Catalyst 3 Meet & Greet

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Join the Rebelution

Gabriella Surace

Achol Nai Deng is a 24-yearold from Sudan, who moved to Australia eight years ago. His friends call him “Rebel” because of the African/Reggae band he created, “The Lion Rebelution”.

He is lead guitarist and vocalist.

He loves people and performing.

Rebel started the band 5 years ago alongside 4 other band members. He stands at about 6 foot 5 and has a personality just as big – he loves being the life of the party.

Even when things aren’t going

too well for him, like this year when he’s finding it hard to get a job, he has a great outlook. He lives for music, it’s everything to him and money isn’t everything if you’re not doing what you love.

He has an extraordinary smile for someone who is stressed and

having a tough year. He seems to forget the bad things in life and is grateful for what he has.

‘I love my band because they’re all hardworking and we have a strong connection through music,’ he said.

‘Music is the message and the message is hope.’

I AM WAITING FOR NO ONE Get a head-start on your career.

Apply now for a midyear place at RMIT or register for any of the free information sessions. > NEW Master of Strategic Procurement Monday 16 May 6 - 7 pm RMIT Building 108, Level 11 239 Bourke St, Melbourne

> Art, Design and Communication Tuesday 17 May 5 - 6.30 pm RMIT Building 22, Conference Room 2, enter via Storey Hall 336 - 348 Swanston St, Melbourne

> Science and Medical Sciences Tuesday 17 May 4.30 - 6 pm RMIT Storey Hall, Level 7 336 - 348 Swanston St, Melbourne

> MBA, MBA (Executive) and Juris Doctor Wednesday 18 May 6 - 7 pm RMIT Graduate School of Business and Law Building 13, Cnr Russell and Victoria Sts, Melbourne

> Education, Social Science, Built Environment and Project Management Wednesday 18 May 5 - 6.30 pm RMIT Building 22, Conference Room 2, enter via Storey Hall 336 - 348 Swanston St, Melbourne

> Engineering Thursday 19 May 4.30 - 6 pm RMIT Storey Hall, Level 7 336 - 348 Swanston St, Melbourne

> MIDYEAR TAFE EXPO Monday 30 May 4.30 - 6.30 pm Experimedia, State Library of Victoria 328 Swanston St, Melbourne

> Visit the website to register www.rmit.edu.au/midyear

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The Wizard of Belgrave Psychic/psycho?

Clare Bowditch The Logie goes to...Don Bennetts Lady Blog: Lady Melbourne Love @ first download Catherine Deveny Mary Lee Cubillo Isaac Graham Sometimes when I laugh, I feel funny: laughter therapy Mark Wang Mr Nobody: Maundz The genuine Steve Bracks How to survive a Thai prison: Warren Fellows Simon Goosey Driving legend: Bert Chapman Napster, Facebook, UCROO? Read, snapped, written Poetry Join the Rebelution

Soren Frederikson Didem Caia Kate O’Connell Marissa Shirbin Calvin Chong Michelle Nick Ellen Coulter Jane Vashti Ryan Louisa Wright Iona Salter Christie Long Harrison Tippet Josh Fagan Dean Watson Anna Harrington Bethany England Abbie O’Brien Sam Van Zweden Michael Waters Gabrielle Surace

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This magazine was produced on land traditionally owned by the Wurundjeri people.

Opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editors or the RMIT Student Union

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Editors: Annabel Smith Jane Vashti Ryan Josh Fagan Assistant editor: Tamzin Byrne Senior photographer: Daniel Gregoric Sub editors: Didem Caia Maria Matina Nick Duxson Nam Nguyen Tira Burgess Contributors: Abbie O’Brien Didem Caia Ellen Coulter Bethany England Josh Fagan Soren Frederiksen Anna Harrington Christie Long Michelle Nick Kate O’Connell Marissa Shirbin Gabriella Surace Harrison Tippet Sam Van Zweden Jane Vashti Ryan Dean Watson Louisa Wright

Editors’ letter Well it’s that time of year again. The long-awaited semester break is upon us and so is Melbourne’s winter. The footy’s starting to get interesting, the local arts season is well underway and Catalyst is back with another edition full of heart-warming stories to indulge in over the break.

This edition we’ve gained a few insights into some of the more interesting characters around Melbourne and Australia. From the famous to the infamous, our Meet & Greet special brings you some public figures you might have heard of, some everyday people that are doing good things, as well as some characters with weird and wonderful backgrounds.

Former Premier Steve Bracks tells Catalyst what he’s been up to since he left state parliament, controversial commentator Catherine Deveny describes life beyond her infamous Logie tweets and musician Claire Bowditch tells us about the balance between stardom and suburbia.

We also meet Florence, a psychic whose future has been foretold by a gypsy.

She decides how old people are by the patterns of their breath. Her story is one of mystery and intrigue. Then there’s Bert Chapman, a driving instructor and doyen of the roads, who educates and entertains impressionable young drivers.

Simon Goosey is a name you might have heard of. He had 15 minutes of fame a few years ago, dominating one of the ‘AFL Legends’ charity games, but his entire footballing journey is one of impressive achievement.

And speaking of local legends, the Belgrave Wizard is one of the most captivating icons of suburban Melbourne. The wizard has led a pretty interesting life and has some great views on the world. Soren Frederikson, who’s profiled him for this magazine has known the wizard for years. Here’s a picture of the two of them when Soren was 14. Awww.

Enjoy the magazine and enjoy the break, six weeks is an ideal amount of time to think up some new and exciting contributions for Catalyst.

Cheers,

Jane Annabel & Josh catalyst@rmit.edu.au

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We’re off to see the...

Wizard

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of Belgrave Soren Frederiksen “The Belgrave Wizard”, I’d proudly respond to friends asking about this article while I was writing it. I expected the interest and praise given a man who has found a rare treasure, but was met with the bafflement and confusion saved for a man who has found a pot of jam in his pants pocket.

Where he keeps it.

Baba Desi, otherwise known as The Wizard of Belgrave or, by his muggle name, Desmond Bergen, is a local icon, an eccentric, activist, crafter of staves, healer of sickness and preacher of non-conformity. And I’d be remiss not to mention that, according to a fond recollection by Desi himself, he is the best thing Billy Connolly has seen ‘since brown bread’. The Wizard of Belgrave is an enigma robed in mysticism and wrapped in a bright purple turban.

We sit in the sun outside a cafe of his choosing. It’s a regular haunt of his, he knows the owner and introduces me. Serene, new-age music and the smell of incense flows through the cafe as I scuffle with my recording equipment and wonder if this place doubles as a centre for meditation, or crystal healing classes.

Desi is known around Belgrave as a kind and approachable figure. Locals greet him as if he were an old friend and chat to him in the street, which might lead you to think he’s always lived in the wooded hills, nestled away in the Dandenong Ranges he now calls home. But Desi’s story begins, and his move to the sticks wasn’t something he planned.

Born in the country town of Wangaratta in

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1929, Desi lived in a number of rural centres before moving to Melbourne to be raised on the formerly mean streets of Richmond. He was always a little different to the other kids, not in his dress, but in his focus. “I mean, I played sports when I was young, did some cricket and boxing. I did all sorts of things at college,” Desi says. “But I was never obsessed by sports, like the other kids; I was more interested in the arts. I painted, did sculpting and whatever.”

Receiving a high school education, but little more, Desi’s experiences in the workplace vary. “I’ve done many things. I’ve worked retail, clothing, factories. I managed the ground floor at George’s, a big shop in the city and a sister to Harrods in London,” he says “I was a big business man, and did many things.”

As middle-age began to settle, there came a sudden change: “I got divorced and I finally began doing what I wanted to do,” Desi says with a smile.

He travelled to India in the hope of ‘finding himself’ there – and he did. His spirituality awoke amid the temples and traditions of some of the most religious people in the world. “I travelled all around, just walking, backpacking. I stayed at a few ashrams,” he says. “Different religious leaders recognised something within me, so they let me stay with them.”

“It was terrific. I could feel the power of the people, but they were so poor. Very poor, but very colourful at the time,” Desi recalls with a melancholy light in his eye.

“Now they’ve gone all modern under American influence, wearing caps and the

same sort of gear as Western people. Jeans, and all that,” he says. “I don’t approve. No, I like colour. Colour brings goodness into the world. It’s about culture and being oneself,” he says.

Returning to South Melbourne, Desi immersed himself in local politics and the art scene. “I was the arts co-ordinator and the minder for two mayors in South Melbourne,” he says. (I’m not entirely sure what he means by minder, but the image of an elderly bodyguard, wearing a gem-encrusted turban and a holstered wooden staff, comes to mind.) “That was before I became this,” he says, gesturing at his carefully wrapped turban.

Desi did try to go beyond local politics and, while he wasn’t elected, he was well supported. “I went for the senate one time and got 28,000 votes or something like that, just running as an independent,” he says.

Somewhere amid all this, Desi found time to be a father. “I’ve got six sons living all around the world,” he says, “In Japan, Poland, Darwin, Whittlesea, and a couple of other places I can’t remember.” He specifically mentions his son Andrez, an author, musician and journalist, who has written for The Age and Herald Sun, and who now lives in Tokyo. He hands me a signed copy of Andrez’s latest book, Tobacco-stained Mountain Goat, which launched to critical acclaim in March this year.

Desi moved to the hills 10 years ago, a man following what he saw to be his other callings. “I’m a healer. I get rid of pain and anger, frustration and arthritis. I’ve worked with people with cancer,” he says. “Every second generation of my family have been

healers.” I ask what this healing might involve. “Vibrations,” he says. “I believe that I am just a vehicle of God, helping people find the healing powers within themselves.”

Noticing it with new interest, I ask Desi about the large, deep-green crystal, glued to a metal trinket that dangles from his neck. He places the stone in my hands and begins to rattle my being with healing vibrations. “Close your eyes,” he says in a deep and hypnotic voice. I do. “Relax. Go deeper and deeper within yourself.” This reminds of a bit from John Safran vs God. “That’s it, go with the flow.” That part where John complains about Indian mystics, blaming him for not doing things right when rituals don’t work. “You should feel a vibration in there.”

I can feel my pulse, but is that unusual? “Deeper and deeper, go with it.” I go with it, or try to.

I open my eyes and ask about the pulse.

‘That’s what it is,’ Desi says. I consider myself healed, or at least heal-thy.

We chatted away, and beneath these anecdotes lay a political and religious philosophy that I won’t soon forget, if not for its content then for the whimsy with which it was expressed.

“Believing in God is giving love to each other. I’m not talking sexually here. It’s about recognising where everybody’s come from, and that there’s no person better than any other. We’re all one. We are all part of the universe.”

Indeed, we are; and I went home that day happy for the fact that this strange character is now a part of mine.

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Psychic/Psycho?

Didem Caia She wrote a book once, sat down and said that she was going to record every trial and tribulation she’d ever experienced. But when she sat down to do it, all that covered the pages were her tears and she was so embarrassed because her tears weren’t really tears, more a mixture of forced self pity and a longing for it all to be over. It was 4.30 in the afternoon and the rain had just begun.

The woman’s name was Psychadelia. No it wasn’t. Her name was Lorraine – but she didn’t like this so she changed it to Florence because that’s where a purple gypsy told her her future. The gypsy was part of the psychadelia and in inebriated states she had epiphanies that were useful for those in her midst.

‘You’re going to live forever Lorraine,’ the purple gypsy told her. There was perhaps an error in translation from Italian, because as I look at her now, I know she is likely to die any minute.

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The first time I saw Florence I was 18 but she told me I was 57.

‘How odd,’ I replied as I helped her adjust her respirator. I am not a cynic; in fact I welcome the unknown and the seemingly unconventional antics of the metaphysical world. I listened intently. You cannot tell a person’s age by their birth certificate or by the lines on their face or from the elasticity of their skin. She says biological aspects of our species aren’t worthy of this world. She prefers to tell a person’s age by the glint in their iris, the patterns of their breath as they speak or the pictures their hands make when they gesture.

‘You my love’, she tells me, ‘your eyes have seen many things in many places. Your hands have felt the depths of the world’s offerings’.

Okay, she was verbose in her speech, elusive in character and embodied the cliché of one who preaches such concepts. Though I was edging toward disbelief I wanted to hear what would/could happen to my 57-year-old self.

There are cats that live with her, so many cats. One of them sits on my lap and one is perched at my feet bowing to me as though I were a princess.

‘You’re going on a very exciting trip Didem,’ she says.

The key is to stay silent during my sessions with her and not give anything away that the psychic could possibly feed off.

‘You’re going to Europe’. Yes, this is true I was going to Europe. She tells me to hang on for a second. She rises from a couch, which she’s named Dusty, and walks with effort, dragging her life support behind her. She needs to pee she says and talks to me still as she finishes up. The cat is staring at me.

‘Her name is Merlot’ calls Lorraine. What an interesting name for a pet, it was also one of my favourite drinks, how funny I think to myself.

I didn’t really go to Lorraine because I wanted my destiny uncovered or my fickle nature remedied. I went to her because I really wanted to be around there. Sure it smelt like stale urine and tuna. Sure there were old romance novels trailing the stained floor all the way to a bedroom that resembled a Mexican brothel.

I liked to hear her talk about herself and she did it quite a lot, among other things.

Mainly she talked about her heartache. She’s alone and there’s one solitary picture on the mantle. Of her. Of her naked when she was 20 years old. I stare at it quite profusely, it’s hard not to. I made a comment on it once, and I vowed not to again. She started to cry. I would have cried too, but out of sheer happiness if I’d had her body.

It’s clear she’s unable to clean her flat because her body is slowly shutting down from a liver disease. She also hasn’t had the chance to clean up her soul. She hurt another human being and she knows now what havoc karma can inflict.

‘He was the love of my life and I loved myself more than him, I hurt him a lot because I was selfish,’ she says.

I could imagine that poor man sitting on the edge of Lorraine’s heart begging to be let in. She never had someone love her again the way he did. She obviously thought he wasn’t the best for her so she was searching and seeking out others and when he found out she had betrayed him with another of much lesser value, he fled. But not without expressing a monologue titled, ‘My heart is a puzzle now’ ‘He died a while ago I heard’ says Lorraine. When she becomes too sentimental I become uncomfortable and tell her I have to leave.

I can see in her eyes she is upset. ‘Ill come back Florence’ I say.

‘Call me Lorraine,’ she says as she closes the door.

Clare Bowditch Kate O’Connell

It’s just past 10am on a Saturday when Clare Bowditch stands in the doorway wearing nothing but a towel.

Gesturing to the living room with one hand, the other firmly holds her only garment in place as she grins sheepishly.

Clare is an impressive figure, even off stage and in next to nothing she is a striking woman.

Clare is usually sweeping her hair off her face as she swings her body to the beat of her band, but this morning it is piled on top of her head with beads of water still clinging to the Fanta coloured strands.

Winner of the 2006 ARIA for best female artist and a prominent Australian singer at 36 years of age, Clare seems glamorous and untouchable from afar.

However, making tea in the kitchen among the remnants of her children’s latest adventures, her life is suddenly shockingly normal.

“Anyone who chooses a creative life is in just the same position as any other working class family, where you’re really always just trying to make ends meet,” Clare confesses as she dunks a tea bag.

“There’s no security.

“You have to have the heart of a lion and nerves of steel if you’re going to make a crack at it.”

Clare, and her husband Marty, are definitely having a crack.

They are balancing three young children, a mortgage and the cost of touring and recording.

Clare is no stranger to this lifestyle though.

She has been performing on the Melbourne circuit since she was 17 years old and has always had music in her life.

Growing up in a rambling old house by the beach in Sandringham, music was part of her life before she was born.

Every member of the family played an instrument of some sort.

Her father played guitar and her mother grew up in Holland where singing replaced television as a youthful pastime.

“Music was normal for us,” Clare recalls.

“There was a piano in the house, there were guitars. It was just an everyday thing and it still is.

“It was as normal as having books on your bookshelf.”

Clare is well known for her soulful tones and has also gained a reputation for her humourous antics on stage.

But there is a darker side to the origins of Clare’s humour.

At five years old she was rocked by the death of her older sister, Rowena, who succumbed to a rare disease after two years in hospital.

Clare took it upon herself, as the youngest of the five children, to bring some laughter back to her shattered family.

“As a kid you take on a role in helping to glue your family together,” Clare says.

“I was pretty busy with my jobs of learning how to be a comic and singing.”

Not that singing was ever a chore for her, Clare says she’s

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always been most at home when playing music.

“I feel incredibly happy with one spare hour and a piano,” Clare says.

“I always know where to go if I need restoring.”

“Sometimes a glass of red wine or a pack of smokes will do the same thing. But it kind of has less side effects to go with music,” the singer jokes.

Rachael Head, a back-up singer in Clare’s band, says she is often amused by the star when touring.

“She has a wonderful sense of humour,” Rachael says.

“But the best part about it, is she is willing to laugh at herself.”

But humour isn’t her only strength, Clare says she feels a duty to address issues in society.

Releasing her fourth album in 2010, Modern Day Addiction, Clare put a label on her many causes for the first time.

Clare is no stranger to a battle against the temptation of a quick fix herself. Chocolate and comfort foods have always been a weakness.

But she says she doesn’t believe this is the way to deal with problems, it only conceals them.

“I feel like it’s my obligation to talk about it and write about it more,” Clare says.

After opening the door in a towel, Clare seems more than willing to lay herself truly bare and talk about her flaws.

Although she is a highly accomplished woman, Clare is not immune to insecurities.

“I’ve battled with anxiety for as long as I can remember,” Clare admits.

“Talking to other adults who’d survived it, taking the fear and the sting out of it was what helped me.”

Stripping back more than her layer of clothes, Clare shows her willingness to laugh at herself, even in her darkest moments.

“I remember someone suggesting to me that perhaps what was going on, was I was feeling anxious,” she recalls.

“And I went, ‘That’s ridiculous, I’m the most happy and relaxed person in the world. I’M F***ING RELAXED.’” Though she hasn’t had a panic attack for years, when she feels it coming back Clare says she simply needs to reground herself.

According to band member Sally Mortensen, this is where Clare and her husband are such a good fit.

“She and Marty seem to balance each other out, he is very down to earth and she is a very emotional person,” Sally explains.

Clare and Marty met through music in their early 20s.

They played together in Clare’s first band, Red Raku, and have continued to work together ever since.

It seems there was an attraction between them from the start.

Clare even remembers the first time she saw him.

“There was this vision of the tallest man I’d ever seen and I just remember thinking, ‘F***, he is tall. Who is this guy?’’’ she recalls.

Needless to say, in the next five years of friendship she began to notice a little more than his height.

Clare says it was only after marrying Marty and falling pregnant

with their first child, Asha, that she finally decided music was to be her sole career.

“I loved music, but I loved it so much I didn’t want to make it my career, I was too scared,” Clare recalls.

“I started to get an inkling that if I didn’t go with music, which was my great love, I would always regret it.”

Since that decision, Clare has managed to win over much of the music-loving population of Australia, headlining major festivals and touring with Leonard Cohen.

Her new album is a break from her older, folky tunes but she says all her music is an expression of herself as a human being.

Clare says there isn’t a big difference between the performer her audiences meet and the mother and friend she is the rest of the time.

“I don’t yell at my audience to pick up their clothes. But there is very little separation between me and the person you meet on the stage,” Clare says.

However, she does think there is an extra element that kicks in when she starts a performance. Clare says every single show takes her on a different ride.

“A performance is like one of those incredibly detailed

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paintings. You look at it from a distance and it looks like one thing, but as you get up close you see all the detail,” she says.

“There are all those emotional fabrics that occur in a single performance.”

Clare is well aware the intensity of performance has been enough to break many other artists.

“You understand why performers often get stereotyped as having addictions or having intense behaviour,” Clare says.

“That’s why, because it’s an intense energy you’re playing with on stage.

“Once you’ve gone to that level of emotional intensity, how do you draw yourself back up to tie up your shoe laces and take your make-up off?”

With the layers of her stardom stripped away through her frank confessions, unwrapped for the world to see, Clare Bowditch is one performer who seems to have mastered coming back down to earth.

The logie goes

Marissa Shirbin

‘Well I’ll tell you who I’ve interviewed: Coppola, Robert Redford – much to Christine’s chargrin – Dirk Bogart and Sean Connery.

‘I danced with Elizabeth Taylor in Monte Carlo-because I was quite a good dancer-and she wanted to get up and dance,’ Don Bennetts said.

‘I went to too many parties. The puritan in me says I wasted half my life going to parties. But it was part of the 60s,’.

Don Bennetts is a television producer who started at the BBC and went to Granada Television in the 1970’s to produce and direct some of the station’s most experimental and, at times, controversial programs.

‘You see, the BBC said we couldn’t give oxygen to Enoch Powell,’ Don said.

British politician Powell had been sacked for his controversial 1968 speech on the dangers of mass immigration.

Banned from talking about his speech, ‘Rivers of Blood’, Don invited Powell for a discussion on rhetoric and Greek poetry.

The show was eventually taken off air.

The previous year Don was busy directing ‘Parky’ - a young Michael Parkinson on Scene at ‘6:30’.

‘Oh, we were mates. But we didn’t get along. We were both very confident,’ Don said.

Don was born in Cohuna, a small town north of Melbourne,

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where John Farnham was allegedly discovered, the Bee Gees once performed and more recently, Sarah Blasko used the town in her film clip for ‘Planet New Year’.

The Bennetts family were ‘poor as church mice’ according to Don. They lived off their father’s salary who worked at a Methodist clergy.

Don would have followed on as a clergy too, had his graduation from Melbourne High School not been so perfectly timed.

It was 1955 and the Olympics were coming to Melbourne the following year.

Television needed ‘bright young boys to point the cameras’, so after sending a letter to the Navy to fast-track his compulsory six month service, Don became one of TV’s ‘bright young boys’.

‘In my mind’s eye, I can still see Don Bennetts miming Perry Como’s ‘Hot Diggity’ or Andy Wil- liams version of ‘Butterfly’.’

3AW’s Kevin Trask says.

After the Olympics, Don became an apprentice cameraman and eventually a star at the Seven Network in the music covers show, ‘Your Hit Parade’.

Don won a Logie Award in 1960 for best male personality.

It was the quintessential ‘office boy story’.

But Don insists it was not unnatural for him to move from behind the camera to in front of it.

to...

‘I was only performing to the people I was usually filming with all day,’ he said.

Don Bennetts says to me out the front of his apartment.

15 minutes later he is seated in his dining room.

‘I was an accidental television performer. I got away with being moderately successful. I had a more instinctive talent’.

‘Television just seemed to satisfy my new interest in excitement, women and the occasional drink,’ he adds.

A far cry from today’s over-theorised and impossibly competitive auditions to be on TV. Don even stumbled into writing a weekly column for the Herald Sun. Another ‘natural thing to do’ in Don’s life was having fun.

‘But you have to get serious at a certain point.’ he said.

In 1962, Graham Kennedy asked Channel 7’s two bright stars, Don Bennetts and Bert Newton, to come with him to Channel 9.

‘I think you guys will be doing much of the same thing in 20 years. I am going to Europe’, he arrogantly told Kennedy.

His wife, Christine, reads The Australian and is seated with their daughter Emma.

There is a bookshelf and Don’s Logie is perched on it.

Taking out an old leather-bound T.S. Elliot copy, Don reads:

‘‘No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.’’

‘I hope, well I know, I didn’t succumb to becoming obsessed by fame. Otherwise I would have succumbed to accepting the invitation from Graham and Bert’, Don adds.

He loves poetry and continues: ‘There’s another poem, by somebody called Vergil, ‘Myself when young of scholarly intent, went forth to find such merriment’’.

On the afternoon of our interview, Don, now 71, has just bought a new pair of jeans.

‘It’s the old prodigal son story. I went off in adventure and found it. See you’re getting very deep and philosophical here.

I don’t envy those people who went off and found real fame, Kennedy died a very unhappy man.’

‘Should I put them on? They might make me look younger,’ he

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He is rounding at the belly but still mainatins a thick head of hair and wears glasses.

Lady Blog

Phoebe Montague

Calvin Chong Walking down Bourke Street Mall dressed in a grey-striped top with pale blue cropped pants, a knit overcoat armed with press passes and a nude carry-all bag, Phoebe Montague squeezes through the crowd to the GPO Pret-a-Porter show.

Better known as Lady Melbourne, this award-winning fashion blogger writes and dresses simply, classically and elegantly.

Although she owns her fair share of luxury items, everything she wears today is vintage.

In Lady Melbourne’ s blog, perhaps the first thing you would notice is the banner.

The banner writes the name, decorated with a lady in a black dress for her “ L” , a cocktail for the “ Y” , a pocket watch for the “ O” and ribbons tied neatly on “ D” , “ U” , and “ R” .

Since graduating from journalism at RMIT University in 2009, Phoebe has built an impressive resume: editor of Melbourne Street Fashion; contributor to Lustable.com; judge for the Westfield Insider blog competition; and Nuffnang’s best fashion blogger in the Asia Pacific region in 2009.

Her blog immerses you in a world of affordable and fashion-forward looks, inspired by vintage and retro from the 1950s to the 1980s, something that made Phoebe stand out of the crowded online arena.

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Phoebe said Coco Chanel was the most significant influence on her sense of fashion and her blog; as Coco was the ‘ lady of her time’ , Phoebe decided to be the Lady for Melbourne.

“She was revolutionary in what she did for fashion. The effects are still felt today,” she said, with a sudden admiration on her face.

“Her use of fabrics, imitation pearls and gemstones allows regular women to dress with elegance that was normally limited to the aristocrats, it was inspiring.”

Her mother, grandmother and neighbours also inspired her.

Phoebe said that despite being average middle class women, they were fabulously dressed and radiated a sense of elegance and style.

“As a child, I was in awe of the jewellery and outfits they wore, even the way they smoked cigarettes was amazing,” she said, her eyes reminiscing and a little smirk on her face.

When Phoebe first started writing, her only readers were Mother Melbourne and His Lordship – her family.

Her blog took off after a Project Runway-esque challenge from fellow blogger Style Tyrant; she created an Yves Saint Laurent-inspired black dress out of garbage bags, paired it with a Chanel Brooch, and posted the photos online.

The unique garment was her most popular post yet, sparking interest from all over Australia.

Phoebe’ s fashion credentials come from a lifetime interest in design, with experience in dressmaking, styling, millinery and accessory-making.

“I learned my millinery skills through books and the internet.

Everything was self-taught,” she said.

Looking to start an accessories label, she moved to London and studied with jewellery-maker Lara Bohinc, whose jewellery has been worn by Madonna.

London changed Phoebe’ s perspective on fashion and developed her sense of affordable and sustainable fashion.

“In Melbourne, I only wear heels because we can drive around.

But in London, you don’ t. All you have is an Oyster card – the Myki card of London – and you walk all the time,” she said.

“So I learned that you have to be practical about what you wear. And Londoners do it with style.”

She juggled her accessories business, her writing and her life between two countries but finally settled back in her birth city, Melbourne.

“I decided to stay permanently in Melbourne when I gained momentum in my blog,” she said.

“I can’ t imagine myself in other cities like Sydney. Lady Sydney just doesn’ t rhyme.”

Phoebe’ s bold style and personality didn’ t go down well in high school.

From a young age, she was fearless in choosing what she would wear to school, unconcerned about what others thought of her.

“High school was exactly like what you see in movies. It is just like Mean Girls. Some of them are merciless,” she said.

Phoebe was more like Janice Ian from Mean Girls – the art freak and the quirky kid, the odd one out.

“Despite all the hardships, I have learned that you have to be tough. I’ m sure I don’ t look like it but I am, internally.”

Because of that, Phoebe has always been a philanthropist; she was part of womens health campaign Frocktober and Fair@ Square, an environmental campaign.

“I have always been involved with current affairs and issues especially for animals and women,” she said.

She felt that she could help, even if just a little, through her standing in the fashion industry now.

She did not care about what others thought of her, she knew that after high school, there was a bigger and wider world that is waiting for her – a world of acceptance.

“I hated high school. After graduation, I walked out and never looked back.”

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Photos of Phoebe from her blog

www.ladymelbourne.com.au

Love @ first download...

Michelle Nick “Attractive guy would like to meet you.”

Australia’s largest dating site, RSVP, reported that there were over 20,000 downloads of the RSVP app within the first month of release.

The makers of Grinder have recently announced their new Project Amicus, an app for people of all sexual orientations, soon to be added to the mix.

RSVP Marketing Directior Lija Jarvis said there were many requests for a smart phone app and the success of the launch can be seen in the high download rate it had for it’s first month.

And the dating app trend seems in no way ready to slow down with over 120 apps in the dating category in the iTunes app store as of April 2011.

Sounds like every woman’s dream.

Swap meeting eyes across the room for being sent a flirt bomb and this could be the new fairytale.

The release of a number of dating and flirting smartphone apps means that meeting people has never been so apparently easy, yet the life of a single person has never been quite so complicated.

With flirting iPhone apps such as Skout, online dating apps like RSVP, and speed dating apps, it seems there are a multitude of ways to get in on the digital dating revolution.

It is as simple as downloading the free app, entering your email address and away you go – ready to wink, chat and scroll – through the bevy of singles waiting to find a match.

Within hours you will find your inbox flooded with potential matches, chat requests and personal messages.

Whether it’s Mathew from Sydney checking you out, or Rachael from Coffs Harbour wanting to learn more about you, you will quickly be free to send kisses and winks from the palm of your hand.

The dating app craze has created a range of new opportunities and complexities for singles trying to navigate the etiquette of the digital dating realm – there are even apps for how to effectively use dating apps.

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“I think it’s a time where people have embraced technology for many things in their lives you know, travel, banking and booking all sorts of things, so why not dating?” Mrs Jarvis said.

“People are getting busier, people are working longer hours, people are finding it harder to meet people as they get older so it’s just a logical thing that people spread their options out to non-traditional ways of meeting,” she said.

“Bars and things are fine when you’re younger but you might find as you get older and you might find yourself single you tend to look elsewhere.”

RSVP is now looking into incorpirating GPS into their app in the same way as as Urban Signals in the UK, that is self-professedly “taking love back to the streets” .

Another app that offers this is Grinder, an app for homosexuals that allows men to meet based on geographical proximity.

Grinder has more than 1.7 million members internationally, with 5.1 million chat messages and nearly 500,000 images sent daily, and users averaging two hours usage each day.

Instead of buying drinks at a bar people are spending their money on monthly subscriptions to dating services.

Costs of using digital dating apps range from free to almost $50 a month for full membership to RSVP or eHarmony.

You can even see each and every person who has viewed your profile. In other cases this payment simply allows you the privilege of contacting other members.

RMIT social media expert Professor Angelina Russo said she doesn’t really know if it all works but she would rather be dating now than 20 years ago.

“Say you were in a bar 20 years ago on your own, you were very much seen as being available,” Professor Russo said.

“Today if you are in a bar on your own and you have mobile technology with you, you are no longer seen in the same way,” she said.

Professor Russo said meeting in the offline world is a high-risk activity and digital is are helping eliminate this.

“When you are genuinely meeting a stranger it’s hard,” she said.

“It offers a broader landscape to pick from, and puts you back in control.”

Professor Russo said that new dating mediums such as smartphone apps allow one to lurk, and follow what is going on without being committed to it.

But with a lack of risk, the reward could be also less.

Online dating has some pretty impressive figures, being the origin of 17 per cent of marriages in 2010.

But are the days gone where love at first sight seemed a possibility?

Perhaps the translation of dating in the world of apps will only increase these figures further, making it easier and more accessible to join in.

Not everyone who has participated, finds the success stories easy to believe.

Agency Nurse Kathy Brown said it’s definitely not an easier place to meet people.

“I think dating used to be easier when you would go out and meet people the oldfashioned way,” Miss Brown said.

“The bottom line is chemistry is something that you’ve got to meet in person to ascertain.

“I think it’s a way for people who are a bit socially awkward or who aren’t very

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outgoing.”

Not only is Miss Brown skeptical about the value of dating apps, she has been disillusioned by the users who take advantage of the lack of accountability.

“One man told my girlfriend he was a Count from Belgium, I think it was,” she said.

With self-regulation the only method to control the legitimacy of people’s profiles it is hard to know whether Rebecca, 28, from Sydney, is in fact John, 54, from Newcastle.

Miss Brown also found herself in some pretty uncomfortable situations, which she now laughs about.

“I had agreed to meet a guy on a Sunday afternoon for a drink and on Sunday morning he SMSD me and said, ‘Lets get naked’,” she said.

“I thought what I’ll do is put it right back at him so I SMSD him back and said ‘They’re not going to serve us at the bar if we’re naked’.

“He said, ‘Well let’s skip the drink and just get naked’.”

“It was really upsetting to think that there are men out there that are willing to have sex with someone they haven’t even laid

eyes on.”

Miss Brown said she didn’t trust the ability of digitalised dating to convey a person effectively through their profile.

“I met a guy last year who I really, really liked and had a relationship with him for a while,” she said.

“He mentioned he had a profile so I looked him up and I definitely wouldn’t have even given him a second glance if this is how I met him.”

HR manager and student Sharyn Twist similarly said that in the digitized world of dating people are too quick to judge.

“It’s very much like a shopping list, where you are scrolling through so many different people and you don’t know these people and you are just culling them at the first instance, but they could be your soul mate,” she said.

So the question remains are dating apps indeed creating more chance for finding love?

With new apps entering the market all the time the future of dating and romance is yet to be determined.

When they tell the tale of Cinderella in years to come maybe she won’t have met her prince at the ball but instead didn’t need her fairy godmother because she had her smartphone to look him up on eharmony.

Catherine Deveny Ellen Coulter Acid-tongued, vulgar and vile.

It’s not the way most people would like to be described, but writer, comedian and former Age columnist Catherine Deveny was described as just that by various media outlets last year.

In person I found Deveny, 42, warm, charismatic and very different to how she has been portrayed.

“I have not and will not apologise for those tweets,” she says, unrepentant.

“Nobody has the right not to be offended.”

She is speaking, of course, about her controversial Twitter comments during the Logies last year that got her sacked from The Age, but have not dampened her enthusiasm for life.

Comments like “I so do hope Bindi Irwin gets laid” and “Rove and Tasma look so cute… hope she doesn’t die, too” (a reference to Rove McManus’ deceased wife, Belinda Emmett, and new partner, Tasma Walton) led to public outrage, especially in other, non-Fairfax publications.

The media and public couldn’t get enough of the story. Love her or hate her, she certainly had folks talking.

“Bitter, pointless humour from Catherine Deveny, who writes a confusing column in The Age,” 3AW host Neil Mitchell said about the tweets.

Miranda Devine, in the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote: w“She does car-crash comment, saying the most outlandish things, often with sexual overtones and foul language, just for dramatic effect.”

Even Shane Warne had something to say, labelling Deveny’s Tweets a “disgrace” on Triple M. Deveny was subsequently, and

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very p publicly, sacked by The Age. “We are appreciative of the columns Catherine has written for The Age over several years but the views she has expressed recently on Twitter are not in keeping with the standards we set,” The Age editor-inchief Paul Ramadge said.

Everything about her is passionate, from the way she talks (her voice is warm, husky and a little bit sexy) to the way she sings out “hi darling” to familiar cafe staff.

The difference between Deveny’s public image and the woman herself is that most people in their columns and articles and blog comments last year seemed to forget she was a real person, with real vulnerabilities and a softer side.

shut Catherine Deveny up. But when asked about her father, Deveny pauses.

He’s an unexpected sore point for Deveny, who has never wanted to be defined by the men in her life – especially one she hasn’t had contact with for 13 years.

“He didn’t tick the box as son, husband, man or father.”

Now the Twitter furore has died down, she feels people need to see the broader picture.

She insists she’s not bitter and The Age did her a favour by sacking her, but there is a kind of cynicism to some of her lines.

“I think my relationships with men are actually incredibly important,” she says.

“It was never about Twitter, they’d been wanting to sack me for quite some time,” she says.

Having recently come out of a 16-year relationship with the father of her three young sons, it’s not hard to see why.

“The editorial department at The Age is no different to the Footy Show guys, apart from the fact they can read. It’s just middle-aged, middle-class white men, alpha men, and homophobic sexists.”

Deveny is now in a new relationship with someone she knew at school, happy, and not hiding it.

It seems mildly unfair then that her tweets (which she defends as being taken out of context and actually a statement about the sexual objectification of women at the Logies) have resulted in such a backlash from some of her city’s biggest names and media outlets.

Known as an atheist, euthanasia advocate and women’s rights defender, Deveny’s vulnerable side is often overshadowed by her loud voice and controversial opinions.

A constant talker, who often feels she has too much to say in too little time, it takes a lot to

“I’m madly in love with this beautiful man,” she says.

Of her new man, her kids have said “No offence mum, but how did you get him?”

After a wild year of ups and downs, Deveny’s enthusiasm and optimism about life is infectious.

“I do know there are some people who are just always going to be ok, and I know I’m one of those people,” she says earnestly.

“It doesn’t matter what decision I make, I will land on my feet.”

Mary Lee Cubillo Jane Vashti Ryan Washed in the pale blue light of a bug zapper, Mary Lee Cubillo watches the plume of smoke roll from her cigarette as she toys with its tortoise shell holder.

It’s hot, about 35, and five of Mary’s six great-grandchildren are sprawled on the floor of the lounge room watching cartoons while they digest their dinner.

Mary’s daughter, Bilawarra, and her son Dean are doing the washing-up in the kitchen, and from where we sit on the porch, the clink of dishes and quiet chatter drift out to our ears: A perfect Darwin evening.

A Larrakia elder – the traditional owners of the land and waters around Darwin – Mary is 79, and remembers the day Darwin was bombed in 1942, because it was also the day her father died.

“Dad was a wharfie, and he wasn’t supposed to work that day,” she remembers.

“Johny Armat was hung-over and didn’t want to work, so he asked dad to work. Of course dad said yes.”

“The first bomb fell on the ammunition boat USS Peary, and everyone on the boat, and on the wharf died. All the Americans and all the Australians. It got a direct hit, then the post office. There were 23 planes and they bombed Darwin 63 times. We went by train to Katherine, and they bombed us there, while we camped on the banks of the Katherine River,” Mary recalls.

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“My dad was killed outright, he was outside on the bough of the boat, and he couldn’t swim. The explosion threw him into the water and he drowned, my Uncle Norm told us.”

From the banks of the Katherine River, Mary, her widowed mother and her nine brothers and sisters were moved in American army trucks to the Balaklava Racecourse outside Adelaide, along with all the other Aborigines displaced by the bombing.

“We only knew Darwin, and there weren’t that many white people in Darwin. It was a shock to see all these white people.

They frightened me,” she says.

“They were in shock too, because there were so many of these black refugees, as they called us. They’d never seen so many! They all came in droves just to look at us. They organised a bus to come to the racecourse just to look at us black refugees.”

“I can remember, I was ironing, and this lady come up to me and said ‘Oh, you’re a pretty little girl; a pretty little black girl.’”

“I told my mother she’d called me black, and my mum said ‘well you’re not, your brown!’ I’d never thought about my skin, because in Darwin, nobody did,” she explains.

and now I have about 50!” she confides, concealing her mirth behind a small, wrinkled hand.

Her first pair were given to her when she arrived in Adelaide and, unused to any but a tropical climate, she suffered severe chilblains on her hands, feet and face.

“The government decided that we had to assimilate, that we couldn’t go home. We were divided in the school, with a big partition so the blacks didn’t mix with the whites. And they were frightened of us,” Mary shouts with laughter: “Thought we were cannibals!”

From behind the screen door Mary’s daughter Bilawarra calls out to us.

“You two need a cuppa? How ‘bout a bowl of ice-cream?” she asks.

Drawn into the tale, the normalcy of this request startles us both.

“Yeah, alright Bilawarra! I’ll have a cuppa,” Mary calls back, reaching for yet another cigarette.

Carefully placing it in her cigarette holder, she lights it, and sits silent for a moment.

The electric sound of a mozzie meeting its maker interrupts Mary, as she reaches for another cigarette. Her orange socks and pink shoes pop in the evening light and she follows the line of my eye.

“The women were determined to get back to the Territory.

They petitioned the government with the help of the Catholic Church to let us go, and finally they said OK. We were put on a train, with no food or water, and they took us to Alice Springs – that’s in the Territory – and left us there. We hadn’t said Darwin, we’d only said we needed to get to the Territory.”

Leaning over conspiratorially she says “I love shoes and socks, I never had a pair until I was 11,

“Well the women were very resourceful, and they called the men from back home to come

down. So we rode in the back of a cattle truck all the way back to Darwin,” she says, eyebrows raised.

Sitting out on the porch in orange socks and pink shoes, with her tortoise shell cigarette holder and a cuppa on the way, it’s hard to imagine Mary Lee Cubillo riding in the back of a cattle truck through the Australian desert as an 11 yearold.

It’s hard to understand why, when she returned to Darwin, she and her family were kicked off Bagot Community land because they were part Chinese, not full-blood Aboriginal.

It’s hard to believe that once she reached working age, Catholic nuns in the Darwin Convent expected her to work for nothing but the love of God. And it’s hard to comprehend the fact that because Mary was an Aboriginal woman, Herbert Francis Lee had to apply to the State for permission to marry her in 1949.

She went on to have 11 children of her own with Herbert, who all have a tertiary education, one of whom – Ian Lee – is about to graduate as the Northern Territory’s eighth indigenous medical doctor and who was a Senate candidate in the 2010 Federal Election.

“We’ve all got degrees. I got mine when I was 60, in Aboriginal Cultural Management. I tell the kids: ‘Every one of you are gonna get your schooling, and then you’re gonna go to uni’. I expect that of my grandchildren, and my great grandchildren,” she says.

Mary Lee Cubillo was awarded the NAIDOC Scholar of the Year Award in 1995.

Isaac Graham “Some days it really overwhelms me but most of the time it’s really exciting.

There are so many lyrical, harmonic and melodic possibilities when writing”

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Louisa Wright

Graham says he really enjoys listening to other people’s songs for the first time and trying to predict where a song will go is something he finds very exciting.

“I think that drives me to maintain a creative musical and lyrical narrative in my own writing.

“I’m a lyrics first kind of musician. I’ve tried it the other way around a few times but it’s never really worked,” he said.

If touring with English punk legend Frank Turner isn’t thrilling enough, imagine being handpicked by Turner himself to be featured on the B-side of one of his singles.

Budding Australian songwriter Isaac Graham is one of two winners of Turner’s ‘Try This At Home’ competition. Graham’s track Gold and Steel is now on the B-side of Turner’s 7” vinyl single “Try This At Home” which features on the album Poetry of the Dead.

Originally from Macksville, a small country town between Sydney and Brisbane, Isaac Graham was brought up on the swamp-rock sounds of Creedence Clearwater Revival and the gritty vocals of Janis Joplin.

“Not much happens in Macksville,” Graham admits.

“It’s famous for two things: cricketer Steven Hughes and footballer Greg Inglis.”

Once Graham writes a lyric he often finds that it has an almost inherent melody or phrasing attached to it. He then works with this melody and sees where it takes him.

He warns us that sometimes you end up in ‘Clichéville’, a town every musician should avoid.

“It’s always interesting listening to very early demos of songs and seeing how much the melody and lyrics change.”

As well as writing his own tracks, Graham has a talent for putting his own spin on other musicians’ songs. Covering artists from Against Me! to Billy Bragg to The Mountain Goats, it is clear how Graham manages to combine elements of his influences in Empty Vessels. It may be a coincidence but put these three artists together and you can get a pretty good feel for Graham’s sound.

At the age of 11 Graham left Macksville, population 2658, and moved to bustling Sydney where he began to learn guitar and play in punk rock bands.

Lately it’s local music that Graham’s been listening to. He has kind words to say about Brisbane’s The Strums and close friend Jack Carty’s new record. Experimental American rock band, Foxy Shazam, has been getting a lot of playtime along with classic artists such as Bruce Springsteen and The Zombies.

Graham’s first album Empty Vessels is a punk-folk gem, from the up-beat piano tinkling ‘This Old Town’ to the stripped back rocka-billy ‘Karl Marx and the Reds’, a song about an imagined skiffle band Graham started after reading a John Lennon biography.

Winning the ‘Try This At Home’ competition is possibly the highlight of Graham’s career to date.

“I’m a big fan of stories. Most of the songs from Empty Vessels are my own stories,” he said.

“It was incredible to see my name and the Epitaph logo side by side on vinyl. I grew up listening to Pennywise, NOFX, The Offspring and lots of other Epitaph bands so to have them contacting me was pretty amazing,” he said.

Reading other people’s stories also inspires Graham.

“When I Find Gold all started after I read a newspaper article about a bank robbery in colonial Sydney, where the burglars tunnelled in under the bank. I liked how that action represented the desperation of the times,” he said.

The infinite nature of music is what drives Graham to make music himself.

“Some days it really overwhelms me but most of the time it’s really exciting. There are so many lyrical, harmonic and melodic possibilities when writing.”

He also enjoys music production, which allows another level of creativity. Empty Vessels was recorded at home using a Tascam 8-Track and this will be used again to record the second album.

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With a new album in the making, and tours with the likes of Frank Turner and Tim Barry, we can be sure this is just the beginning for Graham.

Graham is looking to expand on the sound of his first album.

“It’s a bit different to Empty Vessels in that it’s got a bigger band sound, more drums, electric guitar. There’s even a bit of banjo on there which is good, lots of big gang vocals too.”

The album is currently seven or eight tracks deep but finding the time to finish it is tough and it isn’t something he wants to rush.

Nevertheless, if Isaac Graham’s upcoming album is half as good as Empty Vessels then it is sure to be worth the wait.

Perhaps Macksville will no longer be famous for just a cricketer and footballer.

Sometimes when I

Iona Salter The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has wrapped up for 2011. The gags have ceased, the curtains have been drawn and the funny-makers have boarded planes and skipped town. As the sombre, ominous clouds of winter draw in, Melburnians are probably thinking there is not a lot to laugh about right now.

But a growing number of people are preaching the benefits of laughing at nothing at all. Nada. Zilch. Neinte.

Laughter clubs, of which there are about 7000 worldwide, are based on the idea that laughter – whether real of fake - is good for physical and psychological wellbeing.

There are no knock-knock jokes, no rehearsed one-liners and none of the awkward gags of the kind that guy in accounting with the novelty ties insists on sharing.

People just laugh.

Dr Madan Kataria, an Indian GP, had started the ‘laughter movement’ – as followers called in - in 1995. It has evolved out of Hasyayoga, a branch of yoga that combines laughter with breathing techniques. So popular are Dr Kataria’s ideas in India that laughter yoga has been made part of school curriculum and prisoner rehabilitation.

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Cris Popp is the founder of Laughter Works, a Melbourne company that runs laughter groups in workplaces.

Mr Popp says laughter clubs in Australia have moved into the mainstream in recent years.

“I think it’s gotten more acceptance, but I think the whole talk of happiness has got more acceptance. That whole notion of happiness being something that it’s alright to aspire to, and that we can talk about it – that our nations and workplaces should talk about happiness –I think [laughter clubs are] part of that movement.”

Merv Neal agrees. The former businessman says he laughed himself healthy after his stressful lifestyle brought on a range of lifethreatening health problems.

“I was a person who never laughed. Life was much too serious. Business was much too serious,” he says.

Mr Neal had just made a small fortune off the sale of his IT company when doctors told him his immune system was shutting down.

“I sat back three days after the sale, with my feet on the desk, with all this money.

I thought I’d go to the doctors, and they effectively said that it was all over.”

Now, Mr Neal travels all over Australia preaching the benefits of laughter.

Like Mr Popp, he recalls how businesses would not give laughter sessions the time of day five years ago. But he says his background gives him a foot in the door.

“Going in there as a silver-haired businessman rather than a deadlocked hippy, I’ve got a little bit of credibility to say ‘this stuff really does work if you’ll only give me a chance.’”

Laughter is said to burn calories, decrease blood pressure and relieve pain, but Mr Popp says it is not the be-all-and-end-all to taking care of yourself.

“I think that it’s one of many tools. I laugh a lot more than I used to, a lot more easily, but I don’t personally believe ‘oh if you just go to a laughter club everything will be alright.’”

Mr Popp’s interest in laughter clubs has been sparked by social motivations.

“I’d been reading some literature about how people who laugh and smile a lot are more attractive to the opposite sex – and I was single,” he says with a chuckle.

“I basically thought of laughter as a skill that I had to have.”

He says laughing released tension and was an important bonding experience.

“You laugh and smile a bit more and people find you a bit more approachable. It builds up your social connections. You feel happy.

laugh, I feel funny.

You laugh and smile a bit more, they like you more. It’s a spiral.” *** It is Sunday morning in Federation Square, and as the tourists and city shoppers mill about, a small group of people are preparing to start a laughter session. They form a circle and their leader starts a chant.

“Ha, ha, ha. Ho, ho, ho. He, he, he.”

The chuckles are a little awkward at first. It is the kind of laughter you would expect when, well, when you put a bunch of strangers in the middle of Federation Square and order them to laugh.

But eventually people start to see the funny side of their own ridiculousness. And the ridiculousness of others only spurs this on. The elderly chap with the startling and contagious foghorn-like hoot of a laugh seems to be giving everyone a case of the sillies.

“My stomach muscles are a bit stiff now, after laughing for half an hour,” she says.

Maria Crystal-Paige, a business owner from Coburg, has been going to laughter clubs for a few months. She is training to be a laughter session leader.

“It might be better if you don’t tell people it’s yoga because they’ll think they have to work hard,” she says.

“It’s like you’re getting this complete workout - it is yoga, believe me. But you just think you’re having fun.”

Ms Crystal-Paige says even if people don’t feel like laughing at first, the atmosphere of a laughter session will change that.

“You’ll walk in there feeling rather flat, or maybe overwhelmed by something that had happened and you just want to get through that, and you’ll come out just feeling really positive and able to cope, a lot lighter.” ***

The antics draw the attention of passers-by - many of whom the circle opens to welcome – and by the time the chant of forced laughter has descended into legitimate gawuffs, the circle of eight has morphed into a circle of about 20.

For Sheila Mitchell, an IT worker from Ireland, this is a first. She says she was a bit self-conscious because the session was in such a public place. Nevertheless, she wants to try it out again, if only for the workout it provides.

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Melbourne psychologist Dr Debbie Zaks recently did a study of the effects laughter sessions had on happiness.

Past studies suggested laugher was good for blood pressure, the immune system and reducing stress hormones, but Dr Zaks said she wanted to further explore how laughter affected psychological wellbeing.

Her study found 92.7 percent of people said they felt better after the laughter session

than they had beforehand; including people who said most of their laughter was fake.

“The laughter club model doesn’t require that you find anything actually humorous, so you just laugh for no reason,” Dr Zaks said, pointing out Madan Kataria’s motto ‘fake it till you make it’.

“It didn’t really matter in my study whether or not the participants found their laughter to be genuine laughter or forced laughter, the effects on wellbeing were fairly consistent.”

The study also found participants with higher anxiety and generally lower wellbeing than most other participants told of the most dramatic improvements to their mood.

Dr Zaks said her study suggested laughter therapy would be useful for mental healthcare.

“Increasingly things like meditation and yoga are being incorporated into a holistic healthcare system and laughter therapy could be one of those complementary therapies to the more traditional psychiatry, psychology, social work,” she said.

“Seeing other people laugh, the brain mimics that to a certain extent. And we are social animals and we catch each other’s laughter, so to speak. I think that gives people a sense of connection as well.”

Mark Wang Christine Wong In the early 1970s, Mark Wang was kicking around with waistlength hair and bare feet, a bit too young to be a real hippy but rather a self-labelled artsy type.

He particularly was quite traditional to the extent that he still thought his fourth-generation Chinese children should marry other Chinese people.”

A design school student happy to be earning $50 a week, Wang was also Chinese, making his long hair and outrageous career choice a disgrace not only to his father, but the majority of Australians fearful of the Yellow Peril.

Although no longer sporting his unruly mane, rather a few greys starting to appear on his hairline, Wang still outwardly appears to have little connection to his Chinese heritage.

“My father detested it,” Wang admits as though he is almost proud. “I left home because it caused such a disagreement.

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“I don’t speak Chinese and I very much think of myself as an Australian,” he says.

But being the deputy chairman of the Chinese Museum, it seems Chinese tradition is still significant to Wang.

“I have a casual theory about how generations appreciate their heritage the further away they get from it,” he shares.

Approached by the then director of tourism, Don Dunstan, the pair initiated the museum’s beginnings in 1985 amid Chinatown’s lack of a cultural centre. Having taken over his father’s business selling Asian imports, Wang had an ability to create awareness around community needs.

This stemmed from his art school days, where drooling over but rarely buying $20-a-pot paint was a fact of life for Wang and his fellow students. “I thought this was silly, we’re at arts school but we can’t even buy paint,” Wang emphasises, his hands relaying his indignation.

“So I went to the art suppliers and asked if the school could open an account with them. We opened our own shop at the school, buying and reselling the paint at its wholesale price of $12.”

Wang’s hands spring up from his brown corduroys and mime placing a paintbrush to canvas as he describes his early work. “It was mostly just floaty bits of paint on huge canvases, abstract expressions, just a journey I was exploring,” he recollects.

Wang makes almost nostalgic squiggles through the air as he recalls the frustration it eventually caused. “At the end of the day I just found myself staring at the canvas thinking, what was the point? One day I came to the realisation that I didn’t need to do it anymore,” he shrugs.

But he couldn’t completely disregard his creative inclinations, nor his knack for capturing a group of people together needing help. In 1990, Wang was approached to form part of a think tank looking at possible ways to save a failing government craft centre in North Melbourne.

With the shop losing money, it was closed down and many artists and craftsmen had nowhere to sell their products.

“I offered to open up a furniture shop so they’d all have a place to sell their work. It chugged along very slowly at first but what became apparent was there were people who could design furniture and people who could make furniture, they’re two different disciplines,” he explains.

The shop evolved into Designs Australia, the business Wang is the general manager of today.

All the design is kept in-house while external craftspeople are sought to make the products.

“I’ve realised making furniture is not inventing anything, you’re really only meeting a requirement for a customer. Shaping their requirements into something is a lot more financially viable than painting,” he jokes, realising the paradox. “Painting is self expression, soul searching...not my thing.”

This dry sense of humour seems to be what Wang is known for. “Around the largely-Chinese office there’s few who can

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understand him,” admits the manager of the Chinese Museum, Lucy Tan. “He’s very Australian in his mannerisms, so much that we’ve nicknamed him the banana – yellow on the outside, white on the inside,” she laughs.

“He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t sleep. He thinks they’re both a waste of time. He lives off coffee and chocolate – if he’s ever in a bad mood we just give him chocolate to make him happy again,” Tan shares.

But not even a family-sized block of chocolate could prepare Wang for his first meeting with his father’s relatives during a trip to China in 1985. Sponsored by the Chinese government in an effort to reconnect Chinese people abroad with their local relatives, Wang met his extended family, a community of farmers in Tianjin.

“It was like we were from another planet. We looked the same, because we’re related, but we couldn’t even talk to each other.

We just lived in different worlds. Although we were really happy to see each other, we couldn’t comprehend how each other lived,” he confesses.

He shakes his head, the memory as fresh as if it happened yesterday. He pauses a moment, a slight crease of memory forming on his tanned forehead. “We felt very uneasy. Even though we were happy to see them there was the other side of it... They lived in a little hut with a dirt floor and no glass in the windows. They looked like something from a guide book with their weather-beaten faces, living on the land in the elements,” he adds, still shell-shocked by the confronting experience.

While initially impatient to bypass the sightseeing aspects of the trip, Wang and his family were warned they’d only want to stay one or two days with their family.

“When we got there it was like that actually,” he admits. “China was so cut off from the rest of the world and we had no idea what to expect. As a communist country, it was much more primitive than we thought.”

Amid this, it’s almost easy to forget Wang’s command of ChineseAustralian history. But as his slight frame pads about the museum after hours, indifferent to the ceiling high, 30 metre-long dragon looming suddenly out of the darkness, batting aside lanterns waving eerily in the dim light, it becomes apparent the museum itself is his real motherland.

Mark’s jet black bob is enveloped by the blackness as he moves from exhibit to exhibit, the museum as familiar to him as the back of his hand despite the absence of people and light.

“At a certain age you often look back rather than forward and start to find an identity through your heritage. That’s where I’m at,” he declares slowly.

A hint of uneasiness is evident in Wang’s voice as he takes off his wire-rimmed glasses, his thoughtful brown eyes far away as he shifts slightly in the chair. “I’ve never been back there,” he says quietly. “My uncle has since migrated here, but I’ve never spoken to the other family members since.”

Mr Nobody:

Maundz

“I still suck like everybody else. It’s just good to do something different man, it was a good way of expression”

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Harrison Tippet There’s an old pirated CD somewhere in Melbourne at the moment, scratched and probably forgotten in the back of a wardrobe, silent and neglected.

through Mass MC’s Double Beef Records in 2005, Maundz was still a name rarely heard in the local hip-hop scene. But the seed had been planted for his music to be noticed.

he says. “If I say I live with my parents then I live with my parents. No one else will say that because it’s not cool. But I don’t give a f*** man, just be yourself.”

The disc was one of many burnt and copied CDs being passed around Northcote High School back in 2000. When 15-year-old Andrew Maunders had his turn with it, he was stunned by what he heard.

His uncompromising style, mixed with a sense of humour uncommon to the genre, had a few ears pricked in the underground scene, but, as a job with the local council got in the way, he stopped playing shows in 2006.

Maundz remembers going to the Cherry Bar – in what’s now called AC/DC Lane – when he was in year 11, his final year of school, to see a three man hip-hop group from Adelaide called the Hilltop Hoods.

Melbourne MC Bias B had been at the forefront of the development of the Australian hip-hop scene since the early 90s, but he had flown well beneath Andrew’s musical radar – until this borrowed album, called Beezwax.

The teenagers at Northcote knew hip-hop, but this homegrown version was, in more ways than one, a world away from the usual American posturing and bragging.

Here was a distinctly and unapologetically suburban Australian accent, intoning lyrics about tagging trains on the Hurstbridge line and rainy Melbourne days over familiar hiphop beats. They could relate to that – and in Andrew’s case, be inspired by it.

Now, eleven years after first hearing Beezwax, Andrew Maunders is better known as Maundz, one of the booming new breed of local emcees, with a debut album called Mr Nobody. And despite its self-effacing title, Maundz is starting to gain recognition from the big names he grew up listening to.

With a mic in his hand Maundz is surly, gritty, and often very funny. But here at his mum and dad’s home in Preston, he’s more like the old Andrew Maunders: Unassuming, average height, average build, with short, scruffy, brown-orange hair and matching auburn stubble.

The aggressive persona from his music is misleading, in person, Maundz is polite, amiable, and speaks slowly and honestly.

He offers coffee, tea or water, but settles on a couple of James Boags’. After shuffling to the fridge, he sits down at the kitchen table, takes a long swig, and continues to talk about when he was starting out.

“I think I got jealous seeing heaps of people I know put music out and getting credit for it, and I wanted some of that,” he says.

“I still suck like everybody else. It’s just good to do something different man, it was a good way of expression.”

After releasing two seven-inch records

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Maundz never stopped making music.

Every few months he’d upload a new song to his Myspace website. “Just to keep the fans from forgetting about him,” he says, only half-joking.

At the start of last year Maundz decided it was time to start doing shows again, and was preparing for release the first album. that had slowly been pieced together for the past year.

“You just wanna do something for yourself instead of talking shit your whole life. I thought ‘f*** it’, there’s no point just sitting here and talking about doing stuff,” he says.

The title, Mr Nobody, came together from two different stories, which both help demonstrate how he became Maundz. The first was inspired by his mother.

“When I was younger, when something happened at my house, if I f***ed up or somebody made a mess and walked away, Mum used to say ‘Mr Nobody must have done it’,” he says.

The second has less benevolent beginnings and provides insight into his aggressive style, fired by his early experiences with other emcees.

“I always felt, when I went out to a club or pub where there were emcees out there, everyone’s down with each other you know, no one wanted to really know me,” he says.

“Now that I’m doing stuff, everyone wants to know you. It’s kind of a slap in the face.”

“But that’s it man, they’re all [still] doing their thing, and a lot of them suck. So good on ‘em,” he says, with a hint of pleasure.

Maundz has never been shy to talk about who he is. From writing one of his first songs, ‘Preston Verse’, a realistic homage to his home suburb, to talking about being on the dole, he has never shied away from what some people may consider embarrassing.

“I don’t give a f*** what people think of me,”

Seeing the Hoods, now the pre-eminent Australian hip-hop act, playing to crowds of just 20 people was a lesson to the aspiring emcee. “That just shows you where work can get you,” he says.

With the release of Mr Nobody, Maundz has received serious praise from all over the Australian hip-hop scene. Beat Magazine went so far as to say: “…artists like Maundz are the future of hip-hop in this country.”

Maundz is quietly content with his achievements, and avoids hubris. “I’m glad I’m finally starting to get recognition,” he says “A lot of the people I grew up listening to are saying they like my music and they want to start working with me, which is a bit of an honour.”

That’s an Andrew Maunders-type understatement: The Hilltop Hoods have sought him out to deliver personal praise for his music. And then something he would never have dreamed that day at Northcote High: Bias B has asked him to do a guest verse on his upcoming album.

But the realities of the tiny Australian scene – and the real Andrew Maunders – intrude.

He might be on the brink of becoming Australian hip-hop’s next big thing, relatively speaking, but Maundz says he isn’t giving up his day job just yet. If ever.

The geniune

Steve Bracks

Josh Fagan When John Brumby lost the state election last November it meant only three Labor leaders have ever been elected Victorian Premier. John Cain in 1943, before his son John junior in 1982. Steve Bracks then, in 1999, became the only non-John Cain to be elected as Labor Premier. He left on top after eight popular years, but his retirement was not without suspicion.

So does he regret how it ended, what’s he done since and what role did he play in last year’s federal negotiations?

When accounts of his son Nick’s arrest at a St. Kilda police station made news late last year, Steve Bracks wasn’t angry.

“I didn’t get angry because I know it goes with the territory of being a public figure, all parts of your life are often reported,” the former premier said.

“You may not like when it’s reported, but I certainly understand why it is and we deal with it and deal with it effectively.”

Bracks is still the same natural politician who won over Victorian voters in his eight years as Premier.

At 56, he looks as young as ever and has kept active since resigning as Premier in July 2007.

Staring out of his high-rise office window across to Port Phillip Bay, Bracks recites the list of organisations he’s now head of, chair of, or adviser to.

It’s a long CV; Cbus, the Deakin Foundation, Melbourne University, NAB, KPMG, the Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association, the road cycling world championship, as well as advisor to East Timor’s Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao.

clear that night, not many people were calling it, but I said I’d be happy to share insights and advice to help her in forming government,” he said.

From that point Bracks was in regular contact with Gillard, offering tips and strategies on how to persuade the independents.

“We focused on Labor’s regional policies and how that would help her and I think she handled the negotiations very well.

She’s a first class negotiator,” he said.

While Bracks is remembered for coming from nowhere to spectacularly defeat Jeff Kennett, it’s less well known he had to manoeuvre a similar path for Gillard to get there.

In 1999 Bracks and Labor made an enormous gain in the polls, but were left just short of the numbers to form majority government.

Much like last year’s federal situation, it came down to three independents to decide Victoria’s political future, and all three were from conservative and traditionally Kennett-supporting electorates.

According to former Deputy Premier John Thwaites, the period of negotiation was a ‘mammoth task’ that took all of Bracks’ political skill.

“His ability to break down every component of dealing with the independents and work through negotiations in a methodical way and to then use the power of his personality and his ability to relate to people to persuade them, was a sign of his character,” Thwaites said.

“I can remember the meeting we had with the independents when they agreed to give us government.

He’s more engaged talking about his work in East Timor.

“It’s definitely one of my biggest challenges helping Prime Minister Gusmao set up the government for the future and making sure the development of the country can assist people who are living in poverty,” he said.

Although he’s left the daily slog of state government, Bracks is still keenly active in politics.

As votes were being tallied on the night of last year’s federal election, Bracks watched beside Julia Gillard and told her early on what the outcome might mean.

“I said to her, it’s likely to be a hung parliament, it wasn’t

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“It was one where the strength of relationships was so powerful, they trusted Steve to do a good job, to keep his word, not to undermine them, and we succeeded because of that,” he said.

From his school days in Ballarat, Bracks was self-aware of his political attributes.

“I was a bit of a rebel at school, but I generally had the ability to negotiate myself out of difficult situations,” he said.

He joined the Labor party as a student in 1974 but it wasn’t until the following year, on the day Gough Whitlam was dismissed as Prime Minister that his political passion ignited.

“I was incensed at the time. I immediately went to the trades hall in Ballarat and we put together a makeshift coffin with the words ‘death of democracy’ and marched it down to the local newspaper, the Ballarat Courier,” he said.

“There was a palpable sense of outrage and I remember feeling personally disgusted that someone unelected could get rid of a Prime Minister like that.”

The experience set off a desire to get involved in the political process and by the age of 29 Bracks was preselected for the seat of North Ballarat.

He stood in the traditionally safe Liberal seat and lost narrowly in 1985, and again in the 1988 by-election.

Beyond the despair of consecutive losses, Bracks tried to focus on the progress he’d made in achieving a swing to Labor.

“At the time, even though I lost, I could recognise the achievements,” he said.

“I think I was noticed at a state level as someone who had significant ability and capability.”

Bracks stood again for North Ballarat in 1989 and lost for a third time.

It was clear he needed to move on and after tirelessly networking around Melbourne, he became campaign manager for former Premier Joan Kirner, before being chosen to succeed her in the seat of Williamstown at the 1994 election.

In early 1994 he packed up his life in Ballarat with his wife Terry, who was then pregnant with their second child, and made the calculated political move.

“I had a view personally that I was about to turn 40, I was 39, and I thought if I didn’t make it by 40 I would pursue other parts of my career,” he said.

“I decided it was my last chance, so I determinedly and doggedly went for it.”

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The ‘Mr. Nice guy’ politician looks again out his office window across the bay.

“Politics is my life, and I’ve been tough when I needed to be, but I had no regrets along the way,” he said.

“One of the great lessons in politics is to be yourself; if you’re not you’re seen as a phony, and if you’re not being yourself that lack of authenticity will come through enormously,” he said.

Bracks’ sudden retirement, on the same day as his long-term deputy John Thwaites, was one of his toughest decisions, and skepticism lingers over the timing.

Both Bracks and Thwaites maintain it was a choice they reached after wanting to share opportunities within the party and bring in new talent.

His relentless approach was ultimately rewarded as he went on to become one of the state’s most popular premiers.

For most politicians, that’s a difficult sentiment to imagine, but for Bracks particularly, who has fought all his life to make it in politics, he is open about it.

Looking back, Bracks is realistic about the sort of zealous dedication he needed to create his own luck and the hard decisions the journey required.

He recognises, as voters did at three elections, it’s his genuineness that’s helped him most in his career.

How to survive Warren Fellows:

Dean Watson “I am going to tell you about the worst thing that ever happened to me. I don’t really want to tell you, because it’s too terrible to recall, but I have to tell you. It’s important that you know and I have to get it out of my heart.” – Warren Fellows At 9.00am on Wednesday October 11, 1978, Warren Fellows, Paul Hayward and William Sinclair were arrested in their Bangkok hotel room by ‘Mad Dog’ Vyraj. Thai police, under the direction of Mad Dog found 8.5kg of grade-4 heroin in a black case the trio had planned to traffic back to Perth. In the days leading up to the bust, a friend approached Fellows with the disturbing news that a policeman had said they had him under surveillance and suspected his involvement in a large drug courier operation. The signs were eerie and ignored.

Fellows, Haywood and Sinclair were driven from their hotel room through the streets of Bangkok at high speed, before being ushered into a room to be photographed by the press and then made to sign a document written in Thai.

“I declare that I want a lawyer and Mad Dog goes berserk. He screams that we have no lawyer. He screams we have no rights at all.

We are filth and are going to die…I wonder what my mother is doing, right at this very moment.”

For days on end (Fellows can’t recall the number precisely) he was interrogated in the police interrogation cells in the Drug Suppression Unit, the only brief relief from

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the violence being the occasional presence of embassy representatives. He saw little of Paul and William. Deep into the interrogations in a rare moment of contact, he and Paul tried to take their lives, agreeing to hold down one another’s heads in a water trough, but failed to succeed.

Recent floods in northern Thailand and the significant aid provided by Australia made execution a politically insensitive move at the time of Fellows’ imprisonment. While a trial was arranged, Fellows was relieved to be relocated to a place where Mad Dog would not be, however the relief was short lived. Over the next 37 days, interrogation would continue in a place called ‘The Monkey House.’

“The Warren Fellows of 1978 went in and will never come out. That makes it a grave.

You are welcome to spit on it.”

From this point on, Fellows spent the next 12 years in ankle chains. On orders, Fellows and other prisoners were relocated to Maha Chai, a prison with higher security and a more formidable reputation for its savage treatment of prisoners.

“We soon discovered that we’d spend 18 hours a day in our rooms, which sometimes were packed with up to 30 prisoners. There was a hole in the corner of the room which served as a toilet and was supposed to be emptied and cleaned every three days. Next to the toilet was a bowl of water, as toilet paper was not allowed in the prison.”

The wildlife in the prisons thrived.

Cockroaches, ants and at night, mosquitoes.

The most terrifying, says Fellows, were the sewer rats, as large as small cats. Letters from family offered the only link to the outside world, a chilling reminder that life was going on as per normal, the world oblivious to the horrors of life inside the prison’s iron walls.

In one such letter, Fellows’ mother wrote of reporters trying to force their way into the house back in Australia and in a letter Fellows never received, a friend wrote of drawing optimism for Fellows after seeing the film Midnight Express.

One day, without explanation Fellows was taken to one of the darkrooms.

“Building two was the building the prisoners feared the most, it housed some of the dark rooms. These were rooms big enough for about 10 people to live very uncomfortably – there were usually about 20 prisoners in one room at a time. Absolutely no light penetrated the blackness of the darkroom.

The minimum sentence of one month applied and you were in there 23 hours and 55 minutes a day. Sometimes, prisoners would be in the darkrooms for up to three months.”

Ten days into the ordeal, Fellows bargained with a guard to see the governor. The explanation given for Fellows’ being sent to the darkroom was based on suspicion that he had been planning to escape the prison, as per the letter that mentioned the film Midnight Express. This time, the governor believed his innocent plea. In a place where injustice and cruelty was the law, Fellows would be sentenced to life imprisonment and transferred to Bang Kwang.

“I was going to a place that was even more feared. The Thais called it Big Tiger. They said it prowled and ate.”

While in Big Tiger, Fellows lived through the passing of his father, a month in Khun Deo, otherwise known as solitary confinement and another failed suicide attempt.

“I was too broken and pathetic to manage my own death. I couldn’t die and I couldn’t live. This was truly hell.”

a Thai prison On the 7th April 1989, after 11 years imprisonment, Paul Hayward was released. Fellows would follow on Christmas day that year. He found himself on a plane to Perth, 12 years later than he had initially planned and free from Big Tiger, in the physical sense at least.

His mother flew to Perth to see him, but after the amount of time he spent under guard, he believed his freedom was an illusion and became overwhelmed with the feeling that anything good would soon be put to an end.

“When my mother approached, I just snapped at her. Before I even said as much as hello, I accused her of following me and told her to go away and let me be.”

In time, Fellows would re-enter society and reunite with Paul. William Sinclair was released only a couple of years into his sentence. Paul Hayward died of a heroin overdose in 1992.

“Looking back on it now, I realise that much of the life in Bang Kwang was spent creating a world as similar to the one we knew on the outside there was a pig farm in Bang Kwang.

For a few packets of cigarettes, a Bang Kwang pig would love you long time.”

Fellows regrets his actions, but understands that people wanted him locked away for life.

In some ways, he always will be.

“Some people cannot be warned, that they have to experience things for themselves before they learn if my recollection of the horrors I experienced can change the mind on one person, then my loss has not been worthless. It will in fact, become as priceless as a life.”

Extracts from ‘The Damage Done’ by Warren Fellows (Mainstream Publishing, 2000)

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Simon Goosey Anna Harrington When talking football on the Mornington Peninsula, there’s one name that always comes to mind: Simon Goosey. A local legend, Goosey has played over 300 games as playing-coach of the Mornington Bulldogs in the tough Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League (MPNFL), kicking 13 tonnes along the way. He’s had a long and interesting football career to say the least. Most recently, it’s a journey that’s taken him to local VFL side Frankston Dolphins, where he took over the reins as head coach in 2010.

Goosey began his 20 year football career as a fresh faced 19-year-old at Mornington in 1988, having played in a VFL reserves grand final for Richmond the year before, losing to North Melbourne by seven points. With a previous injury holding him back, Goosey said he played only the last four games of the VFL season, not mentioning the fact he kicked 35 goals in those four games.

Moving to the Peninsula for work, Goosey said he looked back on his time at Richmond fondly.

‘I enjoyed my time – I had two years there playing [and] we played off in a grand final,’ he said.

After the 1989 season, Goosey was drafted by Geelong, where he spent a frustrating year in the reserves, unable to break into a forward line dominated by Cats stars Gary Ablett snr and Billy Brownless. He laughs wryly that he was particularly unlucky not to get a game, getting suspended and missing games at the same time Ablett and others were out injured. Looking back, Goosey said with a bit of patience and luck he may well have made it but chose instead to return to the

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familiarity of the Peninsula.

‘I was pretty pleased with the year I had, I won the reserves goalkicking down at Geelong and I think I came third in the league,’ Goosey said.

‘I was probably my own worst enemy, I was impatient, I didn’t like playing seconds football so I ended up coming home to Mornington.

‘It was one of those things where you would’ve loved to have had the opportunities but I never got them.

I was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ he said.

After his stint at Geelong, Goosey went to Frankston, playing 49 games between 1992-1994 but soon returned to Mornington to begin his career as player-coach, leading the Mornington Bulldogs to four premierships from full forward.

While the concept of a playingcoach may be long gone at AFL level, Goosey’s time at Mornington allowed him to continue to play the game he loved while developing a new path in football and ultimately in his life. The local legend was setting out on a new journey, moving beyond the status of a gun footballer and into the coaching realms.

‘I guess I was always passionate about coaching, so I came down here (to Frankston) for three years then went back to Mornington to coach,’ Goosey said.

‘With a playing coach it’s a lot easier playing at full forward to look at the game in front of you and really get a good grip on things.’

Despite his success as both a player and coach at Mornington, Goosey said the thing he valued most about football was the sense of belonging and loyalty experienced in the club. People at both Frankston and Mornington talk about him as a

club legend, but Goosey says he was just lucky to have the experience not only at the Bulldogs kennel but also in his new home at Frankston.

‘We won four premierships and four runners-up so it was quite pleasing that we were able to have a successful era,’ Goosey said.

‘It’s good that you can look back on your career and say you belong somewhere and at Mornington I know I’m always welcome back there and I’ve been part of Frankston for five years now, three years as a player and two years coaching.’

Experiencing first-hand the unpredictable nature of top level football, Goosey has always been prepared to take an unconventional route into coaching, fully aware he wouldn’t be able to walk into a role like some well known ex-AFL players. So from his humble beginnings 2006, attending opposition games before reporting back to the coaches, while in his spare time managing to play ‘14 or 15 games’ for Dromana, kicking yet another tonne of goals for the season.

Goosey considers this phase of his coaching career one of his most important, both in terms of his strategic development and in getting himself noticed as a senior coaching prospect.

‘I suppose for me with coaching that was the pathway,’ Goosey said.

‘Obviously I hadn’t had my 100 or 200 AFL games to get my foot in the door at a club at a higher level so I had to work my way up and doing the opposition I think really helped me as a coach.

‘It was really good from a coaching perspective to look at the game like that,’ he said.

Also spending a preseason at Hawthorn as a specialist goal kicking coach in 2008, Goosey shrugged off any suggestion he had contributed to the premiership that year. But he joked he may have helped the Hawks’ wayward-kicking spearhead Lance ‘Buddy’ Franklin reach his own milestone of 100 goals.

‘Well Buddy actually did kick straight that year,’ Goosey said.

‘I think his goalkicking accuracy improved about eight per cent.’

While already infamous locally, Goosey gained recognition across the wider footballing community when he was selected to play in the 2005 E.J. Whitten Legends Game alongside former AFL players. He kicked four goals for Victoria against the All-Stars but prefers to think of the match as a fun and memorable experience rather than a test of his footballing ability.

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‘It was a good experience and good fun and something I’ll always remember,’ Goosey said.

‘I suppose it doesn’t matter how old you are you still are competitive,’ he said.

Goosey’s latest challenge is trying to foster home grown talent through the Frankston dolphins.

The dolphins have struggled on field in recent years but Goosey believes it’s only a matter of time before a young team composed primarily of locals stamps itself on the competition.

He says the foundations for both individual and team success have been laid, citing the progression of former dolphin Michael Hibberd, who is now playing for Essendon.

‘We’re talented but we’re young and the only thing we lack is experience,’ Goosey said.

Meanwhile, Goosey is also nurturing the talent of his two young sons, who’ve inherited his love of footy. And he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of playing alongside them.

‘I’ve got two boys, one of them’s playing AusKick and the other one’s playing Under 16s.

‘It’d be nice to maybe have a kick with the oldest one in a year or two,’ he said.

For Simon Goosey life has always been a case of ‘football, football, football.’ And things don’t look like changing anytime soon.

Bert Chapman:

L egend

Bethany England Bert Chapman lends his name to a Facebook group boasting no fewer than 276 members.Group creator and adoring fan Thomas Logan describes him as a “legend of a man”. Not bad, considering he’s a driving instructor.

“Since he began instructing all those decades ago, generations have benefited from his exquisite teaching skills,” an explanation at the top of the page reads.

They will be celebrating no less than a remarkable 50 “solid years” of marriage next month.

“It hasn’t always been smooth sailing, we’ve had some pretty tough times along the way,” Bert said.

take his eyes right off the road and stare at me.”

“I’d be saying ‘For god’s sake don’t look at me boy! Look at the road!’”

The boy had failed the test five or six times already, but that didn’t worry Bert.

“He ended up passing with flying colours, he was so excited after that he kissed me, full on the face,” he said.

Bert recalls how, for six long years, he drove a freight truck between Melbourne and Sydney overnight in addition to his footy playing.

Bert also helped 73-year-old Valerie Tilvinson, the oldest woman on record to get her licence.

“I slept in my own bed maybe two nights a week, tops,” Bert said.

Valerie had never driven before and insisted on driving at 40km/h, even in a 70 zone.

He’s five-five , stocky and most days he wears a black T-shirt and jeans.

“It was really lonely on the road, it’s an 11 hour drive and then I’d be straight on to footy training.

“I’d be saying, ‘Now come on Val, you’ve gotta get your speed up a bit!’,” Bert said.

It’s worth mentioning the now-famous coarse grey ponytail that, judging by countless appreciative comments on Facebook, has been a massive hit with his students.

“I missed Pauline a lot but I suppose it’s that kind of separation that bonds you together,” he said.

“Boasting a near perfect pass rate, his phone number has been passed throughout schools, and as a result an army of his graduates are now on the roads and a legend has been forged.”

Bert is not your typical sort of legend.

Bert started off his career, unexpectedly, as a VFL player for Collingwood.

“Those were good times, I was 18 and what you call an on-baller, a pretty aggressive player,” he said.

The AFL’s historical statistics archive says he played a significant 68 games including three grand finals, spanning 1960 to 1966.

But Bert is modest.

“I just made up the numbers,” he insists.

“Oh don’t listen to him, he was really good,” chides his beloved wife, Pauline.

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Bert and Pauline met in grade 4 at Melbourne’s Ivanhoe State School, where they shared a class.

In 1966 Bert retired from football, gave up his freight truck business and decided to concentrate on driving instructing.

“I was ready for a change, I’d done a bit of instructing from time to time to make some extra money when I was younger and felt there was definitely a niche in that business,” he said.

It’s been 46 years and hundreds of driving test triumphs courtesy of the Bert Chapman Driving School ensued.

“Boy oh boy, where do I begin?,” Bert laughs, recalling the countless students and their struggles. “I had one guy who, every time I would say something, would

On the day of Valerie’s test, it poured with rain, which made Bert feel slightly nervous.

“She just chuckled and told me that it was all right, we could go at her speed now,” he said.

Despite the weather, Valerie triumphed and thanks to Bert, she’s now able to drive her husband from their home in Doncaster to their beach house in Gippsland every weekend.

But driving instructing, as Bert knows all too well, is not without its disappointments.

His expression sours when confronted with the topic of youth road fatalities.

“They say the best drivers in the world are L-Platers and the worst are P-Platers,” Bert said.

“I taught this boy a few years back who would always go too fast in our lessons, and I’d be telling him he’d get caught or worse,” he said.

The boy continued at high speed, and successfully completed his test.

He called Bert at 10 pm that same day, hysterical after he’d been in a crash and promptly lost his licence.

“I said he was just lucky he didn’t get killed, driving is a huge responsibility that you have to take seriously,” he said.

The controversial new driving test, introduced in July 2008, has been designed to prevent L-Platers from obtaining a licence before they’re ready to take on this responsibility.

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Changes to the system include a longer, 40-minute test run, followed by a graduated licensing scheme that requires two years driving with restrictive red P-plates before moving on to the more lenient green Ps. So what is the secret to passing the new test?

“I’m not sure there’s any secret to it, but I always remind my students that it’s their time to learn,” Bert said.

“Basically anyone can learn to drive, it’s really just about teaching confidence,” he said.

At 68 years of age, Bert plans to retire next month.

“I’ve been passionate about my job and that’s worn me out,” he said.

“I wouldn’t change any of it though; it’s been great fun and pretty rewarding too.”

Bert hopes to spend the rest of his life with Pauline at their holiday house, near Port Arlington.

There’s no doubt Bert’s guidance will be sorely missed on our roads.

But happily for Victoria’s budding L-Platers, his youngest son Brad has taken up the challenge of driving instructing and will continue in Bert’s absence.

The Chapman legacy lives on.

UCROO?

Napster, Facebook, Myspace:

UCROO founders Raj Varan, Chase Williams, Andrew Helgensen and James Mc Cubbin.

Abbie O’Brien Many of us remember our days at high-school, in which we were situated realms of a tightly-knit bubble where everything seemed comfortably familiar and the notion of self-directed learning was inexistent. Perhaps the shift to university is a breath of fresh air, rendering a sense of freedom and independence. But for most of us, I’m sure there are days where we miss the abundance and cosiness of the bubble. The time when tangible and face-to-face interaction governed our processes of learning and all academic information seemed to be spoon-fed to us. Perhaps not. Either way, one thing is for certain – the transition from high-school to university is quite considerable in terms of how we are fed information.

UCROO (pronounced you-crew) is an online, virtual community that has been initiated by a group of five university students and is targeted squarely at university undergraduates. Raj Varan, Chase Williams, James Mc Cubbin, Joseph Valente and Andrew Helgensen reckon that the shift from high school to university is pretty drastic, and there are insufficient resources available to guide students through the transition. Williams thinks ‘the difference between university and high school is so vast. I found that at high-school you are pretty much spoon-fed information, but in university that mechanism of learning is virtually abandoned.’

UCROO wants to support university students, by allowing young voices, academic consultation and university experiences to be articulated within a communal network that is governed by university students themselves.

But Elise Quirk is studying teaching at Victoria University and she thinks that it’s important that students aren’t spoon-fed at uni.

‘You’re not gonna get spoon-fed at work, and uni is supposed to prepare us for work,’ she said.

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UCROO is also aiming to simplify and enrich university life.

The site intends to manifest technology that will enable the non-technically savvy student to navigate through the site with ease. Essentially, any person is able create an individual, online account. Upon joining the ‘CROO’ students are granted access to all areas of the site and it’s here, the exchange of study and exam tips and render general academic discussion takes place.

Students may visit the market precinct where they can buy and sell consumer goods (including textbooks, calculators etc.) and advertise and seek housing arrangements within the locale of their university. Deals and coupons will be offered on the site on a daily basis, to facilitate students living on a budget. Additionally, there will also be an employment hub, where students can seek local jobs, internship opportunities and prospective postgraduate employment opportunities.

Alternatively, Monash University performing arts student, Sachael Miller, reckons the Monash intranet service provides plenty of support already. She is also a member of the Bachelor of Performing Arts Group – a uni club. ‘We have our own Facebook page where we exchange notes,’ she said.

The boys believe that “the potential success of our website stems from the fact that we are university students ourselves so we are conscious of the in order to foster a more constructive university life.”

University welcomes the marvel of independent study, critical and analytical thinking and voids tangible and face-to-face processes of learning. To put it bluntly the whole process seems to be more about helping yourself rather then acquiring help from others, as we do high school. The boys ensure [they] “are not trying to recreate the social experience on the net – such as social networks like Twitter and Facebook do. Basically we are providing a service that allows you to move through University in an easier, faster and more efficient fashion.”

UCROO is currently in development but still allows students to discuss all aspects of life via the UCROO Forums. Students are encouraged to join the community now.

Look where a club can take you...

Fair Trade Collective sponsorship of the ‘Comercio Justo: Fair Trade in Chile’ project RMIT student France Pitt was afforded the opportunity to make a dream come true thanks to a generous sponsorship of $1,000 from the FTC in order to start a development project in Chile. France is pictured left with producer Luz. Here’s what France has to say: “The purpose of the ‘Comercio Justo: Fair Trade in Chile’ project is to develop micro-enterprise amongst indigenous producers in the south of Chile by helping them improve their business knowledge, processes and infrastructure. At the moment producers like Luz receive $20 for a handwoven rug that takes a month to make in her spare moments. Our goal is to help her do what she loves quicker and easier so that she gets a better price and has more time to spend with her family.”

In addition, the project offers opportunities for RMIT students to participate who are either interested in developing the project from Melbourne or going to Chile on a study tour with a chance to really make a difference.

If you’d like to know more email:

france.pitt@gmail.com The Fair Trade Collective is a RUSU affiliated club.RUSU supports over 100 clubs and societies. There are a range of academic, spiritual, cultural, political, social and special interest clubs. For more information on other RUSU clubs and societies, visit:

www.su.rmit.edu.au/clubs

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Student Rights @ How to apply for Special Consideration?

A.K.A: I was sick in my exam and I did badly!

I am sick and my exam is tomorrow!

I missed a deadline for an assignment because I was sick!

I have serious personal things going on and it’s affecting my exam study!

Eligibility: According to RMIT’s policy, students can apply for Special Consideration on a range of health or compassionate grounds where they experience unexpected or extenuating circumstances during or at end of a semester which: a) prevented them from submitting assessable task/s; or, b) prevented them from attending an examination; or, c) substantially affected their performance in the above.

Examples of unexpected or extenuating circumstances normally considered include: a) serious illness or psychological condition – e.g. hospital admission, serious injury, severe asthma, severe anxiety or depression. Does not include minor symptoms associated with such a cold, period pain or hay fever. b) loss or bereavement – e.g. death of a close family member, family/relationship breakdown. c) hardship/trauma – e.g. victim of crime, sudden loss of income or employment, severe disruption to domestic arrangements.

Important points to remember when applying: Students can either complete an online application for special consideration or they can pick up a Special Consideration form from the Hub or they can download it from the RMIT website.

Students should submit the Special Consideration form even if they don’t have the relevant documentations to the Special Consideration Panel within 2 working days of the exam/ assignment date. RMIT don’t accept just medical certificates rather they expect the students to get their doctor fill in the impact assessment statement which is part of the special consideration application.Make sure you attach a cover letter, explaining how your illness has affected your studies, along with your application. To submit a late application for Special Consideration, Students must demonstrate exceptional circumstances as to why their application is late and email their application to academic.registrar@rmit.edu.au After submitting the application students have got 5 working days time to submit the supporting documentation.

If the Special consideration panel rejects their application then students have 10 working days to lodge an appeal, against this decision, to the University Appeals Committee.

Remember, RMIT overwhelmingly grants special consideration if the doctor has identified that the impact of your illness on academic assessment is “severe”

If you need more help 37

please email student.rights@rmit.edu.au visit www.su.rmit.edu.au or call 9925 2473

&

REAL FAIR FOOD DEMO!

Learn about

FAIRTRADE & ORGANIC

ingredients

with our special guest speakers & chefs at this FREE event

Thursday May 19 5.30pm arrival for 6-8pm (includes talks & cooking class) @ Realfoods, RMIT University city campus 360 Swanston St, Food Court (Building 8, Level 4)

Meals, drinks & snacks available for purchase from the RMIT 38 Student Union’s ‘Realfoods’ café menu on the night!

Festival & Conference Day

@ RMIT Brunswick

Wednesday 18th May 39

Textile Print “The Plague” by Jess Eisenhauer 2010, Poster Design by Jazmine, Bradley, BA Textile Design Students

www.rmit.edu.au/fashiontextiles

Room

by Emma Donoghue PICADOR ISBN: 9780330519021 RRP: $22.99 Reviewed by

Sam van Zweden Shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize, Room tells the story of five-year-old Jack and his Ma, who live in a space measuring 12 feet by 12 feet. Jack is born in Room and, a captive for seven years, Jack’s Ma teaches him that Room is all there is. They have a TV, but all that’s seen on there isn’t “real for real”, it’s “just TV”. Jack’s entire reality is confined to the Room, where the sky measures only as wide as Skylight, the sea isn’t real, and Old Nick (who Jack sees as an unfriendly God) brings them food and “Sunday treats”. Ma eventually “unlies” to Jack, telling him actually true, and that Room is only a tiny part of a much bigger world. Jack is reluctant, and finds it ‘hard to remember all the bits, none of them sound very true,’ but eventually helps his Mia escape.

Told from Jack’s point of view, the narrating voice of Room is both wonderfully strange and very familiar. Jack has the questioning nature and speech patterns of a five year old, but this familiar voice is put into a very foreign situation. Limited viewpoints are fun for a while, but can usually grow stale unless executed precisely (a’la Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident). Emma Donoghue has hit the nail on the head with Jack’s voice being one of the most original voices in recent fiction.

Throughout the novel, the reader and the author are able to look over young Jack’s head and wink at one another in recognition. Jack describes awful things happening to Ma, but in an uncomprehending way. Every weekday, Ma and Jack get to “play Scream”, where they bang things and yell as loud as they can. Jack sees this only as part of what constitutes the world of Room, part of the daily routine. This reader/author cahoot-feeling continues when Jack gets out into the world (only about 50 pages into the novel–not a spoiler!). Donoghue has managed to see the world through incredibly fresh eyes, wondering at things we take for granted. A writer of historical fiction, she has a knack for finding the strange in the familiar, and vice versa, and this works perfectly for Jack.

Both the protagonists, Jack and Ma, ring very true. At times you love them both, other times they’re just too human to be liked–these are honest characters, not caricatures or thoughtexperiments.

Taking as inspiration the case of Austrian captor Josef Fritzl, Emma Donoghue has thoroughly researched all the implications (both medical and psychological) of such a situation.

However, these characters are so memorable and true because at their centre, they are simply human.

Tears. I’m warning you now, there will be tears. There will be laughter also, and happiness–Room is easily the most moving novel I have read in a long time, one you want to dive into and never return.

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Read, written, snapped...

Un-known A poem by

Michael Waters

It. It. That which can not be defined, But that which definitions of its Antithesis exist in adundance.

There it is, that thing. That Some-thing. That scratch in the Paint. That void in the flesh.

That thing I see but don’t Know. But not see as knowing Sees, but views like air or Water.

It. It. That which bes as I be. But bes more Than I as that which Has not been named.

Call me and I hear.

Call it and it does Not listen.

My name is he. It is it.

But this other thing is Not he, not it, nor She. It is of the set of Those that are without Being. But also being.

It. It. It is it. It Knows it.

“Who are you?”