Largely by chance a discussion occurred on 13 August between the central Australian census manager and a senior member of the Tangentyere staff about how the census collection was progressing. As an observer who knew both these people, I was both privy to this discussion and a minor participant in it. It was quickly agreed that the current collection process was proving too arduous and was unlikely to be carried through to completion in the next two or three weeks. There was a danger of burning out the interviewers and the CCs, as well as the individuals being interviewed, before the task was done. A suggestion emerged: focusing first and foremost on the SIHFs would ensure that at least a basic enumeration would be completed.

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The central Australian census manager decided to run this idea past his superior in Darwin. Within a couple of days a decision had been made, essentially to follow this course of action. Four columns were to be added manually to the SIHF for the recording of information relating to what Aboriginal language the person spoke, what the standard of their spoken English was, whether they were on CDEP, and whether they were of Aboriginal origin. Interviewers could then transfer these and the other basic data items from the enhanced SIHF to SIPFs in their own time away from the interviewees. This way the interviewers would be paid for the completion of the SIPFs, without the full SIPF process jeopardising the basic enumeration.

On Thursday 16 August another meeting was held at Tangentyere to see how things were going and to inform interviewers and CCs of this revised approach. Two interviewers had by this time fallen by the wayside due to the arduousness of the work, without having done much collecting. Two other interviewers had by the time of this meeting completed enumerations in a single town camp with which they were familiar, but were at this stage either unable or unwilling to take on further work. One of these was one of the two original interviewers, an older woman who was a senior resident of the town camp she had enumerated. She had worked diligently at the census collection task in this one town camp over a two-week period and now had other things to attend to in her life, including a funeral to organise. The other, a younger woman who did not live in the town camp she was enumerating, had informally recruited her father, a Tangentyere employee, to help her with the enumeration and together they had managed to do one camp in three days. But this was clearly more than enough for her.

So there were, in fact, only three interviewers who were available and willing to carry on collecting after this revised enumeration procedure had been devised. Yet the job at this stage was probably still less than half done. Two of these three remaining interviewers worked with one CC and one with the other. The team of three was quickly converted to the new collection procedure and conducted the census in three more town camps over the week of 17–24 August, filling out enhanced SIHFs in the camps and SIPFs elsewhere later. The lone interviewer working with the other CC was less keen on the idea of filling out forms away from people and so persisted with the original collection procedure during this week. He was, however, clearly a very competent collector with more stamina for the work than many of the others, so this was not necessarily a problem.

In the final week of 24–31 August, perhaps one-quarter of the census collection task in the Alice Springs town camps still remained to be done. But the two interviewers working with the one CC had by now had enough. One had domestic issues with which he had been dealing all along, which required him to move house, while the other simply lost interest. The two CCs and the one remaining interviewer all became interviewers and all began using the revised collection methodology. This was necessary just in order to get the job done by 31 August, when the actual census day on 7 August was for most people becoming a quite distant memory and the central Australian census manager was returning to Darwin.

The census collection in the Alice Springs town camps had, in essence, taken the whole of July to initiate and the whole of August to carry out. About 25 people had been- 87 - suggested as possible interviewers, but only ten commenced training. Only seven completed training and commenced interviewing and only five lasted beyond the first few interviews, one of these only for three days and with the informal support and assistance of her father. A major change in procedure had been made half way through the collection period because only about 20 per cent of the work had by then been done. Even with this change in procedure, all but one of the interviewers was burnt out before the end of the process and the CCs were obliged to take on the role of interviewers just in order to get the job finished. Eventually about 980 people were enumerated in 190 dwellings in the Alice Springs town camps, over half of whom were enumerated using the revised collection procedure.