Life in one of Darwin's worst addresses, Kurringal Flats

[MadelineB]

Life in one of Darwin's worst addresses, Kurringal Flats
Sarah Crawford
Northern Territory News
February 18, 2013 4:49PM

http://www.news.com.au/national/life-in-one-of-darwins-worst-addresses-kurringal-flats/story-fncynjr2-1226580284314

NT NEWS journalist SARAH CRAWFORD spent a week staying at the notorious Kurringal Flats in Darwin - here is what she found.

Kurringal Flats are three, four-storey buildings of poverty, dysfunction and entrenched disadvantage dumped in the middle of one of Darwin's poshest suburbs, Fannie Bay.

Walking through the back gate past the no alcohol sign feels like you are stepping into an alternative universe.
....
Transvestite Ziggy Wilhelmsen, 50, believes people on the outside think he and all the residents of Kurringal Flats are creeps.

''The society around here thinks we are a big waste of time,'' he says sitting cross-legged on his couch in a shiny, dark brown wig.

''Sure we are poor and not much of us had a lot of education but we are a real mixed group here.''
....
Kurringal Flats was built by the federal government in 1966.
....

Transvestite Ziggy Wilhelmsen at home at Kurringal Flats in Darwin. Picture: Daniel Hartley-Allen

"Some had to be carted away - they did not make it," Mr Williams said.

"But there is this guy in the front block who dresses up as a woman. He has been there for years."

That is Ziggy Wilhelmsen.

He moved into Kurringal Flats with a wife, who suffered from schizophrenia in 2003.

Two years later, his wife divorced him and moved out.

After that he became a she.

"I became aware of my body and that I am a hermaphrodite," Ms Wilhelmsen said.

She says police have broken down her door several times and taken her to hospital.

But she denies she is a schizophrenic.

"Possibly bi-polar," she said.

"But I don't hear voices."

She pays $148 a fortnight for her two-bedroom unit.

A psychiatric nurse comes every 28 days to give her an injection.

She does not go out much.

"Some people are friendly with me here. There is a guy downstairs - he says I look pretty with make-up. But there is others that say 'ugly old hermaphrodite'."

Instead, Ms Wilhelmsen spends most of her time nutting out Einstein's theory of relativity.

"I am very lonely," she said.

"I have not had any sort of contact with people for a long time."

[Cindy]

Mental Health care by proxy.

Advanced mental health care? Gaol.

Wonder why they made fun of the featured person, but then it is so much more fun if you can laugh at a real freak. A drunk Abo doesn't raise a smile anymore.

In Victorian times they used to pay money to watch people in Bedlam.

Now we buy 'news' papers.

I hate people.

[spacial]

Agreed Cindy. It's stinks.

While the newspapers must bear responsibility, those that buy this stuff are equally to blame.

In the late 70s I moved into a flat which was in a block in one of the most run down areas of N Edinburgh. Rubbish and vermin everywhere. Police regularly seen chasing criminals. Though I never experienced any violence from anyone there, there was a continual air of tension.

The common stairway stank of urine, walls covered in graffiti and soot from regular fires in the common rubbish chute.

A group of us got together one day ad scrubbed the stairway, using brooms, buckets of cheap soap and a hose. We got it noticeably clean and the smell gone. Then we started to pick up rubbish around the bins. People asked us why and we said we were doing it for us. We didn't care if others joined in. Frankly, it started as an expression of utter frustration.

Soon others did, other blocks of flats. The area became noticeably cleaner and more relaxed, within a matter of a couple of weeks. Though still untidy. still damaged, still over grown.

We set up an informal action group. We wrote to the local council to ask for support.

Then the left wing suddenly appeared, claiming they had lived there most of their lives! They organised the local action group putting themselves in charge. They ranted about this Tory Government, that Capitalists and so on. Then the local council called a meeting and basically made fun of us all, telling us that all we had done is what people in better areas do all the time. That we don't get extra because we haven't done enough.

The point is, those who live at the bottom of the heap do so because it makes the people at the top feel they have got something.

A man living is a shack is rich compared to a man living under newspaper. The powerful will always be a bit more that the rest of us. If we take power they want more.

There is no reason why people should have to live like those in Darwin or those in N Edinburgh or the most down trodden areas of some town USA. The problems of crime exist because those in power want it so. They keep us down so the powerful can take it easy. It's all our own fault. There is nothing any of us can do. It will never change.

All we can do is pull our selves out.