Intergenerational poverty. Rampant youth crime. Low school attendance. Poor health.
Despite the bleak reality, community leaders in Halls Creek are striving for a brighter future and its younger residents are dreaming big.
It's 9pm on a Thursday in the outback town of Halls Creek.
The sounds of laughter, teasing and skylarking reverberate along the main street.
Groups of children, some as young as six, play fight and muck around — their wanderings illuminated by the orange hue of street lighting.
It's 28 degrees, humid, and the sound of cicadas almost drowns the patter of bare feet on bitumen.
At what point these children will return home is unclear. Youth workers say many stay out until dawn and don't attend school the next day.
Some will replace a good night's sleep with a nocturnal concoction of adrenaline-spiking car thefts, break-ins, police chases and rock attacks.
Community leaders fear their relentless offending puts them on a path to the sort of intergenerational poverty that is rife in Halls Creek, a town where most of the 1,500 people who live there are Indigenous.
Advocates on the ground say they face a world marred by high rates of domestic violence and foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
School attendance rates are extremely low, meaning that as adults, many will struggle to read and write and hold down a job.
This comes at a time when employment is so readily available that seasonal workers from Pacific countries are filling hospitality positions.
A mosaic of small Indigenous-run programs and services strive to address this crisis.
But while their daily wins are micro, only time will tell if the funding and policy support provided by the nation's leaders will be enough to shift the macro whole in a positive direction.
Amid a sense of hopelessness there are leaders with bold plans and young people driven by big dreams, who cherish their deep family-driven ancient culture that has survived colonisation.
Halls Creek's youth crime rates are comfortably the highest in the Kimberley, a region where record juvenile offending prompted a $40 million crisis response from the Western Australian government.
Last year vehicle thefts in Halls Creek soared to record levels, about one every five days.
Residents regularly capture footage of stolen cars swerving through streets, evading and goading police, as children watch from the footpath.
The persistent night time break-ins and thefts have driven essential workers from the town, placing even more pressure on the government to lure professionals such as teachers and nurses, with bonus payments and subsidies.
Pete Bube works for a construction company that's leaving Halls Creek and harassment from youth crime is a major factor.
His work is repetitive, often churning out security screens to protect homes.
He's endured break-ins, a work ute being stolen and torched, and rock attacks.
"I've just been locking up the gate and they've walked past and pegged rocks at us," he says.
"It's disheartening... you kind of think, why am I here? That's the thanks I'm going to get."
Dire statistics reveal how few children are going to school in Halls Creek on a regular basis.
The attendance rate for secondary students at Halls Creek District High School was 26 per cent in 2022, compared to 80 per cent across WA's public schools.
Grandmother Eva Johnson sent her eight children to boarding school in their teenage years so they could get a better education.
She's thrilled about her grandchildren who have gone on to university.
"Finally they're going somewhere where they can learn and be more educated and be someone who they want to be. Make us proud," she says.
The 60-year-old Jaru woman was raised in a tin shack, but she recalls, as children, she and her siblings had roles and responsibilities which prepared them for the rigours of life.
She now sees too many grandparents of her generation raising young children.
Ms Johnson says the school and residents need to rally around the parents who desperately need help.
"Where's the respect? We don't have that anymore in the school.
"We need our mob to go in there on a daily basis to help and support these children that's struggling with this. The parents need to be educated," she says.
Last year the ABC revealed the education department botched a plan to get children back into school in Halls Creek.
The story prompted an inquiry, which led to an apology from then Education Minister Sue Ellery and a series of recommendations to tackle the issue in a meaningful way.
The department's regional director Paul Bridge told the ABC in a statement an Aboriginal advisory group has now been formed and meets twice a term.
"Members represent various communities and help promote attendance messages and ensure that the aspirations of parents and caregivers are reflected in school decision-making," he said.
"They also provide the school with input on ways to support our students in a culturally responsive way."
Eva Johnson hopes the advisory group will allow the school to incorporate more Indigenous culture into learning, in a region where children often speak English as a second or third language.
"We're so blessed to be living in a remote area like this. There's so many places where we can take children and teach them. We have waterholes," she says.
"We have a story to tell. The history to be told. It's all there, we have it, but we don't have the resources."
There's a deeper crisis in Halls Creek that's driving kids out on the streets.
At the heart of the problem is life in the home.
More than 80 per cent of people here live in overcrowded conditions.
The local shire's CEO Phillip Cassell says in any discussion about youth crime, "all roads lead back to overcrowding."
"(If we) get those family units down to what is a reasonable, acceptable number of people in a given house, we have a much greater opportunity of breaking that cycle of dispossession, homelessness and kids on the street at night," he says.
Mr Cassell built his career in civil construction and is in talks with the WA Government to turn a parcel of bushland on the town's fringe into a development with 35 houses — designed by Indigenous people to suit their family structures.
"Housing went wrong when we took colonialist development (mindset) and tried to overlay it over traditional culture," he says.
"If you've got 10, 15 people living in a house, one bathroom isn't enough. They need more open area, bigger family orientated rooms, rather than the typical three bedroom, one bathroom homes that we see in our major cities."
Measures to address the housing shortage are among many ideas and initiatives that, given time, are hoped to cumulatively improve Halls Creek's fortunes.
Residents struggle to pinpoint one particular solution, instead they see a jigsaw of programs and people working night and day.
Traditionally the town's night patrol bus has focused on getting adults home safely, but now it's started picking up children who are out on the streets.
Walmajarri man Hendrick Woodman is part of the Jungarni Community Connect team and he enjoys striking a bond with the children who board the bus.
"It takes time. You have to really speak to them, engage with them, reach out to them. Really make them feel like they're worth something," he says.
As Mr Woodman banters in with the kids, one of his colleagues counts the number of children being picked up, so that data can be used to fine tune the service's design.
As the sun rises in the town's main park, Gija man Gaven Stretch begins work on an Indigenous art mural, painted over a graffiti-covered brick wall.
He says some children, who are still on the street at dawn, love watching him paint, and have even added their own design to the overall creation.
"They just come, rock up, and work with me. They just do it with their own feeling because they have that respect for me," he says.
"Some of the kids, they graffitied on the wall... and they came to me wanting to fix up the wall... and do something good with me and turn it into a good work."
The 27-year-old says he had a tough upbringing and understands the life these children lead.
"Unwanted you know. Without no parents. Just stay with our friends and all of that. Hang around the street," he says.
Mr Stretch is funded for a year to enlist young people to help him brighten the look of the town where main street shops resemble fortresses protected by barbed-wire topped security fences.
He would love to use art to engage children on a full-time basis, to make them proud of their community and culture.
"This is my dream. Good for the town, good for the kids, good for everyone," he says.
As the day heats up, a handful of the children who've been out on the street are referred to Olabud Doogethu.
The Indigenous organisation runs a newly-created Men's Tribal Area on the outskirts of town, and is chasing funding to turn it into a comfortable space where young boys and men can seek respite and discover their identity.
Gija man George Demi says even just providing a child with lunch and then taking them hunting in the surrounding bushland has a noticeable impact.
"It heals them when you go on to your country. Whatever happens in town is bad, but in the bush you're back on the country again," he says.
"Get their culture back again, like hunting you know. How to make a boomerang. Teach them what food to get on trees. What medicine and that. Learn your skin group. What language group."
Mr Demi and the tribal area's main organiser Larry Smith hope it will grow into a place where children who are disconnected from school can learn valuable skills.
"Get them welding or something like that. Get them into carpentry or like a mechanic," he says.
"Try and make it into a men's shed."
But the tribal area — like many programs in Halls Creek — faces the ever-present threat of funding running out.
The ABC has spoken to a variety of groups in Halls Creek and all highlighted the stress of putting together programs using a mix of government and private funding with financial certainty rarely extending beyond a year or two.
They say long term funding would allow them to take risks, learn from their failures, and be truly innovative.
It's an issue Ribnga Green knows all too well.
The Jaru man grew up in Halls Creek and went on to become an academic who advised politicians on Indigenous affairs, before he returned home last year.
"It's a sad and sorry state here in Halls Creek," he said.
"Lack of drive in education, you've broken families, you've got overcrowded housing situations, alcohol's a problem, and of course with kids walking around town without adequate supervision and parental care, it's a real recipe for stuff going bad.
"[But] There's good examples of people working their guts out to get stuff done."
Canberra holds considerable power when tackling Indigenous issues, in terms of funding and policy-making, but Mr Green says the bureaucracy is often out of touch with the issues and views in remote communities.
It's an issue Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hopes to address with the creation of the Voice to Parliament.
But Mr Green says flying visits and quick, narrow policy announcements will do little in Halls Creek.
He says politicians and bureaucrats need to spend time in the community and identify and support emerging Indigenous leaders at a local level.
"You've got to be creative, you've got to take risks, you've got to tune in with the key players on the ground," he says.
"You have to think outside the box, how to do things differently. The same old, same old, is just not going to work."
Commonwealth Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney told the ABC her government's $80 million Indigenous-led justice reinvestment program will include Halls Creek as a location site.
"We are working with the WA Government through the Justice Policy Partnership to support First Nations young people and families to address the underlying socio-economic drivers that increase young people's risk of contact with the criminal justice system," she said in a statement.
Wet season brings a dash of green to the vast plains and ranges ringing Halls Creek on the fringe of the Great Sandy Desert.
Eva Johnson's bush-block is where her grandson Yiyan Gore and his friend Nathaniel Drover, both 13, like to hang out after school.
Next year they'll both leave Halls Creek and go to boarding school outside the Kimberley.
Yiyan's excited about the move but there's a sense he will miss his friends and his country.
"My mum sending me away ... she told me I can become who I want to be in life and all of that and that made me feel good," he says.
"I like it here because it's better. It feels like home and I grew up here."
He's still figuring out what his adult life will look like.
"I prefer looking to get a job in business and all of that. Help my family, help everyone. That would be nice," he says.
Nathaniel worries about other young people his age getting into trouble.
"The other day, they do stolen cars around Halls Creek. Too many stolen cars. Policeman try to stop them, and sometimes they crash ... dangerous," Nathaniel says.
But the Arrernte boy can see a future where he works as a ranger or tour guide — sharing his culture with the wider world.
"Learn like culture. Land. Just tell dreamtime story and then talk to other people," he says.
"Make them feel right."
- Words: Ted O'Connor
- Pictures and video: Andrew Seabourne
- Production: Gian De Poloni, Kate Christian
