NIGHTMARE OF GROG, DESPERATION
08.07.1995
ABORIGINAL health is the worst of any indigenous population in the Western world. Chief reporter TONY KOCH visited some of Queensland's Aboriginal communities to see the problem first hand.
WE had been in Kowanyama four hours. Visually,itis a paradise.
From the airport to the township, the river banks are lined with monolithic ghost gums and the most magnificent palm trees imaginable.
Yet,in that four hours there have been eight fights involving drunken Aborigines.
One involved a drunk man who was hit with a tree branch by a woman he was attacking.
To the cheers and yells of some 100 drunken onlookers _ several of them fighting each other _ the man took the branch from the woman, punched her to the ground and then dragged her away by her hair.
Nobody tried to intervene _ they just kept drinking, screaming out or fighting. It was 5.30pm.
For those with political aspirations, this is no-man's-land.
With the state election campaign now in its third week, none of the stage-managed media tours has come within cooee of Queensland's black shame.
You won't find a Wayne Goss, Joan Sheldon or Rob Borbidge up here. This is Fourth World territory, where the health problems have been described as worse than those in Rwanda and South Africa.
Here Aborigines exist without the basics _ food, shelter, water sanitation and medication _ which other Australians expect as their birthright.
Alcohol and drug abuse, sexual diseases, violence, child abuse and
low life expectancy are the symptoms of this misery.
As I write, rifle and shotgun shots can be heard. Every half hour or so, another two or three shots punctuate the night air.
Family allowance payments have been made today, so there's money in the camp.
By 5pm a conservative count would have turned up at least 150 Aborigines so comatose with liquor they could not speak their names or get off the ground.
The canteen this year will take more than $2 mil
lion from beer sales _ a statistic common to the northern
communities. Earlier in the day we'd been further north, at the Lockhart River community.
The welfare payments _ family allowances _ had been distributed there also, but that canteen did not open until 5.30pm. A bloodbath was promised, so there was no sense in staying longer.
The slaughterhouse that is called a wet canteen at Lockhart is pathetic. A concrete and stone floor, with everything reeking of urine.
But to arrive at idyllic Kowanyama and see how alcohol
is continuing to degrade and destroy a beautiful race of people is a mind-numbing experience.
This scene of destruction is everyday fare for Aborigines on remote communities where they are given welfare money that they just squander on drunken escapades.
Beer costs at least $60 a carton on all the cape communities, but the price _ almost triple that in Brisbane _ is no impediment.
We are seeing a race of people who are killing themselves, just as surely as they would were they drinking poison.
Forthright Aboriginal health expert Associate Professor Grace Smallwood, when interviewed recently about health problems among Australian Aborigines, gave this advice:
""Go to a community, any community, and then close your eyes. Tell yourself this is a white community and then open your eyes. White society would not put up with such conditions pertaining to their own people.''
I did that _ yesterday at Kowanyama, Thursday at Lockhart, last week at Cherbourg.
I was taken back 30 years, standing on the steps of the courthouse at Mitchell in western Queensland where I worked as a junior clerk, and talking to a terrific police
sergeant, Bill Johnson.
It was late on a Friday and across the road came an Aboriginal woman with five or six of her young children, naked or nearly so, in tow.
It was Mrs Pearl Lawton and she was crying and totally
distressed because the local Booringa Shire Council had put the bulldozer through her home at the ""Yumba'' _ the Aboriginal camp over the river from Mitchell township.
She was pleading with Sgt Johnson for somewhere for her children to sleep, something for them to eat.
She was berating the council and in the end turned her an ger to "Your white God that you expect me to pray to _ what's he going to do for my kids tonight or ever?''
S gt Johnson did help Mrs Lawton and her children fi nd
accommodation. In an absolute fury he then rang the Sunday Truth in Brisbane and gave them the story so they could do a proper job on the heartless council _ which they did.
That mental picture of Mrs Lawton's abject poverty and despair has stayed with me.
There would be something radically wrong with anybody who could look at any of these bubbly, cheeky black kids on these communities and not have their heart go out to them.
They are innocence personified, but kids who have seen and
experienced shocking family situations brought about by pathetic drunkenness.
And what chance of a reasonable life or future do these kids have?
Their infant years are just endless days of neglect, abuse and hopelessness.
They live with acute stress beyond the imagination of the rest of the Australian community.
If ever lives were predestined, it is those of these little black angels who are 1000 times more likely to see the inside of a jail than a university _ if they live to enjoy their teenage years.
The scorn of society's do-gooders will now be attracted to those who would dare to suggest that something should be done about the alcoholism among Aborigines before they wipe themselves out, literally.
And what has any politician really done about it? Queensland
Hansard doesn't attest to any memorable contributions.
Last week we were told not to come to the communities if we were "going to do a Graham Richardson _ cry for the cameras, promise everything and deliver
just one tap''.
If any evidence is needed about Aboriginal health, just ask the nurses who work on the communities how much of the trauma, disease, neglect and abuse is directly attributable to alcoholism.
But we as a community allow our elected representatives to ignore this alcohol-induced genocide.
In the 20th century, Aboriginal Australians still live in squalor which includes poor water, broken and filthy sewerage systems, roads crowded with mangy, diseased dogs.
These are communities which don't have doctors, where food costs three times the price it brings in the cities, where syphilis affects seven out of 10 residents.
How heart-warming it is to see the official (token) response . . . ice-cream containers tacked onto walls of community buildings offering free condoms.
At the drop of a hat, Australian authorities can _ very properly mobilise the army, load aircraft with medical supplies and medical experts, and join the international effort at a disaster like Rwanda.
But we can't rid northern Australian Aboriginal communities of syphilis.
The Federal Government budgeted $110 million for Aboriginal health this year.
That's about the same as the annual subsidy that the State
Government provides so that Brisbane rail commuters can use thesuburban electric service.
It might be comforting to know that if we can just ignore
""the Aboriginal problem'' for another decade or so, it won't exist.
Monday: the mothers' plight.
But sometime, take a little time out, close your eyes, and give Pearl Lawton a thought.
We allow politicians to ignore this alcohol-induced genocide
A GRANDFATHER at age 33 . . . David Kitchener with grand-daughter Sainta, 1, at Kowanyama.
WHELAN Charlie, left, and mate Easha Gregory at Kowanyama . . . These kids "are innocence personified, but kids who have seen and experienced shocking family situations brought about by pathetic drunkenness.'
ANOTHER day in Kowanyama Aboriginal Community on Cape York . . . "To arrive at idyllic Kowanyama and see how alcohol is continuing to degrade and destroy a beautiful race of people is a mind-numbing experience.'
