The Devastating Results When Remote Communities Are Shut Down

"If we didn’t have to leave I believe she would have still been here today."

"If we didn’t have to leave I believe she would have still been here today," Floyd Grant says of his 12-year old daughter. “I truly believe that."

Allan Clarke / BuzzFeed News.

Tears streaming down his face, Grant says his daughter is just one of many who couldn’t cope after his community was forced from their hometown of Oombulgurri, Western Australia, in 2011.

Speaking to BuzzFeed News in the nearby town of Wyndham, the former chairman of Oombulgurri Council says locals are struggling to cope since being forced to leave their homes. Suicide and homelessness are tearing families apart.

Suicide has continued to rise since the community closed down almost three years ago, Mr Grant tells BuzzFeed News. Four young people have taken their lives in the past year. His own daughter is one of those four.

"I see young kids today and I just feel like they are just gone already. It hasn’t gotten better, it’s gotten worse."

A female elder who wishes to remain anonymous tells BuzzFeed News that young people from Oombulgurri are so traumatised and dispossessed by the relocation that they're suffering from severe depression.

"The worse thing about it is, we are losing babies. Kids as young as 12 are hanging themselves. How are they (WA government) keeping us safe?"

“Despite extensive efforts to address the issues that have plagued Oombulgurri, there remains considerable risk of further decline"

The decision to close Oombulgurri by the WA state government was made after a report by the state coroner in 2008 about five deaths in the community, four of which were suicides.

In 2011, the WA Indigenous Affairs Minister Peter Collier said the government had spent years trying to fix the crisis.

"Despite extensive efforts to address the issues that have plagued Oombulgurri, there remains considerable risk of further decline in community dysfunction without immediate Government action," he said at the time.

The government claimed that sexual abuse was rife and that suicide and alcoholism were out of control, adding that the financial burden of keeping the dysfunctional community open was not feasible and that the Department of Indigenous Affairs and Housing would continue to find accommodation for residents.

At the time of closing down the community the government estimated that roughly 30 people remained in Oombulgurri, houses and buildings were later demolished to ensure no-one could return.

Last year a report by Amnesty International condemned the forced closure and said, "The safety of residents is of paramount importance, but the wholesale eviction of people from their homes is not the answer, and has only caused further trauma.

"We got the rough end of the stick"

Allan Clarke / BuzzFeed News

Shutting down the community was meant to keep children and families safe, but former Oombulgurri housing manager Ivan Morgan says it's had the opposite effect.

"We got the rough end of the stick. They [the WA government] are saying we can look after them [children] better if they come into town. That’s just rubbish," Morgan says.

All residents, an estimated 107 people, were moved to Wyndham 45 kilometres away. Morgan says that people were forced into inadequate accommodation in Wyndham, with families unable to fit into small dongers, similar to a shipping container, that were provided.

"They keep us in a pig pen, in those dongers down there and we just said we can’t stay here because families couldn’t fit in the one place."

Morgan tells BuzzFeed news that a lot of people are now sleeping in the marshland that surrounds Wyndham and in parks in nearby towns.

"In Kununurra there’s the biggest mob of Oombulgurri sleeping in the park and people just drink now. They drink six days a week, with one day off on Sunday."

BuzzFeed News has sent a request for comment to the WA Department of Indigenous Affairs regarding their promise to provide accommodation to former residents.

In November 2014 Western Australian premier, Colin Barnett said he would close up to 150 Aboriginal communities, saying the state could no longer subsidise essential services.

That lead to a national backlash which subsequently saw the Premier soften his stance. The government is now in talks with Kimberley Aboriginal organisations regarding the future of remote communities.

Grant says the devastation caused to his own family after Oombulgurri was shut down should be a warning that closures do not work.

"We have lost all of our identity, all our people [were] affected by it. Drugs, suicide, depression. The government said they moved us to protect the community, but we have nothing now."