Thread by @wing_kuang

THREAD: I was asked by a local - who knows I’m a journalist - if I would write something about Alice Springs. I said I would, but I didn’t know when. However, given that I’m exactly in the town when the new curfew is implemented, here’s what I saw on the ground. 1/n

I arrived last Friday afternoon. I didn’t know it was the Alice Springs Royal Show, and probs most locals were there - but it’s 3:45pm, and the Main Street of CBD had zero people. I had never seen a town like this in Australia - especially one that had great tourism resources.

And as I was navigating the CBD looking down on the phone, I encountered a teenager. He first said “hello” to me. I greeted back, and then he asked, “where the Fxxk are you around?”

As a solo Asian female traveller, this is not my first time being sworn on the street..2/n

…and in fact, in Melbourne, I was even told “fxxk back to China” locals. So I just walked away. Yet later then I realised I indeed looked very confused when I looked up on Google Map, and maybe that kid just wanted to help, despite the language.

I later spotted him again…3/

And, not just him, but a few teenagers wandering on the street, when the only shops opened at that time were mostly pubs.

There’re no where for these teenagers to go and do in the CBD, even if it’s a Friday afternoon during school holidays. All they could do was walking around.

And that’s my finding in the next few days when I was in the town: not just teenagers, but also kids, they had no where to go or play. I walked past a youth zone a few times in afternoons, it didn’t open at all.

And over the weekend, there’s news about violence and now, curfew.

Now, tourism. I joined a full bus tour to Uluṟu, yet that was probs one of the two buses I saw that day. At West MacDonnells ranges, also surprisingly, fewer tourists than I expected, in the most popular month and season for NT tourism...

Tour guides complained about the “bad press” and how that had led to a dramatic drop of overseas and domestic tourists since this year, while recognising maybe the cost of living could play some roles here.

And yeah, things in the outback can be more pricy than in Sydney.

I talked to a local - the one who encouraged me to write something - about her thoughts on the curfews. She said, the press didn’t exaggerate things, but it also wasn’t as serious as it was reported, because situations were actually improving in the past decade.

What would really work, she said (as a non-Indigenous person), was to work with the elders during school holidays - the elders know the children well, and understand way much better on how to support them, like running youth camps. But there’s always something missing, ie funding

I also have lots of observations, from how many young migrants (under 40) were one of the key labour forces, to some too-hard-basket topics. Will write about them in future.

I hope this little thread of my travel could give you some other perspectives.

And here’s my favourite photo: me vs a tree that’s over 300 years old.

It tells so much about us as humans, nature, life, and time.

Thanks for reading!!