Kintore, Northern Territory

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Kintore Northern Territory
Population:	691 (2001)
Postcode:	0872
Time zone:	ACST (UTC+9:30)
Location:	521 km (324 mi) from Alice Springs, Northern Territory
LGA:	MacDonnell
Federal Division:	Lingiari

Kintore is a remote settlement in the Northern Territory of Australia, located approximately 530km west of Alice Springs and close to the border with Western Australia. At the 2001 census, Kintore had a population of 691, of which 95% identified themselves as Aboriginal. It was founded in 1981, when many Pintupi people who were then of the resident in the community of Papunya (about 200km from Alice Springs) became unhappy with their circumstances in what they saw as foreign country, and decided to move back to their own country, from which many of them had been forcibly removed decades earlier prior to weapons testing fired from Woomera in South Australia.

Kintore is overseen by the Walungurru Council, which is based in the settlement, and also maintains a school, store, airstrip, health clinic and art centre. The town is located in the territory electorate of MacDonnell and the federal electorate of Lingiari.

Kintore is a major centre for the Western Desert art movement which began at the community of Papunya. These people traditionally passed on significant Dreamtime stories by way of art using sand, rock and local plants. Nowadays such paintings are done on canvas and have gained worldwide popularity. A number of members of the famous Aboriginal art company Papunya Tula reside at Kintore.

In the Pintupi language the community of Kintore is known as Walungurru where the underlining indicates a retroflex l and the rr indicates a trill in the standard orthography used for Pintupi.

Kintore is quoted in the Midnight Oil song Beds are Burning (from the Diesel and Dust album): Four wheels scare the cockatoos/From Kintore East to Yuendumu.