Word: borroloola
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Just west of Burketown, Highway 1 on the map turns into a dotted line that staggers all the way to Borroloola, across the Northern Territory border. On the ground, that translates to 480 corrugated kilometers of red dirt and gravel-a track that's bone-jarring at the best of times and, in the wet season, impassable. For the people who live along the road, keeping that dotted line from disappearing off the map is an unrelenting struggle...
...closing time at the local pub, and the main street of Borroloola, 730 km southeast of Darwin, has erupted in a series of drunken brawls. Spilling from the beer garden, heavily intoxicated Aborigines hurl cans, stones and abuse ("F___ you, c___, I'll kill you") at each other. At the hostel across the road, guests watching the communal television barely flinch. "We are so used to it now," says owner Trish Elmy, who sometimes puts up a barrier of water sprinklers to deter the mob from fighting near-or collapsing in-her property. "We know nothing gets done, so what...
...Staff at the health clinic, and many other residents, say the town's only hotel, the Borroloola Inn, feeds the mayhem by serving people who are obviously drunk. The operators say the unfair accusations have driven them to put the pub up for sale. "The hotel in any Aboriginal community is probably looked on as a monster," says Christopher Taylor, the licensee's husband. To limit the risk of problems, he says, closing time on Sundays has been brought forward...
...these parts, some smaller communities have banned alcohol with varying success. But few people think that would work in Borroloola. For now, the aim is harm minimization. Since a general community meeting last March, the town has been trying to prepare an alcohol management plan. Money from the N.T. government has yet to reach the local council to pay the consultants needed to draw up a scheme; the demand for such social services in the Territory is so great that Borroloola is just another community in the queue. The Territory's Darwin-based head of Racing, Gaming and Licensing, Elizabeth...
...Borroloola's problems due to alcohol continue. Just last month an Aboriginal woman stabbed her elderly partner in the stomach with a bread knife during a drinking session at their home. Such incidents are as common in the Top End as the crunch of green aluminum cans underfoot, and the slowly decaying human beings who have discarded them...
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