3. A vast improvement: the 2006 enumeration in the Alice Springs town camps

The conduct of the 2006 Census in the Alice Springs town camps was a vast improvement on 2001. Later I will suggest some reasons for this, as well as identifying some remaining issues. I will begin, however, by recalling some of the major problems of the 2001 collection process and identifying developments since. I will then tell the story of the 2006 collection in the Alice Springs town camps, as I observed it. This should lay some foundations for understanding more analytically in the later sections of the chapter how and why the 2006 Census collection process in the Alice Springs town camps was such a vast improvement on 2001.