Remote Laundries project in Barunga improves health and boosts school attendance

Four years after a laundromat was installed in a shipping container, a remote community is reaping the health and education benefits. Watch the video.

A quirky laundromat in a remote community is celebrating its fourth anniversary after it proved invaluable to residents and tourists alike.

Barunga Laundry employee Finicole Coleman said she applied for a job at the laundromat to help her community combat scabies.

“If the laundry wasn’t here, scabies might come back again,” she said.

“I don’t want to go and work anywhere else.”

Since the laundromat opened in 2019, scabies cases presented at the Barunga health clinic have dropped 60 per cent.

Remote Laundries employee Finicole 'Fini' Coleman has worked on the project since its launch in 2019. She said she applied for the job to help the community fight scabies.

Ms Coleman said the Barunga laundry was important because many residents did not have access to a washing machine at home.

“Countrymen used to go to other community members to use their machines,” she said.

“They don’t have to do that now.”

The Barunga laundry is home to four industrial-sized washers and dryers inside a 20ft shipping container.

In four years, the laundry has spun 13,937 cycles.

Remote Laundries employee Frederick 'Freddie' Scrubby has worked on the project since its launch in 2019. He said he enjoys when the community visits the laundry for more than the washing service.

Employee Frederick Scrubby said he had seen many programs come and go through Barunga, but the laundromat would not go anywhere because the community needed it too much.

“It’s not only the community who love it but people from the outside,” he said.

“Tourists, education mob, from other communities, bring uniforms to wash – sports gear and that.”

Mr Scrubby said he enjoyed chatting with customers when they visited the laundry.

“Some come, sit down, have a yarn, ask how I run this business, and then I explain it,” he said.

“I don’t mind how long they sit and yarn with me.

“In the long run, they might want to join me and work here.”

Aboriginal Investment Group's Remote Laundries project began in 2019 with the Barunga laundry, based out of a 20ft shipping container.

The Remote Laundries project was born after the Bagala Aboriginal Corporation worked alongside the Aboriginal Investment Group to provide the small community with clean bedding and clothing to reduce scabies in the community.

There are now three more Remote Laundries in the NT – Angurugu, Casuarina, and Bickerton Island.

Aboriginal Investment Group CEO Elizabeth Morgan-Brett said the Remote Laundries project was conceptualised to tackle social and economic outcomes.

“(There were) increased numbers of children going to school because they weren’t being bullied because they were wearing dirty clothes,” he said.

The Barunga laundromat has also injected more than $167,000 of wages in to the community, with five staff now employed.