Excerpt from Alice Springs News…

By ERWIN CHLANDA

Mark Lockyer says he began drinking at age 12.
At 17 he moved out of Hidden Valley, where he had grown up, so that he wouldn’t remain an alcoholic.
“I didn’t want to die from drinking,” he says.
But his aunty, to whom he was very close, did.
His mother, now an invalid, remained in the squalid town camp, and so he maintained a connection with this source of much anti-social behaviour in Alice Springs.
As a kid he himself was an occasional player, roaming the town in gangs of six to a dozen kids, “from the camps, the bush and urban kids” – stealing hard liquor, “bottles of grog, rum, vodka” – and food from bottle shops and supermarkets.
Mark’s mother lives in an exceptionally neat house amongst the Hidden Valley mayhem.
It’s 3.30pm on Friday.
Most able-bodied adults in Alice are still at work, but across the road, in a freshly renovated house, painted in garish blue colours, the daily drinking party is getting into full swing.
There are about two dozen young men and women, many already under the weather.
The scene outside leaves little to the imagination about what the interior would look like, recently refurbished at taxpayers’ expense.
Says Mark: “There are already graffiti, smashed doors and windows.
“It’s almost back where it started, trashed.
“There are 15 to 20 people, beds, mattresses, beer cans all over the yard, 12 year old girls drinking and smoking dope.”

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