In the crowded homes of the Northern Territory's remote communities, residents are trying to keep their hopes of a better future alive.
On most afternoons in the community of Rockhole, Evelyn Andrews can be found holding court in her front yard, sat beneath the shade of a tree.
At house number 21, she shares her home with between 10 and 15 other people.
"We love it in the community, we've got the river right there and the kids are safe," she says.
"But we need some more houses."
Evelyn's community of Rockhole sits just outside Katherine, the Northern Territory’s third-biggest town, about 340 kilometres south of Darwin.
For the first two years of the pandemic, remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory were untouched by coronavirus.
But in November, the virus began to spread through remote communities.
Rockhole was one of the first to be hit.
Inside Rockhole, screaming cicadas, roaring lawnmowers, shouting kids and blaring speakers fight for a place in the soundscape.
The spread of COVID-19 in remote communities like this came after nearly two years of grave and sustained warnings.
Aboriginal leaders, health experts and politicians asked for action to mitigate the disaster they feared would unfold when Australia's most neglected communities came into contact with a disease rampant enough to reach the world's most remote corners.
In the forecasts, shocking incidences of poverty-related diseases were euphemised broadly as "comorbidities" in Aboriginal populations.
These health conditions left residents in some of the least-vaccinated communities in Australia over-exposed and under-prepared.
Chronic overcrowding in homes, it was warned, would be an accelerant poured onto outbreaks of the virus.
"With 13 people living in a house it would spread like a bushfire," says Gabriel Henry, Evelyn's son.
So families like Evelyn's became part of an accidental experiment: what happens when you try and isolate in a crowded house with coronavirus inside?
Authorities were quick to recognise the virus was spreading in crowded household and family groups.
They put Evelyn on a plane, where she was flown hundreds of kilometres north to the Howard Springs quarantine facility in Darwin.
Now back in the community, she says she is relieved to be home.
But back in her yard, she laments how the housing situation in Rockhole has not improved in years.
"These were the same houses built when the elders were living here, and there's been no change," she says.
"We just want … the young ones to grow up and be independent."
Evelyn says she wants Gabriel to find a home for his family.
"He needs space," she says.
"He's got to be a responsible person now he has a family of his own."
Gabriel and his partner Karen Yunupingu applied for housing in the nearby town of Katherine through the NT's Housing Department last year.
In Katherine, there are more than 490 people on the public housing waitlist, according to the NT government.
Last year, 36 applications were processed. The NT government estimates the wait time for public housing in Katherine is six to eight years.
Meanwhile, private rental vacancy rates in the town are below 0.1 per cent, real estate agencies say, and rental prices have surged in the past 18 months.
'Shoebox' houses of 'yesteryear'
Across town, in the rising heat of the day, Jason Brown sits on a bed on his porch.
He lives with 10 people in a two-bedroom home.
Inside his home, in the living room, children crawl over a mattress on the floor.
A ceiling fan wobbles above the heat of the room, and a standing fan swirls air around another bed in the corner.
Outside, the temperature, like it does for most of the year, hovers in the mid-thirties.
Community houses are often exhibiting signs of struggle.
Within, ailing infrastructure sometimes leaves residents living in dire conditions.
Hot water can be elusive, and plumbing, with hardware and fittings often exposed, a problem.
Aircons — the one barrier to the oppressive heat outside — are often broken down, with repairs hundreds, sometimes thousands, of kilometres away.
Dr Simon Quilty, who has worked in medicine in the NT for over 20 years, says "the consequences of overcrowding on health are really quite profound".
"When people live in very close proximity in very warm houses that disconnect from electricity all of the time and often have serious problems with plumbing … then it is the ideal environment for the spread of infectious diseases," he says.
“I would say that housing circumstances for Indigenous people in the Northern Territory are by far and away the most significant driver of poor health outcomes universally."
Rockhole was sent into a "hard lockdown" during the outbreak, with residents not permitted to leave their front yards.
"It was tough. The kids got upset, they wanted to walk around, they got wild at us," Jason recalls.
"Why can't we leave our home? We're not in prison."
When the town's lockdown lifted, children who had been stuck inside were suddenly able to visit each others' houses, playing on streets and the community playground.
Housing in Rockhole is managed by the Aboriginal-owned and operated Kalano Community Association.
Kalano is responsible for housing across three communities and some residential leases in Katherine.
Alan Mole, the organisation's acting chief executive, arrived in the area in the 80s.
At that time he remembers housing was a significant issue.
"I've seen some improvements since then, but I wouldn't say big," he says.
"Everything for a family is about where you come home to at night.
"Kids, students studying, having a place to their own in their house to be able to find some quiet time is important."
Mr Mole's assessment of the town's current housing stock is blunt.
"They're shoe boxes," he says.
"The houses that we have now are built for yesteryear," Rick Fletcher, the organisation's president, says.
And current funding, he says, only allows repair and maintenance of community houses to "barely keep pace".
They both agree the last time a new house was built in one of Kalano's communities was "over 20 years ago".
In a submission to the NT government's 2016 inquiry into housing repair and maintenance on town camps, Kalano listed a number of conditions hampering its progress.
These included "overcrowding and homelessness", "a large backlog of repairs and maintenance", "the condition of some housing being uninhabitable" and a "lack of land availability for the construction of new accommodation units within the Katherine township and [surrounds]."
Behind Evelyn's home sits a large vacant lot.
Gazing across the space, Emil Nasarenko, Kalano's housing and essential services manager, says the organisation wants to build more housing.
"We have a total of 35, maybe 36 serviced blocks between Rockhole and [the nearby community of] Geyulkgan ready to go," he says.
The NT government has committed $1.1 billion to housing in the NT's 72 remote communities, and the Commonwealth has promised a further $550 million.
But Rockhole is not included in this funding because it is classified as a homeland, meaning it receives only a modest amount of funding for repairs and maintenance from the NT government.
Homelands, or outstations, are often smaller in size and can be more geographically isolated than remote communities.
On homelands, where it is estimated about 10,000 Territorians reside, people can live closer to traditional lands.
The NT government says it "recognises and supports Aboriginal Territorians’ fundamental right" to live on their homelands.
A review of the NT government’s homelands policy, released last year, found one third of 2,400 houses on homelands had substantial or longstanding issues that necessitated rebuilding rather than repair.
NT Remote Housing Minister Chansey Paech late last year said he had asked for a meeting with federal Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt to discuss the “dire need” for housing on homelands.
He said the current funding agreement, which sees the NT government solely funding homelands, "short-changed" residents and "we need to right that wrong".
But a spokesperson for Mr Wyatt said Mr Paech was told the Commonwealth's current housing investment across the Northern Territory would remain unchanged.
The spokesperson added "state and territory governments remain responsible for housing and municipal services in their jurisdictions" — a line used consistently by the Commonwealth when the NT government requests more funds for housing.
Emil Naserenko says "there is plenty of room [for more housing] if somebody gives us the money".
"If we could build units and houses … we could solve the homeless problem in Katherine," he says.
"We would have no overcrowding in any house."
According to government statistics, the homelessness rate in Katherine is twice the NT average, and 31 times the national rate.
“Our members, this is their traditional land, they have nowhere else to go. This is their country. It's in my heart to live on my country, you know?” Rick Fletcher says.
'We can't stay like this'
Rockhole resident Donna Rogers says she is proud of her community for its spirit and resilience.
But there is a tear in her eye when she talks about the state of housing.
"I have a lot of pain inside for my people," she says.
She applied for her own home when she was 19.
"I'm 31 now, and I'm still waiting."
Now, the housing conditions in her community, in the context of an ongoing health crisis among Aboriginal Territorians since coronavirus hit the remote NT, seem impossible to ignore.
While Aboriginal Territorians make up about 30 per cent of the NT population, about 80 per cent of COVID-related deaths in the NT are Aboriginal people, a large proportion of them remote residents.
The federal branch of the Australian Medical Association says the failure to address the accommodation crisis in remote communities during the Omicron wave was "scandalous".
The situation now has the NT's Remote Housing Minister calling for housing on homelands to be a federal election issue.
"If COVID has taught us anything, it's taught us we need to be investing in our homelands, and the Territory government cannot do it alone," he says.
"We're calling on the federal parties to support housing on homelands because it's the decent and respectful thing to do.
"[We] cannot walk this path alone."
A spokesperson for the federal Minister for Indigenous Australians did not directly respond to questions from the ABC on whether any funding announcements regarding homelands or remote housing could be expected from the Commonwealth before the election.
For Donna Rogers, hope things could improve is not yet extinguished.
"I've seen everywhere else grow, but Rockhole hasn't changed," she says.
"This is our home, but I don't want my kids to grow up and have kids and see the same things over and over.
"It's wrong.
"We want to see their future.
“I have a 14-year-old son, he needs his space.
"My boy doesn't want to sleep with me, he's shamed.
"He keeps running away and staying with his friends.
"We can't stay like this for the rest of our lives.”
Credits
Reporting: Che Chorley and Steve Vivian
Photography: Che Chorley
Digital production: Steve Vivian
