will fall over for the want of a few thousand dollars of sponsorship.

The kids from Canteen Creek - and a host of other far-flung schools besides - will miss out on the opportunity to be energised by the possibilities that the wider world has to offer.

That’s desperately unfortunate.

Just out of curiosity, I wandered along to an Alice Springs Town Council meeting to witness this august legislative body make a decision about whether to lend its full support to the Croc Festival.

Much time was consumed in animated discussion about the pros and cons of putting up more lighting at one of the local soccer grounds. Great consideration was also given to the possibility of some street closures to make life more liveable for some of the locals.

However, the other recommendations of the Corporate and Community Services Committee were accepted without debate.

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).

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.