Paving the way

Alice Springs identity Paul Ah Chee promotes the self-sufficiency of Indigenous communities through tourism, culture and hard work.

Story Kerry Sharp  Photo Lisa Hatz/ NT Major Events Co.

Alice Springs cultural mentor, musician and tourism champion Paul Ah Chee has a spring in his step as he heads to dinner at his favourite Yulara restaurant, with its distant backdrop of Uluru towering above Central Australia’s red desert landscape. He loves Yulara’s upbeat vibe and energy and what’s evolved here through Indigenous tourism – a successful connection between this modern, vibrant tourist complex and an ancient desert monolith with deep cultural significance to the local Anangu people.

Paul has spent the day at an Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park tourism working group meeting at the base of the famous rock, with Parks Australia personnel and Anangu Traditional Custodians who jointly manage the park. The parties meet here regularly with other industry stakeholders to work through an agenda reflecting their shared vision to protect the World Heritage-listed park and continually enhance the visitor experience, both here and at the world-class resort.

“The global successes of parks like Uluru-Kata Tjuta, its Top End counterpart, Kakadu, and others across the Northern Territory are stand-out triumphs of Indigenous joint management,” the newly appointed Tourism NT chairman says. “I’m both passionate and confident about future prospects for other remote communities achieving economic sustainability by developing opportunities to present their own unique natural, traditional and cultural gifts to worldwide visitors.”

Paul has been an elite footballer, band frontman, joint art and cultural enterprise owner, and member of boards Australia-wide advancing tourism, the arts, museums and other entities. He chairs the NT Aboriginal Tourism Committee, helped found the NT Aboriginal Tourism Advisory Council and is now the first Indigenous person to chair the Territory’s peak government tourism agency.