'All Aussies need grog restrictions'

Frank Shadforth, owner of Seven Emus cattle station near Borroloola in the Northern Territory, says the drinking culture in Australia is out of control. Picture: Brad Fleet Source: News Limited

FOR A man who's never had a drink in his life, Frank Shadforth knows a lot about alcohol. He's seen many family members -including his younger brother - perish from the drink.

The Aboriginal pastoralist, who lives on the Northern Territory's Seven Emu station near the Queensland border, believes the type of drinking problems that have plagued his nearby town of Borroloola, causing such violence and despair, are now evident among white people living in Sydney, Melbourne and Darwin.

"It's all over the country now,"he says.

"It's getting worse. I've never heard of it like this before. They're fighting in packs, not fighting one on one. They're like a pack of wolves. Killing people, young people, fighting all hours. Why?

"All they want to do it fight. They're hitting kids, they're hitting people just for looking at them."

Shadforth, aged 56, lives in one of the most isolated parts of Australia. But he is engaged: he listens to the radio, watches the television news, reads newspapers when he can and has recently become an internet user.

He believes there's a national alcohol crisis. "They need to restrict the grog,"Shadforth says. "At ten or twelve o'clock, they should close everything, all the pubs. Shut it down. Put people to work."

To hear an Aboriginal man have a go at all of us for our drinking carries obvious irony to those who consider Aborigines represent the hardest and most wrecked drinkers in our society.

But Shadforth doesn't think in terms of black or white. He sees a changing society where people are more interested in play than work.

Shadforth's father ran Seven Emu and Frank ended his schooling in Alice Springs in Grade Four, after which he went home to work. He says he's never had the time to drink.

"I've never had a drink, never,"he says. "Never even tasted it. I can see what's around. I grew up and spent a lot of time working, and I wasn't hardly in town much. I didn't see any need for it. My family was drinking, and why walk around like a poisoned dog? I couldn't see sense in that."

Shadforth's younger brother died from dehydration after coming off a drinking bender on Seven Emu, only 800 metres from the homestead. "We was very close and that really put me off alcohol,"he says.

"If you look at Borroloola, they were dying at 30 but now they're dying in their teens from alcohol. My own nieces and nephews are dying. But it's not only black people, it's white people. I'm pointing the finger at everybody.

"Our bodies aren't working now, we're soft people. You're eating ice cream and jelly, so your body is soft. Twenty or 30 years ago, people didn't fight so much and get killed. Everybody was working, then. They were harder. They could handle it better."

Shadforth believes there is a direct link between unemployment and alcohol—related violence. He wants to the government to shut off the dole for young people and use the same money to fund small businesses.

He would like to see the money used to initially pay wages until people get back in the cycle of working.

Shadforth believes the young people who are fighting and brawling and ending up with brain damage in the bigger cities are all unemployed. On this point, we disagree: I put it to him there's every chance they're fully employed, cashed-up young people going on binges.

"Well, I'd stop the dole, give it to the old people and pensioners,"he says. "Everyone should go to work.

"You look at Black Caviar. They train it to be the best horse in the world. But if you're sitting down, eating and drinking on your backside, what good are you?

"You're brain is sitting still when you're sitting down. If you're active, you'll be like Black Caviar. A winner."

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