Alternative Interventions

Not all interventions in Aboriginal Australia are inspired by external agents, politics or ideology. Some arise from simple, pragmatic responses to community needs where people and their aspirations are central.

Historian Alan Mayne unravels a story of people, place and relationships. At once both personal and intensely political, this is a journey of ideas into action; intervention through innovation.

In 2010, thirty years after an initial start-up grant of $40,000, an Aboriginal owned science and technology organisation (CAT) was operating with an annual turnover in excess of $20 million and a staff of 130 providing technical services to over 500 remote Aboriginal communities spread across the northern half of Australia. An institution linking people with technology, sustaining livelihoods on country.

'This remarkable story of persistence and purpose should be told as an inspiration to all concerned with the development of appropriate technologies to meet new challenges in human societies. It encourages optimism about the future of Aboriginal people in a climate of uncertainty.' - Professor Basil Hetzel AC - former Chancellor University of South Australia and Emeritus Professor University of Adelaide

'It is clear that it is the human dimension of science and technology about which the least is known.' - Bruce Walker, founder, Centre for Appropriate Technology

About the Author

Alan Mayne (PhD, Australian National University, 1980) currently holds a Research Chair at the University of South Australia, and previously worked at the University of Melbourne and the University of Queensland. He has held fellowships at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, Pennsylvania State University, the University of California at Berkeley, and Boston University.