Indigenous residents dismayed Jabiru town camp to be demolished to make way for Kakadu tourism road

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Indigenous residents on the edge of Jabiru in the Northern Territory say they are devastated to learn their homes have been slated for demolition. Traditional owners of the uranium mining town, who are from another language group, have detailed plans to transform the area into a tourist hub.

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00:00Jabiru town camp leader Kevin Buluwana was dismayed when contractors demolished the house

00:08next to his in July. It had been empty because the roof leaked, but in the middle of a national

00:14housing shortage, he thought it should have been fixed.

00:17Well I was shocked because I didn't know what to do.

00:21Then two more houses were knocked down by Jabiru's Mirror traditional owner body.

00:26There were some structures that hadn't been used in years that were well beyond economic

00:29repair and actually dangerous.

00:31The Kunwinku language group town campers came here from Ornumland for work in the 1980s

00:37when Jabiru was built for staff of the Ranger uranium mine. After the mine closed three

00:43years ago, the federal government gave Jabiru back to the Mirror. The Kunwinku now fear

00:48the other town camp houses will be removed.

00:51We've got a big family that's buried in this ground. We've been living here for so long.

00:56Community leaders here are particularly worried because they say they haven't been able to

01:00get any firm information about what's planned for the future of this town camp.

01:05They're just slowly, slowly now getting rid of us.

01:09The Mirror say they're not trying to force the town campers out of Jabiru, but they've

01:14now told the ABC the town camp is to be demolished. That's so the access road from Darwin to Kakadu

01:21National Park can be diverted from its current route which bypasses Jabiru to one funnelling

01:27tourists into the town to visit new attractions.

01:32So the longer term plan is actually not to have residents there.

01:37The Mirror say they won't remove more houses yet.

01:40There can't be anything knocked down unless there was an alternative provided for the

01:44people who live there.

01:45But it may not be in Jabiru, even though the miners are vacating over a hundred houses.

01:51All the houses are fully allocated. There's a wait list for housing in Jabiru.

01:55They're saying that you can move and go, but they're not saying that you can move but stay

02:01around here somewhere.

02:03The town campers are still hoping to stay in Jabiru long term.

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