Schrodinger’s cat, meet Albo’s school bus.
Anthony Albanese’s flying visit to Alice Springs is the talk of the town — but not for the reason he might have hoped.
The Prime Minister, accompanied by Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles, made an emergency trip to the troubled outback community earlier this week, where they announced a range of new measures to address an out-of-control youth crime wave and surge in alcohol-fuelled violence.
Strangely enough, the gangs of youths usually roaming the streets were nowhere to be seen during the PM’s visit on Tuesday — and the one thing on everyone’s lips is “the buses”.
Before Albo’s visit, the rumour goes, “five buses” arrived to quietly shuttle the worst of the troublemakers out of town for the day.
“Five large buses in town today,” wrote the Action for Alice Facebook page. “They have taken the kids away before our guests arrive.”
The existence of the phantom buses has practically become an article of faith among locals — even though not a single photo or video exists of said buses, and the government “categorically” denies the rumour.
Silvana Placentino, 66, who runs the popular lolly shop MeeMa’s on Gregory Terrace, said it was obvious something was going on when the alley behind her was cleaned of its usual faeces, urine and toilet paper.
“We call that smelly alley — disgusting stuff,” she said.
“Tuesday morning I get here and I thought, my God, it’s all been hosed. The walls have been hosed, our rubbish bins have been hosed, there isn’t a smidgen of smell. It’s funny. And the streets were deserted and clean. Normally you’d have broken glass and all this and you think — someone’s coming. We can tell straight away someone’s coming.”
Ms Placentino said “everyone is saying the same thing” — the buses.
“Have I seen the buses? No,” she said. “I have not seen the buses. But it’s really obvious. And you can’t find anyone that will admit that it actually happens. Nobody will put up their hand, but it’s so, so obvious — the tidy-up. It’s the funniest thing.”
One well placed local government source insisted that it “clearly happened”, although they did not have direct knowledge.
But a spokeswoman for Ms Fyles said the buses rumour was “categorically incorrect”.
“It’s categorically incorrect that the government took them back to community,” she said.
She said there was “always a sense” among business owners and residents “that streets get cleaned up” before any VIP visits and “those sort of comments are always swirling, but in this case, saying people were bussed out of Alice Springs is incorrect”.
The spokeswoman could not confirm whether any cleaning took place before the visit.
“I mean, I don’t know if the council goes ahead [with cleaning],” she said.
Alice Springs Mayor Matt Paterson declined to comment on the buses rumour.
“What I would say is, we’re not going out of our way to clean it up any more than we clean every single day, because it’s in our benefit that the PM or any other VIP sees Alice in its raw state,” Mr Paterson said.
Business owners and workers in the CBD all seem to agree on one thing — the violence has never been this bad, and most are desperate to leave.
A large number of shop windows around town are either boarded up or smashed, and for lease signs are everywhere.
Shyam Rana, 40, who works at the Cignall tobacconist next to Coles, said there were thefts “almost every day”.
“The problem is they come in a group, seven or eight or 10 at a time,” he said.
“The worst thing is even the cops can’t help you. They say even if you catch them stealing, just let them go because they might harm you — kids, mostly teenagers, eight to 15, 16 years old. The elderly they’re OK, they just drink and fight amongst themselves, but the kids, boys or girls, they’re the worst.”
Mr Rana said he had been physically assaulted with rocks and been spat on.
“We are scared to get into our car in front of them, you never know if they will smash up your car,” he said.
“It can happen any time of the day. We open at 7am — it starts from 7am and doesn’t stop. Probably I’ll move in about a year or two, definitely. A lot of people have moved. I have two little daughters, I have to take care of them.”
Terry Chiang, 42, manager of the nearby Kylie’s Fashion Wholesaler, said his store was regularly robbed and had its windows smashed.
“They know the police won’t do anything with them,” he said. “It’s very stressful. Very scary.”
Mr Chiang, who previously lived in Darwin, said many of the shops in town now had wooden boards up and there was “no point” fixing the windows because if “I fix it today, it’s broken next week”.
“I want to go,” he said. “Some of my friends have sold their businesses. It’s very dangerous. If you get married, if you have kids, would you let your kids in this environment? It’s crazy. This is Australia, it should be very safe.”
Guru Singh, 35, chef at the Grill Me Crazy restaurant, said he knew around a dozen people from Alice’s 4000-strong Indian community who had left for Western Australia in the last month alone.
“One of my friends who used to do the deliveries on Menulog and DoorDash, he left last week because his car got attacked twice,” he said. “He had his one-year-old kid sitting in the car [when] they pelted it with stones and broke the windows.”
Mr Singh, who arrived from India in 2014, said businesses were being affected because people were scared to leave their homes after dark.
“It’s hard to find drivers at night time, there’s nobody to do the deliveries,” he said.
“It was a beautiful town four or five years ago, but now things are getting worse. What the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister have done [with alcohol restrictions] is nothing. It’s not going to help — there are three hundred, four hundred kids still who are roaming around town, stealing drinks, bashing windows.”
Ms Placentino said the violence was getting “much more open, much more obvious and much more determined”, both targeting businesses and homes.
“We live in fear,” she said.
“At home I live in fear that my dog will get poisoned. We live in a little prison. We’ve spent thousands protecting ourselves — roller shutters on every window, bars on toilet and bathroom windows, electric gates, lighting, surveillance cameras — everything, which is what you have to do. The sleepless nights is what’s really bad.”
She said the children and teens causing chaos “have terrible home lives — it’s really tragic — well that’s not my problem”.
“And we’re throwing millions — billions!” she added.
“Where the f**k is this money going? It’s going into someone’s pocket.”
frank.chung@news.com.au