84 per cent.
Nearly 84 in every 100 MacDonnell residents speak a language other than English at home. It is among the highest shares of any council in Northern Territory.
Luritja is spoken by 1,044 of our residents at home, 18.5% of the council.
Pitjantjatjara is spoken by 760 of our residents at home, 13.4% of the council.
Western Arrarnta is spoken by 604 of our residents at home, 10.7% of the council.
24 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 MacDonnell 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.
84.1% of MacDonnell residents speak a language other than English at home, against 40.9% for Northern Territory and 27.3% nationally. Drawn from the 2021 census.