{"id":43446,"date":"2014-06-02T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=43446"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:33:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:33:47","slug":"utopia-the-inside-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/06\/utopia-the-inside-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Utopia: The Inside Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 31 [2014], John Pilger\u2019s latest film, <\/em>Utopia will air on SBS television. <\/em>New Matilda owner\/editor Chris Graham worked as an Associate Producer on the film. In this special feature, he provides an inside look at the making of Utopia.<\/em><\/p>\n

SOMETIMES in life, you can feel pretty helpless. That said, I\u2019m a privileged white guy in a privileged white society. So for me at least, it doesn\u2019t happen very often.<\/p>\n

It happened last year.<\/p>\n

At the time, I was the managing editor of Tracker magazine. The NSW Aboriginal Land Council, owner of Tracker, was generous enough to give me time to fulfill a childhood dream.<\/p>\n

John Pilger is a journalist I grew up reading, and a large part of the reason why I entered journalism.<\/p>\n

Pilger was back in Australia making his fourth film about the plight of Aboriginal Australians.<\/p>\n

He asked me to work on it with him. I didn\u2019t feel helpless, but I certainly felt daunted. The helplessness was to come.<\/p>\n

One of the first major shoots was in Central Australia, and we spent the better part of a week filming in and around Ampilatwatja (pronounced Um-budder-watch), a small Aboriginal community 300 kilometres north east of Alice Springs on the edge of a vast region known as Utopia.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d been to Ampilatwatja many times before. Previously I had written a news feature about research out of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR), which had ranked the region as the most disadvantaged in the nation.<\/p>\n

Strangely, only a few years earlier, the Menzies School of Health Research had also noted in a study that despite its poverty, Utopia also had a mortality rate around 50 percent lower than the rest of the Northern Territory.<\/p>\n

That makes Utopia a very unique place \u2013 despite its grinding poverty, its people live longer than many of their countrymen throughout the Territory, due in large part to the fact Aboriginal people in the region still live a semi-traditional lifestyle.<\/p>\n

Governance structures are largely in place, and people stave off their hunger with a semi-traditional diet.<\/p>\n

So the trip to Ampilatwatja with Pilger, Co-Director Alan Lowery and his crew would provide some familiar surrounds.<\/p>\n

During the shoot, John, Alan and I stayed in the nurses\u2019 quarters \u2013 modest staff housing across the road from the Ampilatwatja Health Clinic.<\/p>\n

Preston Clothier (Director of Photography) and his crew stayed in the doctor\u2019s house opposite.<\/p>\n

After a full day of shooting \u2013 including a trip to a remote outstation to film David Smith, CEO of the Health Service at work \u2013 we all met back at the nurses\u2019 quarters for dinner.<\/p>\n

It had been a long, hot day \u2013 Utopia in Spring feels like the worst of a stifling Sydney summer day, and the dry heat takes it out of you. Most of the crew and half of the health clinic staff didn\u2019t last until 8pm, before retiring for bed.<\/p>\n

John snuck off to his room to do some research (standard practice, I was to discover) while Alan, myself and two of the clinic\u2019s nurses, Jackie and Margaret, stayed up to chat.<\/p>\n

Shortly after 9pm, our conversation was interrupted with a loud banging on the front door.<\/p>\n

Jackie was on call, so she went to answer.<\/p>\n

A frantic young Aboriginal woman was on the steps, and she pleaded with Jackie for help.<\/p>\n

Margaret, although not on call, rushed out the door with her.<\/p>\n

ALAN and I stayed. We figured someone \u2013 probably a kid \u2013 had injured themselves. Broken an arm, trod on a nail, fell off her bike, as kids often do. To quote John Howard, we were alert, but not alarmed.<\/p>\n

A short time later, there was more loud banging at the door. I went to answer it. Now, two men were outside. Both seemed very frightened, and suddenly, I was the one fielding the pleas for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want you to come. They need your help,\u201d one of the men said.<\/p>\n

I know nothing about medicine. Beyond lifting something for someone, I couldn\u2019t imagine what help I could possibly provide.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you sure they want me,\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, they want you. You have to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you sure it\u2019s me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, yes, you. They want you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are they?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the camp. Behind the clinic. They need you, quick.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m coming,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n

I rushed back inside and grabbed my shoes. Alan agreed to hold the fort. I headed out the door.<\/p>\n

The drive was only a few hundred metres \u2013 I could have run there quicker \u2013 and when I arrived, the men who\u2019d come to the house waved me off the road into a paddock adjoining the health clinic.<\/p>\n

It was immediately apparent to me that I wasn\u2019t the person that Jackie and Margaret \u2013 the nurses \u2013 had sent the men to find. They wanted the local doctor, Laura, not a visiting journalist.<\/p>\n

The area immediately around a small tin humpy bordering the health clinic was lit up with spotlights from the Ampilatwatja bush ambulance.<\/p>\n

Jackie, Margaret and Dave Smith were performing CPR on a figured slumped in the humpy.<\/p>\n

As I arrived, they started loading the body of a man into the back of the ambulance. Jackie was pumping away furiously on the man\u2019s chest as they did.<\/p>\n

CPR on television always looks quite clinical and controlled. In the real world, it\u2019s a pretty violent process. And it\u2019s hard to watch, particularly if you know anything about CPR. Because when things have reached that point, statistically speaking the outcome is often bad.<\/p>\n

Dave wheeled the 4WD around, drove past me, wound his window down and yelled, \u2018Clinic\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cYep,\u201d I replied, and followed him the 25 metres or so back to the front door.<\/p>\n

By the time the ambulance pulled up, the men and women from the humpy camp were already milling around the emergency entrance.<\/p>\n

Jackie, Margaret and Dave rushed the man into the building, pumping on his chest as they went, and forcing oxygen into his lungs via a bottle and mask.<\/p>\n

I followed, my head spinning.<\/p>\n

As I entered, Jackie was still pumping away on his chest. Margaret was still administering oxygen. Dave was rushing around preparing a cart, which I guessed was a defibrillator.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat can I do?\u2019 I asked Dave. \u201cDo you want me to get the doctor?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYep, that\u2019d help. Thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ran the 50 metres back up the road to the doctor\u2019s residence, and banged on the front door.<\/p>\n

One of the film crew was the first to wake. I told him Laura was needed urgently. He went to wake her, and I ran back to the clinic.<\/p>\n

As I entered the room, Dave, Margaret and Jackie were still working on the man. They were lifting him from the ambulance bed onto a clinic gurney.<\/p>\n

He crashed down on to the bed, and Dave took over the CPR, barely skipping a beat.<\/p>\n

Margaret was straight back on to the oxygen. Jackie was now preparing machines.<\/p>\n

It was an extraordinary thing to witness. And chilling.<\/p>\n

Dave pushed the ambulance bed towards me. \u201cGet this out of the way,\u201d he snapped.<\/p>\n

I moved it a few feet further towards the door, the sum total of my assistance so far, and a clear pointer to the reality that my presence was absolutely, utterly irrelevant.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, I didn\u2019t want to leave. It felt like I would have been running from a bad situation. But I didn\u2019t want to stay either. I felt like a voyeur, like I was seeing something I shouldn\u2019t. So I walked outside and leant against the ambulance.<\/p>\n

I think some of the men outside were wondering why the \u2018doctor\u2019 \u2013 sitting on the back step of the ambulance looking stunned \u2013 wasn\u2019t in working on their friend.<\/p>\n

One of the men approached. \u201cYou alright?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t know. He was workin\u2019 today. He was all good. Then he just crashed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laura and her husband Justin, also a nurse at the clinic, arrived and rushed into the clinic.<\/p>\n

We could all hear the commotion inside. And then after a minute or two, it just stopped.<\/p>\n

Dave Smith emerged a few minutes later.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhose this man\u2019s brother\u2019s uncle?\u201d<\/p>\n

There was no response from the group.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhose this man\u2019s brother\u2019s uncle?\u201d Dave repeated.<\/p>\n

Again, no response.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho is responsible for this man? Who speaks for this man?\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the men pointed to an old man standing just to Dave\u2019s left.<\/p>\n

Dave turned, extended his arm and shook the old man\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry. You saw where we were working. You saw what we were doing. We did everything we could. You saw it. You saw how hard we worked. We tried. We worked hard on that man. But we couldn\u2019t do anything. It was up to God. I\u2019m sorry. We did all we could. But it was up to God.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then that was it.<\/p>\n

The men each thanked Dave by shaking his hand, then turned and walked away.<\/p>\n

As they did, a woman who\u2019d been watching from the shadows rushed forward. The enormity of the news Dave had just delivered had obviously dawned on her, and she collapsed in the dirt, wailing.<\/p>\n

It was the woman who\u2019d come to the door to get the nurses. She was the man\u2019s partner.<\/p>\n

His name was Mr Davey. He was 47 years of age.<\/p>\n

Several more women who I hadn\u2019t noticed appeared from the shadows and lifted the woman from the ground, comforting her.<\/p>\n

They too started wailing.<\/p>\n

The sound of Aboriginal women mourning a death is hard to describe, save to say it cuts right through you.<\/p>\n

I stood frozen, unable to speak, too ashamed to cry.<\/p>\n

The men and women started to walk north down the main community road. The wailing intensified as they did, as more and more people learned the tragic news.<\/p>\n

It lasted much of the night.<\/p>\n

I walked back into the clinic with Dave, my sense of utter helplessness now complete.<\/p>\n

All I wanted to do was disappear.<\/p>\n

As a last act of impotence, I made the staff tea and coffee, then excused myself.<\/p>\n

My last memory of the clinic is Mr Davey\u2019s lifeless body lying on a bed, alone in the corner.<\/p>\n

When I made it back to the house, Alan was still up, waiting. I must have looked a little shell-shocked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot a good outcome, I take it?\u201d said Alan.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah. Not good,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard the wailing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, a man just died.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Humpies<\/a>

Humpies are routine housing in Central Australia, courtesy of decades of poor government spending.<\/p><\/div>\n

The nurses returned home a few hours later. None of us got much sleep.<\/p>\n

We woke early the next morning. The humpy in which Mr Davey lived was already gone \u2013 the community had already cleaned up the site.<\/p>\n

It was like the whole thing had never happened, that it was just a very bad dream.<\/p>\n

In most Aboriginal communities, when an Aboriginal person dies inside a house, the whole family must move out. With a humpy, it\u2019s much easier \u2013 they just pull it apart. As Pilger notes in Utopia, when an Aboriginal person in Central Australia dies, their house dies with them.<\/p>\n

Dave Smith was also up early, although he looked like he hadn\u2019t slept at all.<\/p>\n

His comments to the men \u2013 that they had seen how hard he and his staff had worked \u2013 had confused me.<\/p>\n

I asked him why he\u2019d phrased it that way, as though he was trying to deflect blame for what clearly seemed to be a blameless death.<\/p>\n

Dave explained said that in Central Australian Aboriginal communities, you can\u2019t have an unexplained death.<\/p>\n

Children and old people die \u2013 to the Alyawarra people, that\u2019s explainable, understandable. But the death of a seemingly healthy, middle-aged man needed to be explained. And someone had to be held responsible.<\/p>\n

Dave was concerned his staff would be the \u2018someone\u2019.<\/p>\n

Of course, Mr Davey\u2019s death was entirely explainable. Finding who\u2019s responsible is a little trickier, but I\u2019ll come to that.<\/p>\n

MR DAVEY died of a heart attack. The most likely cause was rheumatic heart disease, something he\u2019d probably contracted many, many years earlier.<\/p>\n

Like trachoma, rheumatic heart disease is a third-world condition which has been all but eliminated from Western countries.<\/p>\n

With one exception.<\/p>\n

Aboriginal people in remote regions of Australia \u2013 particularly Central Australia \u2013 have the highest recorded rates of rheumatic heart disease on earth.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an entirely preventable disease caused, primarily, by poor living conditions and overcrowding.<\/p>\n

The Utopia region is a beautiful place, with beautiful people. But poor living conditions and overcrowding are rife.<\/p>\n

Families in Ampilatwatja routinely cram more than a dozen people into a single dwelling, sometimes as many as 30.<\/p>\n

On top of that, dozens more sleep in backyards on old wooden doors or bed bases propped up by overturned paint tins.<\/p>\n

The single men\u2019s quarters in Ampilatwatja is tiny \u2013 an old tin shed with no running water, and no electricity. It has holes in the walls and is barely fit to store tools. But it\u2019s routinely home to more than half a dozen men.<\/p>\n

Eric Elkedra, a local Aboriginal health worker who is interviewed by Pilger in Utopia, also lives in a tin shed with his wife and two kids.<\/p>\n

It has also holes in the walls, no running water, no electricity. Despite this, the federal government collects rent from him every fortnight.<\/p>\n

And those that aren\u2019t lucky enough to have a permanent dwelling \u2013 like Mr Davey \u2013 sleep in humpies on the edge of the community. A humpy is a simple wood structure. Sometimes shade is provided by tin, sometimes by tree branches.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile a \u2018Government Business Manager\u2019 appointed as part of the Northern Territory intervention lives in a sprawling compound with multiple rooms and more than a dozen air-conditioners.<\/p>\n

Just a few years ago, the population of Ampilatwatja abandoned their community and set up camp in the bush after raw sewage had been pooling in the streets for months.<\/p>\n

The sewerage system was eventually patched up although it still breaks down regularly today.<\/p>\n

When the NT intervention rolled into town in early 2008, no new homes were built to relieve the overcrowding, despite the expenditure across the Territory of more than $1 billion on housing.<\/p>\n

Instead, the old Ampilatwatja homes \u2013 most of them built in the ATSIC days \u2013 got a lick of paint, and then, eventually, dodgy renovations which did precisely nothing to relieve the staggering levels of overcrowding.<\/p>\n

The NT intervention also delivered a new BMX track \u2013 a grader and some white men arrived one morning to push mounds of dirt together.<\/p>\n

A shipping container full of BMX bikes with the words \u2018Ampilatwatja BMX Club\u2019 painted on the side also arrived.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the key to the container was stored hundreds of kilometres away in Alice Springs, lest the local kids think they might actually be able to access the bikes whenever they want, or get something tangible from legislation which suspended their basic human rights.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>

John Pilger pictured in the Utopia region, during the filming of the documentary.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Ampilatwatja BMX club opened its doors once, and then the shipping container sat rusting for the next few years.<\/p>\n

Ampilatwatja, like all remote Aboriginal communities, has suffered from a long bureaucratic malaise, so while there\u2019s an obvious collective responsibility for the conditions in which people like Mr Davey lived and died, it\u2019s harder to sheet home individual blame.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not impossible.<\/p>\n

Just a few hours before Mr Davey died, the Ampilatwatja Health Clinic received a surprise visit from Warren Snowdon, the federal Minister for Indigenous Health.<\/p>\n

Snowdon also happens to be the long-serving Member for Lingiari, the federal seat which takes in most of the Northern Territory.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s held that position for more than two decades.<\/p>\n

The visit was short notice, but Snowdon stayed for several hours.<\/p>\n

Dave Smith and his staff wanted to talk about the needs of the clinic and the needs of the community.<\/p>\n

Snowdon, however, kept steering the conversation back to governance, and the importance of community leadership.<\/p>\n

The irony, of course, is perverse.<\/p>\n

As Snowdon prepared to leave, nurse Jackie decided to collar the Minister as he was walking out the door.<\/p>\n

Apart from nursing, Jackie\u2019s other expertise is in environmental health. She wanted Snowdon to understand that the government could provide all the primary health care that one of the wealthiest nations on earth could afford, but it wouldn\u2019t make a lick of difference if the environmental health problems weren\u2019t also addressed.<\/p>\n

Jackie wanted to talk about the simple things that government could do \u2013 lids for community rubbish bins. Proper sewerage systems.<\/p>\n

Snowdon nodded politely, as though he understood.<\/p>\n

Indeed Snowdon likely did understand, because it\u2019s a message that has no doubt been delivered to him thousands of times as the Member for Lingiari, and hundreds of times as the Minister for Indigenous Health.<\/p>\n

And yet the atrocious environmental health conditions endure, and have done throughout Snowdon\u2019s entire time in office as the advocate in Canberra for the dirt poor people of Ampilatwatja.<\/p>\n

It all begs the question: why?<\/p>\n

A few months later, Pilger got to ask exactly that question of Warren Snowdon during an interview in the decadent and advantaged surrounds of Parliament House in Canberra.<\/p>\n

As Pilger notes in Utopia, the contrast between the grinding disadvantage of Ampilatwatja and the obscene wealth and privilege of Canberra couldn\u2019t be more stark.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to spoil the punch-line of Pilger\u2019s exchange with Snowdon \u2013 you\u2019ll have to watch the film \u2013 but let\u2019s just say one of the things for which Pilger is best known is holding power to account, and he does that in spades with a seething, bombastic Snowdon.<\/p>\n

I sat in on that interview, as Pilger applied the blowtorch to a nervous, gulping but increasingly defiant Snowdon.<\/p>\n

Looking back, I too felt a stark difference between Canberra and Ampilatwatja, although for far more personal reasons.<\/p>\n

In Ampilatwatja I could do nothing but stand and watch as a group of extraordinary people battled hopelessly to save the life of an Aboriginal man who had been condemned to die years earlier, a victim of political blame-shifting and official national indifference.<\/p>\n

But in Canberra, watching Snowdon stripped bare in front a camera by one of the world\u2019s foremost journalists \u2013 being asked the sorts of questions Snowdon should be asked every day, but never is \u2013 I was reminded that I probably wasn\u2019t the only one who felt like they served no useful purpose in Ampilatwatja the day that Mr Davey died.<\/p>\n

After meeting with Dave Smith and the crew from the Health Clinic, Snowdon and his staff piled back into a brand new Toyota Landcruiser to head back to Alice Springs.<\/p>\n

And then, as if by after-thought, a Snowdon staffer emerged from the vehicle and rushed back into the clinic.<\/p>\n

He was carrying two bags of fruit, and left them for the staff \u2013 an act of Ministerial generosity.<\/p>\n

One of the bags was full of mouldy oranges.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 newmatilda.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On May 31 [2014], John Pilger\u2019s latest film, Utopia will air on SBS television. New Matilda owner\/editor Chris Graham worked as an Associate Producer on the film. In this special feature, he provides an inside look at the making of Utopia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}