‘Living in fear’: Residents flee Alice Springs as violent crime spirals out of control
As this Aussie city descends into chaos and violence with seemingly no end in sight, one image sums up the depressing reality for residents.
EXCLUSIVE
Gripped by an out-of-control youth crime wave and a terrifying escalation in alcohol-fuelled violence, Alice Springs is facing an “exodus” of long-term residents — and the situation is so bad, even the town’s mayor says he “can’t blame them”.
Around 200 properties are currently listed for sale in the Central Australian outback town, which has a population of just 26,000.
Typically at any given time that number would be just under 100, according to locals.
“We’re seeing an exodus of people out of Alice Springs,” said Toni Rowan from Alice Springs Realty.
“The primary reason is young families are moving out because their children are getting to an age now where they want them in a safe environment. They’ve been moving for the last year. Now we’ve got the second lot, the grandparents are moving because they miss their children.”
A third group also selling are people who moved to Alice Springs for work and purchased a property due to the tight rental market making it cheaper to simply pay off a mortgage.
“They can’t stick it out,” said Ms Rowan.
“I settled one in April last year, it was back under contract in December. As soon as they got it under contract they had a break in.”
Ms Rowan, who has lived in the town on-and-off since the ‘90s, said the crime was the worst it had ever been and “almost everyone in Alice” was under “very high emotional stress”.
“The children are running amok, breaking into people’s houses, stirring things up, smashing windows,” she said.
“I live in fear. People … have threatened to burn my house down, kill my dogs, to rape me. They’re out of control. People come in from the community and yell and scream. You go out and say can you please be quiet and it escalates. ‘You’re a racist see-you-next-Tuesday.’ People are closing down businesses and leaving.”
Ms Rowan conservatively estimates she is getting “at least five appraisals a week for people leaving town due to anti-social behaviour”.
And she believes the newly announced alcohol restrictions are “not going to work”.
“I understand why the children are roaming the street, because they feel unsafe in their house,” she said.
“They need to be taken off the street. We need to build a facility or something with games and digital technology and have the elders there — I’m not saying lock them up, but if we don’t stop this now we’re going to be saying sorry in 20 years for not doing something.”
Ms Rowan said the difference between when she last left in 2010 and when she came back a few years ago was shocking — and social media likely plays a big role.
“I don’t know how this happened,” she said.
“They’re walking around like Bloods and Crips as if they’re in LA or something. That’s what they’re about. They’re definitely on TikTok, they love it. They’re not even scared breaking into places and putting it on social media.”
Darren Clark, who runs the popular Action for Alice Facebook page, says the crime has been “a real bad problem for about four years”.
The local baker turned community activist says kids have been stealing cars for a “long, long time”, but the issue garnered mainstream attention a few months ago when they began “stealing them en masse, taking them into the CBD and going f**king nuts”.
“The cops tell you to lock your keys away but my advice to people is the opposite — leave it on the bench,” he said.
“Because if they come into your home and can’t find them, they actually stand over kids’ beds and everything.”
The high-profile crime wave and ensuing media attention led to a special high-visibility police operation in the CBD.
“But then it all comes out here to the suburbs,” he said.
He warns that anger in the local community at the perceived lack of action from authorities is reaching boiling point.
“Everyone is just fuming,” he said.
“I’m trying to keep them calm. I’ve got a few boys here that are just ready to go. Mental illness is hitting, they’re on antidepressants. But I have to keep saying, guys, don’t f**king do anything because you’ll be made an absolute example. You’ll be straight out on the road, you’ll be put on a cross.”
He says he is “also talking blokes down now that are going to top themselves because they’ve had enough”.
“Business owners, blokes whose wives have taken the kids and left town because it’s too dangerous but they have to stay and pay the mortgage,” he said.
Mr Clark confirmed “a lot” of people were trying to sell up and leave.
“And [the houses] are sitting on the market now,” he said. “Before, you put a sign on the front lawn and bang, that house would be sold. But that’s not happening, and values are starting to drop.”
Alice Springs Mayor Matt Paterson, who has pleaded for the reintroduction of the Stronger Futures Act alcohol bans which lapsed in July last year, said he was seeing “more people leave” and “I can’t blame them”.
“Lots of people are just saying that the perception of fear is the reason they’re going — they’re sick of being broken into, can’t afford to continue replacing windows, can’t continue to have their businesses broken into,” he said.
“They’re packing up and going. It’s sad because they’re long-term residents, people who have given so much to Alice Springs. But how can I convince someone to stay when they’re scared to go to sleep at night because they’ve woken up with intruders in their home?”
Mr Paterson says the town had been “on a trajectory of a slow burn” for years.
“The lack of investment in remote communities over such a long period of time has just forced people to come into Alice Springs,” he said.
“Why would anyone want to live in a remote community when governments aren’t investing, they don’t have the general facilities or infrastructure we have here? There’s a lack of work, lack of economy, there’s no reason to stay out there so they come to Alice Springs.”
While crime had been bad over the past three or four years, the Mayor said the lapsing of Stronger Futures had caused “chaos”.
“Stronger Futures has to come back straight away,” he said. “I’m not buying into this race-based stuff. I’m not saying it has to be forever, but just to give us enough time to get systems in place.”
The longer the current situation continues, he added, “the reality is we’re going to continue to see more Aboriginal women in these town camps suffer assaults, more children suffer assaults, and more children being displaced from their homes because of alcohol”.
“We’re all too scared to have that grown-up conversation because someone [will mention] ‘Stolen Generation’, but at the end of the day, children are out on the streets in some instances because it is safer for them to be there than at home,” he said.
“That’s not OK in Australia in 2023.”
Writing in The Daily Telegraph this week, Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles of abandoning Alice Springs.
“The warnings were clear,” she wrote.
“The warnings were consistent. Yet for months and months, scenes reminiscent of a failed state have played out in an Australian country town.”
The Australian reported this week that presentations to Alice Springs Hospital had escalated, while NT Police have seen the rate of assaults spike by 40 per cent and domestic violence-related assaults by 50 per cent.
“Neither leader wanted to wear the taint of intervention — even when asked by their own side,” Ms Ley said.
“In July last year, some eight months ago, Labor’s Federal Member for the Northern Territory seat of Lingiari, Marion Scrymgour, likened the removal of grog bans to ‘pulling forces out of Afghanistan’.”
With seemingly no realistic solutions being proposed to address the rising violence, Mr Clark fears within a few years the town will be completely transformed.
He claims he has been told that the current Labor government’s ultimate goal is to migrate the outlying Aboriginal communities into Alice Springs itself.
“In five years time, this will be fly-in, fly-out,” he said.
“What’s going to happen here is not going to be fun.”
Already around the town, several new apartment blocks — protected by heavy fencing and barbed wire — have been built in recent years.
“Tradies and investors are already buying these places, getting one-bedroom units ready, because they know,” Mr Clark said.
“Some companies here are already fly-in, fly-out because their staff don’t want to live here, and they don’t want their staff to live here. But that’s what the whole town will end up like. You won’t have any cafes or anything like that.
“This town will be fly-in, fly-out service workers. They’ll just let all this go. You’ll need more and more social workers, they’ll come in, they’ll all vote Labor, Labor will keep power, and this town will just f**king go to rubble.”
He adds, “We’re about halfway there now.”
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