Council Chairperson

Harold Matasia: Chairperson, Aputula Community

"I've been here in Aputula Community for over thirty years. Before I came here I grew up in Thursday Island. I'm an Islander. When I was young I was a cane cutter in Gordonvale in Queensland. After the season was over I went to work on the railway and I worked my way all the way through South Australia. I went to Whyalla and worked on BHP steel for a year. From there I got a job at Duffield which was the railway siding south of Finke. I became the foreman of the siding, then I moved to Finke railway siding. I got married to a Lower Southern Arrernte woman, Agnes, and we had three daughters. The oldest one has passed away. The railway closed in 1978 and Aputula Community Council was formed. I joined the Aputula Housing Construction Company. We built houses in Amata, Fregon, Mimili, Ernabella, Utju and Indulkana. We made our own panels here in the work shed in Finke. I have been on and off the council for many years. I am the oldest council member from the original council still going. A lot of things have changed here over the years. We used to have a pub with pool tables and we would play every knock off time after work. When the railway finished, there used to be a lot of children crying. Hungry, because all the parents always spent the money on the grog. So the council closed the pub. Everything started to change then. Everybody always had plenty of tucker in their houses. Everybody worked and bought tucker, not grog.

We used to have a gravel road before, and we asked the government if they could help us put a bitumen road around the community. And then we built a new store, the old one closed and we built a brand new one, a big store.

It's a hard job being a chairperson. You've gotta be tough and fair for everyone. If you're chairperson you can't just look after your own family, you've got to look after all the people in the community. You've got to tell them what's right and wrong, for example when the advisor changed all the plans, for pension days and pay days. It was my job to tell everybody what was going on. After our council meetings we always have a community meeting to get approval from the community. I say to the community - you vote for us, you have to tell us what you want to happen in Aputula Community."