It’s the noise which is at first most jarring.
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People shouting at the top of their lungs, an unintelligible (to my ears) drunken rant.
The swearing is unfortunately easy to understand but the violence in the volume, the raw anger, it is disturbing.
I have never once been scared walking the streets of Katherine, not that I walk them much at night. But I am a bigger person than most, I admit.
Last night I was not so much scared, as on high alert.
But it was all too obvious Katherine’s main street is dangerous, it is definitely not safe.
Someone has flicked a switch on Katherine.
In just a few weeks, according to those who know, we have returned to the bad old days.
Single people, groups of two or three, or even five to 10, aimlessly walking the main street.
Some are drunk, not all.
This was the Katherine before strict alcohol sale laws were introduced three or so years ago.
A change in government, a change in policy, and back we go.
I had just come from a Katherine Town Council meeting where Mayor Fay Miller, no fan of the new government’s grog laws in the first place, sounded the alarm.
Mayor Miller spoke of the return of anti-social behaviour in the streets, broken glass, a “backward slide” in town safety.
So I went to have a closer look.
A scout about by car revealed there were a large number of people in Katherine Terrace, Railway Terrace and First Street walking about on a very hot night.
I walked up and down Katherine Terrace and was only approached once, for a cigarette.
For the most part, people seemed their normal nice and passed me by without incident.
But some were surly, drunk or stoned.
Women were more violent to one another, much more than men. This was about 8pm.
There were constant police patrols, cars driving slowly up, down and around.
The fights, and there were a few in a short space of a time, were more like push and shoves, and were again mostly women. More noisy than brutal.
I would not have taken my wife and family on that walk with me.
There is an uneasy edge to Katherine, that’s for sure.
The Mayor is right, there has been a change, and not for the better.