A mothers’ dream for girls to live free of trouble

Bettrina Pula Bundy wants to see her daughters, aged 8 and 5, grow up with a life centered around education and away from the temptations of alcohol and crime in the Alice.

Tilana and Monica smile from their great-grandmother’s home on the outskirts of Alice Springs. Picture: Liam Mendes

At home in the Hidden Valley, a town camp on the outskirts of Alice Springs, Bettrina Pula Bundy sits on a blanket in the shade, laughing and playing with her young daughters.

The 39-year-old Alyawarre woman is an artist who paints bush tucker and medicine plants in her own distinctive style. She has never held a formal job but is determined that her children, Monica, 8, and Tilana, 5, will finish school and make something of their lives.

Bettrina says school is good for her children because they are “playing and learning”. She thinks it will help keep them away from alcohol and she’s glad they’re ­enthusiastic about attending: “Yes, they want to go to school”.

Shy at first, the two girls slowly warm up to the presence of a stranger and begin to engage on their favourite school activities.

“Reading and writing”, Tilana volunteers, before hiding behind her mother. She says proudly that she goes to school “every day”.

Monica wants to be a swimmer.

Tilana, aged 5, Janine, aged 4 and Monica, aged 8 pictured at a home in a town camp on the outskirts of Alice Springs. Picture: Liam Mendes

Bettrina has been visiting relatives in Alice Springs since ­December, when she came for Christmas. She will take her daughters to Adelaide next week to see family before they return to their hometown of Utopia, three hours’ drive from Alice Springs. They’ll get to see their dad, Tony, a sculptor and bush mechanic.

Until then, the two kids aren’t going anywhere near town.  But tonight dozens of others will.

They’ll drift into the CBD to join others roaming the streets, some as young as five and six, many without parents or other adults present, drinking alcohol until the early hours.

It’s a scene that’s become a ­national scandal, with images of shocking violence prompting pleas for alcohol bans to be reintroduced to curb the violence and crime that has engulfed Alice Springs.

Town councillor Michael Liddle has never seen it this bad and he’s blunt about the cause of the problems plaguing the town.

“If we can’t get our kids to school, what sort of hope have we?” he says.

“That just comes from bad parenting straight up; no parenting or bad parenting.

“Education, knowing right from wrong, and the ability to understand good from bad takes place in the early years of life and that’s what these kids have missed out on.

“The problem is being good parents and it’s pretty hard to be a good parent if you’re constantly drunk. You forget things, you don’t have time to manage things, you’ve got no housing, you’ve got no bed.”

Bettrina Pula Bundy wants her daughters Monica, 8, and Tilana, 5, to continue attending school and have every opportunity available to them.

But Mr Liddle, a respected Alyawarre man and advocate for Indigenous mental health and education, says it’s not locals who are causing most of the problems.

“The people playing up here are Aboriginal people and these Aboriginal people have come from all around the central Australian region,” he said.

“Because of the lack of good service delivery that hasn’t taken place outside of Alice Springs over the last 30 or 40 years has made people travel to Alice Springs who say: ‘I don’t want to live remote now’

“Why should I live at a place (in the bush) when I can come down to Alice Springs and have a cold coke and hot Kentucky Fried Chicken for the price of $10?”

Mr Liddle, who is also chairman of the Central Australian Aboriginal Alcohol Programs Unit, acknowledges that the Indigenous community has to play the primary role in fixing the problems.

Indigenous Alice Springs town councillor Michael Liddle. Picture: Liam Mendes

“If it was Sudanese people, if it was Italian people or Chinese people, they’d have some form of leadership within their structures to sort their problem out but it’s not happening (in the) Aboriginal world.

“There’s not enough male mentorship amongst our family structures, I think.”

Mr Liddle has one answer to these issues that he knows won’t win him any friends.

“I do think that the only place where people are willing to learn is when they’re locked up,” he says.

“So if it means young kids who are in strife go into juvenile centres, they’ve got to be there for a long time, three months to half a year to start creating some form of change in their behaviour.”

Men who bash their wives should be locked up for even longer, he says.

“You need a long time to change habits, and we’ve got to break the habit,” Mr Liddle says.

“They keep saying that kids are no good in custody, but this is the only place that people are listening, and have care and have meals in custody, and sadly, that’s what the Northern Territory looks like.”