Frustrated Mount Isa residents speak on living in crime cycle

Mount Isa locals are beyond frustrated as they find themselves trapped in a crime-ridden nightmare right in their own backyard. Take a look at the grim reality they’re facing.

Mount Isa resident Rodger Winch has fitted his home with security cameras and flood lights due to the amount of crime he has had at his house. Picture: Scott Radford-Chisholm

Mount Isa resident Rodger Winch lives in earshot of alleged murders, arsons, hooning, drunken brawls and vandalism, and has installed flood lights and security cameras to protect his home.

Mr Winch lives in a suburb called Pioneer across the road from an abandoned Woolworths shop now used for storage, and for a long time it has been a central point for riots and drunken assaults.

He said at least half a dozen houses in his neighbourhood had been lit on fire in the past 18 months, and he lived in fear that it could happen to his own home.

“My wife needs a wheelie walker and she can’t even get to the front gate without an absolute struggle,” he said.

“A lot of people probably don’t realise that there’s someone else living here with me … I have just got a feeling they’ll light the place up one day when they think I’m not here, and she’ll be stuck inside.”

Rodger Winch said that living in a bad part of the town was not an excuse for criminal behaviour. Picture: Scott Radford-Chisholm

With the looming loss of 1200 Glencore workers as Mount Isa Mines closes its copper operations, the council looks to diversify its economy.

But at a recent strategic meeting looking to capitalise on tourism, residents such as Mr Winch were more concerned with the impact that crime was having on their liveability, and also on their hometown’s reputation.

They speculated that grey nomads who were travelling the major highway were aware of the crime and were preferring to pass through Mount Isa rather than making it a destination.

Mr Winch, a fitter by trade, said he and his wife moved into their house three years ago because it was the best they could afford.

Mount Isa resident Liza Dowler said the community had been impacted from crime throughout the years, with fewer families living in the mining town. Picture: Scott Radford-Chisholm.

“It’s gotten worse and I suspect some of it is targeted just to give me the s —ts but a lot of it was going on anyway,” he said.

“I know that this part of town is not a great part of town but that does not excuse someone acting badly.

“If they decide to gather in a big group and have a brawl on a street, that’s not affecting me apart from them making noise.”

Mount Isa CBD shopkeeper Liza Dowler said there were many workers who worked alone during the day, and that as a woman she felt vulnerable.

“I feel scared at times,” she said.

“I’ve got to be aware of what’s happening all the time in that shop, I’m on high alert every time.”

She said the population demographic had changed in Mount Isa which was impacting the liveability as well, with families being replaced with individual mine workers.

“I know of four or five families, they’ve left jobs here to go somewhere else because the wives have woken up and there’s someone in their bedroom that’s not the husband,” she said.

“So they’re scared and then hubbie’s at work and he’s worried about family because he’s on nightshift.

Mount Isa historian Kim-Maree Burton said youth crime had been an issue for more than 40 years judging from newspaper reports of the time, but that it had worsened in recent years with nobody able to solve the issues.

Although she felt safe at her current property, she had been broken into seven times in three properties and in 2017 she woke to a man on top of her.

Ms Burton said she was not sexually assaulted but a video of her sleeping was posted on social media without her knowledge, and she felt unheard by police or by Mount Isa councillors at the time.

And she said elderly people were also vulnerable to break-ins by youth who did not care about the impacts of their actions.

She supported State MP Robbie Katter’s policy to send remote youth offenders onto remote properties and said the abandoned town Urandangi, 180km south west of Mount Isa, already had facilities that could be used.

“This idea of going to Cleveland (Youth Detention Centre) does not work,” Ms Burton said.

Originally published as Frustrated Mount Isa residents speak on living in crime cycle