In a dry creek bed a few hundred metres from the centre of Laverton, a small town in Western Australia's Goldfields, the mess from a day of heavy drinking is left for all to see.
Skull Creek, a sacred part of the traditional landowners' Dreamtime story, is littered with dozens of empty beer cans and several bottles of spirits.
As Wongatha elder Janice Scott kicks over a can while walking through with her granddaughter Sarah Sullivan, she gets angry.
"Our mob are supposed to be cultural people … but they don't care about this earth," she says, grabbing a fistful of red dirt.
"They don't really care about their culture, the land — just causing havoc and making rubbish everywhere they go."
She points at the empty cans.
"It's all because of this," she says.
'Their sacred thing'
Ms Scott is one of several Indigenous leaders calling for tougher liquor restrictions in the remote WA mining town amid an increase in alcohol-fuelled violence.
While Alice Springs has been in the national spotlight for its well-documented alcohol problems, Laverton – 1,587 kilometres away from the Red Centre, along the Great Central Road – has its own troubles.
The northern Goldfields town's only pub and bottle shop, the Desert Inn Hotel, has introduced temporary restrictions on takeaway sales twice since Australia Day.
The restrictions lasted between 24 and 72 hours.
"The way our mob are going, alcohol has become their sacred thing — alcohol, drugs," Ms Scott said.
"The Laverton Desert Inn has become their sacred site now."
Ms Scott's granddaughter Sarah Sullivan said she had a great childhood growing up in Laverton, but her children were experiencing something far different.
"It's pretty bad … our kids can't even go down town without being humbugged or abused by drunks," she said, looking over at the mess in Skull Creek.
"How would they feel if we went to their community, sat around getting drunk all day and trashed their town?"
Ms Sullivan's 17-year-old daughter Lexie said she had been "sworn at or chased" by drunks on the street.
"They always want money and smokes," she said.
"When we say no and walk off, they chip us, swear at us and call us filthy names."
Countdown to midday
A daily ritual in Laverton is the countdown to midday, when the bottle shop opens.
On Tuesday there were about 20 people waiting for the door to open.
Lexie said she could tell whether she would be getting a good night's sleep by the number of people lining up to buy alcohol at midday.
"You can tell there's going to be big arguments, big fights," she said.
"No-one can sleep at all."
Pakaanu Aboriginal Corporation chief executive Marty Seelander said that was the sad reality in Laverton.
"In 20 minutes, we saw close to 10 blocks and God knows how many bottles of Jim Beam going out that door," he said.
"People are now being challenged for their behaviour in the community and it's around alcohol … people have had enough."
Struggling to keep the peace
The Shire of Laverton's population at the 2021 Census was 1,169 people, 184 of whom identified as Aboriginal.
The result was heavily skewed by the mining industry — more than half of the recorded population worked at nearby gold, nickel or rare earth mines.
It is harder to tell the number of permanent residents in Laverton, but they are outnumbered by fly-in, fly-out miners, who live in a camp surrounded by barbed wire.
Police in the town are also heavily outnumbered and struggling to keep the peace as they operate below their posted strength of 14.
"If people have no hope and purpose they turn to alcohol, and people have to understand that alcohol is a symptom of the problem," Mr Seelander said.
"We do need some form of strategic planning in our community to tackle some of these issues, and it's not just around alcohol.
"It's around housing, employment, health, there's a whole range of issues that are affecting people at the moment."
'Rife everywhere'
Hotel publican Rob Wedge, who also sits on the council, said his staff kept a daily list of everyone who had purchased alcohol and would often restrict sales from repeat customers.
The temporary restrictions banned the sale of spirits and limited beer sales to a six-pack per person per day.
The operating hours of the bottle shop were also reduced.
"Obviously restrictions affect everybody, not just the troublemakers in town," Mr Wedge said.
"But we work very closely with the police, and if there's going to be trouble we do the best that we can to ensure that there's not going to be that many ramifications at the end of the night or the following day."
Mr Wedge said he had lived in Laverton for 32 years and the alcohol problems were not a new development in remote Australia.
He said dry communities like Warburton in the Ngaanyatjarra lands should consider building a tavern offering mid-strength beer to support responsible drinking habits, rather than people drinking to excess when visiting Laverton or bigger centres like Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
"I think it's rife everywhere … whether it's Laverton, Leonora or whether it's Alice Springs, all those areas, these people are just alcoholics," Mr Wedge said.
"If they don't have alcohol here, they'll go somewhere else and get it.
"The problem has always been there — always. It's a lot less now than the early days.
"When I got here, they were able to buy five-litre casks — as many as they liked."
Lip service 'no good'
Shire of Laverton President Pat Hill blames the recent unrest on the end of the federal government's cashless debit card, which saw a mass exodus from the trial in October last year.
The card, which was trialled in Laverton from 2018, quarantined welfare payments and could not be used to gamble or buy alcohol.
"The cashless debit card, it worked — not 100 per cent, but it worked and the families got fed," Mr Hill said.
"A lot of the problems stem from when people come in from the lands and they're cashed up.
"I think the police have got to work more closely with the hotel and, as soon as there is violence or anything arising, the restrictions have got to come in place straight away."
Mr Hill also urged the federal and state governments to intervene and said the amount of mining royalties coming out of the region meant Laverton should be better supported.
"There's no good with just lip service," he said.
"Something really constructive has got to be done, because it's happening all through remote Australia."
WA Police was contacted for comment.
'Generation after generation'
Ms Scott has been painting the story of Laverton and the alcohol struggles of its Indigenous people in a traditional Aboriginal artwork.
She is desperate for younger generations to embrace their culture instead of alcohol.
"Somewhere the cycle needs to be broken so these kids can look at alcohol as not being normal," she said.
"That's not a normal part of our life — it never was.
"We've never been a drunken people … our life was so, so different until the interruption happened.
"That pub over there … all the sickness and everything happens because of it.
"It's standing there in all its glory, their sacred site … killing generation after generation.
"They're all in the grave now."
