Dwayne is a teenager from remote northwest Australia. If you find his community where it rests just outside the regional town of Kununurra and take a right at the giant crocodile that greets you with its fixed expression at the entry to the town from the...
It was Jack Trust’s funeral. Several hundred people were filling the community hall in the east Kimberley community of Wuggubun. Many had known the Indigenous leader personally, while others had driven out bush to show solidarity and support for the Trust family, which included Ian...
Watching kids of the East Kimberley go about their life in the community, one gets a rather uncomfortable front-row seat to the wide disparity that exists between aspiration and opportunity. One might add another element into the pool, that ethereal creature: potential. It’s there if...
It wasn’t long ago that Prime Minister Turnbull, like other Coalition leaders before him, expressed a commitment to working with Indigenous people, not doing things to them. The design and implementation of the current Community Development Program reveals his complete failure in delivering on that...
Ten years ago Lizzy Rutten was working as a surgery theatre technician in her home city of Canberra. Life changed for the thirty four year old musician when she first came to the Kimberley for a visit in 2009. She would return a further three...
After graduating from high school, Kununurra resident Natasha Short enlisted in the Australian Army Reserves. It was a decision that would ultimately shape the next twenty years of her life, during which time the young mother of two would become a highly sought-after community worker....
It was a weekday night when Giancarlo Mazzella arrived at home to find a young Gija girl sitting on his doorstep. He wasn’t to know that she had already been waiting for two hours for him. Mazzella would be asked to accompany the young girl...
At first glance, it was an outdoor film night set in the yard of the local AboriginalCorporation’s premises. Older folk were gathered in the back of the space on rows of chairs, while younger children sat cross-legged on sheets placed on the ground. The kids...