00:00On the New South Wales banks of the Murray, 25 minutes from Echucomoamma, lies Kamaragunja.
00:11This former Aboriginal mission is in an idyllic location, but beneath the surface lies a story
00:18of neglect.
00:24When I moved in, you know, and that's how it was.
00:26No guttering.
00:27Down the track, play a little bit.
00:28And we'll fix the place up.
00:30So nothing's done.
00:32So I didn't buy the plane, I'm not even paying electricity to keep the lights on.
00:35Coke Walker lives in a termite-infested home on the land of his ancestors.
00:40The study come going, it's just a joke.
00:42Since I've lived there, it seems to have gone worse.
00:45Like the housing, a lot of people can't get out their doors, the front doors.
00:51There are 24 houses for about 100 residents, but six of them are uninhabitable.
00:57Only five households pay rent.
01:00Others are simply too frustrated to continue paying.
01:03The village is just diabolical.
01:06It's up to the people themselves to basically look after their houses.
01:11The historic village is run by volunteers on the Kamaragunja Aboriginal Local Land Council.
01:18It earns about half a million dollars a year from grants, farming and rent.
01:23But repairs, insurance and administration costs eat it all up.
01:2690-year-old Yorta Yorta elder, Uncle Colin Walker, says he feels let down by laws which
01:38were designed to improve conditions.
01:40And I call it the land wrong out, because everything's gone wrong.
01:48This one here, Pastor Doug Nicholls.
01:51He travelled around Australia to different settlements and gave food, clothing, blankets.
02:00Aunty Nora Elsley's grandmother and mother grew up in Kamaragunja.
02:03She fears generations of sacred knowledge is being lost.
02:08Why not bring the school back to life and with a teacher in there to teach our children?
02:15Or our own, the language.
02:19Despite years of complaints and calls for better housing, residents and the local land council
02:24say they've been handballed between local, state and federal agencies, falling into what
02:30feels like a bureaucratic black hole.
02:32Both the New South Wales and federal governments refused to answer the ABC's questions about
02:38Kamaragunja's management.
02:39Federal and the New South Wales government have a responsibility to ensure that Kamaragunja
02:47is kept, is funded appropriately.
02:51When it rains heavy, we get a lot of flood here.
02:55I've asked to put a new gut in.
02:58Nothing's been done.
02:59But with a long history of resilience and self-determination, residents are refusing to
03:04give up.
03:05We will still fight for Kamaragunja because this is where we come from.
03:11This is our home.
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