“Me and my family, we need to go somewhere safer. We need much more support,” Mr Ngakyunkwokka said. He says he is still reliving the traumatic events of January 1. “It was just horror that day,” he said. Travis Ngakyunkwokka's home was among those destroyed in the riots. Credit:Queensland Police Service “When I'm alone by myself sitting down, it keeps going through my head. I need someone, like support, to sit down with me and have a word with me, keep me busy, happy.” Police allege there was an altercation on New Year’s Day between two teenagers and a 37-year-old man, during which the latter sustained a stab wound to the stomach. They say the man was pronounced dead at the Aurukun medical clinic around 4pm.

Later that afternoon, up to 250 people armed with spears, star pickets and lumps of wood took to the streets “seeking vengeance”, Superintendent Geoff Sheldon told reporters on January 2. "It became a vengeance-seeking exercise where anyone associated with the people they believed were responsible for this, or any premises or property associated with them was assaulted, damaged and alight," he said. People at a makeshift camp established by the Kapani Warrior group about 80km outside the town of Aurukun. Credit:AAP Superintendent Sheldon said police efforts to calm the situation were “unsuccessful from the get-go”. He said a 17-year-old and 18-year-old man willingly presented themselves to police and were immediately removed from the community for their own safety. It was around this time that Travis Ngakyunkwokka saw the smoke. His home was one of six burnt to the ground. Two others were vandalised and are now uninhabitable. Police later charged 29 people with 120 offences over the rioting.

Mr Ngakyunkwokka says he spent the night running around town checking on family members. Around 5 o'clock the next morning he heard people calling his mother’s name. “They were yelling out for us, 'we're gonna catch you, we're gonna kill you'. I was scared that day ... I said to my mum 'We need to move on. We need to go somewhere safe',” he said. His family fled to Coen, about 300 kilometres away. Others retreated into the bush. Aurukun resident and army veteran Tim White set up a camp for displaced residents after an alleged fatal stabbing on New Year's Day. Credit:Rhett Wyman Aurukun resident and army veteran Tim White, who runs the Kapani Warrior military program for Indigenous men across Cape York, set up a camp for up to 150 refugees 80 kilometres out of town.

“The risk was massive,” he said. “I had nine insulin-dependent diabetics in the camp with no medication. I had a woman dying of cancer on the tail end of chemotherapy. I did a headcount every morning and a headcount every night. I expected that when I did a headcount every morning that someone would be dead ... is this Australia?” The camp operated in extreme heat with limited supplies for 11 days. Jobs were assigned to counteract the “sense of helplessness”: young men caught fish, older women prepared food and other veterans helped assemble a militia to provide camp security. Dr White, who is also a psychologist, said the situation bore similarities to the war zones he had seen in Somalia. “I have had nightmares ever since,” he said. He and friend Irwin Yunkaporta, a Kapani Warrior graduate, are now exploring opportunities for a handful of young men from Aurukun to relocate to Army Recruit Training Centre Kapooka at Wagga Wagga to further their military training.

More than a month after the initial unrest, there is no clear solution in sight. Aurukun resident Irwin Yunkaporta plans to move to Wagga Wagga to escape the ongoing unrest. Credit:Rhett Wyman Aurukun Mayor Derek Walpo has implored people to return, begging for an end to the "anger and retaliations". The state government has enlisted Far North Queensland police officer Duane Amos and Tracey Harding, who has worked in disaster recovery, to help Aurukun residents return home. They will also work on "medium and long-term strategies" for those who will not be immediately returning. They will work alongside former Aurukun Shire Council CEO Gary Kleidon, who is co-ordinating the government response.

The Cape York community has a fraught history. The Aurukun Mission, formerly known as the Archer River Mission, was set up by the Presbyterian Church in 1904, merging five different clan groups. When the mission system was disbanded in the 1970s, alcohol was introduced for the first time. "What's been dealt in Aurukun through the mission system and what I call the post-mission apocalypse, where alcohol was just awash in the communities and people didn't have the generational learning around social drinking ... they've had a really bad run." said Dr White. "It's an immensely broken social experiment. I think there have been many attempts to apply broken tools to fix the broken machine.