84 per cent.
Nearly 84 in every 100 Central Desert residents speak a language other than English at home. It is among the highest shares of any council in Northern Territory.
Warlpiri is spoken by 1,627 of our residents at home, 46.1% of the council.
Central Anmatyerr is spoken by 481 of our residents at home, 13.6% of the council.
Eastern Arrernte is spoken by 160 of our residents at home, 4.5% of the council.
18 languages carry the conversation at home. Every one of them is spoken here.
Each block below is scaled to the number of people who speak that language at home, and tinted by how fast that community has grown since the last census.
We share this portrait because Central Desert is, genuinely, not like an "average" council. Services designed for the median Northern Territory resident arrive here in the wrong language. This Atlas exists so nobody writing policy about us, federal, state, corporate or media, can claim they did not know.
Our linguistic character changes street by street. Click through to any suburb for its own portrait: the languages spoken there, the communities calling it home.
84.2% of Central Desert residents speak a language other than English at home, against 40.9% for Northern Territory and 27.3% nationally. Drawn from the 2021 census.