Mutitjulu community near Uluru rises out of the shadows after intervention

IT was the intervention’s Ground Zero. The tiny community placed in the national spotlight as a hotbed of abuse and despair. Eight years on, there is hope in Mutitjulu.

Mutitjulu

TOURISTS in their thousands flock to watch the sun set against Australia’s most iconic landmark. But from the other side of Uluru, there is an altogether different view.

The residents of the small indigenous community of Mutitjulu have seen the rock cast into a deep silhouette for centuries. It is the kind of spectacle that fed their souls long before the rock became a blur to glazed eyes and weary heads.

Such was the spiral of booze and drugs here less than a decade ago, the Federal Government launched its hugely divisive intervention into indigenous communities.

But eight years on — and on the 30th anniversary of the handback to traditional owners — the people of Mutitjulu have cleaned up their act.

On hot nights, the local kids race to the top of the dusty red dunes that overlook the east side of the rock. It’s an unfamiliar frame through any lens, one rarely seen by outsiders.

Here, the guardians of Uluru kick the footy and backflip in the sand.

From the top of the bank they can see the sacred sites etched deep into the side of the coarse-grained sandstone that rises more than 800m in front of them.

Their skin glows in the late light.

“This is the what we wake to every day,” one community member said. ‘’It’s the side of Uluru nobody else sees.’’

GALLERY: INSIDE MUTITJULU

Mutitjulu remains a private and, ultimately, very shy community. Its people are proud but fiercely protective. Officially, it is closed to visitors. Signs warn tourists away.

Only this year were the gates opened for the Dalai Lama, who visited while on tour. Otherwise the settlement has remained out of the spotlight. Most residents hope it stays that way. But community leaders still grapple with the balance of ensuring health and education provisions are in place, while retaining the cultural boundaries and ultimately their privacy as indigenous Australians.

English is their second language. Most adults can speak four others.

Some elders boast as many as eight dialects from the central desert. But the significance of the rock remains a constant theme.

Like the salt bush trees, which root deep into each crevasse in search of nutrients, Uluru has sustained the people of the Pitjantjatjara nation.

By the late ’90s, though, the rock and the rich culture and tradition around it was forced into a cruel competition.

Cheap wine packed into car boots and driven into town became a new misguided sustenance. The spiral was quick and thorough.

Former prime minister John Howard famously declared the situation a “national emergency’’.

He said it would require a response no less than what might be expected following a natural disaster.

But no wild winds or shifting sand could have possibly left a trail of destruction quite like a kid with a can in his hand.

In 2005, teenagers were spotted sniffing petrol under their T-shirts and dragging their feet across the same spot the Governor-General handed the community back to indigenous leaders 20 years earlier.

There were accounts of domestic abuse; reports girls were prostituting themselves; cases of STD in children as young as four. Some residents fled to the sand dunes to sleep and avoid trouble.

Joseph Coulthard takes a mark behind Uluru. Picture: JASON EDWARDS

Kids of the Mutitjulu community play footy. Picture: JASON EDWARDS

SUCH was the madness beneath one of the world’s most famous landmarks.

Mutitjulu still bears scars of its broken past.

There are holes in walls, graffiti and flimsy housing. Locals are wary.

But there are also signs of a remarkable turnaround.

Last week, the sounds of a drum kit reverberated from the school hall. Teenagers spun their wheels on bikes. Others painted in the sun.

There is a school, a shop and a health clinic.

But there remains an overwhelmingly closed attitude from a community still battling with the burden of stigma. Few are prepared to speak openly. No official would go on the record.

“We don’t want to be known as the community that prompted the intervention,” one said. “We have recovered and we are much more than that now.’’ And like the plans to shift scores of crumpled vehicles that line the southern boundary, there are still things to be done.

A few years back, in an extraordinary bid to escape the heat, local children cut their way through a security fence and dived into the pools of filthy water at a nearby sewage farm. A council member said there was nowhere else for the children to swim even though, by then, Mutitjulu’s problems were on the national agenda.

The pool was eventually built with royalty money saved by the community from Uluru park entrance fees and was a source of enormous pride. It was also used it as an incentive to get children into the classroom. “No School — No Pool’’ was the motto, and it worked.

In all, the government intervention targeted 73 indigenous communities across the Northern Territory.

The plan was to be implemented for five years but with bipartisan support, in 2011, then PM Julia Gillard extended it for another two. It included the quarantining of welfare payments so money was spent on food rather than alcohol or gambling.

Now, there is a consensus communities are back on track.

Luke Sylvester, a former staffer from the Mutitjulu Community Aboriginal Corporation, said the town and its people were in much better shape.

“Before the intervention the petrol sniffing had become so bad people were living inside wire coops and rolls cages,” Mr Sylvester said. “It was like the Mars landing.’’

He said the problems were now in management, particularly when it came to the distribution of royalties from park entrance fees and profits from nearby tourist resorts.

Aboriginal communities are guaranteed the money under terms of the handback agreement, but critics have warned the cash isn’t handed out properly.

“All the royalties go out to the wrong people or the wrong communities and the government departments say it’s not their problem,’’ Mr Sylvester said.

But the Central Land Council hit back claiming the money was carefully managed and was helping communities more than ever before.

Strengthening and protecting the corporation, he said, would be key to the settlement’s future: “There are no petrol problems, domestic violence has dropped, there are fewer cases of skin-related disease. The community is in a better place. But ultimately they just want to be left alone. Now they should be.’’

Kids of the Mutitjulu community. Picture: JASON EDWARDS

The indigenous community behind Uluru is still shaking the stigma. Picture: JASON EDWARDS

BUT politician Alison Anderson said it was an unlikely scenario when there was so much money to be made.

Ms Anderson is a unique politician. She has been the indigenous affairs minister for both the previous Labor Government and the ruling Country Liberal Party one.

Last year she quit the CLP to join the Palmer United Party, before ditching it to sit as an independent.

She said the Territory Government she used to be a part of was run by “a bunch of rednecks’’ who were using indigenous issues to attract federal funding, only for it to be used recklessly.

Ms Anderson, the former commissioner for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, said it was time for governments to pay closer attention to where money was going and how it was being used.

“I was born and bred out bush,’’ Ms Anderson said.

“I look at the children of Mutitjulu and other camps and it saddens me because nobody is listening.

“Even after everything that has happened in recent years, nobody understands what they need.

“If the interventions and the bureaucracy continue it won’t close the gap between white and black. It will get wider.’’

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