Division a common theme amonst Port Augusta and Port Pirie voters around Voice debate

The Advertiser’s Paul Ashenden has set out across the state to gauge where people stand on the referendum. Next stops, Port Augusta and Port Pirie.

There’s quite a few early shoppers in downtown Port Augusta this morning, but not many of them want to talk to us.

We had parked Nelson the Voicewagen Kombi near the town’s old wooden wharf and wandered through to the nearby shopping centre to gauge people’s views on the referendum to introduce an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

We’re not having much luck.

“Sorry mate, I’ve got to live in this town and if I give you my view, who knows what will happen,” one says as he almost does a hamstring getting away from us.

“No thanks mate, this town’s divided enough already,” says another.

Nelson waits for no one, except perhaps a train near Port Pirie. Picture Dean Martin

We are on Day Three of our statewide tour with Nelson and had stayed the night at Port Augusta Shoreline Caravan Park (which, by the way, boasts an ablutions block with perhaps the most glorious ceiling shower heads this seasoned caravan park user has ever enjoyed).

It was going to be a big day. We wanted to speak with the people of both Port Augusta and Port Pirie, two salt-of the earth towns (with populations around the 13,000-mark) on the northern end of Spencer Gulf.

In Port Augusta, Gemma Tomlinson, 32 is one of the few locals happy to talk to us after we introduce ourselves outside of Woolworths.

“I think that it (a Voice to Parliament) is going to cause a further divide between the cultures, so I’m going to vote No,” she says.

“I’ve been watching a lot of TikToks of all the people campaigning for it and they’re all going to vote No, and I feel like that’s the only way to go from here – otherwise it’s going to cause huge tension between us.

Gemma Tomalin in Port Augusta. Picture: Dean Martin

Ali Boyle, 35, from Orange, NSW. Picture: Dean Martin

“All the people I know are going to vote No.”

We sidle up to a friendly Queenslander called Linda, 60, on a lap of Australia with her husband. The couple have already cast their vote at a pre-poll centre but she doesn’t want to give us her last name nor publicly disclose her vote because of the controversial nature of the national discussion.

“If you tell people you’ve voted No, they think you are a racist, and if you tell people you voted Yes, there’s a big hoo-ha about why you shouldn’t have voted Yes,” she says.

“It’s just not clear whether we should vote Yes or No. It should be a little bit more transparent, I think, before we should make a decision on Yes or No. It needs a few more parameters around what it will mean to change the constitution.”

Like many we speak with, Linda is concerned Australia will be a divided nation after next Saturday’s referendum, regardless of the result.

Mitch Crump, 40, and Ali Boyle, 35, from Orange, NSW are on holiday with their two young children and studied both sides of the debate deeply. They will both vote Yes.

“Aboriginal people deserve to be able to have their say in parliament,” Ali says. “We’ve done and made a lot of policies that have wronged them. So for them to be able to influence policy, with their voice, I think there’s nothing but good to come from that.”

On the other side of town, at the popular Archers’ Table cafe, Brodie Jarmyn and Danica Manfield, both 28, have stopped in for a coffee while their car is being serviced just around the corner.

Brodie Jarmyn and Danica Manfield, both 28, spend some quality time with Nelson. Picture: Dean Martin

The Port Pirie couple have been too busy preparing for their December wedding in Las Vegas to pay much attention to the Voice debate and still don’t know how they’ll vote next weekend.

“There’s an ad at the moment that is saying to vote No, and I’ve seen a lot of that, but I haven’t actually seen much promoting Yes yet,” Danica says. “So I was going to look into why Yes is obviously an option too.”

We’ve spent a morning in Port Augusta and only managed to find 14 people willing to tell us how they’ll vote – three will vote No, three will vote Yes (only one of these is a local) and eight are undecided.

It’s a different story about an hour down Highway 1 at Port Pirie, where the result of our admittedly unscientific survey of 20 points to a district sitting emphatically in the No camp.

In the few hours we spend talking to people, 15 tell us they will vote No, two will vote yes and three are undecided. All but three of the people we speak to are locals.

Harry’s Home Made Fine Foods is a popular roadside stopover about 10 minutes from Pirie, and we drop in to pick up some of the pickled onions and cured meats for which the store is renowned.

At Harry’s Home Made Fine Foods, brothers, Mitch, 37, and Archie, 45, Kanbanos, admire Nelson the Kombi. Picture Dean Martin

By this stage, Nelson the 1973 Voicewagen Kombi is also making a name for himself after a front page picture in The Advertiser raised him to celebrity status. Harry’s owners Archie and Mitch Kanbanos (Archie, 45, is undecided on the referendum, Mitch, 37, will vote No) jump at the chance to be in a picture with Nelson, immacutely restored by Cooper Pratt at Kombi Camping in Sandy Creek.

In Port Pirie, we run into Nicole Snow, 40, who speaks passionately about why she is voting No.

“I’m against the division this is going to bring,” she says, echoing the views of many we speak to in the town. “We know that they’ve already got a voice. We know the amount of money that’s allocated. I have Aboriginal friends and 90 per cent of them are voting No. Everyone I’ve spoken to is voting No. There should be no separatism. No to apartheid. No to racism.”