Fiona Dhawunymurruwuy, a 52-year-old bilingual teacher from Milingimbi in Arnhem Land, will be evicted on Sunday from the Yilli short-stay accommodation (YiSSA) complex in Darwin, along with 120 other First Nations people. The facility is closing after the Northern Territory government failed to renegotiate a five-year lease.
Dhawunymurruwuy, who had her left leg amputated last month due to ongoing health problems, moved into YiSSA in April 2025 to be closer to dialysis facilities and her work at Malak primary school in Darwin's northern suburbs. She helps students transition from her community of Milingimbi to schooling in Darwin, teaching in both English and Yolngu Matha.
Federal offer rejected
The NT government has rejected support from the federal government to keep the facility open, turning down a $6.5m offer to purchase the demountable buildings from owner AUSCO Modular as recently as this week. The offer was made under the condition that Yilli Rreung Housing Aboriginal Corporation would continue as the service provider.
Instead, the remaining residents will be relocated 100km away in the small town of Batchelor. Visiting YiSSA on Thursday, the federal minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarindirri McCarthy, said it was a "deeply sad day". McCarthy said the offer from the federal government "still remains on the table" and was a "fair and a very reasonable offer" that would get families through the wet season.
Residents face uncertain future
The NT chief minister, Lia Finocchiaro, last month labelled the funding offer a "waste of taxpayers' hard-earned money". Her office did not respond to a request for comment this week. At its height, the facility housed almost 400 First Nations people, including women and children escaping domestic violence and people visiting from remote communities for medical treatment.
In July, when the Territory government informed Yilli Housing they had until 11 October to vacate all residents, there were 383 people living at YiSSA — including 145 children — with another 300 on a waitlist.
Speaking from Palmerston regional hospital where she is undergoing rehab from her recent surgery, Dhawunymurruwuy said she is working hard to get healthy again but feels it was all for nothing. "I had my amputation and now I'm doing my rehab, the exercise, training as much as I can," she says. "All I need is a prosthetic leg and to train myself. I'm training to make my leg muscles and my hand strong again. The problem is, if I finish all of this, where will I go? There's no place for me when I get out. Should I go straight to living in the long grass? I've never slept in long grasses ever in my life."
Protest and concerns
Dhawunymurruwuy is referring to First Nations people experiencing homelessness in Darwin who sleep rough in the city's parks, open spaces and bushland, known locally as "long-grassers". An estimated 1,000 people sleep in the long grass on any given night. More than 90% are First Nations people, many have travelled to Darwin from remote communities for medical treatment, family visits or cultural reasons, and become stuck due to poverty and a severe public housing shortage.
As the clock ticked down on the eviction of YiSSA residents, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Darwin Convention Centre, where the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute held its biennial Australian Homelessness Conference. The rally, organised by grassroots movement Justice Not Jails (JNJ), called for the NT government to reconsider its position and partner with the federal government to purchase the facility.
Natalie Hunter, an organiser with JNJ and Nyikina and Jabirr Jabirr woman, says the Finocchiaro government had not considered a "range of issues" before allowing the lease to lapse, and tells Guardian Australia the decision to move people to Batchelor was rushed and ill-conceived. "There's no resources there, so how do you cater for even half of those 400 families," she says. "They've probably got over 100 children, so how do you have a hundred children coming into your local school without even having any plan, or direction in where they're placing people? The health service in Batchelor only caters for that little town. It has not been planned. There's nothing out there. The CLP are doing this on the run."
All Dhawunymurruwuy wants is to have a house of her own, and to "get back to work because those kids miss me very much". "They said that they are missing me," she says. "They called me and they was talking to me … even the teachers I work with, they miss me."
