History of the Ngkarte Mikwekenhe Community

The Catholic Church sent a permanent Parish priest, Father Long to Alice Springs in 1929. By 1930 the church had built a small church in Hartley Street. The second parish priest, Father Paddy Maloney, began the “Little Flower Mission” in the back yard of the presbytery in 1935.

The main reason the Arrernte Aborigines were living on the edge of Alice Springs was because they had lost their land. It was not really that they preferred ‘handouts’ although no doubt the wonders of the white people, good and bad, attracted them. Before Father Maloney started the Mission at Charles Creek, the Aboriginals were getting rations supplied by the government – food, calico, blankets and essentials. This was all done through the police stations of the Northern territory and in the case of the Eastern Arrernte people, around Alice Springs, at the Old Police Station at the Gap. So what attracted them to Father Maloney’s mission ? It would have been two things, the spiritual – all Aborigines, as those who know them well will testify, are very spiritual people, also they were finding friendship and Acceptance from their pale-faced neighbours. (1988, p.5)

Frank McGarry, a lay missionary from Manly NSW joined father Maloney in 1935 and they moved the mission to Charles Creek, after threats from the local town’s folk who were not happy about the number of Arrernte people living behind the presbytery...

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