Erwin Chlanda, Alice Springs News

It’s enough to make your heart beat faster: Dollars and visitor numbers graphs shooting skywards, heading for $5.3 billion (yes – with a “b”) in earnings from 2.7 million visitors. Wow. Before your blood pressure too goes through the roof, note that the numbers are demand targets, as operators were told by the Department of Tourism last week, in an update of what’s snappily called the T2030 Strategy.

Water bombing, which is on stand-by around the clock in the Adelaide Hills during summer, “could have a role” in protecting Alice suburbs. Planned burning should be extended in The Centre’s national parks. And controlling buffel is critical for reducing the risk of fire around Alice Springs. That’s the view of Dr Rohan Fisher, CDU’s Northern Institute fire researcher. Instead what Alice Springs had over the weekend was a planned burn that got out of hand, started possibly at the wrong time, causing an inferno that destroyed 25,000 hectares, in and near the West MacDonnells National Park, and threatening the edge of the town.

NT Minister Chansey Paech has not responded to a question, put to him three times yesterday by the Alice Springs News, whether his government is buying the land of the former St Mary’s Children’s Village just south of The Gap ... This has caused distress to some former residents as well as concern over the future of the chapel on the site.

“SUB blends the body, sound, objects and lighting to imagine a future world where humans have burrowed underground to live. “It is an incredible work for incredible times, speculating on the future of a world transforming before our eyes.”

Adrian Tomlinson. Fire is one of the terrible consequences of buffel, the invasive grass many call a weed, and which is declared as such in neighbouring South Australia ... Yet the NT Government seems to be responding to this emergency without great strategy, judging by answers given to Araluen’s independent MLA Robyn Lambley, who put questions in Parliament suggested by the Alice Springs News.

The Chief Minister is clearly taking no account of the difference between the impact on the society of DV – which is horrendous but usually happens in a private space, and needs targeted measures – and the crime that happens mostly in public locations, much of it committed by children: its reporting in national media – factual and fabricated – has led to a drop in the town’s vital tourism business by about 50 per cent.

Preliminary crowd figures for the Alice Springs Show were 19,000 over the two days ... Brendan Fogarty, a trade exhibitor over several years, says it was quieter than usually but better than last year ... “A few enquiries, a few sales, not a bad weekend,” says Mr Fogarty. “There’s always someone to have a talk to.”

“When our children come to us, and we’re available, we are there, and we’re listening, and it could just be just 30 seconds, it could be something very important they want to tell us, then stop and listen, send that message that we are available.” These thoughts come to a town that spends a great deal of time talking about a cohort of children, different ones from year to year but always around 50 to 120 of them, out in the streets at night, breaking into homes and businesses, trashing, stealing cars, torching some.

The current drop in crime in Alice Springs coincides with a decrease in tourism of around 40 per cent in several sectors, triggered largely by the nation-wide reporting of crime in Alice Springs ... Mayor Matt Paterson says following his speaking out the Stronger Futures was brought back and a $48.8m grant came from Canberra, partly to be used for more police.

Of the two budding NT government art galleries, one is making news: The one in Darwin, because construction is under way. At the opposite end of the Territory, and of government attention, there is no news about the Alice Springs “national” Aboriginal gallery because its senior director, Tracy Puklowski, is not able, not willing, not permitted, not whatever to answer media questions.