Christmas in the remote Indigenous community of Minyerri, 250 kilometres south-east of Katherine, is a far cry from the extravagance enjoyed by many in Australia's major cities.
"Pretty basic" is how Ken Muggeridge, chief executive of the Alawa Aboriginal Corporation, describes Christmas celebrations in the community.
"It's a bit hard to do a lot of things for kids when you're on Centrelink payments, so some of those kids may have missed out or may not have got very good presents," Mr Muggeridge said.
"It's pretty hard when you've got four or five kids to buy a lot of stuff for them when you're on social security."
At the board's direction, the corporation stepped in to add some Christmas cheer.
It purchased $4,000 worth of gifts and spent $2,500 on food to make up hampers.
But Mr Muggeridge returned home last week to find more than half of the 200 gift-wrapped presents had been trashed.
"We managed to salvage some of them, and they had just wrecked the hampers that we made for each one of the community houses," he said.
Other hampers and gifts were found strewn around the community's billabong and school.
Children rally to the rescue
Mr Muggeridge had resigned himself to the fact that Christmas would lose its cheer this year, but children in the community were adamant the celebrations would go ahead.
His grandson, who was staying with him at the time, posted video and photos about the vandalism to social media.
The posts were shared far and wide and Mr Muggeridge was soon fielding calls from people wanting to donate.
"I spent a whole week answering my phone. It's unbelievable the response."
The ABC, the community's regional council, a local newspaper and several companies got behind the campaign, and people have sent gifts from as far away as Melbourne.
In a very Territorian version of Santa and his sleigh, Mr Muggeridge has since spent days making the 1,200km round trip to Darwin to collect the gifts.
"We're probably going to be swamped now," he said.
