Daniel Fletcher, CEO of Litchfield Council on the outskirts of Darwin. The area is home to the Manigurr-ma mining village at Howard Springs that housed passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship and Australians repatriated from China, during their time in quarantine.

Our community has gone on quite a roller coaster journey of personal growth. The Howard Springs mining facility was the first place on the mainland where repatriated Australians were placed in quarantine. There is a school that backs onto the facility and there were genuine community concerns about the plan based on what people were seeing on the news – it would be fair to say there was initial reluctance to support the repatriation of Australians here. But that quickly changed to the point where local schools were writing and video calling in to communicate with young people staying there. They made things for each other, too.

Our community went from having that “not in my back yard” mentality to saying, “we are here, and we have a real opportunity to support our fellow Australians”.

The accommodation facility is managed by the NT government so our role as council was primarily communication. We met with state and federal chief medical officers and Health Minister Greg Hunt and were able to provide reassurance back to our residents that every appropriate precaution had been taken and that the first thought in everyone’s mind was community safety.

The Howard Springs village is currently being used as a drive-thru COVID-19 testing centre.

One of our other challenges is that we haven’t had any community transmission yet, so the tangible dangers of coronavirus are not necessarily as evident here as in other states. But our people and our businesses are doing the right thing and adhering to the restrictions, so they are feeling the same personal and economic impacts as elsewhere. They want to ensure their actions contribute to a good outcome nationally, despite the inevitable economic outcomes this is going to cause.

It has been inspiring to see the co-operation and collaboration across all levels of government and throughout our residential and business communities.

Daniel Fletcher
Chief Executive Officer
Litchfield Council