The program behind the build

In partnership withOonchiumpa Consultancy & Servicesoonchiumpa.com.au

Oonchiumpa is an Aboriginal-led organisation working with young people across Central Australia. Kristy Bloomfield runs it. Her mother Karen Liddle is a Traditional Owner. The program is built around young people working through hard stuff, supported by older community members from their own families.

For this trip Oonchiumpa ran the build in Alice Springs and chose where the beds went in the homelands. Centrecorp Foundation paid for the materials. We turned up with tools and a truck. Every young person who built a bed kept one for themselves. That was the agreement before the first leg got clicked on.

The bit usually missing from a remote delivery story is the program behind the door. Without Oonchiumpa this trip is a truck and a stranger.

"I had a yarn with the girls one day. Said you got to get out and start your own business. That's how we started Oonchiumpa."Karen Liddle · Traditional Owner, mother of Kristy

Fred and Decon got us through the door

Fred and Decon are Oonchiumpa support workers. They drove ahead of us into the homelands, made the introductions, and sat in the council conversations that worked out which households were waiting on a bed. We arrived in Utopia with a truck full of materials and no relationships of our own. Fred and Decon lent us theirs.

At Urapuntja the local workers and council staff took over. They told us which families had asked and where to drive next. They chose the doors. Our job was to keep up.

A delivery story usually skips this bit. The truck arrives, the beds go in, the photos look good. None of it happens without the people who already know the place and are willing to spend a day pointing visitors at the right house.

House to house, with the local team in front

Arlparra is the central outstation of the Urapuntja homelands: health service, council, the airstrip up the road. It was where we slept and where most of the beds landed. The local crew Fred and Decon walked us into became the team for the day. Every door we knocked on already knew we were coming.

We went house to house and asked the same question each time: how many beds do you want? Some answered one, most answered two or three. We put them together on the spot, local fullas and us side by side, around five minutes a bed, no tools, on the verandah or just inside the door. While we worked, households told us what they were sleeping on now and what they needed next. We wrote it down.

At every house we asked twice for photos. One set went back to the family, so community has its own pictures of its own days. The other we kept, to show what a bed can change.

What people were already sleeping on

Arawerr (Soapy Bore) sits just south of Utopia on the Sandover. The community came out to meet us, household by household, and the request was the same at most doors: two or three beds. Nobody asked for just one.

Walking through the yards we saw what people were already sleeping on: car trays balanced on bricks, mattresses on stacks of tyres, foam pads on plywood. Every household had improvised. Once they had seen a Stretch Bed assembled and tested, every household wanted one.

While we worked, kids flew the drone above the camp. We stumbled into a 2-year-old's birthday, mid-celebration, and were asked to photograph the birthday girl. Those photos went back to the family.

Back to camp, up before light, on to Ampilatwatja.

Frankie and Donald

Frankie Holmes and Mr Donald Thompson are senior Alyawarr brothers. Both have been recognised with the Medal of the Order of Australia for decades of work for their community and their Country.

Four beds went in, for the two households between them. The unloading took longer than the assembly. The yarning took longer still. The clip we kept is the moment Frankie sat on a finished bed, tested the canvas with his hand, looked at his brother and nodded. Then he started talking.

What this trip points at

Three days, end to end. Beds at the homes that asked for them. Frankie's nod. Donald on the bed beside his brother. Mykel saying he would rock up every day to make them. None of it happens without Oonchiumpa, and none of the Utopia leg happens without Fred and Decon driving ahead, making introductions, and holding the room at the council so we could be useful when we arrived.

Goods on Country is an enterprise. The Stretch Bed and the washing machine *Pakkimjalki Kari*, named in Warumungu by Elder Dianne Stokes, were designed in community with the Bloomfield family who run Oonchiumpa, over years. The next piece of the model is a containerised plant that can shred and press collected plastic into bed legs at around thirty beds a week. That plant can move to a community and be owned there.

That is what Mykel was pointing at on the first morning when he asked about coming back every day. Alice and Utopia are both live candidates for where the making happens next. There is plenty of plastic on the ground waiting to be collected, and a steady cohort of young people coming through Oonchiumpa who want work. The household demand is already on the table.

A bed off the ground cuts scabies and rheumatic heart disease, and means kids who slept enough to make it to school. Local production on top of that is income that stays in the community. The work, eventually, is to move the making to community ownership and then become unnecessary.