australian letters This is a weekly newsletter published by the Australian bureau. This week's issue is written by Northern Territory-based reporter Julia Bergin.
Driving through Central Australia can mean battling dust, flooding, fires, crumbling roads and network failures. And if the cargo is food, even a small setback can have serious consequences.
The remote Rajamanu Aboriginal community was established in the Northern Territory by the Australian government in 1949. Dozens of people, already uprooted from their traditional homes, were relocated there from another community about 350 miles away because of overcrowding and water shortages.
Currently, the population of Rajamanu is approximately 800 people. Like many other remote communities in Australia, it is maintained by his single store selling everything from food to diapers to washing machines. The stores are supplied with food once a week, sometimes once every two weeks, by truck drivers who have to contend with the region's harsh conditions and dangerous infrastructure.
During the first months of this year, a combination of record rainfall, storms and flooding cut off the only road into Rajamanu. Regular deliveries stopped and stocks of food, water, medicine and other essentials began to dwindle. Andrew Johnson, a Warlpiri man and a Rajamanu elder, said the community was particularly struggling with food insecurity.
“There's no power, no energy,” he said.
Under government policy, stores had to prepare for such an outcome given the predictability of the annual rainy season. As the situation worsened, residents and suppliers repeatedly appealed to the Northern Territory Government to declare a state of emergency.
“The silence was deafening,” said Alastair King, president of the Arnhem Land Progress Aboriginal Corporation (ALPA), a non-profit organization that operates stores such as the Lajamanu store in remote communities. “They didn't respond, they didn't tell us what it took to declare a state of emergency, they didn't tell us why they didn't declare a state of emergency.”
So ALPA organized special trucks and small daily charter flights to transport supplies. In the end, after several months of doing so and spending over A$350,000, or about $232,000, the shelves at the Rajamanu store remained nearly empty.
“We were hoping for a big Hercules military plane to bring all the food, but all we saw was a single-engine chartered plane going backwards and forwards, slowly lowering itself,” Johnson said. “It wasn't enough. It wasn't treated as an emergency, it wasn't taken seriously.”
A similar situation was occurring some 800 miles away in the remote Aboriginal community of Minieri, also known as Hodgson Downs, and another 750 miles away in Borroloola, both of which were cut off by flooding.
In Borroloola, food stocks were dwindling, panic buying was reported, cash withdrawals were limited, and credit card payments were impossible due to a lack of telephone service and connectivity. In late March, months after the first request for help was made, the military was brought in to help evacuate Borroloola residents. The Northern Land Council, which represents the region's indigenous peoples, said the response to the disaster by the federal and Northern Territory governments had been “remarkable”.
In most remote Indigenous communities, subsistence provision models are the norm. It is the product of decades of interventionist policies that have displaced people from their traditional homelands. Now, whenever supply chain issues threaten food security, locals are forced to turn to the government for help.
In Rajamanu, three months after regular truck deliveries ceased, ALPA officials told the territorial government in an email that the community was in an “extremely critical” state. There were no eggs, non-perishable milk, frozen meat, or toilet paper.
A Northern Territory Government spokesperson said in late March, two days after receiving the ALPA official's email, that a “food security plan” involving daily government-funded charter flights to transport supplies until the roads could be used again stated that it has been enforced.
Mr King said the government only started paying for the tickets after a personal appeal was lodged with the Northern Territory's attorney general, Chancey Pech. Mr. Paech declined to comment.
King said the root cause of the crisis was the government's failure to ensure roads could withstand the rainy season. Pointing to photos of muddy, crumbling and completely submerged roads, King said hundreds of people were trapped and starving as a result.
“If that's not an emergency, what is?” he said.
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