15 Mile History

Phillip Goodman: Back to the early 80s the first camp was here at Mitchell Creek and this land now that we’re on was Crown land. So what ADF did is sort of bought the land out for the mob was living down at Mitchell Creek so they could move up here. So when they bought the block it was only about 3 houses first up. There was about 6 or 7 family’s back then, from Maningrida mostly.

Out of them 6 families that were staying here from the beginning I was married to one of them family. I’m from Humpty Doo but early 85 I moved in here and it was just like 3 houses here back then. House 4, 5 and 6. I’d get a job out of 15 Mile, go to bush work, back again. Gradually it was increasing, but the same infrastructure of housing like not a proper built in toilet. Even through the wet season we gotta walk to it.

Still the same. 4 ablution blocks between 16 houses now. But back then in the 80’s it was only 2 ablution block for 3 houses and then somewhere the years just rolled by. Bernie got more funding from ATSIC or back what they called it then ABTA, and got some more houses, house number 7 & 8 and 1,2 and 3. That was that bottom camp and now some where early 90s he start on the top camp then, 9, 10,11.12 and 13,14,15,16. But all still the same, same ablution block built in the top camps. Nothing changed.

All that first people, that Maningrida mob that moved in from that creek, some of them moved away, moved back to the outstations, some of them died you know poor bugger, from waiting for changes that ADF promised them. ‘In the future we’re gonna buy you this block and buy you houses, better accommodation. That was in the 80s and he’s kept saying to them ‘we’re gonna build more good houses, brick houses’ you know, with toilet built in to stop you going in the wet season to the ablution block. But that promise - we still here, we still waiting. And now in the millennium year of 2000, now that ATSIC put pressure on Bernie, now he started to renovate them early 90s house’s, that one that got built in the 90s -13,14,15 and 16. And they gonna put 2 extra new houses with toilet built in it.

Like what we sitting on now, these houses is gonna be all wait till he gets more funding, that’s another promise. He reckons next year. Well look, the promises came from 85, 18 years eh. 18 years, now we got renovated house. I mean, that promises, you have to wait for another 18 years for that promise again?

He said he’s gonna find a way to get funding to knock down these other houses here - 9,10,11,12 and build a better house you know, with toilet built in them. So we don’t have to go to ablution block in wet season every time.

It’s very hard for the old people. We’ve got asthmatic, heart problems, and people on dialysis. You see that wire mesh all round the houses, water going in when rain time and the wind, it’s really bad for the old people.

We got my Mother living in the house 8 - her septic problem is bad. The waste where you wash up plates and left over water, it’s not sinking down to the ground, it’s rising up. 44 gallon drum at the back that’s all. I got an older sister staying with my mum. My mum’s a heart patient, I was the one took her down to Adelaide to get a bypass and she’s on medication and my sister is on dialysis. They living there 3 years now, but the house been there a long time. We’ve spoken to health department but I don’t know what they’re gonna do. We’re waiting for health mob too, you know Danila Dilba mob.

We’ve spoken to Bernie about this problem before ATSIC haven’t cut his funding. Before everybody found out there was something wrong with him. We’d say ‘can you do something about that septic problem", but he say ‘we’re gonna do, we’re gonna do it’. That’s like 3,4 years ago. Nothing.

Now ATSIC caught up with him, and cut his funding, he’s turned the table around and he’s

Saying ‘oh, it’s ATSIC fault’. But ATSIC always given him money and where’s the money gone? He should have fixed that problem.

In 1994, I got a job as a parks and wildlife ranger at Fogg Dam. I was working there for 3 and a half years. But before I went to that job, I was a representative of this community.

I was an ADF Committee member. We used to talk about funding and he used to speak to us like ‘we gonna find funding and we gonna upgrade the houses, put louvres in them for better ventilation for old ladies and maybe we might build toilets in them’. This is coming out of his mouth in the early 90s you know and it goes far back to the 80s saying things like that. And we’d say yeah, good idea, we’ll wait.

We waited, we waited, and things got worse and nothing ever happened.

Everything he [Bernie] says goes. What he say is ‘um, it’s a bit difficult. Why don’t I take it back and I’ll fix it’? We say ‘Bernie, what do you reckon if we use your tractor?’ He say ‘Oh, there’s problem. If it broke down, have you got money to fix it?’ I say yes, we have. He say ‘Oh, well wait on, I’ll go back and fix it with CDEP’. And then he go argue with our organisation CDEP.

Bernie says to them ‘You got a lot of money, why you come asking me?’

It’s a political thing you know, back then I don’t know.

He hasn’t shown any impact towards our needs. What we need he’s always turning a blind eye. He’s always giving us a promise or ‘I’ll give you a better promise’.

Or he says, ‘oh yeah, good idea but I got a better idea’, and he sweeten us up, here’s a food voucher, here’s chicken, here’s a blanket. Oh he’s good you know, Bernie good. But I didn’t think back then like now. I was a bit young.

I was with land council myself, ATSIC council and we helped him out a bit, me and this other guy from Western Australia. I couldn’t work him out really. He was using me. He said ‘hey Phillip, now you’re sitting up there. Now you can help me, get your organisation to give me money - we can work together". We spoke and we argued for ADF. He used me for inside info in ATSIC.

I worked it out and I said, ‘that’s it - I don’t want anymore politics, I’m going straight and I’m getting the hell out of here, I’m going to get this parks and wildlife job.

And 3 years, I wanted to stay there another 10 more years but I reckon, no, this is not for me. I know parks and wildlife is good money, it gives you a lot of good opportunity trains you. But I had to look back to my community, why did I leave this community? I had to come back. And when I came back - same thing. After 3 years it had never bloody changed.

He took out all them outside taps in the 80s. We plug a hose from inside tap, through the gaps, put sprinkler outside. We use our sink tap to make our lawn green and water our garden and our trees. His reason was blackfellas use up too much tap. Little kids leave tap water on and drunkard people drink out of it and they have showers and waste water, and no one can pay that water bill. We know we pay $20 rent and $20 water through CDEP. Pension people pay through centrepay - one time one old lady had $1000 in credit for power.

He doesn’t give us any receipt. I had to come back from parks and wildlife. I seen and I always hear what Bernie do.

They used to come round Monday and Friday for rubbish, but they didn’t come round on time any more. That street lights been buggered for a long, long time. We have to use flashlight to get around. He cut the power in the toilet blocks, I don’t know why. Even that hall’ it’s got no light. At night, those kids wanna go play there, put tape and all that, but no power.

He don’t want us all to see the power bills. We give up now. I don’t know. Maybe he sick and tired of hiding that extra money in his pocket.

Well what does he do for us mob? The only thing he does is come here with a lot of government people and complain towards ATSIC lately. He comes in here with opposition mob, CLP. That Burke mob. And he brings in bags of cooked chicken and food vouchers. What do you call that? And we have to sign it. We know he’s got excess of vouchers. Sometimes he just brings it, when there’s somebody important knocking at his door. Like ATSIC, he comes out and do good things for us.

Q In an ideal world, how would you like to see your community run?

Well that’s a really easy question. I like it to run the better way; I don’t want a person like Bernie to run it. He’s a bloody crook. The whole world has got corrupt people like him.

We don’t have to put up with him any more. I knew him when I was a little boy. My father knew him, but inside, I don’t know what he’s like. He must have been using the old people back in the early days too. We don’t know. Far as I concerned, I reckon he should leave, step down. He should move on in his life and hand this organisation (ADF) back for Aboriginal people to run it, the way we want it. Someone should appoint an Aboriginal governing system to run this place - to run this organisation ADF.

Oh, I’ll tell you about training, we ask him, we ask him, this was going on long time now, been nothing since the 80’s n 9o’s. He says ‘oh yeah, that’s a good idea but we’ll see what happens.’ Promises that he’s made it hasn’t changed this conditions of living. We just living on promises that he made.

We had to cut all the long grass with the push mower.

Our job, in CDEP is to look after our houses, gardens around our houses. Things like that.

Not the whole block - the rest of the block is ADF concern. They’re supposed to slash all the big grasses. We had to do it. Because ATSIC cut he’s funding - and I reckon that’s right. ATSIC cut his funding because he’s misleading that organisation in a different way. He’s doing the wrong thing.

That cheque hey, you savvy that blank cheque? He’s got Aboriginal committee members from each community as signatories. When they have the meeting he gets the person that is the signatory to sign the ADF cheque but he doesn’t tell them how much. He writes out blank cheques. There’s no figure on the cheques. That’s wrong. You don’t do that. You got to have a meeting for it, what is it for and how much it’s going to cost. The committee gotta agree and then get the quotes and write the figure down. But nothing like that

David Timber: It’s got to the stage where you just don’t believe Bernie any more. You just give up on him. You don’t believe any word he says. It’s been like that for 30 years. People have given up on him. He say one thing but whether he means it or not is another thing. He’s just that type of person. Very self centred, he looks after himself, whatever he says goes. He doesn’t worry about what anyone else says, even the committee.

Michael Robinson 15 mile resident 12 May 2003

Q: What happened when you mob first came here?

Me and my wife put the power on and I seen Bernie, I was asking him about this broken power box, cos we get shock every time. He told me after Easter. He supposed to come and fix that thing. At the moment we not sleeping there, we whole lot sleeping outside.

But I don’t think he even contact them. We switch the power off because we get electric shock when it’s on.

My wife pay $100 for power every fortnight. I pay $30 for rent. That’s since last year. I need all them things to be fixed up. All them iron been ripped off, door broken inside, back window and I got wire round the back there that’s broken. But that switch mainly. It’s off now. You put it on; kids might get electric shock. You plug that cord in, like fridge and you get shock.

Dennis Burke was here. I told Dennis Burke himself to walk in and check that thing out. He said to Bernie ‘you better do something about that or kids will get a shock and then you’ll have biggest trouble yourself’. He said he’d do it after Easter. But waiting, nothing yet. When he come up here he was gonna kick me out of this place you see, like I wasn’t allowed to stay here. I told Dennis Burke that he trying to kick me out of here. And when we went inside to show Dennis Burke the inside, Bernie said ‘Oh, we’re gonna knock this thing down and build you a good house, 3 bedroom for your mother inlaw’.

I don’t know when?

Phillip Goodman: There’s another promise. 15 mile promises.

David Timber: Bernie, he thinks for the future. He knows that the town planning for this area has already been planned for by the government. This Palmerston development here, someone was calling to move this town camp, that was about a year ago now. And maybe keeping 15 Mile this way, it’s easy to move Aboriginal people out cause it’s just like a dump to them. Like they’re deliberately doing this as an excuse to kick us out of here in the first place.

Like at One Mile Dam, we’re being neglected and now 15 mile looks the same. They’re all identical problems like they have at One Mile Dam, and Knuckeys. Lagoon. With developments going on all around the place, these are just some of the things that we’re worried about. Government want us out because of development people and move us further down or out of Darwin. They don’t want an Aboriginal Town Camp nearby to their development plan. It decreases property values. It’s an attitude of a lot of people, I feel that a lot of it is the responsibility of the government. The government doesn’t want any blackfellas around town, or wherever there’s going to be developed and they’re reinforcing that attitude on everyone by how they act toward Aboriginal people.

Phillip Goodman: Bernie needs to step down. Someone high above in the government needs to see this through. Bernie needs to have a proper audit and thoroughly see through his account. We need to do something about this Bernie to move forward. At the moment we’ve got no chance of doing anything, having our way. It’s always his way. I hope someone out there has a good idea of how to get around this bloke because I’ve run out of ideas. If someone out to support us, we could spread our voice together. Maybe we can do something about it.

Source