An Alice Springs Prison from the air. NT Correctional services would like to apologise for not providing a Night-time shot due to budgetary constraints.
With only ten days till Christmas, and all the excitement of an upcoming federal election it is an irony that our scribe from the near north is undergoing treatment in an Alice Springs Hospital.
His diagnosis; ” Water works” seems odd for the dry interior. But then it’s been a la Nina year and with more water about than usual one should expect the unexpected. Like imagination in public policy? We must contain our expectations and be reasonable. Nothing like that will ever happen in Australian politics. So for inspiration, read on about the human condition. Something about ‘retention’. He writes;
Hiya friends,
Uighur prisons are also brilliantly lit at night, though arguably not as attractively designed as NT prisons.
So once again I find myself in Alice Springs Hospital. Retention is no Sunday Picnic. But then again there are many worse off than I. For instance, Nampijinpa from Nyirrpi down the corridor who discovered Jungarrayi and keeps calling in on me requesting/demanding janyungu (tobacco). It is beyond Nampijinpa’s comprehension that I don’t have any tobacco nor the ability to obtain some, nor can she believe that I have no idea when she will be going home. It is also beyond the comprehension of the somewhat put out Hospital staff that the demented old lady paddling along on her zimmer frame has every right to call in on her uncle demanding tobacco and there is no need at all to deflect her from me,and that I quite enjoy her interruptions to nothing. At night I can hear Nampijinpa crying in her sleep. She’ll be back asking for janyungu and to see if I know when she’s going home. I will again disappoint her.
It isn’t very long ago when Nampijimpa was a vibrant with-it person, as vibrant as her famous paintings.
When I sold over one hundred copies of Kim Mahood’s ‘Position Doubtful’ when I was still trying to manage the Yuendumu Mining Company store, I had no inkling that a few years later I’d be flogging my own book. So as I was waiting at Yuendumu Clinic to be put on the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) plane I asked Wendy to pack two copies of My Yuendumu Story with my things. It was dark by the time we approached Alice Springs Airport. The nurse on board pointed to the brightest constellation of lights on the ground “That is the Alice Springs Prison” she informed me. My follow up remark that that was the Northern Territory’s second largest industry resonated with her, so I mentioned that the prison rated a mention in my book and soon enough she’d bought one of the copies I carried with me only to sell the second copy to the Doctor she handed me over to who took me in the Ambulance to the Hospital’s triage person and thence to my hospital bed. It was like being on a conveyor belt.
Even in 1952, Neville insisted that the cover of his new novel featured an illustrative panorama of the exciting and visionary new NT prisons of the future.
So here I am four days later and hopefully on the mend.
So as I lie in this bed getting periodically infused with antibiotic spiked saline solution (which is a fancy way of saying salty water) and a bag collecting urine draining out of me hanging off the bed rail, I was reminded of the ‘Man in White’ in Catch-22. You know the one- bandaged from head to toe kept in an upright position, with fluid pouring into him out of a bag at the top, and fluid draining out into a bag at the bottom. Every night a nurse would reverse the bags. Yosarian would come around each day for a while and read to the Man in White just in case he could hear. Bless him.
Well that’s enough for now.
Jungarrayi
Camp inmate bartering for tobacco in the excellent film adaptation of “A Town like Alice”. (In the olden days some of the inmates were white due to an error in crime profiling)
P.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuw8YjSbKd4 (I can handle this on the mend music)