You know a town is football-obsessed when they’re driving 11 hours out and back to play their local game every Saturday. For the residents in the town of Ngukurr, it’s been this way for years.
Ngukurr is a community of around 1,100 people in one of the most remote areas of south-east Arnhem Land, and approximately 92% are First Nations peoples. Its residents are some of the most disadvantaged in Australia, with the median weekly income for families almost half of the poverty line.
Because of their remote location, football players and spectators from Ngukurr take two buses to Katherine, as key members in the Big Rivers AFL competition. But soon Ngukurr will be able to host its own games from its $24 million multi-purpose sports, community and recreation hub, developed by Yugul Mangi Development Aboriginal Corporation.
The project includes a football oval resurfaced with grass, a community hub with a kitchen, multi-function room, toilets, sports facilities and a gym, with a design that emphasises cultural sensitivity, including separate male and female spaces and culturally appropriate entries and exits for both their active men and women’s teams.
Funded by various grants, the Ngukurr Community Sporting Precinct is not simply a grant-and-build project, nor is it just the Ngukurr Football Club. It’s the result of self-determination from a remote community to drive grassroots, sustainable action and make major change happen.
For the past five years, the Ngukurr community has engaged stakeholder consultants, a funding application consultant, applied for various grants and sought extensive consultation and input from the local community, slowly assembling the right people and taking steps to plan the community hub around the football oval.
“It all started when Yugul Mangi self-funded the resurfacing of the Ngukurr football oval with grass, so their beloved Bulldogs could play on a safer surface,” says Hames Sharley Northern Territory Studio Leader, Alex Quin.
“Now it’s a complex community project with a different conglomeration of funding agreements delivered in different stages – and it’s all being delivered by community.”
The result is a transformative hub to be completed in three stages, placing community, sport and recreation at the heart of Ngukurr, bringing together local communities to engage in sports and recreational activities, fostering connection and improving health and wellness. It will also reduce the 11 hours travel to Katherine each week, delivering sport and its benefits directly to the community.
“Thanks to the community of Ngukurr and the Yugul Mangi Development Aboriginal Corporation, we have been involved in a reiterative and collaborative design process. The design outcome is not ‘our design’, it is the community’s. We are simply the tool to facilitate their vision,” Alex says.
For example, the first meeting was a cultural awareness presentation by local elders to ensure the Hames Sharley team was aware of culturally sensitive language, social protocols and specific sites in and around community that were restricted. Subsequent community consultation was on-site at picnic tables under shade trees. Both conveyed a need greater than the buildings; to a broader vision to sustain the whole community and its surrounds.
“The only way to design something that fulfils the community’s needs is to first listen, then propose scenarios to test our understanding and then to listen again. This collaborative process is the only path to ensure the design satisfies the community’s needs, and provides spaces that are culturally appropriate,” Alex says.
More widely, the Ngukurr project serves as a model for others, demonstrating what communities can achieve by working together to drive the change they want to see.
“The community members here in one of Australia’s remotest places have the will, determination and motivation to get this critical piece of community infrastructure delivered purposefully, ensuring everyone understands the process and has the time to engage in it,” Alex says. “It’s an inspiring example of a project by community, for community.”
“This is an empowering process for the community of Ngukurr and one that Hames Sharley is privileged to be part of.”
With the project currently in design development phase, there is still plenty more work to do, to honour and embed the values that uphold a strong culture, creating a lasting legacy that celebrates community, diversity and growth.
