Ali Curung set to receive new health clinic alongside its Medicare Urgent Care Clinic

An Aboriginal community’s fading health centre is set to be replaced by a modern facility across town, one of four remote health services to have either received or been promised new facilities in recent years.

Artistic render of the proposed Ali Curung health clinic at 8 Warlpiri St, Ali Curung, which will replace the existing Ali Curung Primary Health Centre on Jangala St. Picture: Hames Sharley

The remote Aboriginal township of Ali Curung, located south of Tennant Creek and home to 394 people as at the 2021 census, is due to receive a sleek new health clinic to complement its recently announced Medicare Urgent Care Clinic.

The Development Consent Authority is currently advertising plans for the new clinic, which would be located on a 8200 sqm site at 8 Warlpiri St, across town from the existing Ali Curung Primary Health Centre.

The existing centre, opened in 1988 and understood to be reaching the end of its useful life, will be replaced by the new Warlpiri St facility.

The site currently contains a childcare service, the Alekarenge Family Centre, and various vegetation including a sacred tree.

The new Ali Curung health clinic will be located at 8 Warlpiri St, Ali Curung. Picture: Hames Sharley

According to the development application, the new health clinic will feature seven consulting rooms, a two-bed emergency room, a morgue, a four-seat renal room, an X-ray room, hearing room, ambulance bay, breast screening bay, dental van bay, laundry, outdoor play area, and covered staff parking, among other supporting infrastructure and amenities.

According to architects Hames Sharley, the clinic’s design was based off the Remote Health Centre and Australasian Health Facility Guidelines and informed by a “user group process with key stakeholders and community elders to finalise the brief and ensure functionality”.

“The building is highly functional and architecturally designed considering the region, its location, history and culture,” Hames Sharley said in its report.

“Materials were chosen with a heavy emphasis on constructability in a remote location that land vehicles cannot access during the wet season.”

It was not immediately clear how much the health clinic was expected to cost.

It did not appear in any of the NT government budget papers over the past few years.

NT Health was unable to comment.

The former Labor government invested heavily in upgrading remote health services in the NT, with projects at Jabiru, Gunbalanya, and Borroloola all funded.

The Ali Curung proposal coincides with the federal government opening three new Medicare Urgent Care Clinics (MUCCs), offering bulk-billed services and extended operating hours, in the Territory, including at Ali Curung.

The three new remote MUCCs (Lajamanu and Galiwin’ku also received one) are co-located with existing services and have been “adapted to operate in a remote context and better meet the health needs of First Nations communities by providing care for non-life threatening conditions, treatment awaiting aeromedical transfer, and chronic conditions,” according to federal Health Minister Mark Butler.

The five existing MUCCs at Alice Springs, Palmerston, Alyangula, Maningrida and Wurrumiyanga, had received 32,000 presentations since they became operational, Mr Butler added.

Ali Curung has had an unlucky run with infrastructure of late.

The $2.5m for sealing the Ali Curung airstrip promised by the previous Labor government was carried forward over multiple budgets, infuriating Barkly MLA (and now CLP minister) Steve Edgington, while the proposed Ali Curung Youth Centre, funded under the Barkly Regional Deal, has been stuck in no man’s land amid a cost blowout and contractual dispute.

Originally published as Ali Curung set to receive new health clinic alongside its Medicare Urgent Care Clinic