An Aboriginal community has saved up its rent money from the Uluru park to fund a community pool. Source: AAP
IT gets hot and dusty in the Aboriginal desert community of Mutitjulu and for seven years the kids near Uluru have had nowhere to cool down.
That has changed with a community investment of $1.6 million of rent money from the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park to partly fund a swimming pool.
Opened on Tuesday, the pool should help improve both the health and welfare of the children.
"There's a number of sites around (neighbouring) Yulara with swimming pools but the kids weren't necessarily welcome there and were moved on, on many, many occasions," director of the Central Land Council David Ross tells AAP.
"There's all sorts of reasons: tourists, paying guests, maybe they didn't like the behaviour of the kids. Kids are pretty noisy, and people are there for their vacation."
Not everyone has access to a car in that southwestern corner of the Northern Territory, and it is hard for the children to get around.
"The kids were looking for something to do in the community, and were swimming and playing in muddy sewer water," Mr Ross says.
So in 2006, the traditional owners put $100,000 of the national park's annual rent toward the construction of the Mutitjulu Tjurpinytjaku Centre pool, with a $3 million grant coming from the Aboriginals Benefit Account.
The traditional owners also added another $1.5 million to ensure the pool operates until 2017.
Mr Ross says it will benefit the community in innumerable ways, by providing employment and lifting social, health and educational standard.
"We hear all sorts of anecdotal evidence that, if you have a pool, it'll improve long-term health and welfare for children with breathing problems, eye problems, ear, nose, throat, all those issues," he says.
"People are in water, so they're going to be much cleaner and they're physically doing something in that water rather than breathing in dust all the time."
A 'no school, no pool' policy will keep kids attending classes, he says.
"It's an improvement not just to the Commonwealth but the Northern Territory government's bottom line in terms of how much they spend on health and welfare and whatnot in communities," Mr Ross says.
After 2017, the community will need additional funding, so Mr Ross hopes the economic argument will sway the government to invest in an area.
However, he knows of three other community pools at Areyonga, Kintore and Santa Teresa in Central Australia that have had to close because they aren't receiving any funding.
Mr Ross said that costs would ideally be shared so traditional owners can invest their rent money in other community projects.
The Labor party promised to fund them all if re-elected, but Mr Ross says the CLC is still waiting on word from the new coalition government on whether it will support what he says is a great asset to the community.
"If you'd seen these kids jumping in the pool, they don't need to tell you (how happy they are)," he says.
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