Kylie Rixon, the owner of Mt Isa’s Sunset Tourist Park, agreed … and she urged travellers not to change their trip plans.

“Lock up as you normally would and don’t dismiss visiting smaller regional towns because of it,” she said. “It is detrimental to the core of our small businesses who rely on the travelling public as our livelihood … it saddens me to think people are making these decisions about whether or not to visit because of a ‘blanket’ reputation.”

Over in WA, the General Manager of the Kununurra Visitor Centre, Vivienne McEvoy, said that if people were to stop visiting the regions, small towns and communities would reduce in size and services would diminish.

But she said the signs were still positive.

“I can tell you that, during the months of May, June, July and August, our town is bursting at the seams with visitors and often our caravan parks and hotels/motels are fully booked, so it doesn’t deter a large majority of visitors to Kununurra,” she said. “No matter where you travel from or to, you should always lock your vehicle and not leave valuables in the car that are easily visible to opportunists … when people leave home, they lock their house – so why wouldn’t they lock their caravan when they are out?”

The NT Department of Industry, Tourism and Trade told the Grey Nomads that the Australian and NT governments have announced a $250 million dollar package for Central Australia that aims to improve safety and social cohesion in the region.

“Included in this package is an immediate increase in police presence in Alice Springs and Aboriginal corporation night patrols to ensure the safety of both residents and visitors,” it said. “Our upcoming peak tourism season is looking very positive right across the Northern Territory with forward bookings for the Central Australian region continuing to be strong with accommodation capacity already constrained over some of the season.”

The Department said that, when travelling in the Northern Territory, grey nomads should exercise common sense and look out for suspicious behaviour, as they would anywhere else in Australia.

Last year, when there was a similar outcry about levels of youth crime, the South Australia Police said its data showed there had been a slight decrease in reported crime over the past decade.

“Intelligence analysis of juvenile crime suggests that more than half of the offences committed by juveniles were committed by around 10% of young offenders,” it said in a statement. “It is important for us to not just focus on the number of offences but the seriousness of the offence, and the core group of offenders who are responsible for a disproportionate number of these offences.”

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