The ABS's central Australian census manager arrived in Alice Springs in mid June 2001 and began gearing up the operation. The plan for the discrete Aboriginal communities, both in Alice Springs and out bush, was to conduct the census over a period of perhaps two or three weeks in the month before the official census day on 7 August. The intention was to avoid the complication of a major movement of people from these communities to the Yuendumu Sports Weekend on 4–6 August. A related aim was to enumerate people over a period of time in a fairly usual place of residence, rather than just somewhere they happened to be visiting on a particular night.

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The time-frame of this plan began gradually to change when it proved somewhat more difficult to recruit interviewer-collectors (henceforth interviewers) and CCs for the town camps than had first been anticipated. Four potential CCs had been identified by the ABS's central Australian census manager in conjunction with Tangentyere, two of whom were the Tangentyere housing employees, one of whom was an ex-Tangentyere employee now working with another Aboriginal organisation in town, and one of whom was a former long-term Department of Social Security officer. All were, at least partly, of Aboriginal descent and were well known in the area. At an initial strategy meeting and training session for CCs organised for 7 July, only one of the four turned up, along with the Tangentyere housing manager. At a second training session organised for 20 July, only the two who were not employees of Tangentyere showed up and it was soon ascertained that the two Tangentyere employees had decided they could not combine census collection with their current employment responsibilities relating to housing work.

This training session went well, with both coordinators clearly catching on quickly to the nature of the task they were being asked to undertake. One indicated that he was somewhat restricted in the time he could devote to the job, because of his employment elsewhere. But the other was not otherwise employed and had more time at his disposal. Both were asked to try and find other Aboriginal people who might be interested in being interviewers and a number of possible times for an interviewer training session were identified a week to ten days hence. It was also decided that the central Australian census manager should try to meet the Tangentyere Executive Council the following week to try to build some more support within Tangentyere for the census collection process now that it was imminent.

As well as hoping that the two CCs would be able to come up with Aboriginal people who might be interested in being interviewers, the central Australian census manager also put in some time over the next week encouraging the Tangentyere Job Shop to refer people on to him. An interviewer training session was finally organised for 31 July and five potential interviewers and the two CCs attended. This training session went for three to four hours. All the participants seemed interested and to be picking up the idea of the work quite quickly, but the training was as yet incomplete as none had themselves practiced filling in actual census forms. The training session was called to a halt around 1.30 p.m. as the seven participants all felt they had had enough for one day, and a continuation of the session was organised for the next morning. Only three of the five newly-recruited potential interviewers showed up the next day to complete the training, together with one of the two CCs. All went well, although there were some interesting issues raised during the process of practising filling out forms. These are worthy of further discussion so they can be revisited in the light of actual collection experience.

Starting with the SIHF, the central Australian census manager emphasised that the ABS in the Northern Territory was trying to enumerate primarily on a usual residence basis in these discrete Aboriginal communities. This meant, he explained, that all people who had lived in a dwelling in a community for more than six months of the previous year or were likely to live there for more than six months of the next year could be counted as 'people who live here', the language the SIHF used to describe usual residents (see Appendix B).- 81 - He also noted that visitors or 'people who are staying here' should also be listed on the SIHF, but that if they were also likely to be counted elsewhere they did not need a SIPF filled out for them. Some visitors would require a SIPF, but some would not. The count, on the SIPFs, was thus to be usual residents plus some visitors, though all visitors present were to be listed on the SIHFs. This seemed reasonably clear and well understood.

A little further on in discussion of the SIHF, it was suggested by one or two of the trainees that it might be difficult to get a figure for the rent paid for the house from any one individual interviewee, as the Tangentyere rent policy was partly a per person contribution scheme and not just a single, clear per house rent. It was suggested that perhaps the rental information should be obtained direct from Tangentyere, rather than from the interviewees and that this could tie in with the construction of the Dwelling Check Lists. As noted above, the Dwelling Check Lists which were being drawn up for the town camps were derived from Tangentyere's administrative records and covered any dwelling for which Tangentyere was attempting to collect some rent.

There was also some discussion of the issue of age and the fact that some Aboriginal people might not know their age precisely. It was however agreed that they might know their year of birth, from which age could be calculated, but that if they did not, an estimate of age could be made from discussing with them other people and events.

Another question which caused some concern was the income question (Q. 28, see Appendix C) on the SIPF. It was felt that the distinction between before and after tax would not be made and some people may say what they get weekly, as Tangentyere CDEP employees are paid weekly, and that a quick calculation would need to be made. Some of the concern about this question was allayed when the collectors realised that they did not have to obtain precise income figures, but merely had to place people in pre-determined categories. Some discussion ensued as to which of these income categories people on various Centrelink payments and CDEP would probably be in.

Another question which caused comment, rather than concern, was whether the person had looked for a job in the last four weeks. It was generally agreed that not many of the people in the town camps would be actively looking for work, as there was not much work around that they had any chance of obtaining, but that they would probably say they were looking for work if they were on Newstart Payments because that was what the conditions of payment required them to say when asked that question by Centrelink.

At the end of this second morning of training it was agreed that the three collectors and one CC were ready to start. It was agreed for all to meet the next morning at nine o'clock at a particular small town camp and to 'have a go' before the people there started moving around for the day. It was generally agreed that early morning was going to be the best time of day to get people in the camps because of movement out of the camps to other places in town later in the day and also because of drinking going on in the camps later in the day.

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The next day, Thursday 2 August, only two of the three fully-trained interviewers turned up at the small town camp for the first collection, and the third never returned. There was at that point no Dwelling Check List for this camp, as there were no dwellings there for which Tangentyere was attempting to collect rent. The CC set about constructing a Dwelling Check List by looking around. There were five tin sheds without internal services and two sets of communal ablution blocks and toilets. Meanwhile one of the interviewers had approached one of the tin sheds and was beginning to complete a SIHF for it. A 'Person 1' was identified, somewhat arbitrarily, and others who had obviously spent the previous night sleeping in or around that tin shed were gradually added. Others, who had not so obviously slept in or around this tin shed the previous night but perhaps somewhere else around the camp, also came over and offered their names. Soon the SIHF contained a list of 14 people, and the interviewer and CC realised that it was perhaps becoming more of a communal personal checklist. The CC and the interviewer decided to abandon the idea of separate households in this small camp and just to work on this one SIHF. At that point, after about 15 minutes' work, the addition of people to this single SIHF was halted and attention was switched to filling out SIPFs for the 14 people now listed on the form.

Both interviewers now worked on the filling in of SIPFs for these 14 people for about two hours, while the CC, who did not himself fill out SIPFs, provided support by calling people back to have their forms done and fielding questions about how answers to questions should be treated; for example what sorts of training courses qualified for a 'yes' answer in the post-school education questions, since many of these people had over the years undertaken some training course or another. By 11.15 a.m. SIPFs had been completed for 12 of the 14 people on the single SIHF, while the other two, it was indicated, had 'walked away' from the camp to do something else. One of the collectors, who lived at an adjacent town camp, agreed to come back at another time to try and track down these two. The people at the camp had begun to lose interest in the census collection process and no more were offering themselves to be put on either the existing single SIHF or on a new one. The interviewers too were tired and they did not actively try to identify and pursue any other individuals who might still be in the camp but not on the first SIHF. The CC and the interviewers agreed to adjourn for the day and the two interviewers agreed that they would continue on their own in other camps with which they were familiar the next day.

During that first morning's work I had, as an observer, noted 25 people in that camp at about 9.15 a.m. When I mentioned this to the central Australian census manager, he in turn mentioned it to the CC who replied that it had been ascertained that the other people in the camp that morning were just visitors and therefore did not need to be counted. If the principles enunciated in training had been followed, these visitors would of course have been listed on SIHFs and then divided into those who did and those who did not require a SIPF depending on whether they were likely to be counted elsewhere. But in practice, with the overall collection task proving somewhat time consuming and arduous, the idea of someone being a visitor was used by interviewers and the CC as a rationale for not listing them even on a SIHF, thereby reducing the task at hand to slightly more manageable proportions. The emphasis was, after all, as they had been told in training, on counting people where they are usual residents.

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We will return to these issues later. But as an observer of the collection at that first camp that first day, I should perhaps say that I was not entirely convinced by the line of argument that the other 11 people in the camp that morning were visitors. I had observed some discussion about particular people who were present that morning not 'belonging' there. However, from the way this was said I had interpreted it to mean as much that they were not particularly welcome at the camp, as that they did not usually live there or were not currently staying there. Indeed, it seemed likely that the forceful assertion of their not 'belonging' probably reflected the fact that they had stayed there a while, uninvited, and were likely to continue doing so for some time to come. The likelihood of their being counted elsewhere in the census was at least questionable. And the census had now been done in this camp, except for the issue of returning to get SIPFs for the last two people on the single SIHF.