The remote eastern Kimberley town of Oombulgurri was slated for demolition by the Western Australian Government in November. But the demolition job may have started today. It has been reported by The Australian journalist Andrew Burrell that the demolition could be underway today, “heading off a belated effort by Amnesty International and some Indigenous people […]
September 2014
One Mile Community reminds me of South Africa’s town camps, where people were, and many still are, corralled in acute poverty. The apartheid-like, third-world-akin One Mile Community is only one mile from the town centre of Broome. The contrast between this shanty town and the predominance of tourist mecca Broome is disturbing. There is no […]
Last Thursday, the Kimberley Land Council (KLC) voted unanimously to protest the Western Australian Government’s proposed changes to the Aboriginal Heritage Act. First Peoples and land councils throughout the State have railed against the proposed changes which seek to blow away processes and which put at grievous risk sacred, cultural and historical sites. Miners and […]
The Kimberley is enjoyed by tourists and by most of its local population but for a significant number of the total population it is a place of extreme poverty and disadvantage. Nearly seven per cent of the Kimberley is homeless, an unbelievable situation in contemporary Australia, one of the world’s wealthiest nations. Thousands of the […]
The Western Australian Government has a bent for demolishing the communities and homes of First Peoples, and then sitting idly by, not too fussed about many of them who finish homeless. But is there an agenda behind some of this other than the obvious assimilation policies that Governments wrap themselves in knots over? In the […]
As the years go by and I involve myself in more and more issues of advocacy around matters related to racism, religious bigotry and other issues I find myself looking far more intently for the right areas of inspiration. Invariably these moments of search lead me back to the teachings of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a […]
31 years ago, an off-duty inebriated police officer, drunk not only with alcohol but with racism, killed 16-year-old Yindjibarndi John Pat. Tomorrow will be 31 years ago to the day when Western Australia’s remote town of Roebourne became known to Western Australia for what two decades earlier, Birmingham became for Alabama. On Sunday remembrances will […]
The pristine Kimberley’s tourist mecca Broome is a sorry tale of ‘two cities’ – one of rampant affluence against one of incongruous grinding poverty. And it is racialised – shanty towns filled with the Kimberley’s First Peoples. Tourists fly in from all over the world to Broome to enjoy the Cable Beach resorts and the surrounding […]
The Untold Story of Anti-Indianism in Drury and Clavin’s Book on Red Cloud Four Arrows Fielding Graduate University I don’t mean for this to be a book review of The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud. An American Legend. Rather, I intend it to be an indictment of the […]
On an open jeep safari in Kruger National Park in South Africa, we sighted a gaunt-looking lioness stalking a herd of impala from a stony outcrop. Lions only hunt in the daylight when they are extremely hungry. The lioness’ location was radioed through by our ranger to other safari jeeps in our vicinity, despite our […]
General News
- March 9, 2021
Australia’s governments must end health discrimination in its prisons. An incarcerated child must not be a second-class citizen. Nor any adult. We must ask, why are our governments dishing the vulnerable jailed, second-class healthcare? When evaluating the nation’s carceral system, we are […]
- February 2, 2021
When will the cries of the homeless be heard? Is there some sort of grotesque caste system in Western Australia? The anti-humanism is a brutal public spectacle. On the last day of January, the Western Australian Government actuated five days […]
- December 3, 2020
West Australia is the nation’s backwater. It is the mother of injustices, inequalities and the draconian. West Australia and the Northern Territory leave the have-nots that far behind, for many their lot appears irreparable. If there is a Mason-Dixon line […]
- September 22, 2020
There are many faces to homelessness. A 51-year-old woman walked into my Perth office. She has lived thirteen consecutive years street-homeless. Not long ago, she spent eighteen months sleeping her nights in the same park. She is weary, harrowed by […]
- September 3, 2020
Often beleaguered by international aid work I have lifelong been involved in; the increasing unmet needs, the mongrel injustices, I have argued the horrendous lie of our generation is that poverty is being reduced around the world. There are countries […]
- March 10, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – In 2014, I disaggregated to the Kimberley’s First Nations peoples, the nation’s highest suicide rate, one of the world’s highest, at over 70 suicides per 100,000 population (First Nations), thereabouts seven times the national rate. Fortunately, although […]
- February 18, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – More than 51 months ago I wrote an article on the imperatives of forgiveness and redemption. This remains true. We journey together in one form or another, we can either salt the earth or jag the road, […]
- January 29, 2020
By Gerry Georgatos – Trae lost his eleven-year-old brother to suicide. Nine months later he lost his mother to suicide. Trae was the last to see his brother. Half an hour later he went looking for his little brother. In the […]
- January 21, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – Children as young as 9 years have been lost to suicide, three in fact in recent years. Australians should ask, why? Proportionally, more children aged 14 years and less have been lost so far this century compared […]
- December 10, 2019
Gerry Georgatos – A mother suicides, a father suicides, their child was a suicide. Not once has this occurred but untold times. Over the years I have warned of mothers and fathers that would be near certain lost to suicide […]
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