2017 Edition 1

ASTEROIDS | HELIUM | ANXIETY

FARRAGO EDITION 1 2017

RADIO FODDER 2017 SEMESTER 1 TIMETABLE TIME

MONDAY

TUESDAY

9:00

WEDNESDAY

Radio Arts Melbourne

11:00

Scope

Guide to Classical Music

Off Beet

Level Up!

Curiosity

The Biggest, Blackest Show

Enviro Weekly

12:00

National Public Fodder

1:00

The Language

2:00

A Currant, A Fair

Binge ‘n’ Bants

3:00

Accretion Disc

Rich Mahogany

4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00

FRIDAY

Campus Convo

Top of the Morning

10:00

THURSDAY

Lounge An Hour of Trash Down the Rabbit Hole The Henderson Paradox Apatheater

Heavy Metal Hour

Network Disabled The Mein Event

Mordant Heaven

The Ferg Neal Show

Snappy Hour

Mudcrabs Radio

Socbites

Clickbait

History’s Greatest Duck-Ups

Slippery

Extraordinary Tales

Snags and Satellites

The Generalists

Home Grown

Nominal Interest

TUNE IN, SPACE OUT

RADIOFODDER.COM

61 31 22

20 12

CONTENTS 52

COLLECTIVE 02 03

contributors editorial CAMPUS

04 05 06 07 08 08 09 10 10 11 11 12 13 16

news nuggets march calendar home system 1 stop right now over-hall timetabling drama the divestment dilemma student groans skeleton crew mind the gap all systems go breaking (the) news office bearer reports unimelb field guide

COMMENTARY who’s afraid of the rich and entitled?

18 psyched out 20 it takes a village 22 the dark side of the aisle 23 problem nannas 24 life in parkville 26 total recall 27 sick sad world 28 the human factor 30 pupils 31 baroque fever 32 not queer enough 34 on the origin of strangeness 36 scientology 101 38 the tourist bubble 39 how to get over heartbreak 40 berlin nights 42 oh the horror!

17

BACKGROUND BY SELENA TAN 03

CREATIVE one corner of a poster in a bp roadhouse 47 the south wind 48 the world is fucked 50 pink 51 jesus on hold 52 helium boy 55 faded and altered 56 planet of the grapes of wrath 58 art suite: ruth simone rathjen-duffton 60 wtf!

61 no secrets in this reign 62 recollections 63 red and white 64 butterflies and moths 66 chroma 67 come to dinner 68 for and against 44

COLLECTIVE

THE FARRAGO TEAM EDITORS Alexandra Alvaro Amie Green James Macaronas Mary Ntalianis CONTRIBUTORS Ashleigh Barraclough Frankie Bell Ben Clark Chelsea Cucinotta Veronica Di Mase Belle Gill Lynley Eavis Tilli Franks James Gordon Olivia Hart Dana Harper Ilsa Harun Markos Hasiotis Ashleigh Hastings Morgan Hopcroft Harriet Jarrett Esmé James Anisha Kidd Wing Kuang Lilly McLean Jack Francis Musgrave Amani Nasarudin Alain Nguyen Ruby Perryman Ruth Simone Rathjen-Duffton Claudia Schroeder Nellie Seale Claudia Seers Morgan-Lee Snell Alison Tealby Issy Tobin Alexander Baky Tran Caleb Triscari Peter Tzimos Sean Wales Will Whiten

SUBEDITORS Elizabeth Adams James Agathos Natalie Amiel Kergen Angel Harry Baker Amy Bartholomeusz Amelia Bensley Sue-Ann Chan Esther Crowley Noni Cole Sebastian Dodds Katie Doherty Esther Le Couteur Alessia Di Paolo Simone Eckardt Victoria Emerson Esmé James Candy James-Zoccoli Annie Jiang Celine Lau Vicky Lee Maggy Liu Caitlin McGregor Sinead Medew-Ewen Ellen Muller Jeremy Nadel Jesse Paris-Jourdan Ellie Patton Sarah Peters Lara Porczak Jeffrey Pullin Claudia Seers Alf Simpson Felicity Sleeman Morgan-Lee Snell Reilly Sullivan Caleb Triscari Peter Tzimos Matt Wojczys Alice Zeng Stephanie Zhang

GRAPHICS

Charlotte Bird-Weber Ella Hope Broadbent Edie Bush Leung Chin Ching Ewan Clarke-McIntyre Cornelius Darrell Anwyn Elise Veronica Fernando James Goh Minahil Munir Hamdani Ilsa Harun Darus Noel Howard Kyaw Min Htin Carolyn Huane Lauren Hunter Clara Cruz Jose Nakate Kakembo Esther Le Couteur Sarah Leong Sarah Fan-Ning Lin Lisa Linton Hanna Liu Eloyse McCall Lilly McLean Rachel Morley Amani Nasarudin Sam Nelson Wasinee Phornnarit (Gwen) Elena Piakis Ruth Simone Rathjen-Duffton Amelia K Saward Nellie Seale Bonnie Smith Morgan-Lee Snell Sophie Sun Selena Tan Jasmine Velkovski Reimena Yee

ARTWORK BY SARAH FANG-NING LIN 04

COLUMNISTS Madeline Bailey Anwyn Elise James Hazeldine Claire Longhouse (online) Tessa Marshall Harry McLean Monique O’Rafferty (online) Ed Pitt Danielle Scrimshaw Claudia Seers (online) Benjamin Smart (online) Linus Tolliday WEB Jenny Huynh Jack Kaloger Cathy Weng SOCIAL MEDIA Elizabeth Haigh Ilsa Harun Annie Liew Monique O’Rafferty Acacia Pip Ramone Taanya Rohira Mega Safira Maddie Spencer COVER Charlotte Bird-Weber Farrago is the student magazine of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU), produced by the Media Department. Farrago is published by the General Secretary of UMSU, Yasmine Luu. The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of UMSU, the printers or the editors.

Farrago is printed by Printgraphics, care of superstar Nigel Quirk. All writing and artwork remains the property of the creators. This collection is © Farrago and Farrago reserves the right to republish material in any format.

COLLECTIVE

EDITORIAL ALEXANDRA ALVARO The first gig I ever went to was a Delta Goodrem one and it was pretty much the defining moment of my life because it’s when I realised I wanted to be the best soprano in Australia. It’s a bit awkward now because I’m fast approaching 22 and I thought by now my face would be on the cover of a multi-platinum selling album instead of in this magazine. Still, editing damn-you-to-hell student journalism for this 92-year-old publication is a pretty good outcome.

Picking up a copy of Farrago on my first day at uni was like finding treasure and weaselling my way into this community after a couple of meek attempts was well worth it. Being a part of this collective is like receiving 200 hugs at the same time to the power of infinity and knowing I’ll be leading this group of talented people with my three favourite idiots is even better. Welcome to Farrago for 2017 – read it, sniff it, take a shit on it, but most importantly, contribute. I’ll delay the release of my straight fire mix tape for now just to witness it.

AMIE GREEN New things are scary. The last time I did something for the first time was during the summer when I learnt how to swim. It was in an old abandoned Tasmanian quarry filled with endless, black water. I was fucking terrified. When I had to float, I subjected my friends to a long tantrum. But it was instinctual and I swam for hours through the weird dog vomit algae and neon slime. I was swimming very, very poorly, but I was swimming. Then I swallowed a dragonfly and panicked and thought I was going to drown.

It was scary but I wasn’t alone. Never stop doing things for the first time, even if you end up eating some bugs. Farrago isn’t for us four losers, it’s about you and what you make of it. Whether you like to make weird art out of clay, write commentary about sniffing band-aids, or discuss critical, complex theories, we’ll hold your head above water as you spit out bits of dragonfly. That’s what Farrago did for me and what we are going to do for you this year. We hope to see your name on our pages and your face at our events.

JAMES MACARONAS We are all going to die, someday or another. Until then, we have Farrago.

In other news, hey, hello, how’re you doing and welcome one and all to 2017. I’m a Farrago editor, you are a Farrago reader, and we are going to get along like a house on fire, a phrase I will probably never use again. Tea? Suit yourself.

‘Farrago’ is a Latin word that roughly translates to ‘clusterfuck’ and that is exactly why I’m writing this editorial with a big, stupid grin on my face. This magazine has it all – fierce journalism, prose that dances between the everyday and the impossible, art that’ll make you weep and a goddamn perforated page. Beautiful. I am too excited to be putting this magazine together with three scarily talented individuals, but I’m even more excited to see what you – yes, you – are going to submit for the next edition. And the edition after that, and so on until 2018 comes around and our existential terror limbers up for another wild and crazy indiscriminate length of time.

Get scribbling, send it to us and let’s rock and roll.

MARY NTALIANIS If you ever find yourself in the library on the Second Floor of Union House, turn right, then turn left up the stairs and walk right to the end of the room with the blue walls, then, on one of the bottom shelves you’ll find a row of heavy black books dating back decades with gold letters on the spine that read Farrago. In recent months, the nature our world both within the walls of the University and out there has been marked by a series of events motivated by intolerance and more importantly, a lack of empathy. In the midst of all this Farrago is here to evoke deep and critical thought, inspiration and outrage. We at Farrago would do this far less well if not for your detailed campus investigations, captivating ethnographies, helium balloon sex stories and debates about asteroids that are frankly, out of this world. So what next, you might ask? Read anything and everything you can get your hands on. Write furiously and submit your words to Farrago. Be relentlessly curious and go on more adventures to the back rooms of libraries.

BACKGROUND BY ANWYN ELISE PHOTOGRAPHY BY LYNLEY EAVIS 05

CAMPUS

NEWS NUGGETS

University staff will be negotiating a new enterprise bargaining agreement over the next six months for both academic and administrative positions.

SHIMMER ME TIMBERS

MIDSUMMA LOVIN

For a second time, the University has led a contingent through Pride March for Victoria’s Annual Midsumma Festival. The event celebrates the diversity within the LGBTQI+ community.

POTATO RAKE (IN THAT CASH)

Culture festival Shimmerlands took over the Parkville campus this summer, bringing film, music, art and food to students and the general public.

SECRET FEES

Potato cake and hash brown prices have inflated by no less than 10c at Union House hotspot ‘University Catch’.

MOVING ON UP

FURTHER DELAYS

TILL DEBT DO US PART

The University has raised student service related fees for 2017.

These include fees related to graduation , childcare, international application and student card replacement, which is now set to cost $50.

DON’T HATE, NEGOTIATE

Automatic debt recovery letters sent by Centrelink in January earlier this year have frightened and frustrated thousands of young people. Students from the National Union of Students held a protest on 27 January outside the Centrelink South Melbourne offices.

HANG IN THERE

BUDGET SUBMISSION

Universities Australia have released their pre-budget statement pending the 2017 Federal Budget. Recommendations include a rejection of the 20 per cent cut to higher education by the current government, a reduction in the minimum repayment threshold for HELP debt and the continuation of demand driven funding.

The University of Melbourne has ranked #18 in Times Higher Education’s ranking of the world’s most international universities – a measure based on how globally connected universities are.

The University of Melbourne holds the highest rate of bachelor degree completion in Australia.

According to the Federal Department of Education, 88 per cent of domestic bachelor students complete their degree at the University. Universities that take higher volumes of students from Indigenous and low socioeconomic backgrounds tend to have higher drop-out rates.

GETTIN’ HANDSY

A new subject handbook will be live shortly after Semester One begins. More information to come.

NUMBERS UP

Offers made to Indigenous students by the University have risen by 17 per cent since last year.

The release date for the results from Australia’s first national study on the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment has been pushed back once again. A source has told Farrago results will be made public around mid-year.

ARTWORK BY ELENA PIAKIS 06

NO JOBS

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics has revealed that the number of 15 - 25 year olds employed full-time has been on a steady decline since the same time last year.

Part-time work is still on the rise.

CAMPUS

MARCH CALENDAR WEEK 1

WEEK 2

WEEK 3

WEEK 4

Monday 27

Monday 6

Monday 13

Monday 20

1-2pm: Queer – Trans Collective 1.15-2.15pm: Welfare – Monday Mingle 2.15-3.15pm: Disabilities – Access Tour 5.15-6.15pm: Welfare – Free Zumba

1-2pm: Queer – Trans Collective 1.15-2.15pm: Welfare – Monday Mingle 5.15-6.15pm: Welfare – Free Zumba

1-2pm: Queer – Trans Collective 1.15-2.15pm: Welfare – Monday Mingle 5.15-6.15pm: Welfare – Free Zumba

1-2pm: Queer – Trans Collective 1.15-2.15pm: Welfare – Monday Mingle 5.15-6.15pm: Welfare – Free Zumba

Tuesday 28

Tuesday 7

Tuesday 14

Tuesday 21

10.30am: Education – Museum Tour and Coffee 12pm: Women’s – Women of Colour Collective 12-2pm: Activities – Bands, BBQ & Bevs (Tkay Maidza) 9am-12pm: Bike Coop Breakfast

9-12am: Enviro – Bike Co-op Breakfast 12pm: Women’s – Women of Colour Collective 12-2pm: Activities – Bands, BBQ & Bevs 1-2pm: POC – POC Collective 2-3pm Enviro – Enviro Collective 5-9pm Enviro – Play with Your Food

9-12am: Bike Co-op Breakfast 12pm: Women’s – Women of Colour Collective 12-2pm: Activities – Bands, BBQ & Bevs 2-3pm: Enviro – Enviro Collective 5.30-8.30pm: Enviro - Green Screen

9am-12pm: Bike Co-op Breakfast 10am-2pm: Enviro – Bike Co-op 12pm: Women’s – Women of Colour Collective 12-2pm: Activities – Bands, BBQ & Bevs 1-2pm: POC – POC Collective 2-3pm Enviro – Enviro Collective 2-4pm: Creative Arts – POP! Wait a Minute 5-9pm Enviro – Play with Your Food

Wednesday 1

Wednesday 8

Wednesday 15

Wednesday 22

12pm: Women’s – Women’s Collective 1-2pm: Clubs and Societies – Mudcrabs’ Rowdy Laughter 1-2pm: Queer – Queer Lunch 1-2pm: POC – POC Collective 4-8pm: Media – Wordplay #1 5.15-6.15pm: Welfare – Free Yoga Activities – Start of Uni Party (SoUP)

12pm: Women’s – Women’s Collective (National Women’s Day) 1-2pm: Clubs and Societies – Mudcrabs’ Rowdy Laughter 1-2pm: Queer – Queer Lunch 5.15-6.15pm: Welfare – Free Yoga

12pm: Women’s – Women’s Collective 1-2pm: Clubs and Societies – Mudcrabs’ Rowdy Laughter 1-2pm: Queer – Queer Lunch 1-2pm: POC – POC Collective 1-3pm: Creative Arts – Life Drawing Class 5.15-6.15pm: Welfare – Free Yoga

NUS National Day of Action 12pm: Women’s – Women’s Collective 1-2pm: Clubs and Societies – Mudcrabs’ Rowdy Laughter 1-2pm: Queer – Queer Lunch 5.15-6.15pm: Welfare – Free Yoga

Thursday 2

Thursday 9

Thursday 16

Thursday 23

8.30-10.30am: Welfare – Free Breakfast 1-2pm: Queer – POC Collective 1.15-2.15pm: Disabilities – Disabilities Collective 3pm: Education – Human Library 4.15-5.15pm: Disabilities – Anxiety Support Group 5.30pm: EdPub – EdPub@Pub 6pm: Creative Arts – Ensemble Assembly

8.30-10.30am: Welfare – Free Breakfast 1-2pm: Queer – POC Collective 1.15-2.15pm: Disabilities – Disabilities Collective 4.15-5.15pm: Disabilities – Anxiety Support Group

8.30-10.30am: Welfare – Free Breakfast 1-2pm: Queer – POC Collective 1.15-2.15pm: Disabilities – Disabilities Collective 4.15-5.15pm: Disabilities – Anxiety Support Group 4.15-5.45pm: People of Colour – Race & Diaspora Reading Group 6pm: Creative Arts – Pot Luck Open Mic

8.30-10.30am: Welfare – Free Breakfast 1-2pm: Queer – POC Collective 1.15-2.15pm: Disabilities – Disabilities Collective 2-4pm: Creative Arts – POP! Wait a Minute 4.15-5.15pm: Disabilities – Anxiety Support Group 4.30pm: Media – Farrago Edition 2 Launch

Friday 3

Friday 10

Friday 17

Friday 24

10-11am: Enviro – Fossil Free Meeting 1.15-2.15pm: Welfare – Free Meditation

1.15-2.15pm: Welfare – Free Meditation

1.15-2.15pm: Welfare – Free Meditation 7pm: Activities – Trivia (St Patrick’s Day theme)

1.15-2.15pm: Welfare – Free Meditation

ARTWORK BY ELOYSE MCCALL Reverse this calendar to see Anwyn Elise’s ‘Home System’. Each edition will piece together to form an eight part artwork.

08

CAMPUS

STOP RIGHT NOW

WORDS BY CHELSEA CUCINOTTA AND ALAIN NGUYEN ARTWORK BY CORNELIUS DARRELL

STUDENTS INTERACTING WITH STOP 1 ARE IN NEED OF A HUMAN TOUCH

I

n 2016, the University of Melbourne introduced Stop 1, a new student centre aiming to be the home of student services. The changes were part of the University’s Business Improvement Program for 2014/15, which saw previously separate faculty student service centres merged into one place.

Located at 757 Swanston Street, students are greeted by assistants and a bustling office-like centre. They then print a ticket and are directed to wait at one of the multi-coloured couches. Not long after, students walk to a pod or room, where with some luck, their queries will be answered and resolved.

The concept of Stop 1 sounds simple: a central, easy to find hub for students to heave through the complicated university administration process. Yet, in entering its second year of operations, has Stop 1 really revolutionised the way the University connects with students and services?

The centre offers many modes of communication, including face-to-face appointments and telephone calls. More urgent queries can be answered through the online chat system, where one’s questions can be answered within minutes. For more pressing enquiries outside office hours, a plethora of information awaits under various Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) categories online, including admissions, administration, enrolment, support, skills and development.

However, the efficiency of such services is debatable, with many students recording long wait times and incoherent answers as Stop 1’s major flaws. While long delays may be solved with a higher staff presence, the inconsistency of answers provided may be more difficult to resolve.

“Stop 1’s online support supervisors provide inconsistent and over-generalised answers," said Bachelor of Environments student Isabella Etna. "It's difficult for students like myself to resolve issues."

“While corresponding via the online chat is convenient, the answers I received after multiple chat sessions surrounding enrolment issues meant that I had to visit the centre in person, only to be directed to another online resource.”

The lack of clear and guided answers through the online service has also caused confusion for many Environments students, a course that commenced its final year of intake of 2016.

Many students are given differing opinions from staff members on whether or not they should stay in the Environments stream or transfer to the Bachelor of Design.

“My understanding is that the Bachelor of Design commences this year and the Bachelor of Environments will be slowly phased out,” says Samuel Choy, a second year Bachelor of Environments student.

“Stop 1 should give a uniform answer to students regarding if it’s beneficial to switch to the new course from Environments.”

Despite the concerns expressed by students, according to Director of Student Service Delivery, Dr Fiona Downie, the University is striving to improve such problems within the system.

“Now that we’ve been operating for a year, we have a full set of data to build a picture of what the issues are and can start to address these one by one over the next 18 to 24 months,” she says.

Students can expect to see improvements to staff training, online systems, web content and even the level one Parkville facility in 2017. Late January will also see a new virtual booking system via Zoom and extended hours suitable for working students, not to mention more staff working alongside each other in one team.

However even with expected improvements, one of the biggest concerns for students is waiting times, particularly around the beginning of semester.

“We know from feedback that students want to self-manage where they can and we encourage students to take advantage of all of the Stop 1 channels to avoid waiting in a queue when they don’t need to be there,” said Downie.

According to Downie, by the middle of semester, over 75 per cent of students will wait less than 10 minutes to meet with an advisor.

“For the first few weeks of semester, we encourage students to follow us on Twitter to know the best times to drop in, and to take advantage of the live chat, online and telephone enquiries to avoid queues.”

With the University’s willingness to improve the student services, students can expect Stop 1 to be bigger and better in 2017.

09

OVER-HALL

T

CAMPUS

WORDS BY RUBY PERRYMAN ARTWORK BY CORNELIUS DARRELL

he University of Melbourne’s Richard Berry building has been renamed to the Peter Hall building in an effort to create a more inclusive campus environment.

Hall is a late fellow of the University renowned for his contribution to probability theory. The new figurehead of the School of Mathematics and Statistics lost a battle with leukaemia in January 2016.

“Peter received numerous other awards and medals, and presented countless prestigious lectures around the world,” a University spokesperson said.

“He was also extraordinarily generous with his time, be it for students, colleagues or for science more broadly.”

The name change follows an outbreak of media coverage detailing Berry’s self-identification as a eugenicist. He performed infamous experiments on Indigenous Austalians and sought to sterilise and segregate them through his research. In 2003, many years after his death, 400 skulls from this practice were uncovered on campus.

“It was a necessary step forward that needed to be taken to acknowledge the atrocities of the past,” University of Melbourne Student Union Indigenous Officers, Wunambi Connor and Marley Holloway-Clarke, said.

TIMETABLING DRAMA

U

WORDS BY WING KUANG

niversity Services has denied rumours that revisions to the current timetabling infrastructure will include a move to an auto-timetabling system. Auto-timetabling involves the automatic allocation of classes to enrolled students, and Farrago has been told that it is under consideration as part of the Flexible Academic Programming Project (FlexAP).

FlexAP is a University program that studies ways to optimise current university resources and infrastructure, particularly online.

According to a student representative present, auto-timetabling was proposed to the timetabling workstream of FlexAP during the program.

Despite this, the University administration have denied that any such proposal is being considered.

“There is no proposal at this stage for auto-allocation timetabling and therefore I cannot really make any comment,” Director of Student Enrolment, Evan Kritikakos said.

“Should this change, we would seek to consult before proceeding with any initiatives.”

Tom Crowley, former UMSU Education Officer, suggested that was not the case.

“University Services is claiming that under the current system there are 21,000 complaints a year relating to clashes,” he said.

Arrernte student Tré Turner wasn’t aware of Berry’s dark history his entire first year at the University.

“I was pretty confused because there was no acknowledgment of it and it even seemed hidden,” Turner said. “The plaques never identified who he was yet sort of idolised him.”

While the renaming is indeed a step in the right direction for reconciliation, several other buildings on campus remain named after advocates of eugenics. These include the John Medley building, the Frank Tate learning centre, the Agar Lecture Theatre and the Baldwin Spencer building.

“The Uni needs to identify these people so as to not deny history,” says Turner.

While some say it is wrong to modify historical buildings, others feel that a lack of doing so condones racist ideologies and perpetuates discriminative behaviour.

“Every student deserves to feel safe on this campus,” Connor and Holloway-Clarke said.

In November 2016, the University announced a review into the names of current buildings and the process of naming them in the future. This will work alongside the University’s Reconciliation Action Plan to increase representation and recognition of Indigenous students.

“We hope that the University will follow through on one of its core promises for this year,” Connor and Holloway-Clarke said.

“We should not be celebrating those who attempted to destroy anyone’s humanity."

“They say this new system would reduce that.”

Crowley said University Services has also discussed autotimetabling at Monash University as an example as to how the system could function.

For the past six years, Monash has been using Allocate+ for activity registration. The system allows students to select and rank their preferred slots before the automatic allocation.

“University Services cite the statistic that 88 per cent of students at Monash get their first and second preferences,” said Crowley.

Other universities including La Trobe University, Western Sydney University and Australian Catholic University are also using Allocate+.

Crowley also shared his concerns that a move to a preferencebased auto-timetabling system could mean an increase in requests for class changes due to reasons such as commuting issues or work balance. These issues could burden Stop 1, as opposed to allowing changes only for clashes.

Additionally, incumbent UMSU Education (Academic) Officer, Roger Samuel, is concerned that overburdening Stop 1 in this way might diminish accessibility for students requiring timetabling changes for legitimate reasons, such as living with a disability.

“I think if this timetabling system is introduced it will be important to have a fair procedure that can provide exceptions based on equity grounds,” said Samuel.

“We need to see the results of the feasibility study before we can decide whether this is the best way forward."

10

CAMPUS

THE DIVESTMENT DILEMMA WORDS BY ASHLEIGH BARRACLOUGH ARTWORK BY WASINEE PHORNNARIT (GWEN)

IS THE UNIVERSITY DOING ITS BEST TO SAVE THE PLANET? On 24 January, students received a proud email from ViceChancellor Glyn Davis announcing the University’s long-awaited Sustainability Plan.

“The Plan is the product of many months of collaborative work by staff, students and our wider university community, designed to strengthen the University’s contribution towards better management of the earth’s climate,” Davis’ email reads.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen the University continually champion itself as a leader in campus sustainability.

We’ve also seen students camp out on the Chancellery Lawn and stand naked on top of the Old Quad in the name of divestment.

The Plan, which sets the agenda for now until 2020, calls on students and staff to help actualise the commitments and goals of the Sustainability Charter, released in March last year.

Divided into six key commitments – operations, research, teaching and learning, engagement, governance and investments – it sets ambitious operational targets such as achieving zero net emissions from electricity by 2021 and carbon neutrality before 2030. The Plan also states that by 2020, water usage will be cut by 12 per cent, wastage will be reduced to 20kg per person, and 100 per cent of staff air travel emissions will be offset.

The major research goal outlined in the Plan is to “develop industry partnerships that emphasise our resources for sustainability research including the campus as a living laboratory.”

By 2020, all undergraduate degrees will ensure that students can “understand and apply sustainability knowledge and values to practice in their field."

Another target is to engage not only experts but also the public in the sustainability debate. The Plan details merging the ideas of industry and academic experts, policy leaders, students, staff and the community at large.

However the University offers no promises to break investment ties with the 21 fossil fuel companies which are listed on the Carbon Underground 200 ranking. This list, maintained by Fossil Free Indexes, reports the global top 100 coal companies and top 100 oil and gas companies with the highest carbon emission potential, based on their reserves.

These 200 companies have a combined potential to burn over 474 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide.

Instead, the University has promised to set up a “sustainable investment framework” by the end of this year and to divest from companies that do not satisfy the requirements of its framework by 2021. The University currently invests in ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron – all of which are listed in the top 10 of the Carbon Underground ranking for oil and gas.

The University is also a shareholder in BHP Billiton, Mitsubishi, and Rio Tinto, which all place in the top 20 on the coal ranking.

Instead of promising to diverst from these fossil fuel companies, the University is proposing collaboration.

“Fossil fuel companies will need to redefine their roles and be part of the solution,” the plan reads.

“Investing in climate solutions will have a greater and more positive impact on future generations than simply exiting fossil fuel holdings.”

The University of Melbourne Student Union’s Environment Officers, Elizabeth Nicholson and Kate Denver-Stevenson, disagree with this approach.

“Engagement with fossil fuel companies is unacceptable.

Stimulating the industry to undergo the fundamental and urgent changes necessary to mitigate the worst effects of climate change through shareholder engagement is extremely unlikely,” they said.

The University has insisted that divestment is costly and volatile but Denver-Stevenson argues the opposite.

“There’s more of an economic risk to not divest. All of these perceived profits are still in the ground and once you’re not allowed to burn those anymore the carbon bubble will pop,” she explains.

They say that regardless of the commitments laid out in the Sustainability Plan, the University is still sending a pro-fossil fuel message.

“Divestment is about the statement and about the University saying that they will not have anything to do with fossil fuels,” Nicholson said.

It's a statement which several major Australian universities have already made. In 2014, Monash and ANU made partial divestment commitments, while 2016 saw La Trobe commit to divest from fossil fuels over a five year plan.

Whether the proposed sustainable investment framework leads to divestment from the Carbon Underground 200 remains to be seen.

09

CAMPUS

SKELETON CREW WORDS BY CALEB TRISCARI ARTWORK BY SOPHIE SUN

STUDENT GROANS

T

WORDS BY ANISHA KIDD ARTWORK BY SOPHIE SUN

he Grattan Institute has released a report recommending that all students be charged a universal 15 per cent loan fee when borrowing from the Higher Education Loan Program (HELP).

According to the Grattan Institute, currently “full-fee vocational education and undergraduate students pay loan fees of 20 and 25 per cent respectively while postgraduate and governmentsupported students do not.”

They believe this is both discriminatory for students and unsustainable for the government.

The report, titled Shared interest, a universal loan fee for HELP recommends utilising loan fees to recoup interest costs currently paid by the government on approximately $52 billion debt calculated as of mid-2016. These repayments will contribute to much needed budget repair.

The loan fee suggested would not be an upfront payment.

Instead, it will be added to a student’s total loan amount and repayment would remain dependent on income so that individuals who earn over the minimum repayment threshold can pay back an increasing portion of their income as it increases.

The Grattan Institute estimates that this would enable the government to generate an estimated extra $700 million a year whilst continuing to transfer risk and smoothen the transition to higher education for students.

In response to the report, Minister Simon Birmingham maintained that future reform “will ensure HELP student loans will continue to be one of the cheapest loans people will ever get.”

Other commentators, including Paul Kniest of the National Tertiary Education Union, and the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU), have criticised the proposal for suggesting to increase costs to students without any improvements in the quality of education.

Vicki Thomson, head of the Group of Eight states “these kinds of proposals just tinker at the edges of what is a more serious systemic funding challenge for our sector.”

According to UMSU President Yan Zhuang, the proposal does not have the interest of students at its core.

“This proposal will see students take on more debt and receive a poorer education – this is not good policy.”

Another idea proposed in the report includes lowering the income amount for when graduates start repaying their debts from $54,126 per year to $42,000 per year.

The Turnbull Government has benched all higher education reforms until 1 January 2018.

S

tudents will be returning to university in 2017 with less academic and career services available following significant staffing restructures across multiple campus divisions in the lead up to the Christmas holiday period.

Careers Services, Academic Skills, Global Mobility and Student Advice will merge into two professional divisions. Staffing positions were set to be made redundant and replaced with positions which required less professional expertise. Since the proposal, changes have been made to ensure no redundancies within the Academic Skills division.

Katherine Beaumont, former Director of Student Success, claims the academic service restructures will deliver on requests expressed in student experience feedback. Beaumont says the proposals will “continue to offer ‘basics’ such as CV checking, interview preparation in the career space and workshops and tutorials in the academic skills space but in additive ways that both provide service to students and build the employability of students and peers.”

One of the restructures that has been met with heavy resistance is the closure of the Victorian College of the Arts Centre for Cultural Partnerships; the only research and teaching facility for arts and social practice in Australia.

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has condemned the redundancies and limited consultation with affected staff as part of a “culture of sackings, restructures and toxic management”. At a NTEU meeting in late 2016, some affected staff claimed that they were unaware of the proposed redundancies until notice of the union meeting.

A protest outside Vice-Chancellor Glyn Davis’ on-campus residence in December painted Davis as a ‘Christmas Grinch’.

Yan Zhuang, President of the University of Melbourne Student Union, has expressed concern over the timeline of these restructures.

“By having these changes in full effect by January 2017, the University has attempted to sweep the restructure under the rug and begin the new year as if it had always been this way.”

Zhuang also notes that the final change plan which outlined the confirmed proposals was released a day after the staff consultation period ended, suggesting that consultation was not fully considered.

The University has entered into the six-month bargaining period held before the implementation of a new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA), which outlines the terms of employment for staff, including rate of pay and working conditions.

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ALL SYSTEMS GO WORDS BY ASHLEIGH HASTINGS ARTWORK BY SOPHIE SUN

MIND THE GAP WORDS BY SEAN WALES ARTWORK BY SOPHIE SUN

S

tudents travelling to and from the University of Melbourne may face transport and infrastructure disruptions this year as work starts on the new Parkville train station.

Parkville Station will be one of five new underground stations forming the Metro Tunnel. The new tunnels will link the Cranbourne/Pakenham and Sunbury lines, and connect to the City Loop via direct interchanges with Flinders Street and Melbourne Central stations.

After consultation with the University and Parkville stakeholders, and the creation of an extensive environment plan, preparatory work will begin on the station site, located under Grattan Street, between Royal Parade and Leicester Street. There will be lane closures around the Parkville campus on streets such as Royal Parade, Flemington Road and Leicester Street, limiting parking around the construction sites.

“From late 2017, the construction of the new underground Parkville station will require Grattan Street to be closed to traffic between Royal Parade and Leicester Street for up to five years,” a Melbourne Metro Rail Authority (MMRA) spokesperson told Farrago.

Along with drivers, pedestrians and cyclists may also be affected.

“Pedestrian and cycling access will be maintained while the new Parkville station is built, however detours may be in place at times,” said the spokesperson.

“A crossing point will be provided across Grattan Street while Parkville Station is built to ensure students can still move around safely.”

Buses to the University, including the 401, 402, 403, 505 and 546, will be rerouted around the work sites. The construction of a new tram stop on Royal Parade to ease pressure on Melbourne’s busy tram services, will cause short-term disruptions to the Route 19 trams.

While access to the campus may be disrupted, the MMRA says the station will benefit the city in the long term.

“Metro Tunnel’s Parkville Station is expected to provide access to around 45,000 jobs. It will be used by nearly 60,000 passengers each day in 2031,” one spokesperson said.

The University of Melbourne does not anticipate major disruptions to students and staff, and is looking to maximise the learning opportunities for students.

“At this stage, the University does not predict major disruption to traffic flow. The University is also currently exploring a range of initiatives that will enable students to capitalise on the learning opportunities presented by the Metro Tunnel project,” the spokesperson said.

D

evelopment plans for a new biosciences building are causing concern due to their impact on the University’s System Garden, which has already shrunk to a quarter of its original size since its inception in 1856.

Originally a purely scientific design of radial, concentric circles arranged by plant type, the garden follows a tradition established by institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge.

The System Garden is believed to be the only garden of its kind left in Australia, with less than half a dozen left in the world. Much of the original is now covered by buildings.

According to a feasibility brief leaked to Farrago, the Western Edge Biosciences development is scheduled to commence in mid 2017 and is predicted to set the University back approximately $85 million by the time it is completed in December 2019.

Tim Uebergang, Curator of Horticulture at the University, says the System Garden holds historical significance at a national level.

“Everyone from within the University’s Grounds department from the Grounds Supervisor down are astonished with the actual size of the garden being acquiesced for the bioscience building development.”

“The older northern end of Building 142 could see a modern replacement but I am not sure if it should be at the expense of a significant amount – 10 per cent – of historical garden and valuable open space.”

A spokesperson from the University said that downsizing the garden would be much less than the 10 per cent figure circulated by critics of the plan.

“The University is absolutely committed to maintaining the integrity of the System Garden. It is at the heart of our biosciences precinct, and is a significant and cherished part of the University and wider community.”

“A revised masterplan for the site will be developed as part of the construction process, which will aim to expand the plant collection of the Garden. This masterplan will acknowledge the investment the University has made into the Garden over the years.”

The questionable future of the unique System Garden has attracted attention more broadly than just within University staff, with concerns raised by the local horticulture community.

Australian Garden History Society member Trevor Pitkin has been advocating for the preservation of the System Garden since the development came to light.

“It’s like playing with the space like it’s just all negotiable and tradeable, it’s just numbers on an architect’s sheet.”

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BREAKING (THE) NEWS WORDS BY PETER TZIMOS ARTWORK BY EWAN CLARKE-MCINTYRE

A

THE FUTURE OF UNION HOUSE IS ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK

s the relocation of the student precinct begins, the future of Union House has finally been decided: in 2017, The Block will be taking over.

After an episode of Channel Ten’s Masterchef was filmed in the University car park last year, the Provost decided to take the next step and host the renovation show at Union House. With four teams and four levels, it will be a race to prove who can create the best selling apartments in a mere six months.

With preparations underway, the popular Bands and Bevs live music event has been cancelled to make way for a giant chalk scoreboard that has been fitted with pyrotechnics, and multiple cardboard cut outs of Scott Cam smiling without his teeth.

Scott Cam will be scaling the walls of the building and Farrago has been informed that promotional filming will take place throughout O-Week.

UMSU President Yan Zhuang insisted that the presence of the show on campus may prove more beneficial than initially thought.

“It will give Anthropology and Media students something to observe for assessments and Environments students will be able to see the real-life workings of the construction industry. Also, I really want to meet Shelley Craft, preferably while I'm wearing a hard hat.”

Arts student Jonathan Gao is worried about the economic effects of closing Union House.

"I swear, if they don’t build another Egg Sake Bistro in the new Union House I’m moving to La Trobe," he said.

"I come in with literally only $7.50 a day – do they have that kind of value for money in Bundoora? I didn’t think so.”

Others, such as Commerce student Kaitlyn Crossmore, are worried about how privacy for students will be upheld on the set of one of Channel 9’s headlining programs.

“Honestly, I don’t really care about cameras filming me, as long as I’m wearing 2XU. If they catch me outside without it, I’m going to lodge a formal complaint, how about that?” she said.

Over the course of Semester One, students will be able to meet contestants as they endlessly paint, hammer random objects and dramatize regular conversations for the camera.

Vice Chancellor Glyn Davis is concerned about the aesthetic of the renovation, and has made some special requests of the teams as they design their apartments to fit within University guidelines.

“I really hope they put in one of those cool sinks with motion censored taps. Or those industrial globe lights – that would be nice.

I’m just excited for work to get underway. Tools down!” he laughed.

This year's contestants include the classic best-friends/mums team, a bearded Fitzroy boutique carpenter and his vintage-loving wife, an aggressively homoerotic male duo who are almost always shirtless, and an elderly couple who plan to use the prize money for a third negatively-geared property.

Union House will soon be filled with the echoed screams of Shaynna Blaze and the constant dragging of furniture by local tradies. More details to come.

'Breaking (the) News' is Farrago's satire column and is not to be taken seriously.

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MEET YOUR OFFICE BEARERS (O-BEES) PRESIDENT | YAN ZHUANG Welcome, and welcome back! I’m Yan, your 2017 Queen Bee (or officially, Student Union President).

I like to describe the University of Melbourne Student Union as the heart of the University – the centre of the hive of university life, if you will. Whether you fly (don’t walk) to join some of our many clubs, find somewhere to bee yourself at one of our autonomous collectives, or get support through our advocacy and legal service, UMSU has something for everyone. So come and get involved!

I hope you’re just as abuzz with excitement about Summerfest, our massive two-week start of semester festival, as we are. Look out for our new Union House Sleepover - it’s gonna be amazing. And look, I might be winging it with some of these bee puns, but UMSU sure isn’t. If you ever have any questions or concerns, or just want to chat about capitalist interpretations of Bee Movie (yes, it’s a real thing), my door is always open to you.

GENERAL SECRETARY | YASMINE LUU

Hey there bee-autiful students, welcome to university, and more specifically, welcome to the Student Union! UMSU is the hivemind that works to provide you with support, fun and networking throughout your university career. As a fairly experienced student, I offer you this one piece of honey sweet advice – get involved with UMSU. You won’t regret it!

But HOW do I get involved you ask? Well, there are SO many events happening! Grab a Guide to the Uni-verse and peruse the various student departments. Come to our events and meet new, likeminded people. Have a say in how your student union should be run! Join a club, be on the radio, write for the student run magazine! Whatever you want, we’ll have it here at UMSU! That’s all from me, beehive yourselves this semester, you busy bees!

EDUCATION (ACADEMIC) | CALEY MCPHERSON & ROGER SAMUEL We’ve been keeping buzzy this month with the new Counter Course Handbook website, featuring reviews of the syllabuzz to be launched early February. Bee excited! Please contribute through the form on our Facebook page, UMSU Education. With fewer than five weeks to go until Summerfest, it’s tempting to wax lyrical about our exciting O-Week events (check them out in the calendar!), but honey, you’ll just have to wait and bee. The Student Representative Network is kicking off, with members notified and preparing for training. This year we’re using a new online forum for communication and sharing reports, currently still pre-launch. Academic Misconduct Hearings have also already kicked off – beehive, kids. Proposed changes to the Academic Skills services have been resolved with the same level of support remaining available.

Discussions around the Careers service are ongoing, and we will continue to advocate for the same or better standard of support.

EDUCATION (PUBLIC) | DANIEL LOPEZ & SINEAD MANNING According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that the Education Public department should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground.

Education Public, of course, flies anyway. Because the Education Public Department doesn’t care what humans think is impossible.

Education Public is abuzz with our new volunteering program: PEP (the Policy Engagement Program). PEP is the hive (read: community) where we get together to make honey (read: work together to increase equity, access, and quality at the University of Melbourne). The busy bees in charge of this nest? Daniel Lopez and Sinead Manning. Please fly by our office to say ‘Hi’ – we promise we won’t sting! We probably think you are the bees knees.

WELFARE | RYAN DAVEY & TERESA GORNALL Hi, we’re Teresa and Ryan, your Welfare officers for 2017! The Welfare Department provides a range of services to make campus life as inclusive and enjoyable as possible for all members of the UniMelb hive. We are responsible for connecting students, supporting students’ rights against discrimination and marginalisation, and promoting both physical and mental health awareness. We will be continuing events held in previous years such as the Monday Mingle and the cooked breakfasts every Thursday. We will also be adding free breakfasts running out of the student bar space on Level 1 of Union House every other day of the week. The Welfare Department will also be running FREE yoga, Zumba, meditation and self-defence classes. Feel free to contact us through the Welfare Facebook page, email or come by our office on Level 1, Union House.

ARTWORK BY RACHEL MORLEY 15

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DISABILITIES | ALSTON CHU & CASSANDRA PRIGG Everybody deserves support from peers and a say in how they’re treated. Where university falls short, we’re here to catch you, whether you’re physically disabled, dealing with mental health issues, affected by a chronic condition, neurodivergent, not sure, or any number of other things! We’re here to hear you out and – if you want – help refer you to services or start discussions with the University faculties or departments. Collectives and groups run every week to help us extend this to support and learn from each other on a more regular basis. Other events are open to everyone, so even if you don’t identify as disabled, come along and get involved! Whether you float feeling super fly or just want to bee, the disabilities office is here to help disabled students bee themselves.

INDIGENOUS | MARLEY HOLLOWAY-CLARKE & WUNAMBI CONNOR The Indigenous Department for 2017 is still in its early stages but everything is coming together for a smooth start to semester. We are gearing up for many events such as the Welcome Back BBQ and the return of The Biggest Blackest Radio Show. Under Bunjil is back for its fifth volume with submissions closing soon, so start sending through art, essays and creative writing. With the National Indigenous Tertiary Education Student Games approaching in late June we are already in the early stages of planning for the week long student games. Keep an eye out for our social calendar for wicked events that always provide a fun social atmosphere for everyone. We have been some busy bees over the last two months with no sign of slowing down so follow us on our social media platforms to stay informed!

Facebook & Instagram: @UMSUIndigenous. Email: Indigenous@union.unimelb.edu.au.

PEOPLE OF COLOUR | ELLA SHI & HANANN AL DAQQA Hello! Welcome! If you’re a new student at the university, you might bee asking, ‘What is the People of Colour Department?’ If you’re a returning student, you might also bee asking, ‘What is the People of Colour Department?’ In case you missed the news, this Department was set up last year after consultation and feedback from students. We’re here to combat racism, advocate for equal cultural representation, and provide a platform for engaging and progressive discussion. We’ve got a lot planned and the office has been buzzing with excitement. Our regular program this year will include a weekly collective (with free food!) and a reading group. Make sure to keep an eye out for our special events, too! Now you probably want to get to the rest of this fabulous magazine so we won’t drone on, but check out our Facebook and Instagram (@UMSUPeopleofColour) to stay updated.

QUEER | BLAKE ATMAJA & EVELYN LESH Hello students, University staff, mum! We’re Blake and Evelyn and we’re the Queer Officers for 2017! Are you excited? We’re excited. We’ve got a cavalcade of ideas and events in motion for this year; besides our weekly Queer Lunches (held every Wednesday at 1pm) and our continuing collectives, we’re looking to collaborate with the other departments on volunteering and university-wide bee-witching events to get everyone involved and having fun! If you’re buzzing with new ideas, que(e)ries, or just feel like having a friendly chat in a mostly air-conditioned space, you can find us most days in our office on the First Floor of Union House. Otherwise we’ll be chilling out, maxing, and relaxing all cool in the Queer Space; it’s your space to decompress from University and anything else that’s got you stuck like honey. It has bean bags, board games and tea, good friends and everything you need to bee yourself at uni!

WOMEN’S | ANJANA ABEYRATNE & HANNAH BILLETT Let’s face it: 2016 was a crappy year for being a woman, but 2017 is going to be so much better*. Your brand new Women’s Officers Anju and Hannah are doing their bit to make this happen. We’ve been busy bees organising fabulous events for Summerfest! Look forward to trendy totes, feminist tunes and making rad new women friends. Oh, and there will be cake!

Make sure you check out our Summerfest events and come to our weekly catch ups: Women of Colour (Tuesdays @ 12) and Women’s Collective (Wednesday @ 12), both in the Women’s room and featuring free snacks and quality chats! Stay tuned for events surrounding International Women’s Day (8 March). Expect fascinating speakers and a sign-making sesh to make our contingent to the official march extra glittery. Get keen and get patriarchy smashing! *Unfortunately we cannot guarantee that 2017 will be better, but a girl can dream.

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ACTIVITIES | JACINTA COOPER & LYDIA PAEVERE O-Bees, we run this motha (yeah!) | Who run the world? Bees | Honey, Honey, I can see events all the way from here | Can’t you see the sleepover in Union House | I can feel the sun when summer fest is near | Our new venue for SoUP will make you melt away | If you liked it, then you should have bought a ticket to it | Don’t be mad once you see that we sold out | If you liked it, then you should have bought a ticket to it. The inaugural Union House Sleepover will be happening on Friday 24 February! It’s the perfect opportunity to meet all of your lovely O-Bees and other students looking for a fun time! You will be fed and entertained for the best 14 hours of Summerfest! There is a great range of activities on all night, hope to see you there!

CLUBS & SOCIETIES | GULSARA KAPLUN & KAYLEY CUZZUBBO Hello from the Clubs Department, Gulsara and Kayley here, your new Queen Bees. We plan to introduce a swarm of our own initiatives. Without droning on, here is a list of things to look forward to. A Eurovision party in North Court to watch the broadcast with food and drink (BYO glitter). More food options (pizza and sausages are great but to put off the inevitable of a cow befriending a human and suing the human race for beef consumption we are branching out to get food deals that cater better for people with dietary requirements). More comprehensive welfare to make sure people are always on their best bee-haviour, providing general welfare training. Finally, we know the hive that is Unimelb does not stop at Parkville and we will be implementing incentives to encourage cross-pollination of club events.

CREATIVE ARTS | HARRIET WALLACE-MEAD & SARA PASCOE To bee or not to bee? Art, that’s the rub.

But what, exactly are we rubbing against? What are we doing with this friction and tension that burns hot all over?

For there is something igniting between us all, a burning desire to show and share our passions and then throw them in the air; to be caught and germinated, propagated and amalgamated into a newness – a collective response of light in a darkening world.

We encourage your light to flicker, and bee illuminated. Flicker on and on until your voice is heard, your script is read and your art is your world. For there’s a whole little world in the art that’s in you. We have a festival coming up, grant money to give you, support and info, meeting places and sharing spaces. Come and chat to us, we hope you will pollinate your art with us.

ENVIRONMENT | ELIZABETH NICHOLSON & KATE DENVER-STEVENSON We’ve remodelled the office thanks to the Reuse Centre on campus. Get in touch with us if you’d like to get some cheap & free furniture the University no longer needs. The University announced the Sustainability Plan back in January, and since then we’ve been busy making sure the University puts the pedal to the metal on implementation.

The campaign to save the System Garden (and the bees) is well and truly underway. Like the ‘Save the System Garden’ Facebook page to find out more. The Australian Student Environment Network held their annual Training Camp, over 70 students attended from across Australia to learn about building effective campaigns, followed by attending the Invasion Day March.

BURNLEY | JESSICA PEELER The campus may be quiet, but the gardens at Burnley certainly aren’t! They are buzzing with bright colours and gorgeous scents, and quite literally with bees from our on-campus hives.

We’ve bought some fancy new beekeeping suits to keep volunteers safe while dealing with our pollen loving friends, and we’ve also been working hard to get the community garden pumping out fresh summer produce (check out our latest harvest on Instagram!). We’re planning our Summerfest events, and along with our own student orientation we’ll have a stall at Parkville’s Carnival Day. Come and say hello, and grab yourself a free plant to get your own garden started!

We’re super excited for the year ahead and look forward to meeting you all and working with the other departments to bring more services and events to students, no matter where they study!

VCA | NICHOLAS LAM On 22 and 23 February, the VCA will be a beehive of activity, and not just for our newly minted freshies. We have a huge line-up of events to bring a little of that O-Week madness down to the VCA. We’re setting up stalls for clubs, student works, and even a student comedy show to our humble Southbank campus.

We have free food, free music, and even a VCA O-camp. What are you waiting for? Kick off the new semester with a bang. To sign up for our O-Camp or keep up to date with what the VCASA has planned for you, follow us on Facebook at /VCAStudentAssociation.

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COLUMN BY MADELINE BAILEY ARTWORK BY REIMENA YEE

EDITION 1: THE ARTS WEST ANIMAL

T

here is an animal with antlers who trots around Arts West.

She cannot use the marble stairs (due to her hooves), but she can fit into the elevators fine. She loves the Arts West elevators because they are very shiny. Sometimes she hides in them to watch the Arts students arrive. This is why those elevators are always slow and erratic: she weighs them down and keeps nudging the wrong buttons.

No one sees the animal because she has a shaggy coat that changes colour so it blends in with her background. As she walks around, she tries on the wallpapers. On the first floor, her fur is tartan. In some tutorial rooms it turns floral, or it becomes blue with clouds. When she plods past that third floor curtain, her body is purple velvet.

She sleeps in the little room that’s on the fifth floor, just to the left. She likes the green silk chairs and the oak desk, because they smell the way she thinks a forest would. All the bookcases are glass.

Sometimes she breaks them. (Accidentally. Her curled antlers are quite hard to control.)

When this happens, the professors are all very nice about it.

They cannot see her, of course, but they believe she exists. This is why the Fifth Floor forest room needs swipe card access: they want her to have a space that is her own. They also open up their offices when they think she’s around. They do not mind her consuming their pot plants, or chewing their MacBook chargers by mistake.

At night, Arts West is dark. Sometimes she needs a distraction, so she searches for a room with screens that slide down from the ceiling. Then she watches ballet lessons on YouTube.

The ground floor has glossy tiles, so she used to practice there.

Her hooves clicked as she pranced around. She could pretend she had an audience who sat along the stairs, and who applauded when she performed arabesques.

She had loved dancing at night-time but she stopped due to the pigeons. The pigeons had looked so smug. They strutted around the dark cobblestones outside, and then they gathered at the glass doors so they could sneer at her pirouettes. She wished that she had claws. Her hooves felt clumsy. Her legs tangled.

Now she does not dance at night, she only sleeps. In her bad dreams the pigeons leer at her. In good ones she grows wings and joins their flock.

Weekdays are a relief, because they are bright and busy. She curls up in classroom corners and peers out at the clock tower. She joins Latin lessons and linguistics lectures (if they can’t see you they can't charge you HECS).

She likes a lot of the librarians. Her favorite is from the Baillieu and has a ginger beard. In O-Week he ran a session on effective research techniques and he said you can find most answers using Discovery. She had been wondering if his beard could change colour and so she forgot to listen when he explained Boolean terms.

Maybe this is why her questions get no answers. Once she typed in: can you tango with four legs and no dance partner? but Discovery said: no results were found.

Yet in the Arts West elevators, everything seems okay. She watches students shuffle in, their lips painted red or purple. She likes how the colours smudge onto the coffee cups they’re clutching.

If she’s gentle, she can nuzzle their wool jumpers. She can know she has a herd.

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COMMENTARY

WHO’S AFRAID OF THE RICH AND ENTITLED? WORDS BY KERGEN ANGEL ARTWORK BY AMELIA K SAWARD

THOUGHTS ON FLWT’S WHO’S AFRAID OF THE WORKING CLASS?

A

s I got older and left high school, social class began to emerge in my life like a great beast shoving its way through a calm, fairy-tale forest. The more I read and the more I engaged with a larger and more diverse group of people, the more apparent this great invisible force controlled by affluence and appearance became, and it threatened to swallow me whole.

Broadly, our society can be expressed as split into three tiers: upper, middle and lower class. Each group is categorised by its relation to the other, conjunctively through wealth, education or cultural awareness. While at first this definition seems kind of simple, realising and understanding the boundaries and delineations it forces upon practically everyone is endlessly complex and often disregarded.

Growing up in a financially unstable but educated family, I developed a unique perspective into both working and middle class groups.

I would watch news reports of stabbings, robberies, brawls and assaults in certain areas. I’d hear people laughing at the concept of ‘getting shanked at Broadie station’, and I’d listen to fears of getting pickpocketed in Sunshine. The truth, I was soon to learn, was that there is no ‘good side’ or ‘bad side’ to the people I was once socially taught to fear.

As such, the further I immersed myself into this class struggle, a new reality became more and more present in my everyday world; one hidden by politeness and, ultimately, denial.

This realisation came in swarms: countless homeless people appeared on the streets I’d walk along everyday. Wealthy parents would push bulky and expensive prams past the same schools where some children could barely afford books and uniforms.

Friends would tell me they didn’t want to walk down certain streets because they led alongside housing commission flats.

It culminated last October, when I asked a friend to come with me to Four Letter Word Theatre’s performance of Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? My friend and I are both intrigued by the representation of class – she draws about it, I write about it – so a text written from the perspective of the working class was one that fascinated us.

It was originally comprised of four different plays written by different Australian playwrights in 1998. One name in particular stood out for me: Christos Tsiolkas, author of class-centred texts like The Slap, Loaded or Barracuda.

Knowing Tsiolkas’ work, I envisaged a play that portrayed the working class as working class: a strong work ethic and a raw anger at oppressive forces.

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The play trailed down from a livid monologue of a teenage boy’s sexual anger at Jeff Kennett, to familial rejection, theft, sex work and ultimately, death. It was at times as confronting as it was empowering, and it all kept compounding that notion that in the modern day, class was, in the words of Tom Marvolo Riddle, “very much alive”.

The entire play was loud and aggressive and succeeded in what I believe it set out to do: to give a voice to the marginalised and voiceless. The anger at domineering upper class political bodies, the exposure of quiet and polite shunning of everyday homelessness by the privileged, or the rejection and almost fear of people with mental illnesses. The play, as a play, was an achievement.

However, when asked how he went about researching his role in the play, actor James Martin, who played a racially-abusive white working-class man, responded, “I went to a private school… so most of my research was done through watching TV”.

This left me feeling unsettled. Largely shown as racist, sexist, self-hating, desperate, stupid and loud, why was it seen as okay for the Australian working-class to be portrayed as this, particularly by people who belong to a higher social status?

These thoughts culminated into one final event the night still had in waiting for me and my friend. As we climbed onto the 19 tram, we found ourselves confronted by a pack of partying University of Melbourne college students on their way into the city.

We were pushed into the corner of the door and watched as the students drank openly, chanted obscenely and yelled down the tram.

It was one man in particular who particularly revolted me and was the motivator for the writing of this piece. As we prepared to leave – he – dressed in expensive, unmarked skinny jeans, a polo shirt and well-groomed hair, grinned at my friend and stuck his tongue between two outstretched fingers.

After what I’d just seen performed, what was intended as an empowering piece for the working class to be heard became a disgusting exhibition of hypocrisy.

I agree with what I believe many of the original writers’ sentiments were in creating the play. We shouldn’t be afraid of the working class. Rather, we should be afraid of those who unashamedly commit acts of indecency and have the privilege and entitlement to escape any form of vitriol or deserved justice.

COMMENTARY

PSYCHED OUT WORDS BY MARKOS HASIOTIS ARTWORK BY BONNIE SMITH

DISCUSSING MENTAL HEALTH RESOURCES, ANXIETY & DEPRESSION

W

hen I was in primary school, we had to wear a hat during recess and lunch when the weather was hot.

Those who did not have one were forced to sit under the shade outside the Art Room. It was a depressing spot, nothing but a rectangular slab of concrete under a veranda. I would constantly ‘forget’ my hat on purpose just so I had an excuse to sit there. I knew nobody would play with me and wouldn’t even want to try. Nowadays, people would look at that as a serious sign of anxiety, social issues or depression, but at that time nobody at the school ever noticed it, let alone thought to help me.

A renowned Melbourne psychologist recently said, “The mental health care industry is certainly improving as is acceptance and recognition of mental health.”

You could even say, there’s never been a better time to be mentally ill.

Not only are electric shocks and straitjackets at an alltime low, but the stigma has reduced greatly. Mental illness is widely understood and empathised with nowadays, rather than scorned or dismissed like it once was. There are 135 countries around the world pledging to implement the World Health Organisation’s ‘Mental Health Action Plan’ and ‘cool’ celebrities like Ryan Reynolds, Miley Cyrus and Jim Carrey speak openly about their mental illnesses. Counselling is seen as no different than going to the dentist, except it’s just a different part of your skull being worked on.

My own journey through the mental health care system has been eventful to say the least. As mentioned before, it all started when I was in primary school, way back when Isis was just an Egyptian Goddess and hashtags were only used to play Tic Tac Toe. I knew I was different – always worrying too much, crying too often and not playing with other kids enough. My concerned mother took the wise step of getting me some help.

I went through an assembly line of smiling child psychiatrists with their “how are you feeling?” quizzes and piles of toys in the corner. It just wasn’t very effective. Not because those child psychiatrists weren’t competent, it’s just that you can’t get a little kid to open up if they don’t feel like it, or expect them to persist with something that they don’t enjoy.

I refused to go back and managed to survive the remainder of primary school by gritting my teeth and clinging to the happiness I garnered from food and Cartoon Network.

In the following years, anxiety and anger took hold after a maddening high school experience, so I sought professional help again. In 2012, I began having weekly counselling sessions with a psychology student at a university. It was pleasant and helpful to talk about my problems, having a consistent source of support and a friendly ear to listen to me.

It was inexpensive too, which was great.

Except this was not enough. A student counsellor ultimately lacked the skill and confidence that a troubled mind needed, it was like going to a trainee barber when you need a hairdo for the Oscars. Not to mention that conversing with a fellow uni

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COMMENTARY student in a confined room is more conducive to a crush than a cure. So I ceased the sessions at the end of 2013 with the belief that I was in a comfortable place to continue into my final year of university unaided.

I was very wrong. My unchecked mental illness saw me make a mess of life and booked me a room for one at rock bottom. By mid-2014, I was jobless, friendless and hopeless. The hangover from that was just as terrible. I barely did anything in the summer months of 2014/2015 other than lie on a couch in silence. I was a wounded soldier sitting in the devastating aftermath of my own out-of-control moods and ego. At my own graduation I didn’t even crack a smile. I knew instantly that professional help was no longer a choice, but a necessity.

I briefly tried a spiritual healer, my last stop before psychiatry. Aside from the nice smell of incense, it did nothing for me and I stopped after three appointments. I realised that it would take more than just a friendly heart-to-heart to help me, what I needed was heavy-duty treatment. I went to my GP and got referred to a psychologist.

I vividly remember the first session with the psychologist in early 2015. It was a Friday morning and the summer sun was just beginning to poke through the clouds. Soothing jazz music played in the waiting room, which had a collection of reading materials like National Geographic, Rolling Stone and even a copy of There’s a Hippopotamus On Our Roof Eating Cake. I was nervous about it and still in a negative headspace, but I felt as though I was taking a solid step in the right direction. Hope was in the air. I was called into the room and met the white-haired, friendly-faced psychologist.

The first session consisted of me explaining my whole story, unloading everything that worried me and the troubling things I had done. He listened, taking notes as I spoke. I was surprised to see that my stuff-ups filled over six pages.

I have had sessions with him fortnightly ever since, always on a Friday morning. There is the same sense of renewal and excitement present in the air every time. It has not always been easy. I have had to learn complex Medicare details. I have been put on medication with side-effects that gave me problems for a while. I admitted to my insult-generous siblings that I was in counselling. I also part with a few hundred dollars every two weeks.

However, it wasn’t long before those challenges became irrelevant. I soon felt like the boulders in my head were crunching down into manageable chunks, grinding into fine dust and blowing away. This cleared the land in my mind for a much better life which I have been lucky enough to enjoy for some time now.

Of course, this isn’t to say that the system is perfect.

Long waiting times, high costs and limits in resources and accessibility is a reality for many people. More needs to be done.

What is important is that such issues are bureaucratic and not the symptoms of a nation that isn’t making an effort. A few bad apples don’t spoil the tree that is very much growing and spreading its helpful branches around the country.

All in all, my journey through the mental health care system has been a positive one and has worked. Every step of the way, help was always available in so many forms. I was never made to feel that no one cared and no one was there. It was all about poking my head through the open doors until I found exactly what was right for me, which I eventually did.

While I haven’t reached the finish line of my journey with mental illness, I have gotten to a meaningful checkpoint.

With billions of dollars in government funding and almost 30 programs available, it’s comforting to know that others can receive beneficial help too, without feeling ashamed about it.

I’ll leave you with a comforting message. In my psychologist’s office, there is not just one chair for him and one for the patient. There is a whole circle of chairs, so every time I go to a session I am reminded that I am not alone. Neither are you.

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IT TAKES A VILLAGE WORDS BY DANA HARPER ARTWORK BY CLARA CRUZ JOSE

MENTAL ILLNESS, NEOLIBERALISM AND COOPERATIVE HOUSING

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n the front porch of a run-down house in Austin, Texas, in the dim light of a single bare bulb, a boy picks me up without warning, sweeping me off my feet. I shriek and laugh, clinging to him, wrapping my arms around his neck.

I have always hated being picked up. Never trusted anyone enough, even when they promised not to drop me. I can’t do trust falls and improv exercises in drama class were always a nightmare – anything that relies on the idea of someone else stepping up, coming through, is not something I find easy to get on board with.

If I can’t do it alone, chances are I won’t do it at all.

Even now, some part of my brain is screaming in protest: He is going to let you fall. You’re going to hit the concrete, it’s going to hurt and you need to get down now.

But I hold on tighter, laugh louder. Other residents of Eden, a light blue weatherboard cooperative house, under whose raccooninfested roof live some 15 students, sit on the recycled bus seats or the damp old couch, huddled together against the chill of the night air. It was late, most of us were drunk and though I had lived in the place only four months, I wasn’t sure I had ever felt so at home.

Between the ages of 11 and 20 my mental health was less than perfect. I spent years feeling utterly disconnected and isolated from the world, seeking distractions in order to avoid interacting with the real world, or worse, continuing to be excluded from it without an alternative focus. I felt completely alone. But studies indicate that I wasn’t – that the rates of people suffering from mental illnesses are increasing, particularly amongst young people.

“Of all the fantasies human beings entertain, the idea that we can go it alone is the most absurd and perhaps the most dangerous.

We stand together or we fall apart,” writes George Monbiot in the conclusion to his Guardian article, “Neoliberalism is creating loneliness. That’s what’s wrenching society apart”.

A fairly obvious statement, many would think. Humans are social creatures, dependant on interactions with others. Even the most introverted among us crave intimate bonds with other people.

Loneliness has serious health implications, mental and physical.

So while various explanations have been offered for the high rates of mental illness in modern Western society – from increased detection, to the pathologising of normal behaviours, to heightened expectations of how happy we should be – Monbiot’s contention that it is a culture of individualism and competition, spurred on by social media and an insistence on self-reliance and personal achievement, seems believable.

We have been taught, all our lives, that the neoliberal model of both business and lifestyle – in which we compete against one another, see other people as the thing standing in the way of our success and act for ourselves and ourselves alone – is not only a viable way of organising our lives, but the only one. In his piece, Monbiot contends that this mentality is the mainspring for modernity’s epidemic of mental illness. An atmosphere of competitive hostility is toxic and lonely. It isn’t one we can live with.

Co-operative living was perfect for a student, particularly one in a new city for a short time. An instant community to be a part of, someone else to do the grocery shopping so that not having a car wasn’t a problem and lots of parties. But as much fun as we all had, most Inter-Cooperative Council members will not go on to live in adult co-ops.

This isn’t for a lack of them. Co-ops which cater to all people exist around the world, even in cities which don’t have the more accepted student versions – Melbourne has at least the Murundaka Cohousing Community in Heidelberg. But living in a communal space, even one which is effectively just a more social apartment block, as most adult co-ops are, isn’t seen as the normal or done thing. It’s a bit different, a bit alternative. The kind of lifestyle that is a viewed with a sideways glance and an internal huh.

That old cliché that it takes a village to raise a child comes from somewhere – from the fact that we work better together than alone and maybe live that way too.

Co-ops exist as the exact antithesis of the capitalist, neoliberal model. Some are simply businesses – there are many co-op supermarkets and other stores, in which people invest in order to become ‘member-owners’, a position which gives them a say in how the store is run. The existence of non-financial stake-holders forces the business to do what is best for these people – they may be more sustainable, more ethical in regards to labour, and so on when making money to return to shareholders is not the sole objective of the business.

Housing co-ops, however, take this a step further. Neoliberal values suggest ownership of a home as a key marker of success while living in share houses and the like is the purview of students, young people not yet established within the world. Becoming an adult involves obtaining a home, probably with a partner and children, and living there with only that group of people.

But this is not the way humans have always lived. That old cliché that it takes a village to raise a child comes from somewhere – from the fact that we work better together than alone and maybe live that way too.

The isolation imposed upon us by modernity is incredibly unhealthy. We are not supposed to spend our lives in isolation and it increasingly seems that we can’t, no matter how hard we try.

Co-operative living is not going to cure mental illness, nor is it going to cure all of the many ills within our society. But if a competitive and isolationist mindset is even one of the things making us sick, living and working closely with larger numbers of people, especially with those to whom we are not related and technically owe very little, might be one way to begin to combat it.

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DARK SIDE OF THE AISLE WORDS BY HARRIET JARRETT ARTWORK BY LILLY MCLEAN

PRODUCT REVIEWS FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SUPERMARKET AISLE

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here’s a lot to be confused about in today’s world. The government’s doing something wrong, the environment’s doing something science-y, the economy keeps acting up.

Despite all the mystification, when we enter a store and are faced by the aisles all uncertainty fades away. No more confusing shades of grey on these shelves, just two colours: pink and blue.

For decades now the advertising industry has been making our lives easier by clearly specifying which products are for which side of the gender binary. Is the product pink, with flowers, butterflies or feminine font? Then it’s for girls, silly! How about if it’s black or navy, with hard angular lines and a sports-themed label? Duh! Definitely for boys!

But what if we could look beyond the packaging, to the product inside? After all, beauty is only skin-deep. As a female, with a bathroom full of pastels, beautifying scrubs and ‘sexy’ scented deodorant, it was time to cross over to the dark side. Or, at least the side with darker packaging. So I armed myself with three men’s products to put to the test. The task? Cleaning my feminine self.

The results? Varied. The ride? Wild.

Product Two: Old Spice Swagger Body Wash $7.49 We’ve all seen the Old Spice ads – the “look at your man, now back to me” plea for men to stop using “lady-scented” hygiene products. Of course any self-respecting man would run screaming (in an athletic, masculine, completely non-fragile way of course) from any smell from the wrong side of the gender binary. Smell like a man, man! I couldn’t wait to find out what sort of man I would become after using the body wash.

Squeezing the bright red bottle, the body wash itself oozed out in a lurid blue. It reminded me a little of bubble bath mixture.

Smell like a bubble bath, man! The smell was fairly inoffensive, and after using this product my body felt exactly as clean as it has after literally every single body wash that I have ever used.

Final Score: Four mid-strength beers at the footy out of five

Product Three: Norsca Men Instant Adrenaline $4.50 Ah, deodorant: the completion of the essential hygiene products trifecta. My own relationship with men’s deodorant is perilous – a single whiff can induce flashbacks to year eight corridors perpetually foggy from clouds of Lynx Africa. Needless to say, as I stared down the flashy black and green can, I was nervous.

“Whether it’s taking it to the extreme in the outdoors or a high pressure deadline that makes your adrenaline pump…” the can read. No, Norsca, it’s the mere thought of spraying my soft, meek female pits with you that makes me sweat! Despite my foreboding, I liberally applied the deodorant and set off on my day.

Number of sweaty pits: Zero Number of induced flashbacks to pubescence: Countless Final score: Two and a half power tools out of five

Product One: Dove Men+Care 2 in 1 Fresh Clean $6.75 I was already familiar with this brand, owning several Dove products in pearly white bottles. But never like this before – goodbye girly white, hellooooo masculine silver. The description on the back of the bottle only increased the feeling that I was in a whole new world of toiletries: “Smokey BBQs. Muddy Pitches.

A hot day. Men relax their way.” Maybe there was something to this advertising after all – as a woman these things didn’t seem particularly relaxing to me.

Bracing myself, I lathered up. The shampoo itself looked familiar, white and opaque. It foamed up just like any girly one would do. While using it, I was overcome by an unfamiliar scent – this was no fruity or floral smell – this was menthol. With a mild craving for a cough lolly, I rinsed my hair.

Had I MAN-PROOFED my hair, as the bottle had promised?

My hair both felt and looked no more man-proof than it did after my regular shampooing. Was my hair adequately cleaned, albeit slightly less shiny then usual? Yes! Final Score: Three flexing biceps out of five

Reflecting on my experience, I’m certainly cleaner, but am I any wiser? Each product I used was aimed exclusively at men, and each seemed very similar to what I use on a daily basis. The products claimed to cater to certain ‘masculine’ traits, ones that it was assumed I did not have. Don’t get me wrong, each did the job satisfactorily. But maybe it’s worth thinking about an industry that tells us so much on how to look, smell and even act based purely on our gender. At the very least, it might be worth spending a little more time choosing a product that actually is best for you, instead of one that just looks like it is.

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PROBLEM NANNAS WORDS BY MORGAN HOPCROFT ARTWORK BY ESTHER LE COUTEUR

BABY BOOMERS, RACISM AND PAULINE HANSON

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y Nan is great. I love her to pieces; we catch up about once a fortnight.

But she’s 65 and, frankly, has always been a little racist.

A couple of weeks ago, we got lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant in Footscray. Afterwards, we proceeded to walk down Nicholson Street, observing all the people of different nationalities and restaurants with non-English names.

“It’s nice to see that these migrants are really having a go and making a life for themselves here”, she said as we peered through the window of an Ethiopian restaurant.

In this atmosphere, surrounded by so much culture and diversity, I felt as if Nan might have abandoned her ethnocentric tendencies for the time being.

I ventured to discuss the topic of Pauline Hanson’s maiden speech, which had drawn considerable controversy for a number of reasons. One of these was her labelling of diversity as a “disruption”. Another was her denigration of the Muslim community as a folk-devil responsible for all this terrorism nonsense keeping good true-blue Aussies from feeling safe at night.

As I endeavoured to bring up the subject with Nan, I was aware of a need to tread carefully. “So did you see Pauline Hanson’s speech?” I asked, trying not to slip into my self-important Gen Y voice. I’d picked a strategic moment to pose the question: we were walking past a gaggle of young Muslim girls donning bright hijabs. As she lowered her voice, I knew her answer wouldn’t be good.

“I think that Pauline represents a voice of my generation that isn’t being heard anymore,” Nan said once the Muslim girls were out of earshot. “She has said some silly things but I think she makes some good points. So many schools have too many non-Australian kids who can’t assimilate and Pauline’s opinions on Australian values being diminished are very true. If we have too much immigration, our values of being kind to each other and helping one another won’t be valued anymore.”

I took my time to digest this, wondering why my Nan considered those particular values to be uniquely Australian, as well as why, mere moments before, she had applauded Footscray’s diversity. But her statement highlights something I’ve noticed about her generation.

There is a certain double standard held by her and others with regards to people of different cultures. They are happy to eat at an Ethiopian restaurant, or view a documentary about asylum seekers in order to make a token effort at cultural relativism. However, if a Somali man or a Tongan woman gets on the same train carriage, they quickly clutch their bag on instinct.

Of course we shouldn’t generalise – but a significant number of baby boomers do behave in this way and it’s important to think about why this is the case.

The baby boomers were raised in a period of Australian history during which the last vestiges of the White Australia Policy still remained, multiculturalism was much less widespread and many ethnic groups were not yet present in our country.

My Nan was raised in a small country town and has never been to university.

I think about how there are so many members of her generation who are just like her. How the ideas of diversity and immigration may seem to people of this generation who often still covet the ‘Australian Dream’ and can’t help but perceive migrants as a threat to that ideal. How many Gen Y-ers get frustrated with their elders over their outdated beliefs, instead of attempting to understand that they have been brought up in a completely different world?

I think about how many of my peers are quick to pass judgement and chastise their elders for these seemingly-archaic ways of thinking. But in attacking those who hold different views to us, we are not spreading the values of tolerance and understanding we so handily preach. So instead of attacking her, I will listen to my Nan talk about her perspective. I will try to practise tolerance and understanding rather than disapprobation and righteousness. I will look for common ground and build from there.

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TOTAL RECALL WORDS BY BELLE GILL ARTWORK BY NELLIE SEALE

ARE REMAKES REALLY RUINING THE FILM INDUSTRY?

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hen you heard the news about the new Spider-Man movie you probably thought: Seriously? Another one?

Do they not know how to make movies anymore?

The notion that Hollywood is running out of original ideas is not a new one. Adaptations, reboots or remakes are all the movie industry seems to be churning out these days. My dad once told me that as a teenager he would have never thought that he would still be watching Star Wars as a 50-year-old man.

Movie producers, directors and writers figured out that remaking or adapting ideas that everyone is familiar with basically guarantees a box office hit. They can cash in on the nostalgia of the older generations, satisfy rabid fans of an established franchise and capture a whole new generation of movie-goers in one fell swoop. And it works! From 2003 to 2012, a total of 12 billion USD was made from 122 movies that were either remakes or adaptations.

Based on the current list of planned releases, by the year 2020 over 200 adaptations, reboots or remakes will have been released over a span of 20 years. The simplest question everyone has is, why? Why doesn’t Hollywood release anything original anymore? A simple question has a simple answer: cold, hard, cash.

One of the most successful reboots and adaptations ever includes Star Wars: the Force Awakens. The movie broke all kinds of box office records, including being the fastest film to gross USD one billion. Another successful franchise is the film adaptation Hunger Games series, which raked in almost USD three billion worldwide.

These movies don’t even have to be good. They may not make money in the US itself but score well with international audiences, like China. Movies that are just plain bad, like Independence Day: Resurgence and Avatar: The Last Airbender, have been saved by international markets despite bombing in the US. All this basically guarantees that we aren’t going to see the end of adaptations, reboots and remakes anytime soon. But is this good for the movie industry? Let’s break it down to the good, the bad and the ugly.

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THE UGLY We all know at least one unoriginal Hollywood movie that was so bad you wondered who in their right minds allowed it to be released. Case in point? Fantastic Four. The half-assed superhero movie was Sony’s attempt at rebooting the franchise just so they wouldn’t lose their license to the characters. Avatar: The Last Airbender was also a white-washed, poorly directed disaster.

Unfortunately, Hollywood doesn’t learn from its mistakes and cast Scarlett Johansson in the movie adaptation of the popular Japanese anime, Ghost in the Shell.

THE BAD Then there are movies you can bear to sit through but then wonder why you ever paid for the ticket in the first place. The second Independence Day focused more on blowing things up than the plot. The heavily-bashed female remake of Ghostbusters proved that women, just like men, can bust ghosts and make average, Adam Sandler-like comedy.

Granted, all this paints an ugly picture. But fear not, there is hope.

THE GOOD You are probably wondering whether all these reboots, remakes and adaptations have a purpose higher than sucking our wallets dry. The answer is a resounding yes!

The new Star Wars movies are the epitome of a good reboot.

The Force Awakens managed to be more than just a rehashing of A New Hope by adding ideas and building upon the old movies. A female lead and people of colour as leading characters are also how the new Star Wars has been able to distinguish itself.

Another good example is the upcoming Spider-Man film.

Yes, after five Spider-Man movies and two different actors as Spider-Man (Spider-Men?), can this movie really bring anything new? Hell yeah! Other than being a fresher, younger take on your friendly neighbourhood superhero, Spider-man: Homecoming is looking to be one of Marvel’s most diverse films yet. Its cast includes up and coming actors of colour like Zendaya, Laura Harrier, and Jacob Batalon.

Hollywood is slowly starting to realise that diversity in movies is good, and is learning to let go of the fear that white audiences won’t be able to relate to people of colour or female leads. This gives a refreshing take to the remakes hitting the cinemas.

Granted, we may be doomed to a never-ending parade of adaptations and remakes. However, with more women and people of colour working behind the screens as well as in front, this may be a chance to truly bring diversity to the silver screen. With Black Panther hitting cinemas in 2018 and an all-female Ocean’s 11 (remake of the 2001 film which was a remake of the 1960 film), perhaps there is hope after all.

SICK SAD WORLD COLUMN BY ED PITT ARTWORK BY HANNA LIU

INSIDE THE INVOLUNTARY CELIBATE (INCEL) COMMUNITY

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thread titled ‘This is why you can’t get laid’ greets those venturing into the ‘incel’ community. It details the many shortcomings individuals may have that make them unattractive to those they wish to bed – in this case, almost always women. Such include “because you’re rude to people”, “you don’t want her friendship” and “you need hobbies”. The thread also specifically explains that women are, in fact, people and that they should be treated as such… if you want to get laid.

It came to my surprise to see such relatively mild comments from a community dedicated to incels. Only later it dawned on me that the thread was intended as satire.

For the past month I’d been following the incel community, trying to understand a group so despised. Perhaps the first thing I’d noticed has been the vitriol – for everyone, from everyone.

Every week the community would receive a barrage of abusive advice from outsiders.

Moreover, every other post blamed these outsiders – generally women or ‘Chads’ (attractive men) – for their sexless lives. As of today, one of the top posts in their community is titled ‘Women are assholesexual’.

In between all of the blame shifting and backhanded advice, some incels attempt to discuss a solution to their ‘inceldom’.

These range from the inane such as, “There seriously needs to be government regulation on dildos: a dildo above seven inches is too fucking big. It’s spoiling and ruining women,” to serious proposals for ‘incel affirmative action’, whereby governments provide girlfriends to incels.

It is unsurprising that the community supports prostitution – however some incels further want to see the government subsidise prostitution for incels, whilst others think marriages should be arranged.

Adam*, a moderator and highly involved member of the community, had more reasonable responses when questioned about the incel ‘problem.’ Speaking with him, he suggested that the Dutch model – whereby the government subsidises prostitution for those with disabilities – would be a step in the right direction but would not be an ideal solution, as most incels aren’t simply after sex, but a relationship.

In Adam’s view, the problem lies within a “hook-up culture” in which “half of the women are having sex with 20 per cent of the men”.

Explaining this problem, Adam suggests that women reject their “looks-match” – people of comparable attractiveness and instead seek more attractive male partners, in turn requiring men to lower their standards. He has had some experience with this, stating that “a lot of the women I went on dates with were ugly, so my standards were not too high”.

It was hard to understand how one comes to adopt such a mathematical view of dating. I was also surprised when Adam said he was a former feminist. His feminist views, however, changed over the course of a few years, in which time he was dumped due to his girlfriend moving away, went on few first dates that lead to second dates and dated a female friend who manipulated him into paying her rent. These situations drew him to the incel community.

Adam suggests that this is a standard story among incels – less desirable men are ‘red-pilled’, learning an apparent ‘truth’ about women through similar unfortunate encounters. He elaborates, however, that it isn’t only those in the incel community that should be considered ‘incel’ and that it is a de facto thing – anyone who has been “unable to obtain sex or a romantic relationship for at least six months”. It was at this stage that I wanted to ask him where asexuals fit in, or whether people ‘graduate’ into ‘inceldom’ after six months, or whether after six months the term can be applied retroactively. For the former, I had a feeling I already knew the answer – an appeal to ‘nature’. The latter I didn’t ask to continue the pretension that this is a serious article.

As Adam was explaining to me terms key to understanding the incel community, such as hypergamy and sub-human, he also told me about ‘cope’ – “a strategy that an incel uses to help with his feelings of depression.” For some, he said, that may be alcohol or drugs.

However, “often it can involve telling lies to yourself in order to help you feel better”.

My time with the incel community was a depressing one. Between the ostracism by everyone else, the rejection of any advice, the projection of faults and the entirely cynical attitudes towards life and women (with many resigned to ‘LDAR’ – ‘lay down and rot’), there was very little discussion on the way forward as individuals or as a movement. Maybe it was ideology – maybe if I were “red-pilled”, the community would be more affirming; it would be nice to be able to blame others when lacking a love life rather than oneself. * Name changed to protect anonymity.

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THE HUMAN FACTOR WORDS BY JAMES GORDON ARTWORK BY JAMES GOH

WHEN AN ALLERGY CAUSES AKATHISIA CONTENT WARNINGS: PANIC ATTACKS & ANXIETY-INDUCED DISSOCIATION

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hat makes us human? What is the elusive gossamer threading our brain to our personality?

A few weeks ago, I found out I was allergic to the anti-nausea agent Maxalon. I only took it to relieve a mild tummy ache, but what it caused was far worse. Akathisia. The word has Greek roots; kathízein means ‘to sit’ and the prefix twists it into its opposite. Its scientific definition is a state of agitation, distress and restlessness, and it literally translates as an inability to sit.

Lying in bed, I suddenly felt a strong desire to move and fidget, but it was different to restlessness. It was entirely internal. It was as if I were a separate entity to my own body and I was trapped inside it, thus movement did not relieve the sensation.

At the time I was watching Netflix, but I had to stop watching because I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t focus on anything. I felt an urge to dig at my skin so I could escape my own body and the longer it lasted the more trapped, claustrophobic and restless I felt internally.

This extended to physical restlessness in a futile attempt to relieve the sensation. I started pacing and I felt a gradually growing pain in my head. It was not like a headache, but as though I was working out an immensely difficult mathematical equation without the satisfaction of any relief. It felt like my skull was caving in on itself.

I couldn’t understand how much pain I could inflict on myself psychologically. Doctors have explained the experience as the suppression of dopamine transmissions in the brain. Putting it simply, dopamine is a pleasure chemical, secreted in response to a smorgasbord of activities including eating, sex and acing an exam.

So it makes sense an absence of our dopa-buddy in the brain would probably cause some discomfort.

Often akathisia is drug-induced, caused most commonly by antipsychotics and antiemetics (such as Maxalon in my case). In addition, many addictive drugs such as heroin and cocaine increase dopamine levels in the brain, so akathisia can also be experienced as a withdrawal symptom from recreational drugs. It has even been suggested that people with naturally low dopamine levels are more prone to addiction. It appears life is an uneven playing field.

While there are other causes too, it always involves that balance of dopamine. If our brains are so easily moulded and influenced by chemicals, what are we but walking beakers? Where lies the ethereal wisp separating soul and molecules? I have always felt the spirit and the body were one but then my akathisia caused a panic attack.

Now I wonder whether they sit on entirely different planes. For those who have not experienced a panic attack, this is how it feels.

After I paced from my bedroom to the bathroom I started sweating. In response to my akathisia, the panic attack arrived in full force and it felt like I was about to die. I was contemplating writing a note to say goodbye because it was as if nobody else knew.

It felt like my brain was trapped in a cell inside my chest and my head was on fire. I remember feeling very trapped. A strange man appeared beside me and he was whispering, “You are about to die! This is what everyone feels before they die but nobody alive knows because they haven’t experienced death! It’s very important not to tell anyone what you’re experiencing because nobody alive can know. Even if you don’t die now and you manage to escape this, you’ll only be postponing your death for another time. You’ll never again live in peace and you can never tell anyone how this feels.”

I knew that only I could hear this devil, which made me feel isolated and even more convinced that nobody around me knew of my impending doom. It was an incredibly frightening and legitimate fear, and it felt like I was on the edge of a cliff despite clearly being in the bathroom. It was like an out of body experience experienced inside my body. As if my body and mind were on two separate wavelengths.

In fact, I remember several moments where I sympathised with myself as if I were not the one experiencing the pain.

The doctors call this anxiety-induced dissociation. It is the absence of serotonin – a brain hormone mainly responsible for regulating mood, sleep and cognition – and excess of adrenaline.

But still I question what separates our ‘soul’ from our body. If I can have an out of body experience and wallow along time’s coil without belonging to any physical being, then what defines who we are? Because certainly both our body and our personality can change drastically over certain plots of time. We only have to examine ourselves as children, when we were both physically and intellectually different people, to wonder what drives our consciousness.

The voice described earlier, despite being within my own consciousness, was not following my command of silence. We can naively believe we are master of ourselves, but to what extent is this true? After all, we often recognise our own faults, yet still struggle to change them. What if we are merely that: a body of swirling chemicals with the simulacrum of consciousness. The panic attack and akathisia did indeed subside. But it was, scientifically, merely the return of dopamine to a satisfactory level.

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BAROQUE FEVER WORDS BY WILL WHITEN ARTWORK BY NAKATE KAKEMBO

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ON THE FAUX-BAROQUE ARCHITECTURE OF SKOPJE

elbourne’s own Federation Square has been labelled an ‘eyesore’, had calls for its demolition and been named one of the world’s ugliest buildings – however, casting an eye over to Skopje’s latest major project reveals that the Macedonian capital may yet offer some serious competition for this rather dishonourable honour.

The ruling Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE) party is seeking to transform Skopje into a capital of culture with a project as extensive as their party name is long. One hundred and twenty buildings and monuments, costing somewhere in the vicinity of half a billion euros, are under construction, but the project is mired in controversy. Questionable taste, spiralling costs and historical inaccuracies have led to a less prestigious rebranding of Skopje. The city has been dubbed the capital of kitsch by bemused visitors and the capital of cringe by exasperated residents.

Of course, most large scale construction projects earmarked for public spaces attract their fair share of detractors – the various elements of buildings and monuments, such as their design, colour scheme and placement are scrutinised, criticised and then built regardless. However, the Macedonian Government has taken this ‘you can’t please everyone’ attitude to the extreme with a development project that has attracted ridicule and caused offence in equal measure.

To say that the aesthetic of Skopje is eclectic is to be too kind.

In truth, it’s shambolic. The old town is a stronghold for Ottoman era, market-place charm, but elsewhere the city is a battleground of conflicting architecture and history. Byzantine, Ottoman and Yugoslavian influences are all evident, but the recent advance of neo-classicism is proving irresistible – to the government, at least.

The city centre is crowded with huge statues and the banks of the Vardar River are lined with ostentatious museums, theatres and government departments. Faux-baroque fever is spreading quickly through the capital and it demands attention.

The centrepiece of Skopje 2014 – a dazzling likeness of Alexander the Great – is a big bronze metonym for the project at large. Alexander is literally on his high horse, riding a fifteen metre stallion atop a ten-metre-tall base that lights up in neon tones after dark. The issues with aesthetic and expense are self evident,

but it is the statue’s historical foundation that is proving to be most problematic. Macedonia, it seems, is intent on provoking its neighbour to the south, Greece.

Alexander was born in Pella, a city within the borders of modern Greece. Ancient Macedonia included this region but modern Macedonia shares only the name and a fraction of the territory the empire covered. A lot has changed in the 2300 years that have elapsed between Alexander-in-the-flesh and Alexanderin-bronze. In this time, Macedonia has been assimilated into the Roman empire, invaded and settled by Southern Slavs, absorbed by the Ottoman Empire, incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbia and later, into both the communist and socialist manifestations of Yugoslavia. This historical and cultural rollercoaster has ensured that modern Macedonia bears no ethnic or linguistic resemblance to the empire Alexander built. Despite this disconnect and the offence to Greece, the Macedonian Government appears to be forcing its own historical narrative and prescribing national unity.

Unfortunately, neither are grounded in reality.

The Skopje 2014 project is no less contentious at home. For many Macedonians, the buildings and statues are an apt symbol of the failures of their government. What better way to convey the economic mismanagement of a country than with a building project that has tripled in scope and multiplied many times over in expense? What better place to house government officials completely out of touch with their constituents than in palatial, fauxbaroque buildings? What better sign of rampant corruption than labyrinthine paper trails, ‘lost’ construction tenders and kickbacks commensurate with the buildings and statues themselves.

The upside, for now, is the increased revenue from tourists who are coming, perhaps more than anything, to witness the absurdity of the whole project. Government statistics show that visitors to April last year were up 8.7 per cent from the same period in 2014; a continuation of a general upwards trend. With state corruption rife, however, and unemployment consistently hovering around 30 per cent, it is unclear just who takes home the tourist dollars. There is also a sense that the ‘so bad it’s good’ approach to tourism can only sustain itself for so long. When the novelty wears off, the stream of tourists may run dry and the citizens of Skopje will be left with a succession of faux-Baroque faux pas.

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NOT QUEER ENOUGH WORDS BY TILLI FRANKS ARTWORK BY JASMINE VELKOVSKI

DISCUSSION OF QUEER EXPERIENCES AND BI ERASURE

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y first female kiss was an alcohol-induced blur, at a backyard party when I was sixteen, on a freedom-high from a recent breakup. Bottle of cheap, pre-mixed alcohol in one hand, I was hit with an astounding moment of clarity: I kind of really liked girls. But the next morning I was overcome with a familiar sense of guilt, the same kind I regularly felt when I experienced attraction to women. I wasn’t gay, right? I’d had boyfriends and genuinely enjoyed my time with them. I was attracted to men. TV, the radio and magazines had taught me bisexuality was promiscuous, indecisive, and most of all, not real.

Take, for example, the song that shot Katy Perry to stardom in 2008: “I kissed a girl and I liked it/The taste of her cherry chapstick/I kissed a girl just to try it/Hope my boyfriend don’t mind it.”

The song, and its accompanying video clip, won the 2009 People’s Choice Award for Favourite Pop Song. Cue hazy, pink décor; slow pans of lingerie-clad cleavage and legs; close ups of long-haired Victoria’s Secret-esque girls; and of course, the classic, a pillow fight between barely clothed, conventionally attractive females.

In general, I have no problems with any of the former. I myself am partial to attractive women in underwear. But the underlying message of the video is clear in the tropes that translate teenage boy’s fantasies onto screen: female queerness is only acceptable when performed for the male gaze. What’s more is the blatant homophobia which underlies the hyper-sexualisation of any bisexual or questioning women: “It felt so wrong/It felt so right!”

If only this were the exception. But time and again, the same old tired stereotypes are dragged out. In ‘I Luv Dem Strippers,’ Nicki Minaj hangs out with 2 Chainz in a strip club, joining him in objectifying interchangeable, faceless strippers as she tucks dollar bills into their panties. In ‘Lil Freak’, she performs the seduction of a young, bewildered girl for the watching eye of Usher alongside lyrics like “you go get some girls and bring em to me ... let her put her hands in your pants, be my little freak.” Shakira and Rihanna roll around on a futon stroking each other’s bodies, to extremely irrelevant lyrics intercut with even more irrelevant shots of Shakira in black leather, playing guitar in a swimming pool in ‘Can’t Remember to Forget You’.

In the hit ‘Cool for the Summer’, hinted by Demi Lovato to be about bisexuality, the ultimate bi-phobic downfall of all these experimentalthemed trysts is exhibited as she writhes around in spandex and false eyelashes whispering “don’t tell your mother,” stipulating an expiration date for her wild-girl phase. Bisexuality, or girl-on-girl action, is therefore portrayed as temporary, kinky and ‘naughty’. The thin line between experimentation and fetishisation blurs further in light of the fact that these artists restrict their queerness largely to their professional identities, rather than their personal.

Of course, women should be allowed to express themselves however they like. If posting a nude selfie is what you find empowering – looking at you, Kim Kardashian and Emily Ratajkowski – then go for it. Equally valid is wearing a meat dress, swan costume, or a head-to-toe sack. But existing in a society where sexuality is made for consumption, these faux-queer portrayals of women perpetuate a larger problem. It creates an image of bisexuality, or questioning women, as attentionseeking, only doing it for popularity. It renders my sexuality illegitimate.

Further, heterosexual performances of bisexuality erase the unique culture and legitimate experiences of real women-loving-women and replace it with an unfamiliar narrative.

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This is not to argue that the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community isn’t sexualised. However, even the most anti-gay of conservatives are unlikely to argue against the existence of homosexuals. Unlike bisexuality, where a Buzzfeed video entitled ‘Questions Gay People Have For Bisexual People’ featured a gay man declaring: “they’re not real!” Similarly, Rob Haskell dismissed Cara Delevingne’s bisexuality in the same way. Perhaps even more cutting is the appropriation and subsequent dismissal of bisexuality by pop stars, in order to capitalise on ‘queer’ culture. David Bowie, supposedly a queer icon, called himself a “closet heterosexual” who was just “experimenting” in a series of interviews in the 1980s and 1990s. Nicki Minaj, as previously mentioned, frequently uses her ‘ambiguous’ sexuality to incite speculation and attention. In an act of self-erasure, Jessie J, pop-singer and a coach on ‘The Voice’, recently labelled her relationships with women as “a phase”. The constant undermining of sexual identity faced and perpetuated by bisexual people ensures a continuous scepticism about whether or not we actually exist. In an era where enigmatic celebrities are idolised and influential, their actions reach further than their personal experiences of sexuality.

Fearing ‘the phase’ was what prevented me from coming out in my earlier teenage years. I felt isolated from my straight friends and unable to venture into the LGBT community. I wrote off my female crushes as drunken escapades – which resulted in me drinking heavily almost every chance I got as to have an excuse to feel that rush which I was sure was teenage experimentation.

According to the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2015, bisexuals experience higher rates of mental illness than any other sexuality. How could we not, when we are told we are not real? Community plays a huge part in an individual’s capacity to be resilient, societal acceptance is key in mental stability and equitable access to healthcare. When on the one hand you have those who fetishise your sexual identity, on the other you have those who persistently yell at you to ‘pick a side.’ Solidarity comes in numbers and when media portrays you as either a sex object or as flighty and untrustworthy, no wonder bisexuality becomes a running joke.

Australian media commentator Peter Ford declared on ‘The Morning Show’ that “it’s not wise to marry a bisexual”, after discussing the recent scandal of Johnny Depp’s alleged abuse towards Amber Heard. But really, when considering how bisexuals are portrayed in the media, who can blame him for having this conception? MTV’s Faking It is centred around the two girls who ‘fake’ being a couple to gain popularity at school. Game of Thrones character Daenerys Targaryen’s female sexual relationships are largely plot devices used to titillate a male audience. Piper, in Orange is the New Black labels herself “shallow” and “a former lesbian”.

The very word ‘bisexual’ seems to convey some kind of underlying falseness: suggesting that, ultimately, it’s a phase. Whether it be a passing experimentation aimed at arousing teenage boys or a transitioning period to becoming a ‘real gay’, LGBT representation largely misses out on the ‘B.’ And the effect of this is undeniable. My manager at my café job, a card-carrying member of the gay community, engaged to a man, who regularly converses with me over the best LGBT clubbing scenes, frequently reminds me that I’ll “pick a side eventually”. An ex love interest of mine expressed his relief when I told him I was dating a girl, as “that’s why it didn’t work out!”

Whilst I may enjoy the aesthetic appeal of Katy Perry’s lipsticked and heel-adorned pillow fight, in reality, it doesn’t represent the majority of most queer women’s experiences. Finally accepting my queer identity means a constant struggle against the caricatures of bisexuality which the media and some parts of the LGBTQIA+ community, rolls out again and again. Bi erasure and hypersexualisation should not be the only way to portray bisexual identity and I’ll keep trying to represent bisexual realities until I am queer enough for the rest of the world.

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ON THE ORIGIN OF STRANGENESS COLUMN BY TESSA MARSHALL ARTWORK BY EDIE BUSH

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HOW TO LOSE A BIRD IN 10 DAYS

n a few tiny islands off the coast of New Zealand, there lives a fat, flightless and rare parrot called the kakapo. The kakapo is quite possibly one of the most ridiculous birds to ever exist, with Benedict Cumberbatch once describing it as “a bird that is as un-bird-like as it is possible for a bird to be”.

In many ways it is more like a cat than a parrot. It climbs trees rather than flying between them, it is nocturnal, and it has catlike ‘whiskers’ which allow it to feel its surroundings in the dark.

Douglas Adams eloquently noted in Last Chance to See – a book accounting his radio documentary on endangered species, that, “Not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, but it has forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Apparently a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground.”

The kakapo has not only forgotten how to fly, but it has one of the most awkward and unique mating practises to have ever evolved. Kakapos are a ‘lekking’ species – meaning each year in December, male kakapos find a rocky alcove and create a communal display ground by digging shallow ‘bowls’ in the dirt underneath. For eight hours each night for two or three months, they sing the kakapo equivalent of EDM – a low frequency ‘booming’ call, that is amplified by the bowl and can be heard by females up to five kilometres away.

It’s such a strenuous exercise that the male kakapo loses half his body weight during the breeding season (clearly no one told him that bulking is the way to attract girls).

So here we have a creature whose sex life exists only once every two to four years, thinks techno is appropriate foreplay music and forgets to let their side chick know the location of the booty call.

Unfortunately, this strenuous serenade is mostly ineffective.

Female kakapos are very fussy: they only come into heat when the fruit of the rimu tree is abundant, which only happens once every two to four years. This is to ensure that there is enough food to go around when the chicks are born. So, if the rimu tree is fruitless, so too are the male’s efforts. The chances of a male being chosen are on par with the success rate on the Chinese dating show If You Are The One. There is also a major problem with using ‘booming’ as a pick-up line: it’s incredibly difficult to determine where the sound is coming from. Low frequency sounds are hard to pinpoint even at the best

of times due to their long wavelength. To make matters worse, the sound echoes off the trees and rocks of the New Zealand forest, so it sounds like it is coming from all directions. Even if a lady kakapo likes what she hears, she may spend days wandering through the bush, never finding her lover.

So here we have a creature whose sex life exists only once every two to four years, thinks techno is appropriate foreplay music and forgets to let their side chick know the location of the booty call. It’s no wonder there are only 157 kakapos left.

Amazingly however, the kakapo’s counterproductive breeding strategy is not the cause of their endangerment. In fact, with no natural predators, kakapos were so common prior to human settlement that, as explorer Charlie Douglas observed, “You could shake a tree and the kakapo could fall down like apples.” The kakapo’s bizarre rituals enabled a sustainable reproductive rate; if they bred too fast and become overpopulated, kakapos would have consumed all available resources, leading to a population crash and potential extinction.

Unfortunately their breeding rate cannot adapt to being hunted.

Over the years, humans have introduced various mammalian predators to New Zealand, from the Polynesian rat (or kiore) introduced with Māori settlement, to cats, rats and ferrets from Europe. These predators have caused a drastic decline in the kakapo population – to such an extent that in the 1970s, the kakapo’s fate was to all appearances sealed, with only 18 known kakapos left, all of which were male.

However, in 1977, some females were discovered and hope resurrected. The kakapos were moved to protected and predatorfree islands off New Zealand’s coast. For 40 years, kakapos have benefited from an intensive conservation programme and numbers are rising. However, they are still critically endangered. In fact, there are so few kakapos that each one has been given an individual name (you can view the entire list on Wikipedia and get some inspiration for your next pet: there are traditional Maori names, common names like Sue and Heather, and the more creative ‘Solstice’ and ‘Boomer’).

While we may laugh at the kakapo’s sexual ineptitude, lack of coordination and poor music choices, one must admit it would be a shame to lose such a unique and amusing creature, one that has survived against all odds. To admire the speeding falcon we need waddling penguins, to fear the cassowary we need harmless sparrows and for every graceful swan we need a clumsy kakapo.

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SCIENTOLOGY 101 WORDS BY CLAUDIA SCHROEDER ARTWORK BY LAUREN HUNTER

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SCIENTOLOGIST: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC OBSERVATION

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isiting Melbourne’s Church of Scientology is like being trapped in a terrible PowerPoint – you’re forced to endure a series of gaudy videos, inspirational quotes and strange hovering symbols. You are shuffled along with alarming speed, just when you want to stop and take a closer look at the tacky mess that surrounds you, you’re hurried on to the next slide.

The Ascot Vale property that houses the controversial religion is giant and imposing, an old nunnery of some kind that has been disemboweled. The courtyard has been converted into a car park and the cloisters into private rooms. I go with my friend Josh, who out of all my friends is the most indulgent of my love for conspiracies and cults.

The vision of fulfilment feels a bit old school in a daggy neoliberal way. All ‘success’ and ‘prosperity’ and ‘realising your ultimate self’, while men in ties power-stance on cliff faces.

From the moment we walk past the gates, a small throng of Scientologists is watching us. One of them, a large older man in a Leonard Cohen T-shirt, intercepts us as we go through the main gate. “I haven’t taken it off since he died,” he admits, and for a second, I am nervous that I am going to find this whole experience too relatable, the people too normal.

I need not have worried. From the moment we are escorted into the front door the full ridiculous tackiness of Scientology sinks in. The décor is heinous beyond belief, everything is beige, and covered in little bronze busts of L. Ron Hubbard (the founder of Scientology), strange plaster iconography and giant quotes about ‘saving yourself from moral decay’ emblazoned on every wall. The foyer is laid out like a maze of flashing screens and as soon as we step in we are hand-balled between Scientology officials, about

seven or eight different people in a single minute, a bombardment of middle-aged women in heavy makeup and awkward-looking young people in cheap suits and gold ties. So this is the Scientology demographic, I think to myself. Mums and misfits.

Before we know it we have been deposited at the feet of Tim, our guide for the day, an ocker young guy with a patchy beard. Tim asks for our names and, having heard a million stories of people hounded by Scientologists who have their details, I go with Fiona.

Josh, inexplicably, comes out with ‘Justice’, a decision I can see surprises him as much as it does me.

Tim guides us swiftly between a number of ‘panels’ – little booths playing videos about Scientology. The seats are uncomfortably close to the screen. With our noses practically to the glass, Josh and I are subjected to a series of short films that are weirdly reminiscent of shitty ‘80s film trailers, like Jerry Maguire on acid. In between the pulsing Enya-esque music, stock footage of businessmen giving confident handshakes and little girls picking flowers, I learn of the eight dynamics, ARC triangle and 80-stage emotional tone scale, all of which sail gently over my head.

The vision of fulfilment feels a bit old school in a daggy neoliberal way. All ‘success’ and ‘prosperity’ and ‘realising your ultimate self’, while men in ties power-stance on cliff faces. No wonder this stuff isn’t popular with the kids these days.

Like many young men of the scientific persuasion, Josh is very prone to scoffing. Ten minutes deep into a fanciful propaganda video about L. Ron Hubbard’s life, I can hear a faint scoffing coming from Josh’s direction and I can see his eyes wobble around, restraining themselves from a full roll. I have to subdue him with a “shush, Justice.” After all, we are being watched.

In the reflection of the screen I get a little chill seeing a small group of church members watching our backs, arms folded. Before each video ends, the sound of footsteps accelerates behind us, so that at the exact close of each clip we are moved on by the dutiful Tim.

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We are whisked around the building and I feel a bit sad to see what has become of the old heritage site. What must have once been a religious space of a much more solemn sort kind of now looks like a film set for the worst fantasy movie ever. I really can’t overstate the ugliness of it all. ‘Life is an adventure’, the walls yell at me. Tim gestures vaguely to a corridor where church members are taken for auditing, the Scientological version of counselling. I’m keen to take a closer look but before I can open my mouth, we are ushered in the opposite direction. Next slide.

The Purification Centre is essentially a rehabilitation centre but it looks a bit more like the site of some terrifying medical experiment.

Tim is a very chilled out young guy with what is obviously a very cushy day job. He says he was born into the Church and it has helped him ‘to communicate better’ (communication being the third factor of Scientology), but that he never found auditing that helpful. He seems very casual about the whole thing.

Later, as we enter the Purification Centre, he points out a blonde middle-aged woman sitting at a table – “that’s my Mum, hi Mum!” For a second there I envy him – he can’t be more than twenty-three and he appears to have a stable nine-to-five job doing nothing much except for kicking it around the Church and giving tours to suspicious outsiders. A cursory glance around the Purification Centre destroys that envy for good.

The Purification Centre is essentially a rehabilitation centre but it looks a bit more like the site of some terrifying medical experiment. The room is filled with young people on treadmills waving exhaustedly to us as we pass, little chalky spoons in helpyourself bowls of potassium and salt tablets and corridors of saunas so hot you can feel them from outside the door. It might be my natural aversion to exercise but I’m harrowed by what I see.

Tim tells us that one of his friends took a purification course in these saunas and all the Ritalin he had taken in his life started to ooze out of his skin like a purple slime. I take this with a grain of salt, especially as it comes from a man who 10 minutes prior informed us with wide-eyed earnestness that Scientology alone reduced the Colombian crime rate by 82 per cent, “but of course, they don’t tell you that stuff in the news.”

Behind the Purification Centre is a large truck that looks like the delivery van for a haunted amusement ride – the side reads ‘Psychiatry: The industry of death’ in dripping red letters.

As we wander around, there are people everywhere, gesturing enthusiastically to each other in what I assume must be the highest level of Communication. There are 200 people working here every day. All the same, I get the overall feeling that no one here is doing much work – everyone is lounging around in their gaudy gold and black ties, drinking coffee and goofing off.

The other side of the building is closed to visitors, although Tim points to some shadowy figures through the window. “You can probably see some faces over there,” he explains, “they’re being tested”. We are neatly deposited into the car park at the end of our visit, facing the gate out. I sense that we are approaching the thin end of our welcome.

I feel not much more enlightened about who these people actually are or why this butchered heritage gem in Ascot Vale pulls such a crowd every day for courses with vague names like ‘Personal Efficiency’. Josh waxes philosophical on the relief that Scientology must provide to very vulnerable, spiritually unmoored people. Yet, I can’t get my head around what kind of relief this assault of slogans and galaxy graphics could provide. I leave with a free DVD and a burgeoning migraine.

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THE TOURIST BUBBLE WORDS BY ISSY TOBIN ARTWORK BY ILSA HARUN

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TRAVELLING OUTSIDE POPULAR TOURIST DESTINATIONS

uring the mid-year break I made the spontaneous decision to take a solo overseas trip to Russia. As a history major, Russia provided me the same level of excitement as a week – long pub crawl would for any regular 22-year-old.

Interestingly, not everyone shared my enthusiasm.

The response from my family and friends was one of misunderstanding and significant apprehension. Understandably, they questioned my safety.

Russia sat firmly outside the ‘tourist bubble’, in other words, it is not as yet incorporated into any Contiki Tour routes.

A few days into the trip, I came to a realisation. I had acquired ‘true blue’ Australian tourist syndrome, caused by the unwillingness to accept the existence of another dominant culture. My symptoms included the unconscious expectation that everyone should conform to me. As Australians, we have the great fortune of living within a culturally diverse society, which, for the most part, we do so peacefully, as long as incoming cultures adhere to our cultural values. We expect them to speak our language, consume our popular culture and engage in a way congruent to our understanding of social acceptability. How many times have we shared a resentful glance with a co-worker in response to a customer whose broken English was making the order a thousand times harder to understand?

Commonly associated with high levels of crime and dodgy ‘business enterprises’ there is no doubting why one would approach the former Soviet empire with caution.

However, most people’s apprehension drew from the fact that Russia sat firmly outside the ‘tourist bubble’. In other words, it is not as yet incorporated into any Contiki Tour routes. “Who goes to Russia? Can anyone even speak English there?” My dear friends were genuinely perplexed.

I can confidently conclude that navigating Russia with minimal Russian-speaking capabilities was one of the most challenging things I have ever done. But linguistic hurdles aside, the greatest challenge was by far emotional. I felt alienated in a country that was unwilling to adapt to me.

At first, I was resentful. I’d ask a question in English and they’d scold and walk away. Locals would talk to me in Russian and I’d stare blankly back, humiliated and extremely regretful of my decision to venture outside the mother tongue. It was intimidating, highly inconvenient and for the most part, incredibly lonely.

Fortunately, what started as a definite mistake turned into one of the most valuable experiences of my life. All it took was a mere change in attitude.

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All of a sudden I was that customer, and fortunately I realised it was a position I needed to be in. In fact, it’s a position that we should all experience at some stage. At a time when issues concerning cultural diversity are becoming increasingly relevant within Australian society, intercultural understanding is more important than ever. My experiences in Russia vested me with the ability to empathise with the feeling of complete cultural alienation and the challenges pertaining to it. They say to truly understand somebody you must take a walk in their shoes – same goes for understanding diversity.

As someone who always considered themselves attuned to this particular topic, the trip completely changed the way I engage with this discussion.

By venturing outside our comfort zones we learn to coexist amidst differences. It is these insights that I believe hold the key to eradicating prejudice and subsequently promoting a more peaceful, inclusive society.

So go to the most random country you can think of and embrace the feeling of being a complete outsider. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy my fair share of pub crawls. That feeling of complete cultural alienation, however, was by far the most valuable thing I took away from my European adventure.

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BERLIN NIGHTS WORDS BY BEN CLARK ARTWORK BY SARAH LEONG

WHEN EXCLUSION IS THE NEW BLACK

W

e knew the mythology long before we arrived. Different.

Cool. Alternative. Long has Berlin prided itself on being the home of subcultures, a place where alternative types can find their niche and wear it proudly. Add in a healthy dose of post-teen hedonism and an infamous clubbing scene, and it sounded like a perfect place to party.

Yet the resounding message from locals was that for any of the clubs worth going to, we were very unlikely to get inside. “Wear all black or don’t bother,” we were told. “Whatever you do, don’t take your phone out whilst waiting in line,” said another. “Even then you still probably won’t get in. The bouncers are notoriously judgemental.”

If Berlin was meant to be the home of alternative culture, why did the bouncers sound like textbook high school bullies? Isn’t alternative culture meant to react against snooty judgement and oppressive social dynamics, not mimic them? It seemed that rather than subverting the judgemental, hierarchical culture that pervades the worst of ordinary nightlife, Berlin clubs were in fact amplifying it.

Berlin is by no means unique in this regard. Around the world, alternative scenes can be hard to break into. Instead of breaking down dichotomous social structures, hipsters everywhere are frequently guilty of merely replacing one set of self-serving social rules with another. Scenes founded by those excluded from “in groups” have built walls that block out not just those who might ruin the vibe, but those who might enrich it.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not expect to just waltz into any scene, anywhere in the world, and automatically be accepted. Some cultural milieus take time to adapt to, and some you are simply not entitled to join. I would gladly be turned away from a gay club for being heterosexual. I would expect weird looks were I, a thoroughly white guy with dance moves to match, to attend a hip-hop club in Harlem. Cultural scenes are designed by certain groups for certain groups, and need not bend for the comfort of an Australian tourist.

Yet the arbitrary judgement of Berlin bouncers was seemingly not aimed at preserving culture or fostering common bonds. It was aimed at manufacturing ‘cool’. The lurid, visible spectacle of social capital allocation. There is a line between keeping a scene tight, preserving its uniqueness, and using privileged positions in social groups to push others out, to inflate your own sense of worth.

If a cultural scene relies on such blatant exclusivism, it has likely become detached from its roots and, dare I say it, pretty lame.

The question worth asking, for those of us who want accepting cultural scenes is are hipsters the new jocks? Like in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, just as the pigs begin walking on two legs and wearing human clothes, have the formerly weird kids merely subsumed the role of the old cool crowd?

We can all be guilty of building walls around the things we love, and this includes social groups and cultures. Often, the scenes we party in demand a form of membership – required attire, assumed

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I had the horrible realisation that we were living a stereotype.

We were the tertiary educated, liberal-minded ‘elites’ that Donald Trump had so viciously derided in his presidential campaign.

The US election conjured inside me a sinking feeling, that everything I cared about so passionately had beem summarily ignored. But no wonder it was. Those inside my bubble had systematically excluded those outside it. Through devising barely penetrable social theories, we were isolating not just those who offended our beliefs, but those who failed to speak our highlyspecialised language. Of course, Rick from Michigan doesn’t care about universal human rights, because that discussion is rarely framed in a way that offers any tangible relevance to his life.

We weren’t as obnoxious as Berlin bouncers, but we were breathing life into the limp husk of exclusiveness all the same.

We had created our own little club, inaccessible to the uninitiated.

knowledge, shared language. These common characteristics help define these groups, and give them a sense of common identity.

Yet if they are too rigidly enforced, they risk alienating people who would otherwise thrive in such environments, but just can’t break through the barriers.

At first, Berlin had seemed standoffish. Then we met Wolf, an eccentric writer working part-time behind a bar to make ends meet.

We traded worldviews and laughs over German pints. Between anxious gesticulations – impassioned, but twitchy – he would pause to ponder our words carefully before earnestly replying. He looked you in the eye when talking, without a shred of confection or affectation. His charisma was magnetic, pulling a diverse crowd to his end of the bar. He was everything the bouncers were not. Soon enough we were all discussing the rise of demagogic populism with two pro-Brexit Brits.

“We’re not racist, we’re sick of being called racist,” said one.

“Immigration has nothing to do with it – it’s the system, the system itself is damaged. I’m from Birmingham – working class – and those Oxford twats don’t give a shit about us. Something needed to fuck up the status quo, and it has, and I’m glad.”

I’d never actually spoken to a Leave voter. My liberalminded friends and I had greeted Brexit with a similar mix of disappointment, disdain, and even patronisation. I haven’t changed my mind about Brexit, and I don’t buy the simple narrative of the working class biting back after years of being overlooked. But hearing their opinions helped me grasp the true extent to which certain groups feel entirely alienated from their fellow citizens, which is being harnessed by demagogues to incite division across our increasingly fractured world.

Wolf broke down Berlin’s walls, and invited us all in. We left his bar intoxicated by the city’s vibe. If only the internet fostered the same jovial, respectful exchanges as Wolf’s corner of that dingy bar.

We sipped our craft beer at the Swanson Street rooftop bar. We ate burgers from rustic wooden boards. A bearded DJ in a denim jacket played Chet Faker. We were having a spirited discussion about our favourite Netflix dramas, until someone broke the conviviality by mentioning the US election.

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Anyone unversed in the language of tertiary-level social sciences just wouldn’t get it. Some might not see this as a problem, for university is by nature an elite institution which invariably leaves some behind. Still, without the faculties to communicate our beliefs to a broad range of people, we ‘liberal elites’ will be left turning people away from a club with increasingly few people inside.

If Berlin taught me anything, it is that exclusiveness sucks.

We must be constantly attentive to the accessibility of our social groups, clubs and institutions. We must adjust our behaviour so that those outside our bubble feel welcome to join, even if this means spoiling a particularly rigid image of how it ought to look. We must speak a language that can be understood by all. I’d much rather share a pint with someone who walks in different shoes, than wait for three hours with perfectly curated attire to dance with people who all look the same.

SCIENCE

OH THE HORROR! WORDS BY ALISON TEALBY ARTWORK BY VERONICA FERNANDO

SLENDER MAN AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HORROR FLICKS

F

rom humble beginnings as an entry into a 2009 Photoshop contest, the phenomenon of Slender Man has exploded across social media as one of the most well-known monsters to be produced by meme culture. He became the inspiration for fan art, horror stories, movies and videos, a soon-to-be-released HBO documentary and a series of games. He inspired parody memes: Trender Man, Slender Man’s sassy and fashionable cousin, and Splendor Man, his jolly older brother. He has his own fan-made character in My Little Pony, Slender Mane. In 2014, he also became the inspiration for several acts of violence, most famously the nowcalled ‘Slender Man Stabbing’, when two twelve-year-old girls stabbed their friend 19 times during a game of hide-and-seek.

But what is it about Slender Man that has captured the attention of so many? The answer may lie within a theory by American philosopher Noël Carroll. In examining the ‘paradox of horror’ (the question as to why people enjoy horror fictions that are created to frighten and unnerve), Carroll proposed that the appeal of horror revolves around the mystery that monsters invoke. Monsters of horror fiction, according to Carroll, are “in principle unknowable”.

They cannot exist in real life; their nature is otherworldly or alien.

To their audience, they are both unreachable and incomprehensible, and it is through this elusiveness that they stimulate their audience’s imagination. In short, the fear and discomfort that the monster elicits is outweighed by the stimulation of its audience’s curiosity.

The television show Doctor Who takes full advantage of this mystery appeal, with monsters such as ‘The Silence’ or ‘The Weeping Angels’ and their voiceless, menacing presence. One of Stephen King’s most famous monsters, ‘It’ or ‘Pennywise the Dancing Clown,’ similarly grasps the audience’s attention through an allure of inexplicable danger. The monster, in its unknowability, its mystery and otherness, provokes an unresolvable fascination that demands imaginative engagement in a way that the real world does not offer. Slender Man most certainly belongs to this category of mystery. His looming, distant presence – always threatening to come closer, to appear at the periphery of one’s vision – signifies his unreachable position. He is a part of this world only when he so desires to be, which usually involves the suggestion of an untold violence. His facelessness and elongated figure, cloaked in a dark suit – almost but not quite recognisably human, as though he is clumsily attempting to disguise his true self with human clothing – marks him as the unknowable, monstrous ‘other’.

The mystery that Slender Man produces allows his fans to explore the unanswerable questions of ‘otherness’, of an unknown creature beyond this world. His existence can be felt from the terror of their bodies and the dread in their minds, but it is not physically tangible, and can never in reality be seen or touched. In the words of Douglas E. Cowan, a professor of religious studies, the genre of horror explores “the dark side of religious belief”. It looks for the same answers, searches for meanings and understandings of the universe and seeks to “challenge the conventional, convenient, and comfortable understandings that the universe is a friendly place”.

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For teenagers seeking to make sense of themselves and the world around them, a creature such as Slender Man may become an attractive myth through which to attempt a first independent brush with spirituality.

Alongside his mysterious appeal, Slender Man speaks to a number of fears and anxieties that are very much directed towards youth. Shira Chess and Eric Newsom’s 2015 book Folklore, Horror Stories & The Slender Man analyses in detail the specific threats Slender Man represents to adolescent life. He is a child-oriented monster, an abductor of children and young people. The dark business suit he is always wearing epitomises adulthood – a symbol of a world to which his audience is not yet a part of, as does his immense height, which dwarfs everybody around him into the stature of a child. He embodies the foreign territory of the Adult, quite literally looming over his teenage audience from a place in which the teenager knows full well they will soon be expected to join.

Christine Jarvis, a professor of education, has a deep interest in the relationship between teenagers and horror fiction. In her paper School is Hell: Gendered Fears in Teenage Horror, she suggests that horror plays a role in aiding young people in working through their anxieties, resolving teenage confusions about their place in society and fictionalising their fears into monsters. In this way, the anxieties of adolescence (changing bodies, newly realised desires, confusion of identity, fears of failing to successfully transition into the unknown realm of adulthood) can be explored from the safe vantage point of fiction and imagination, a space of reflection and growth that is not offered elsewhere.

Alongside the chaotic teenage anxieties embodied in horror monsters, Jarvis notes that another prevalent fear in teenage life is that of inordinate adult control. Teenagers are strictly regulated by adult systems in most aspects of their lives. Anger is also directed towards the contradictory adult world – teenagers find themselves in the process of realising that adults are not as perfect as they may have seemed from the blissful platform of childhood.

Disappointment creates anxieties about the tightly-controlled adult world, and for this reason, the supernatural and occult are favoured in young adult fiction. Slender Man’s business suit may exemplify the ‘Adult’ and their control, but the rest of him – the black, wavering tentacles, the pure white skin, his facelessness – all represent a paranormal force that is beyond logic. Slender Man embodies the adult world, but he is also above the adult world. Adults cannot defeat or control, or even understand Slender Man. He is a power that remains untouchable by all – whilst he does represent an adult threat, Slender Man is also a figure of resistance.

The fascination with Slender Man becomes, perhaps, a little clearer in the context of the turbulent minds of his fans. For the young would-be murderesses of the ‘Slender Man Stabbing’, and all of the teenage obsessors of the myth, Slender Man became an outlet. An icon on which they could focus their fears and anxieties, through which they could grasp a tiny piece of their identities beyond the control of adults and explore their own understandings of the universe.

SCIENCE

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ONE CORNER OF A POSTER IN A BP ROADHOUSE WORDS BY JACK FRANCIS MUSGRAVE ARTWORK BY AMIE GREEN

P

ies in Ponds was the last pie floater stand in South Australia.

Em found it drunk and dreaming.

They were coming off a pre-drinks that had gone harder than they were aware of. Shouting about how poor their grades were to nobody and singing with the ticket inspectors but thinking that they could easily pass as only three drinks in.

Without telling anyone, someone, Em thinks it must have been Grant, just got off and they were all swept along with him.

So they ended up two stops from the city, on the fringes of the inner suburbs. Only avoiding the cops because they didn’t stay in one place long enough for the old people to get out of their beds and to their phones to complain. They played with a Sherrin they found in the middle of the road, stealing some poor kid’s Christmas present for the sake of ‘shenanigans’. Lara had her head on Em’s shoulder, crying about Grant, or some boy, or something, but Em didn’t take any of it in. Em thought about that kid, and the lecture they’d get from their dad about responsibility for their belongings and how the kid would beg please, please, they’ll do the dishes for a month if they can just get it back.

The rest of the night was a blur. The boys raiding backyards, appearing from nowhere with wife beaters and cork hats.

Aaron shoving stubby holders onto her hands which Em thinks was flirting. Being shocked at finding a 7-Eleven. The smell of homebrand surface cleaner. Grant pissing on the counter.

Running from sirens that they weren’t sure they were imagining, down side-streets and alleys until somehow they found it. Pies in Ponds.

Pies in Ponds operated out of a rusting second-hand Ford Transit. A window had been cut out of the side door with what could only have been a power saw, which would explain the tape covering the exposed, tetanus-infested edges. The counter was made of plywood. The ‘kitchen’ seemed to be a microwave and countless Tupperware containers. It was painted in a pea-green that didn’t do many favours. Pie floater was misspelt in the menu.

Inside, cramped and too tall for his van, was Shane. Hair on the forearms, rolled up sleeves, wouldn’t look too out of place in a Snowtown casting call. Shane spoke in grunts.

They tried to get Shane to talk but he wouldn’t.

He only spoke to tell them that they’d have to buy something or piss off. So they paid $3.50 to eat a swamp. Em ate it expecting some secrets of the elders. For it to open her third eye, or make her want to live in Adelaide until she carked it.

What she got was a half-cooked meat pie that tasted vaguely mush. Her eyes met Shane as if to say “What?” Shane smiled. He knew. Walter vommed and they called it a night. Em said goodbye to Shane and he nodded.

Em woke up on the floor, hungover and wrapped in tinfoil she mistook for a blanket. She opened her phone and deferred her next semester. Everyone laughed and tried to piece together everything over bottled shake-mix pancakes. They were convinced Shane wasn’t real. The others went on about how he was a creep and how shit pie floaters were and Em nodded her head but couldn’t stop thinking about that van.

The police came for Grant which was a whole thing for a while, but Em got off.

She waited about a week until she couldn’t stop herself from going back. She tried googling it but she couldn’t find an exact location, so she tried retracing their steps from the night. The 7-Eleven had closed down. When she finally found the right alleyway, after stumbling into two different drug deals, Shane was napping on the counter when she sat down.

“Remember me?” she asked. Shane nodded.

“Dunno how I could forget you lot.” She ordered a floater as an excuse to keep talking, which Shane didn’t do a whole lot of. Ask him his footy team he’d say Norwood. Ask him if he lives around those parts he’d say nah. Yea nah nah yeah yea yea nah fuck the Magpies. Have ya got a wife? Nah. And that’d be it. Shane would drop his head and start washing mugs that no one had actually used.

Em ate the rest of her pie in silence. Still nothing.

“I’ll see you tomorrow Shane.”

“See ya then,” said Shane, not believing.

To her word, she came back tomorrow. She sat down, and thought she hallucinated seeing two Shanes. She didn’t, it was Doug, Shane’s son. Doug spoke in grunts. Em watched as they grunted at each other. She bought a pie and smiled. Em came back day after day, but slowed down a bit after the honeymoon period. When she told her friends they all said ‘that’s nice’ but started a new group-chat without her.

Em learned a lot about Shane even if she had to piece together all the fragments. His dad had opened the pie cart back in the early days, and it was a really successful family business. It was a known treasure of the city back in the day, dating back to the late 1800s. Shane never wanted to run it. His dream was to be Australia’s first Olympic gold medalist in weightlifting. He was on track as well until a torn ACL ruined any chance of ever coming back (“they didn’t have the same steroids back in those days”).

At the same time his dad died, and he didn’t have anything else planned, so he took over. While Shane never smiled, Em could tell he was smiling even less when he said this.

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“What about your wife?” Em asked one day.

“I cheated,” Shane said. And that was it.

Em would come in and spout facts about pie floaters and Shane would listen politely.

“Did you know that the pie floater was named a heritage icon of South Australia back in ‘03?”

“Oh so that’s what that letter was going on about”. And so on.

Em fell in love for just a moment. Doug was washing the tupperware in the sink when they locked eyes. They’d have their reception out the back of the cart in the carpark of a nice looking church, with little artisanal pie floater canapés. Her dad would shake hands with Shane and they’d nod and maybe lean over something and have a dad chat about dad things, and he wouldn’t like Shane or Doug but he wouldn’t say it out loud for a couple of years ‘cos he loves her. Their honeymoon would be in Bali but she’d make sure to take him away from Kuta Beach to get the ‘real experience’. When they got back they’d take out a loan and get a reasonably priced but smaller than they’d hoped for home in walking distance of Norwood Oval. In the morning, she’d cook the soup for the cart and store it into the Tupperware they got from Shane when he cried for the first time after the wedding and told them he loved them. Doug would sleep in till two after getting home at three in the morning selling pies to drunks, so they’d have afternoon tea and coffee and the two would sit and read the newspaper and not say too much. When she didn’t, Doug would go to work while she slept, and would always wake her up when he crashed into bed but Em would never mind.

The next moment, Doug put the dishes in the rack and asked Em what she wanted. She thought about the church, the coffee, being woken up by the sheets moving every morning. “A pie,” she said. “I think I want a pie.” Doug gave it to her for free. She ate it.

Maybe something?

“Y’know Em,” Shane said, “if you want, you can work with us if you want. I can’t really pay you, but you’re here all the time anyway.”

Em had never said yes quicker. Em put on an apron, smiled, and didn’t serve a single person.

One day Em came and the cart wasn’t there. She sat in the alley on a crate that smelled like the smoke of a uni student. “This is odd,” she thought. “Shane must be sick, and Doug must not have enough time to take over the cart. I will come back tomorrow.”

So Em came back tomorrow. She sat on the same crate, with the same smell and the cart was not there. “This is odd,” she thought.

“They must have taken an impromptu holiday, Shane did mention that he needed a break, and it is the lowest point of the pie season, so they’ve taken a week break. I will come back in a week.” So Em came back in a week. No cart. A month. No cart. The shops next door bought more bins instead. Em got in the bins and pretended they were a hip pop-up pie stand in a cute Melbourne alleyway. As she handed out a soy-latte to a bearded man that wasn’t there, she realised. Pies in Ponds was gone.

Em went into the fruit store across the road to see if they knew anything but they didn’t. An old lady by the pumpkins said that she knew Shane and called him a bastard. Said that she hung out at the pub Shane drank at and that he was a real piece of work. Em asked for the name of the pub and was looking up the quickest Metro route to The Old Colonial before she had even passed the bananas out front.

She took one tram and two sketchy bus changeovers to get there. The chalkboard out front showed happy hour prices that confirmed this was not a student hangout. Em walked in and hid in the ladies’ for ten minutes after making eye contact with one greyhound watching punter. The air smelt of stale cigarettes and cheap parmigianas. Em found a stool between two quiet men and faked a cough until the bartender woke up. She asked for a beer but panicked when the bartender asked what type so she fell back on West End and couldn’t tell whether or not he was judging her.

With the voice of a private school kid trying to buy weed for the first time she asked: “does anyone know what happened to Shane with the pie cart here?”

It felt like the whole pub stopped. Heads turned and pints hung in stasis between table and mouth.

“Shane? Do I fucken ever,” said the bartender. Everyone knew what happened to Shane or at least had their own yarn of it. The son was sick of his dad so he took a golf club to the van and ran away. Nah nah, the cops were after Shane cos he’s the one that stole those three kids from the beach. Someone else heard it from someone else that he’d pissed off some Maggies fans when he was down at the Fisherman’s Wharf one Sunday and now they were out to get him so he was hiding out in Victoria. All the big blokes with beards agreed that he was buying heroin off bikies and owed them a fucktonne so they’d taken a torch to the Ford while Shane was inside it.

Em was yelled at on the bus home, drunker and more uncertain than she’d ever been. She wished she’d asked for a landline.

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Sometime after, Em found herself on the Firefly to Melbourne.

She wasn’t sure why, but her mum had said it would do good for her, so she packed a backpack and rocked up to the busport two hours too early. The driver had put on what Em assumed must have been a straight-to-DVD movie. It was something about a talking galah, which she watched with one earphone in. The kids behind her laughed.

Halfway to Victoria was a roadhouse just out of Ararat. She’d tried to sleep but it was 3a.m. now and nothing was happening so she got off. She ordered a fish-cake from the tired looking woman at the counter. The woman said they were out of fish-cakes but they could fry one up if you’d like and Em failed to see in the woman’s eyes that she really wanted Em to order something else.

On the wall was a faded poster from the ‘80s. Come see Adelaide. A rollercoaster in a West Field. Flared pants down Rundle Mall. Down in the corner: “you haven’t tried Adelaide till you’ve tried a pie-floater”. A couple smiles in front of a cart with a face that could have been Shane in a younger life. Could it? Em couldn’t tell, but it sure did look like him.

Em stepped outside. The clouds were out. The black of the sky crept up on the safehaven of the BP. It was so cold. She hoped for some stars but it was overcast.

Em went to Melbourne, but she doesn’t remember it.

When she got back, Em was strung along to an SANFL game.

Norwood and Port. There was meant to be entry fee but the club waived it. Two thousand people were there officially but it looked like twenty. The Norwood cheer squad was a guy with a flag. The Port fans were drunk and angry. Across the field Em saw a crooked red-and-black scarf hanging like something.

Shane didn’t react when he saw Em so she didn’t either. They spoke in small talk. Darren had found some stable work and was dating a girl who was a bit odd but she brought out the best in him. Shane spoke of boys with muscles kicking balls that only he would know. He listened to Em list the three things that had happened since they’d spoken. They drank beer in silence and Em smiled. Then she turned to him and asked those lingering two words: “what happened?”

Shane was still. Visions of men on bikes, of needles in arms, Port fans with hammers danced through Em’s head. Shane sighed.

“I dunno what to say Em. People just don’t want pie floaters anymore.”

Norwood kicked a goal and the guy with the flag went nuts.

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‘One Corner of a Poster in a BP Roadhouse’ is an unpublished manuscript by Jack Francis Musgrave (1997 – 2016). Jack was a friend and prolific contributor to our collective in 2016 and exemplified what makes Farrago... well, Farrago.

THE SOUTH WIND BY NELLIE SEALE instagram.com/nellie.seale.art/ facebook.com/NellieSealeArt/

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COLUMN BY DANIELLE SCRIMSHAW ARTWORK BY SAM NELSON

PART 1: THE SACKING OF YOMG

I

t has been eight months and approximately 16 days since the world as we knew it was destroyed. I say ‘approximately’ because I’m actually not that sure; in the past I would’ve read the time on my phone, but obviously that’s gone. I tried marking the days with an ongoing tally, scratching lines into the floor of the derailed train I live in. It was working for a while, until I forgot how many days March had.

The other day, George and I were scavenging on the main street of Mordialloc, perhaps the most dangerous part of the suburb, but also the hotspot for quick resources. Mordi, if you don’t know, is – was? – on the Frankston train line, the south-east one with all the stabbings. I’m guessing Frankston looks pretty much the same as before.

“You know that’s not how prescription glasses work, right?”

I asked George, who was lying beside me on his stomach. In his hands he clasped makeshift binoculars, which were basically two toilet paper rolls with cracked glasses lenses taped to one end.

He squinted and held the other end to his eyes.

“I can see them … they’re coming out now, yeah?”

“No.” “… Now.” “No.” We were on the station side of main street, huddled down behind a pile of rubble. Our attention was drawn to the ruins of YOMG, an old froyo place which is now inhabited by a group of preteens that are savage both in a Lord of the Flies kind of way and an internet-age slang kind of way.

The most desirable outcome would be the YOMG kids leaving the building long enough for us to sneak inside and snatch their resources. As we waited for our opportunity, I thought about making George distract them.

George and I do most of the scavenging for our small group – my mum and her mate Susan being the other half. George hates the post-Apocalypse, what with all the suffering and scavenging and lack of memes. I guess I can classify this moment as the post-Apocalypse, can’t I? The actual Apocalypse itself is meant to be the climax point, like when everything is going to shit and the world is exploding and everyone you’ve ever known is probably buried under the ruins of their swanky apartments in what used to be Fitzroy, still clutching their vintage vinyl records and lattes.

Right? Well, somehow I survived (fuck me, I know), and this is what’s left.

I don’t hate it as much as George, and I have half a mind to think it’s because he went to a private school. The lights in the

toilets didn’t even work at my public school, so I reckon pissing in the dark for five years has somewhat prepared me for this life.

“Ooh! There!” George elbowed me in the ribs, jolting me back into focus. “That’s someone moving, isn’t it?”

Of course he had to ask me for confirmation, because he was still using those fucking toilet paper glasses and probably only noticed movement – maybe a rabid possum. But he was right.

“Congrats, fam. It does appear to be a little girl leaving the base.”

He lowered the paper rolls and turned to me. “What now?”

“Go make a distraction. Be as loud and annoying as you can to get them all out. I’ll race around and go through the back entrance.

Keep them occupied but, for fuck’s sake, don’t get caught.”

He scoffed. “They are all, like, under twelve. I think I can manage.” I was doubtful, but let him head off feeling confident.

I ran across the deserted road, sneaking behind piles of crumbled brick and scraps of metal which used to be cars. When I was close to the building – or what was left of it – I crouched and waited for George to do his work. After a few minutes I heard loud banging from around the corner, as if he were smashing two metal pots together. I think he was even singing – I faintly recognised the words, ‘are you ready Steve? ’ A few of the older kids came hurtling out the front entrance of YOMG. ‘All right, fellas,’ I heard George sing-shout. ‘Let’s goooooo! ’ With their backs turned to me, I sprinted towards the building and slid in through the window.

I grabbed my tote bag and started filling it with anything I could find. Canned soup, canned asparagus, canned spaghetti, canned – ohmygod tampons.

“Who are you?”

I jumped and looked up to see a little girl standing in front of me, who spoke too loudly for my own comfort.

“My name’s Roella,” I whispered, and, because I didn’t know what to do, held out my hand.

“Rosella?” She ignored my hand. “Like the soup?” She pointed to the can I was clutching.

“No, Ro-ella.”

She stared at me for a moment, blinked a few times, and then let out an ear-piercing scream. I snatched my tote bag and legged it.

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PINK WORDS BY OLIVIA HART ARTWORK BY LEUNG CHIN CHING

Pink flowers grow in the front lawn Their velvet dew drop texture I long to wear in my hair I burden them with attention Removing petals from stems And gravity helps Pockets full of petals I set up a wood paned store On my front lawn grass patch I show them off to all And so taken by their beauty Visitors exchange them for gold No sooner bought do they return A withered pink and rot Imitation of velvet petals I did not disclose the short expiry Though like everything alive They’ve since ceased to be The whole world forgets How beautiful things Don’t stay beautiful forever.

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JESUS ON HOLD WORDS BY ALEXANDER BAKY TRAN ARTWORK BY KYAW MIN HTIN In a suburban setting Emerge from the garage the charming father On Sunday morning filthy words via filthy lips Are flung Across the hall A shadow marinates In shame Glide along the fridge Folding frowns: “You are to me what salt is to wounds” Creases deep enough for squashing flies That’s why this household’s a circus of all sorts A fight for siblings Bratty children playing pirates Gold digging Learning young Mum is crying In the bathroom On the tiled floor a mannequin attains nirvana Church is cancelled Religion can wait Nothing is safe Until the old man says I am sorry For the two tantrums Occur simultaneously A rehearsal One for the children and one for the adults Kids eat free The dressing for conflict Seasons to ease the sores of green mistakes Unlike their father The king per hour a slave for life With the scrunched up face Who now has to face The music of mothers Breathing anxiety

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HELIUM BOY WORDS BY ESMÉ JAMES ARTWORK BY CHARLOTTE BIRD-WEBER

“K

eeping those on?”

James stared down at his trainers, then to the newly liberated condom in his hand. He swallowed hard, admiring the girl laid bare before him, trying to think up some logical solution to his problem.

“Um. No.” Kate stared, waiting for him to remove the rest of his clothes.

James fiddled with his shoes, attempting to wriggle his heel from its confines. It was no good. He could already feel himself rising. He’d just have to think up some other excuse. Perhaps he’d say that he had bunions. No, that might ruin the mood even more.

He sprawled himself back down onto the bed, footwear firmly intact. Before Kate had time to protest, James pulled her into a heated kiss, whipping out what he believed to be his most impressive tongue work. His plan succeeded. Kate seemed to forget all aversion she’d had to his peculiar fashion sense, letting herself be seduced by the kisses that always failed to land directly on her lips.

“Where do you want me?” Her whisper was masked by a large tangle of hair.

James fell into himself, suddenly recounting every porno he’d ever watched. There were a few things he’d wanted to try, but he doubted he had the agility, or the equipment, to complete the experiment.

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That was when the idea hit him. Potentially the first good idea he’d ever had in his whole seventeen years of life.

“Get on top,” James replied, in the smokiest voice he could manage. It sounded more like he had a terrible cold.

Kate made no complaint, steadying herself upright, brushing a hand through her disarranged locks. She was making some sort of sultry movement; James could just see it out of the corner of his eye while he fiddled with the condom. How the hell were these things meant to go on again? Something about rolling them. He tried to conceal his confusion about the tiny rubber bag before Kate could catch onto the fact that he was a complete beginner at this. Not that he hadn’t had ample opportunity in the past, of course. He just hadn’t been sure how he’d ever deal with his peculiar situation.

While Kate was distracted by her dolphin-like dance, James positioned one of his feet below the other, prying the shoe loose.

One fell to the ground with a loud thump, rocks spilling out of it and all over the floor. Kate didn’t seem to notice; her dance becoming faster now, agitation increasing. Fuck. He could feel himself rising, and not in the good way. He really hoped this idea would work, otherwise things were about to reach a whole new level of awkward.

Here he’d been, panicking that she might tell everyone he’d been terrible in the sack. The possibility that everyone may discover he was a levitating freak hadn’t dawned upon him.

“Hurry up,” Kate commanded, her fire starting to lose heat.

The other shoe was at last extracted. He rolled the condom down to the base. He was fully up now. It began. Kate started to make some weird, gyrating movements. Is this what sex was? Like, it felt good and all, but was this it? Maybe it would feel better if they hadn’t been hovering an inch above the bed. Fuck. He looked up at Kate, but she hadn’t noticed. Her eyes were closed as she bit her lip. God, she was even hotter than how he’d pictured her. He’d waited so long for this, he just needed to let go and enjoy it. James relaxed into the movement, allowing himself to forget the risk he ran of floating to the ceiling at any moment. He closed his eyes. Yeah, it was getting better now. He could feel her, feel everything that was happening…

Without warning, Kate rolled herself over, and pulled James on top of her.

Thump!

The two of them flew up to the ceiling, James’ back hitting it hard on impact. Kate let out a loud scream. Unless he was mistaken, though, it didn’t seem to be one of alarm. James’ eyes flew open; Kate’s were still firmly shut. She had absolutely no idea about the total defiance of gravity currently taking place. God, she really must be enjoying it. Maybe he had a natural talent for this kind of stuff.

He didn’t have time to wonder, as the weight of the new situation dawned upon him. Rather, the weight of the girl in his arms.

CREATIVE

It appeared his peculiar ability didn’t transpose itself onto the people in contact with him. James was lying upon the ceiling, holding onto Kate with nothing but his arms and evidently talented penis. Swinging his legs around her thighs, James relieved some of the pain from his limbs.

“Go faster,” Kate begged him, her face nestled into the nape of his neck.

James made no reply. He was biting his own lip, trying to conceal a cry of pain. Kate proved to be much heavier than she looked. Swallowing back the ejaculation, James made work to thrust his hips more vigorously towards Kate’s. She let out another cry. He must be doing well; David hadn’t said anything about her screaming like this when they’d done it last November. But he couldn’t even fully process the satisfaction this thought should have given him. Arms about to fall off, he didn’t have time or energy to think of another clever solution; he would have to try the first thing that came to him and hope they didn’t die in the process.

With a silent prayer to a God he’d never before shown any interest in, James fought to force Kate back on top of him, hoping they’d both fall back onto the motel’s dodgy double bed, and not onto its fragile wooden flooring.

Thud!

The bed proved to be far less luxurious than it appeared, the mattress about as thick as a single sheet of paper. James’s back was thrust heavily onto the wooden panels. There was another cry. At least she was still enjoying herself. He’d heard guys say that after good sex, you shouldn’t be able to walk. James didn’t think they meant it should cause complete paralysis.

This was getting ridiculous. James couldn’t concentrate on the sweaty teenage girl riding him. This long-held dream was turning into an utter nightmare.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes!”

He’d have to find a way to get his shoes back on, and hope that there was still enough weights left in them to keep his feet firmly on the ground. With what energy he had left, James wriggled their bodies toward the end of the bed, and dangled his legs over the edge.

Kate’s screams were becoming more frequent. James tried to conceal his efforts: “Yeah, um, yeah!”

Her eyes flew open for the first time since they’d begun.

She looked to the source of the sound, confused, as though she’d forgotten he’d even been there. Her interest was fleeting, before her eyes clenched shut and she again took up her sea creature motions.

James’s sigh of relief was lost amongst the racket. God, he hoped these rooms were soundproof.

One foot attempted to feel around the floor for the lost shoes.

He felt like a blind Cinderella. But this was nothing like those shitty Disney films. This was a pure, gory Brother’s Grimm tale, replete with axes and mutilated lovers.

His foot finally hit something that felt particularly shoe-y.

Success. James felt out for the hole, trying to fit his foot within it. It took a solid half minute of frustration before he realised the shoe was facing the wrong way. Making a few jerking movements, to Kate’s delight, James managed to slip himself inside. To his relief, there still appeared to be enough rocks left inside the shoe; enough to keep him closer to the floor than ceiling. Feeling confident they were not about to go for another hot and heavy air ride, James swung his torso up, Kate now straddled on his lap.

“Oh, James,” she whimpered, impressed by his sexual efforts, completely clueless. As she bounced upon him, he continued to fiddle, making occasional movements with his pelvis to keep things interesting. Gazing over her shoulder, he could see nothing through the abundance of dark bouncing locks. Pulling her into a tight embrace, he flattened her hair down, desperately searching the floor with his eyes. There it was, strewn across the tattered floorboards, and just out of reach. Fuck. Fuck.

“FUCK!” Kate cried.

James had no idea what he was going to do; there was just enough weight pulling him towards the floor. He wriggled himself further down the bed, until his cheek bones were thrust painfully onto the wooden railing. He was almost there, it was just within reach.

He pointed one of his toes out, looking like the World Champion for Most Ungraceful Ballerina. He touched it and…Kate made a sudden movement, causing him to push the shoe further away.

There was no other way around it but to travel towards the shoe.

He didn’t know quite how possible this would be; he could already feel himself rising gradually towards the roof. Honestly, though? At this stage, James could not give the slightest fuck if Kate did discover he had a strange tendency to levitate. If she spilled the beans, he’d tell everyone she made more noise than a hippo in the sack.

55

CREATIVE He wouldn’t really be that cruel. But, right now, his back was about to crack, and his arse was taking an excruciating pounding.

Making a strange squatting motion, hoping it would keep him more grounded, James ventured towards the shoe. Kate’s legs were squeezed tightly around his waist. This was just the icing on the cake for her experience. She was going wild, her head swinging in all directions, making it incredibly hard for James to see if he was headed towards the shoe or the wall. The weight in his single shoe was not enough to hold his whole body down. Had it not been for Kate’s constant and violent gyrations, James would be flying to the roof any second. Kate had finally made herself useful.

With one last excursion, James stretched his leg out towards the shoe. His foot fell in. Relief washed over James in a large wave. Turning them around, James dropped Kate back onto the bed, allowing himself to fall on top of her. The sweat that had developed from his strain began to fall onto her face, mixing with her own perspiration. She had reached her highest pitch yet, scratching at his already destroyed back, drawing him closer towards her. With a heavy exhale, James closed his eyes, deciding he would utilise the fragments of energy he had left to try and make the most of this experience.

He had just calmed himself to a state somewhat resembling relaxation, when Kate gave off a scream so loud and piercing, James’s muscles froze up again in complete panic. Every limb in Kate’s body suddenly tightened around him, cutting off ample circulation. And then, suddenly, it all released. She fell onto the bed with a heavy sigh.

James admired the disheveled body before him, uncertain of the appropriate next move. Kate brushed the bedraggled hair from her face, and used her legs to push him from her, indicating that, without a doubt, she had finished. The next moments fell into a blur. Was that it? James rolled beside her, thinking he could at least enjoy a cuddle if this was really all that was left to enjoy.

“Shit, is that the time? Gotta run.”

Without a second of hesitation, Kate rolled off the bed, and began to scavenge various items of clothing from around the room. She was talking all the while, some stuff about the sex: that she’d enjoyed it and wanted to do it again some time. James hardly heard a word she said. He stared blankly at the moulding ceiling above him.

Her loose blouse now vaguely fastened, Kate came over to give a farewell kiss, “Text me some time, we’ll organise a date. Like I said, though, not tomorrow.”

Kate crossed the room. Just before reaching the door, she turned for one final intake of her disfigured partner, “Oh yeah, and James? Don’t take any offence or anything but, next time, lose the shoes. It’s really not sexy.”

With that, the door slammed shut, and James was left alone with the ceiling.

56

FADED AND ALTERED BY VERONICA DI MASE instagram.com/vemaase/

57

A

man, Beck Stein, journeys through the landscape of The Great Depression only to be kidnapped and taken to a strange planet by large, anthropomorphised grapes. Soon, said grapes put him to work on a farm that produces wine with a mysterious secret ingredient. Along the way, Stein meets Shazza, a magical, sassy, talking horse (the comic relief!), and subsequently becomes entangled in the dystopian vineyard underworld, inadvertently discovering the horrifying, cannibalistic secret ingredient: grapes.

The film will be a hybrid-bastard-crossbreed-love-child of the visual claustrophobia of Terry Gilliam and the emotionally exploratory violence of Michael Bay. On a narrative and thematic level, Planet will tap into Agnes Varda’s study of individuality and identity, along with the carefully laid formula of Tony Scott – non-stop audience pay off and an abundance of high fives (think Top Gun but with cannibalistic grapes!). On top of this, the score will be played entirely on a keytar. And I mean entirely – you can thank me later.

Planet plays into everything audiences want and more! They’ll come for the grapes and stay for the cannibalism! And who doesn’t love a sassy talking horse?

COLUMN BY LINUS TOLLIDAY ARTWORK DARUS NOEL HOWARD 58

CREATIVE 1

2

EXT. AN EMPTY BEACH - MIDDAY

BECK Oh my God, we’re on Earth. In Australia!

BECK is riding SHAZZA the horse along the beach. He is battered and bloodied.

SHAZZA Oh wow, fuck. I could go visit my mum. Last I saw her, though, she was doing some shitty race in Melbourne.

BECK I just can’t believe it! Wine is grapes!

Shazza throws Beck from her back.

BECK You maniacs! You damned dirty grapes!

BECK Ow! Shazza, bad horse!

SHAZZA Hey, Beck, I was talking about seeing my mum. Pay a little attention.

SHAZZA Neigh, bitch.

BECK Oh, shut up! She’s probably been turned into glue or dog food by now!

Beck stumbles to his feet and trudges along the beach.

BECK I landed on my face! I could’ve broken my nose!

SHAZZA Honey, that woulda been an improvement!

Shazza stands on two ly. They walk around House half-submerged Planet of the Grapes

legs and a corner in sand. of Wrath

SHAZZA Oooh! I thought I was the sassy one!

A large, deformed GRAPE hobbles into view, holding a gun and drunkenly swigging wine.

snaps her hooves sassiand see the Sydney Opera They realise that the has been Earth all along.

3

GRAPE Gotcha now, my pretties!

4 BECK Oh no! A character from earlier threatening our happy ending!

STATUE OF LIBERTY Time to liberate you... from life!

SHAZZA That was the one who engineered the whole cannibalistic plot in the first place!

GRAPE And I would’ve gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling person and anthropomorphised horse!

The grape takes aim with the gun and cackles.

GRAPE (CONT’D) Time to die.

The ground starts to rumble, and the Sydney Opera House rises from the sand. It continues to rise and all the characters watch in wonderment. The grape is horrified. The STATUE OF LIBERTY emerges underneath the Sydney Opera House, carrying it.

STATUE OF LIBERTY Not today!

GRAPE What!?

GRAPE No! The Statue of Liberty throws the Opera House at the grape, who dodges it. The Statue then reveals a machine gun from her dress and shoots the grape.

Juice spurts everywhere.

BECK Thank you, Statue of Liberty. You really saved the day!

STATUE OF LIBERTY And now I must return to my home planet.

The Statue flies into the sky. Beck and Shazza wave and smile.

FADE OUT.

59

ARTWORK BY RUTH SIMONE RATHJEN-DUFFTON 60

“S

ince I was about 17 my art has generally focused on or incorporated nature and natural resources. This is still a big part of my art work as I enjoy being in and surrounding myself in nature. I think this is particularly important in a world increasingly becoming somewhat unnatural, which contributes to the idea that the Earth doesn’t matter and exasperates the problem of global warming and other environmental issues.

Recently I have been focusing more on ways one can be more comfortable with their body. For me, painting and photographing my body has helped me feel more confident and accepting of my body.

I feel that confidence in one’s body is difficult for all people to accomplish. I think this is in part due to society’s attempts to dictate standards as to what bodies should be and look like, and how we should use our bodies and behave.”

61

62

CREATIVE

NO SECRETS IN THIS REIGN WORDS BY JOSCELYN WYNTER ARTWORK BY LISA LINTON There are no secrets in this reign No strength where there is power No corners for the stowaway In wet tunnels circling a flower

There are no secrets in this reign But the reign was always faulted The power is still skewed For the king never revolted

A flower alongside trees in my eyes Which wept their last tears when mine had all dried They fought to keep the desert from coming Like a slippery dream, you’re eternally running

Did the king even know Of the kingdom he let dry?

To the mercy of the desert To the fingers of the sky

We will meet: He, She, and the Hour After an eternity, at the feet of the flower When time is all gone and all is now spent The reign over all, has come silent and went

Tiny hands reaching, no smaller they could be For if any smaller, no longer them we’d see Tiny hands grow, their vines snaking up the green They grow and they tug at the weaker parts of me

My veins have been trampled My eyes bleeding blue After eternity, will you find me?

Will you take me with you?

Even smaller, my planet, clouded only in blue My kingdom there rings, with a goldening hue Once you did visit, and brought gifts of your crown We knelt at the ankles, surrendered and drowned

And pray these roots send their shoots to the sky Where a little blue angel dreams of spring and cries For spring yellow is lighter than lost evening green Deep in the garden under a whispering stream

And the little green hands, pulled us out of the murky Seaweed and yellow eyes, gleaming ever so chirpy We rose still dripping, not one shiver escaped Laced white and transcendent, in shared sparkling cape

Oh, what of the field That we have all now forgotten?

Am I the only one to remember The sweet and the rotten?

The bitterness and clarity That left nothing the same The heartache I knew Was one I chose to reclaim

We rose and began spinning As we dried in the sun And the roots turned their eyes Watching glory as it spun

I miss you like lonely roots forced to grow deeper Into the earth, darkness their only speaker I miss you while sinking, I miss you while undone I miss you like roots, aching always for the sun

The roots, they all sighed And their aching, they harnessed As they each grew a flower Underground in the darkness.

63

CREATIVE

RED AND WHITE WORDS BY FRANKIE BELL ARTWORK BY MORGAN-LEE SNELL river deep and long and course and strong it travels down until it no longer does where one loses the will or gains it perspective decides between the poles river or rivers? branching across the surface intertwining in a form of integral, unavoidable dance it’s clear where the river used to flow from here and there they say its bed was a striking ochre the river is dry these days fading but unwilling to lose its mark they say the river used to be beautiful but now it lies its path is there but the current is lacking the courage is lacking perspective change to a girl in a bedroom with another she traces the edges of her body she traces the lines on her body she traces and traces and traces watches how their bodies differ how they come together and how they fall apart how long? three or four months when did it begin? last year do you still want to?

I think about it perspective change to a man by the river shovel in hand he has a task maintain the path of the river if the path is gone and the water comes his home will be lost all will be lost he slips down into the depths of the river’s path the ground here is tougher than above a contradiction of the liquid he brushes his hand against the earth to find remnants of the river flow there is little here now beneath his feet the bed is pale his hands dry his hands tough like the path of the river his hands reek of iron his hands know more than him and so red fades to white

65

CREATIVE

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS WORDS BY MORGAN-LEE SNELL ARTWORK BY ELLA HOPE BROADBENT

CONTENT WARNINGS: EATING DISORDERS, SUBSTANCE ABUSE

I

n my grandfather’s study, a glass box of butterflies and moths sits propped up between a leather encyclopedia and a shiny blue globe. The years have worn away at them, their papery wings disintegrated so that only their naked bodies lie impaled on silvery pins, almost translucent. I always thought they were more beautiful this way, and spent hours staring into the box at the iridescent dust of their crumbled skin.

Christine says I am dissolving. Her office is sprinkled with colourful bean bags instead of chairs, and there’s a poster on the wall depicting pictures of a man’s face twisted into a myriad of different emotions. She tells me if I do not stop, all my teeth will rot away and my hair will fall out. I think about waking up to a clump of shiny blonde on my pillow. I think about the glass box.

She asks me to make a list of things I want. “I wish I had long toenails I could cut,” I tell her, “and blue sunglasses with square frames.” I do not tell her what I really want, but I write it in my diary over and over again. 48 kilos, 48 kilos, 48, 48, 48. “I want a pair of black boots I can use to squish snails,” I say.

Christine has told my mum to provide positive reinforcements and to spend quality time with me. So Mum makes us special breakfasts – two pieces of toast, one glass of orange juice, a bowl of cereal filled with 51 Cheerios and one cup of milk. I lift spoonfuls to my mouth, chewing each one with my dissolving teeth exactly 24 times. She asks me why I do this. I say I do not know. “But you are Young and Beautiful,” she says, as if this means anything and then she cries into her orange juice while I check the carton in the trash can to see if the milk was full-cream.

In our second session, I tell Christine about The Beginning. I was nine, I think, when the monsters crawled inside of me. A sudden desire to float. A sudden desire to shrink. I started feeding myself facts instead of food, searching up caloric densities and BMI’s and how many hours I could starve myself before my body would start storing the fat. I’d take four strawberries to school for lunch, but I wouldn’t eat them until all their seeds had been picked clean and they’d been sliced into at least twenty-one glassy cross-sections.

These numbers nourished me, and they made the monsters pleased.

Christine is used to hearing these kinds of things, and tells me I am not alone. I know she sees others like me, because we sit together in the waiting room, rotten butterfly broods with translucent skin.

I want to ask her if the other children share their secrets with her. I want to ask what they used to have for lunch.

Sometimes Christine asks about the hospital and I don’t know what to say. They sent me there after my mum found the collection of pizza slices the monsters had left to rot in the back of my closet. I don’t like to talk about the hospital, but I tell her anyway, how they taped a tube to my cheek and threaded it down my throat and let sticky feed run like sandpaper into my stomach, clinging to me.

I tell her about waking up every morning expanded, waking up panicked because the etchings of my spine stopped shifting when I twisted in the mirror. I tell her it feels like swallowing space and all of its mass.

I don’t tell her the rest though. I don’t tell her how, on Christmas, all the moth-children crowded onto a single bed to watch festive films, the television flickering small and analogue. How we watched reindeer leap across the screen, constructed of lumpy brown and white pixels all bundled together. I don’t tell her how, at lunch time, the nurses filed in with trays full of gingerbread, handing them out to the cold moths, who held them in their cold hands. I don’t tell her about my dense dorsal tufts, or crumbling the cookie into my bed sheets. The secrets burn like cigarette smoke when I try to inhale.

Christine says I am getting better. But they visit me still - the monsters – from time to time. Like in the grocery store, where they stroll the aisles with me for hours, counting. We walk with our empty basket, staring at all the Doritos lined up on the shelves and the chocolate bars twisted into their little purple wrappers. We pick out carrots and spinach and almonds, but they tell me to leave the almonds in the frozen food section beside the pizza pockets because the fat content is too high. They always come clothes shopping, scrutinising my cellulite. And in the clubs, they whisper to me; the best thing about MD is that it takes away your appetite.

Christine says that they are disintegrating, and that soon they’ll be too weak to visit, or I’ll be strong enough to turn them away at the door. But the monsters know this isn’t true. And so they tempt me with hip bones like crystals and rib bones I can count. They feed on my flesh and grow meaty and thick and I can feel them moving about inside me. They make my breakfast, pouring out a bowl of milk and crushing half a Weet-Bix into blue ceramic before sitting it amongst the dirty dishes on the sink. And every night they feed me dreams, so that as they grow stronger, I decompose, rot away, like butterflies and moths inside a glass box.

66

CREATIVE

67

CHROMA GOLD ARTWORK BY ILSA HARUN CURATED BY ILSA HARUN

Each edition of Farrago will include a photoset of a different colour.

Check out the next edition’s colour on the content list tab of facebook.com/ Farragomagazine. Submit your photos through farragomedia2017@gmail.com.

68

CREATIVE

“Come to dinner,” she’d said One by one, speech slurs.

A fork clatters.

A slop signals that it has begun.

As clarity claims their eyes, poison claims her guests.

She dabs a napkin to her mouth and returns to the meal.

WORDS BY CLAUDIA SEERS ARTWORK BY AMANI NASARUDIN 69

FOR AND AGAINST THE ASTEROID THAT KILLED THE DINOSAURS ARTWORK BY MINAHIL MUNIR HAMDANI FOR BY JASPER MACCUSPIE

T

AGAINST BY RUBY PERRYMAN

he dinosaurs sucked. I’m sorry, I know it’s not a particularly popular thought, but it’s true. They weren’t the cool, scaly lizards of Jurassic Park; no, they were covered in feathers, none of them spat acid and, perhaps for the better, none of them could speak in weird dream sequences. Apparently they didn’t even roar. Instead, they most likely squawked.

So I think you’ll agree with me when I say that we’re all better off not having them around anymore. After all, they’re a bit of a letdown. That’s why the asteroid that took them out was a good thing for the world. The theory of natural selection dictates that the strong survive and the weak die out. However, I believe another theory is also relevant here: the theory of asteroid selection, where only the cool animals survive. Hopefully there’s another asteroid coming for seagulls very soon.

Another benefit of this asteroid is that it has fuelled our interest in large-scale apocalypse scenarios. Films such as Armageddon and Deep Impact are examples of how our fascination led to an entirely new subgenre of film-making: disaster films. Any event so powerful that it could kill off the supposedly strong dinosaurs is inherently interesting, and therefore guaranteed to make money at the box-office.

Furthermore, the manner in which the dinosaurs were killed, in a way they had no understanding of and could not prevent, has inspired the human realisation of life’s finite nature. If another asteroid could strike Earth any day and kill all of us, why shouldn’t we go skydiving, or eat a fifth bag of chips? After all, as the saying goes, you only live until an asteroid strikes. The mere fact that something so powerful could be eradicated in an instant scares us, but at the same time motivates us to try new things.

So, I’m sure you’ll agree that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was a damn fine thing. It gave us cool films, allowed us to do cool stuff, and rid the world of the scourge of giant chickens.

There’s also the fact that without the death of the dinosaurs, the ecological conditions that gave rise to the dominance of mammals and the eventual evolution of humans wouldn’t have happened, but that’s beside the point.

Dinosaurs sucked!

L

ife as a single mum is tough, but Betty the Brontosaurus follows a pretty solid routine. She wakes, prepares a breakfast of assorted shrubbery and drops the young’uns at school on her way to work.

This morning appears like any other. Betty’s children, Billy and Brenda, climb onto Betty’s back and they set off to tackle another day. At six and eight years of age, they ooze enthusiasm for life.

Suddenly, a large entity spirals from the sky. Billy squeals.

Brenda shrieks. It collides with the earth and the impact sends the children flying. Betty watches as the life she has struggled so hard to create is destroyed before her eyes in a matter of seconds.

Have you shed a tear? I sure have. The thought of helpless dinosaur families like this keeps me awake most nights. They mustn’t have deserved such a tragic end.

Imagine how we’d live with Betty and co. still kicking. Oh look, it’s time for your tutorial, better hop on your Triceratops and go for a ride.

Have you moved interstate for university and wish to visit your loved ones over the break? No worries. A Pterodactyl will have you delivered.

There’s no need for fuel guzzling modes of transport on a dinofilled planet! Goodbye global warming.

And while we’re solving worldwide problems, let’s take a moment to visualise un-inseminated dinosaur eggs. They’d be bloody huge. Big enough to feed a small developing country, I assume. Adios starvation.

Not only would dinosaurs be brilliant vehicles and alternative sources of nourishment, but they’d also make dope pets. Thieves wouldn’t dare enter a home with a ‘BEWARE OF TYRANNOSAURUS’ warning on display. They’d be a budget security system. Actually, maybe not. It would probably cost a fortune to feed a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Having trouble with bullies? Whether used as a scare tactic or to cause serious physical injury, your large reptilian pal has that covered too. Or maybe mammal mate? Have we figured out what they were yet?

Regardless of their blood temperature, dinosaurs would change the general course of history. Battles would be fought with dinosaurs. Imagine knights in shining armour sweeping across fields atop a dino.

Wait, would humans even exist if the asteroid hadn’t hit?

Perhaps we wouldn’t have been able to evolve or we’d have been eaten or something? I’m not too sure how evolution works, I’m doing a Bachelor of Arts.

70

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