The Digger No.7 November-December 1972

W ILL THE ELECTIONS STOP THE STONES?^

WAINER PLOTS ABORTION ON REQOEST

This man is setting up business, at the above address, as a fertility control consultant. He is Dr Bertram B. Wainer, and he is known in some circles for his “enigmatic personality ". On page 1 o f this issue. Wainer explains his plans for Victoria's abortion business, without enigma . . .

Tk M f's the dope-smoking, I V L O S S v f t S S J homosexual, Jewish p lo t—

by Margaret McIntyre —Page 5

A tribute to old Ezra:

The Digger’s first poetry supplement —Page 6

Worm’s-eye view of a floating kidney: the Universe — Part II by Alan Roberts —Page 4

Ross W ilson & the all-new Daddy Cool trip

by Jenny Brown — Page 11

BLANK PAGE FOR ISSUU VERSION ONLY

Page 1 Under the thin veneer. . .

Old habits die hard in Adelaide

Wainer to negotiate cut-rate abortions

Fear outlives the law in the south

by Brace Hanford

Wainer’s TV style isn’t anywhere near as good as Whitlam’s. He’s Bert Wainer, Australia’s most nervolisly quick, not fidgety. He notorious doctor, has returned to walks quick, and when a question is the town that made him famous. ? asked, there’s a quick hesitation, Wainer became famous in 1969- and then . . . The Answer, which 70, campaigning for a change in the he’s thought out in advance, and law on abortion. He also became a which he speaks in a thick accent — target for all kinds of slagging. Doc­ Scots. tors are supposed to keep quiet, “ You’ve got a great opportunity and make money. Doc Wainer made there,” I said. “The next time some­ a lot of noise, and went broke. one asks you one of those What Makes He was shoved out of the AMA, Ya Tick questions, you ought to haul harrassed and physically attacked, out a clock, race around the desk, and generally treated as a crazy. and poke it at the microphone.”

His public performances forced the “ Yeah,” said Wainer.

Victorian government to hold an * * * inquiry into the way police extorted Wainer is full of stories. Since money from abortionists.

At that inquiry, the government’s he became notorious, everybody with lawyer accused -Wainer of being a a beef seeks him out, and tells him publicity-hound, and a liar. Things a story. “ How,” he asks me, “ do said in court are “privileged” ; the you separate the truth from ratMelbourne papers were entitled to shit?” “ I have the same trouble,” I said. print those views about Wainer, and they did. But whatever defects of “I’m beginning to suspect everything’s character are in Wainer, three Mel-, ratshit.”

So we decide not to dwell too bourne detectives went into jail as much on the myriad rumors of evil a result of the inquiry.

Doc Wainer wasn’t exactly ran and stench in the land, and stick to out of town. But he found he the one thing. “The last time I was couldn’t stay in his St. Kilda prac­ down here, I tried to do everything, and I didn’t do anything well . . . tice, and he was declared bankrupt.

For the past year, he’s been prac- I’m sticking to this one thing, now.”

The one thing is his Fertility ticising medicine in Caloundra, Queensland, a small, quiet, salty Control Clinic, at 104 Wellington village more than a thousand miles Parade, East Melbourne. It’s in a building which also houses the Liberal away.

Party offices, the Parents Without * * * Partners, the Alcoholics Anonymous, A mate of Peggy Berman’s rang, to and Recovery. “ A machievellian say Wainer was due Monday night. plot on my part, no doubt,” Wainer (Berman was star witness at the speculated. inquiry.) Tuesday morning, This The rent on the clinic is $29.00 Day Tonight rang, to ask for some a week. The Women’s Electoral background on the Real Wainer. TDT Lobby (W.E.L.) are helping with was about to do an interview with the receptioniste duties. Wainer figures Doc, at his new office in East Mel­ to spend about half an hour with bourne. Dr B.B. Wainer is beginning each patient, charge them $5.00 for a practice as a Fertility Control the consultation. “ I have to live.”

Consultant.

The women who come may also That night I went around to watch have to pay for an independent preg­ TDT with Wainer, at his relative’s nancy test, from a lab. “It’s impor­ house. There’s new wallpaper, and tant to have the opinion of a reput­ paint, in the frontroom. It looks able lab. There are lots of abortion­ quite smart since it was redecorated, ists who won’t tell a woman if she’s after the place was bombed. Feeling not pregnant.” They go ahead' and ran quite high a few years, ago. We do a job, and get paid for it. sat there and watched Gough WhitThere are a lot of misguided souls lam together for a while. We both who think Wainer is an abortionist. laughed a lot. “ I think,” said Wainer, I’m here to tell you, he is not. So “that he will win.” what then, is a Fertility Control Whitlam was doing everything he Consultant? could to make sure that abortion “ It’s up to you,” said Wainer, was not an issue in the Federal “to smash through this thin veneer, election. Whitlam pointed out that and expose me for what I am.” even if Labor won, and decided to * * * change the law, it could only change I believe that Dr B.B. Wainer is it for the A.C.T., and the N.T., be­ cause the abort laws were State back from Queensland, rested, tan­ ned, and reasonably together, to laws. comer the market on referring “ I’ve been trying to make this a Federal issue for three months,” said patients to abortionists. I believe that if he can get a reasonably large Wainer.

Bill Peach came on, and did a case load, he’ll be able to negotiate short rap about abortion. Peach look­ with the doctors who do the actual ed harrassed. Considering what’s hap­ operation to lower their prices, which pening in the ABC at the moment,, are now (as many of you know) he probably is harrassed. Then here’s too high. I believe at the moment Dr B.B. Wainer on TV, moving up that Melbourne may be set for an a flight of stairs with a lot of posters honest $120.oo scrape. If Wainer’s under his arm, and putting them up practice gets large, I believe an at­ on the walls of his empty new office: tempt may be made to drop that EVERY CHILD SHOULD BE price.

Fertility Control might mean WANTED

Sexual virtuosity The lady who wrote ‘Why does the Women have all the Pain, Miss?’ (Dig­ ger November 4—18) was certainly courageous, and as honest as she could be. She treated the children in her class with respect and they re­ sponded. But her action was in no way a ‘solution’ let alone a ‘joyous’ one. The problem of sexual repres­ sion in that class remains. For there

must have been children who were struggling with the realization, and subsequent fears, of their own homo­ sexuality. If so how did they express these fears (if at all) and how did their teacher respond? (She makes only cursory mention of the subject quoting a child who asks ‘Whats a perv?’ we don’t know her answer).

How did any homosexual in the class feel in the midst of this discussion about exclusively heterosexual sex?

I imagine normal feelings of alien­ ation were further reinforced. No simple or joyous solution for my brother(s) or sister(s).

by an Adelaide Digger

other things, too, besides abortion.

It might mean contraceptive advice, or it might mean talking things over with someone about continuing a pregnancy, when mom or the boy­ friend want it terminated.

Wainer has a clear idea of what constitutes grounds for aborting. “ Any woman who seriously requests an abortion has thought about it,

The tone of the discussion (if my impression from the article is correct) implied that there is one way only of experiencing sexual love, that between man and woman.

The teacher’s job, given that she willingly took on the role of sexual ‘expert’ is to point to the immense potential for different sexual ex­ perience in each individual. This I feel is the real issue, and one which will be calculatedly avoided even by the most ‘liberal’ teachers, be­ cause it is that potential that ‘straights’ and ‘gays’ are afraid of.

Simeon Kronenberg Prahran Vic. Note: The suggestion that the article posed a 41joyous solution” was mine as an editor — P.F.

and she should have help finding a safe avenue. Ohce you say, ‘I can’t help you’, they’re back out there shopping around, being exploited.” * * * The Fertility Control Clinic at East Melbourne opened the morning this was written. Jacque L’Affrique and I went around to hang a picture on Wainer. He’d already seen six patients and nine television men.

Aiding the aborter It is not true as the abortionist, Keith, maintained in your edition November 4—18 that he could not get a social v/orker to work for him for love or money. You may point out to him that I would be most happy to work for the latter, and so would a number of other social workers I know.

Holy Jockstrap, if we don’t see the misery and hardship that results from unwanted pregnancies, who does? Besides, most of us are women.

M.B. (Name withheld by request) St. Kilda Vic.

“ Some have haemorrhoids, which are interfering with their sex lives,” said the doctor.

By the time this is printed and distributed, the clinic will have been open several days. We await a con­ sumer’s evaluation of the service.

See pages 8,9, for Abortion His­ tory, Part II.

Adamson confused Is the Robert Adamson who wrote ‘Zimmer’ with Bruce Hanford the ‘Bob Adamson’ who loves Van and digs Carole King?

Please, don’t tell me he is also •the poet who publishes in The Sydney Morning Herald — If there is only Robert Adamson, he must'be a very confused person!

Anyhow — Bob, thanks for your article on Carole King it’s the best thing on pop music Digger’s used.

Why don’t you just come out with it though? Wirte about your Bobby Dylan?

Jane Waldburg Eastwood NSW

Timothy and Glenda Telfer live on a six acre farm five’ miles north of Victor Harbor. Tim is a bricklayer, Glenda a receptionist in a motor garage. They also run a commercial cleaning business and tend to their farm, “by looking over the paddocks and digging weeds.”

Tim has lived at Victor since he was three. He was adopted. Glenda comes from Modbury, a desert-like suburb north of Adelaide.

Tim belongs to the local Lions Club and Glenda attends meetings of the Birthright group — not to be confused with the anti-abortionRight to Life association.

The general attitude of the society Tim and Glenda live in is that young people get married and if it’s not a shotgun, the wife works for a few years and then she does her duty and has children.

This is where the 26-year old couple who live about a mile from the main road without disturbing anyone are likely to cause a stir.

They don’t want to have their own children. At the moment they don’t want children at all. They are seeing a social worker about part-time fos­ tering of a 10-year-old and if a re­ lationship is set up they may put in for full-time fostering. They don’t think it is right for them to go and take a child without finding out his feelings.

They don’t want to bring child­ ren into the world because there are too many as it is. “ It would be im­ moral to go and have our own child­ ren just to satisfy the pressures of society,” Tim and Glenda are supposedly selfish if they don’t have children and yet a lot of people tell them they should have children because they would be lonely in their old age.

The last four years of married life has been pretty good for Tim and Glenda. They’re financially suc­ cessful, but earlier this year they had an experience they wouldn’t wish on anybody.

In May Glenda discovered she was pregnant. She has tried many types of contraceptives since her marriage.

She had a coil inserted when she discovered she couldn’t get on with the pill and the first week she had it she got a pregnancy in the tube.

She also tried a new low dose pill.

She was told if she didn’t get on with the ordinary pill she would never get on with this new one.

Both Tim and Glenda have asked to be sterilised. The policy among Adelaide doctors seems to be that you can’t get sterilised under 30, unless you’ve done your duty and had half a dozen children.

It seems it is easier for men, but Tim hadn’t any children so why the hell would he want to be sterilised?

They were told they were too im­ mature, they didn’t know their own mind. They were told this by a psychiatrist, who fell pregnant to get married. This is not generally con­ sidered sound advice.

As soon as they found Glenda was pregnant they set off on the abor­ tion trail. Trooping through liberal bed SA is not as easy as it seems.

They went to the Queen Eliz­ abeth Family Planning Clinic. They were met by a woman doctor and this made Glenda think, “ You beaut!” The reaction from this wo­ man was, “A 100/1 chance of you becoming pregnant and you did, how fabulous. You should be thrilled to bits. I can’t understand you at all.”

Tim got so upset he had to leave. The woman then insisted on examining Glenda even though she had told her the wouldn’t get an abortion.

Glenda was surrounded by the woman a new Australian lady, a nurse and a young doctor. They all told her how wonderful it would be to have a baby.

“I wouldn’t recommend anyone to go there, it was like cows going into the slaughter,” Glenda said.

“It was a classic example, the

perfect reason of why we don’t want to bring anymore children into the world,” said Tim. Tim and Glenda went to seven doctors, including the one who gave the second signature for the abor­ tion. The reaction was varied. Some, didn’t or wouldn’t understand their feelings. They also went to the one who had refused them a sterility.

He wasn’t happy and sent them off to a psychiatrist again. Espec­ ially in abortion cases these note pad men of ultimate truth are good catchers mits. If anyone, like Tim and Glenda, deviate from the norm in any way, like a car they are sent to the mechanic to get their wheels aligned.

A lot of geepees in Adelaide are scared to sign their names on abortion papers because the police are keeping a close check and any­ one who goes over their quota will be in trouble. If in court a special­ ist said that a couple shouldn’t have had an abortion and geepee had given consent then the geepee would be out on his ear.

The grounds of having an abor­ tion is that there has to be danger to the potential mother’s mental health. The psychiatrist said he wasn’t convinced Glenda would have a complete mental breakdown. Can your health be impaired without a complete breakdown?

According to this notebook man of ultimate truth, no.

They went to a liberal minded, geepee and he said he couldn’t sign because the police were watching.

He used to send people to a good psychiatrist who had been pressured into shutting up and to the Queen Elizabeth Family Planning Clinic (the animals to slaughter).

They told the geepee about their experience there and he said the woman Glenda had seen had only been there a week. Up until she came along he had been getting 60 or 70 per cent accepted but during that week he had six knocked back.

“The law does not go far enough.

There is a lot of personal opinion.

Doctors who are anti-abortion won’t tell you, so you don’t really know why you’re getting knocked back,” said Tim. Sitting watching teevee Glenda saw Doc Wainer talking about his abortion clinics. This prompted them to ring Newsbeat which ran a small item on them during a recent show.

Since then people have made com­ ments to Glenda at work and she feels they will get worse.

When Glenda had the loop put in she went to a gynaecologist who told her not to keep the loop inserted as it was detramental to her health and only for Indian women. “I got the impression, from the way he spoke it was because he thought the Indians to be lesser class citizens,” said Glenda. “We found out a couple of months later that he was one of the heads of the Catholic committee.

We realise he was definitely biased but he could have told us he was biased.”

Another doctor they went to see was influenced by his wife, by her Catholicism. The doctor admitted this to Tim when he was rang up after hours. The doctor said he felt no moral obligation to advise they have sterilisation.

Glenda reckons you shouldn’t have to get two signatures on the form. You have a family doctor who knows you and you shouldn’t have to go to a stranger and tell him your life story in 10 minutes, plus convince him this is the best thing to do.

They are both fed up with Mel­ bourne Street, North Adelaide psy­ chiatrists who get paid $10 an hour to expound their own sexual, religious and sociological biases. They are fed up with doctors who let their biases stop them from giving an objective opinion. They are fed up with bias.

They believe in abortion on demand,

November 18 — December 2

Page 2

The Digger

November 18 — December 2

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process, she married another ‘part’ aborigine, had six children (one The A.C.T. electorate, tradition­ severely Tnentally handicapped and ally deeply concerned with the re­ reluctantly institutionalised) and is peal of dog ordinances, now has its now separated, living on welfare and first chance to register a protest supporting her youngest child. vote with the nomination of abor­ At the age of 34, Aboriginal iginal woman Pat Eatock as an in­ and womens’ rights are her main dépendant candidate (giving second preoccupations. She attributes her preferences to Kep Enderby.) marriage breakup to a flaw in the Secretary/Treasurer of the Abor­ normal conditioning process — ‘The iginal Embassy Pat Eftock’s life role-playing bit just stopped working reads like a Katherine Susannah with me’ — and the need to do some­ Pritchard dream. She was brought thing active in the aboriginal rights up by a white father who is *now a movement.

Hard to pin down as to political hospitalised paranoiac (‘aborigines have nine times as much chance of position — ‘revolutionary left, but ending up in mental hospitals as I’m not campaigning for the over­ whites’) due, says Pat, to the social, throw of the state’ — she is standing domestic pressures of denying his mainly in an attempt to prevent racial origins. This may be another the government making election reason why she resists classifying capital out of black issues through aborigines into half-, quarter-, or misinformation (cf Mr' ‘landrights part- categories, this being, she says, are equivalent to apartheid’ Nixon), a pretty effective divisive tactic of a as well as offering an opportunity for white society. After a childhood the disenchanted ‘whoever you vote spent fairly successfully evading the for a social democrat gets in’ voter benefits of the Australian education to register a protest.

by Jean Gollan

measure time by how many aboriginal babies die each day

Red flush over the white collar;

ABC staff flexes to strike There are occasions when direc­ tions and categorically expressed wishes are much needed though they may not be consciously wanted. While there are those who will shout ‘op­ pression’ at any sign o f directive action on the Commission’s part, there is always a silent and consen­ ting majority which ensures that dissent will be o f short duration.

— a report to the ABC General Manager, on Current Affairs Pro­ grammes, quoted in Aunty, the new staff newsletter. * * * The management of the ABC is playing heavy. This Day Tonight which has been white-anted by elec­ tion year restrictions during its rat­ ings battle with A Current Affair, will probably be broken up into state editions after summer recess.

News will go national, run from the Sydney office. Or so says the grape­ vine.

The News department is easier to control than a commentary' pro­ gram such as TDT, and the manage­ ment of the ABC is trying to make a quiet life for itself, after three years of heat from the1 declining Liberal-Country Party coalition.

Allan Ashbolt, and Harold Hort, the General Manager’s brother-in-law, have resigned from the executive officers’ association.

The Director of Current Affairs, Lachlan Shaw, has resigned from the ABC. So have Colin McDonald, Assistant Manager of the Staff Assoc­ iation, and Neville Carnegie, the Director of Personnel.

These resignations are generally .regarded as “protests” . Carnegie, for instance, was required to serve an official charge of misconduct on Dr Peter Pockley, the chief o f the ABC’s Science Unit. Pockley may be the first ABC officer ever to be char­ ged with misconduct. His offence seems to be that he attended a pro­ fessional seminar (with the consent of the ABC management) and an­ swered a question about the ABC Science programmes.

It’s hard to get white-collar wor­ kers and “professionals” to organize, to act with solidarity. Most of them have been conditioned to the myth of individual success. According to the myth, hard work and obedience I will be rewarded, and the boss will allow you to keep the faith with what­ ever private conscience you have.

An ambitious person working with ambitious colleagues is a sitting duck, if the boss thinks his conscience has got in the way of his obedience.

He can be victimized, and his col­ leagues will allow it to happen,' be­ cause they regard him as a competitor.

In consequence, white-collar em­ ployees are sometimes less free on the job than blue-collar workers. If a straw boss gives someone a hard time on a construction site, the vic­ timized worker’s mates may yell “all out!” But in a white-collar job, the other workers in the office are likely to just put their heads down and appear to be diligently doing their own jobs.

For a long time, rightwingers such as Bartholomew Santamaria, Sen. Ivor Greenwood, and Dr Malcolm McKay have been sounding off about a radical plot or at least, a concen­ tration of leftwingers, in the ABC.

These sorts of allegations have been used to put pressure on the ABC management to toe the line, polit­ ically. The ABC management has put pressure on its staff, in turn.

From the outside — from the Digger’s house — the ABC’s staff doesn’t appear very radical. The ABC seems to hire a spectrum of people, rang­ ing from tweedy conservatives to nice liberals, but they are all dis­ tinguished by their respectability., The programs the ABC produces are sometimes quite reasonable in terms of providing disquieting in­ formation about Australia and the world. At other times, there is a flavor of cute concern about middleclass issues such as free education, non-nuclear families, the Poor, &c.

However, the first ABC program which provokes people to the bar­ ricades has yet to be broadcast.

Until very recently, the middleclass myths about individual achieve­ ment and failure made any ABC employee who became too brave quite vulnerable. He could be trans­ ferred, harrassed, or stood over by management, and no one would yell “all out!” in support of a mate.

That has, however, changed. The “ Oct. 9” committee may be the beginnings of a real plot to give staff a countervailing power within the Commission. The committee, which links the various unions and diverse operations of the Commission, and which is involved in producing news­ letters and organizing staff, could ensure that future dissent about management directives is of greater duration, greater force. * * * Merv Rutherford reports: A meeting was called last Oct. 9 to discuss the position of Tony Ferguson. Ferguson, one of three Exécutive Producers of TDT, ran a program critical of the PMG after he had been specifically told not to.

He was then sent on 49 (why 49?) days recreation leave.

Although a number of people spoke emotionally about Ferguson, the mood of the meeting was directed towards bitter criticism of the way the ABC is now being run and has been run for the last three years.

One speaker summed this up by saying that 40 years of crawling on their knees had been acceptable, but the last three years of wriggling along on their guts was too much., After the regulation motions of protest had been passed, people started asking what they were going to do about a situation that they found disgusting. It was a good ques­ tion. Sitting <in tfeat very Teachers Federation Hall (Sydney) where the meeting was being held was living evidence of where complacency had led to in the past.

Allan Ashbolt, regarded as one of the most imaginative men ever to run Four Corners was there. Allan is still with the ABC, tucked away in a quiet corner where no one can see him. Some years ago he ran a program that showed tlfe RSL for the bloodthirsty, hypocritical power base for conservatism that it is. He went so far as to interview a Com­ munist ex-serviceman, barred by RSL rules from the membership, and benefits this brings.

Near the front of the 300 or so

people present was author and critic Bob Ellis. Bob might still be turning out programs for the people’s push, but he got the sack. He had the Silly idea that as the ABC was paid for by public money the people had some right to know what went on.behind the screen.

And it was just three years ago, yes before the last election would ya believe, that another TDT man Bruce Buchanan was slipped sideways ,for some forgotten triviality.

So the present saw the past, and.. it wasn’t a pretty sight. Less so if your future was involved: It wasi either put up or shut up. Pull down your pants or roll up your sleeves.

Someone suggested they form a committee. This sounded pretty tame.

There had been talk of a strike. One fiery Ms wanted to march on Broadcast House for the purpose of occupying it until Talbot Duckmanton, the General Manager, talked turkey.

But the mob from radio furnished an example of what organization can do. Some nine months ago they formed a little group called the “ Radio Action Movement” . At first all they did was meet and discuss production ideas and problems. Not surprisingly they found this increased both their knowledge and appreciat­ ion of their art. They pondered for

a moment as to why the ABC bosses had never thought of the idea and let it pass. Then, at one of these sewing circle meetings, someone raised some of their industrial prob­ lems. Pretty soon these became the issues that dominated their thinking.

They ran candidates for election in their union, the ABC Staff Assoc­ iation, and went very close to taking control.

A committee of 16 was elected from the meeting. It is representative of many different departments.

One resolution from the meeting empowered the committee to collect and file and distribute information about instances of suppression, and about the people doing the suppres­ sing. The dossier system will drive the right wing mad with fury, as they will be the casualties. However they pushed, prodded and provoked the ABC slaves into revolt and I can only say that it couldn’t happen to a nicer sort of blokes. Not that threats to independence will come only from the right. There are a number of paranoids on the ALP front bench who would be just as intolerant of criticism as William McMahon. The late Doctor Evatt, a noted small “1” liberal, was notorious for his inter­ ference in ABC programs.

The October 9th Committee has met several times since formation

One of the cases in point where she feels the government has taken a line of deliberate and cynical dis­ tortion of facts is the Great Decline in Infant Mortality line. The 1971 figure for aboriginal infant mortality was among the highest infant mor­ tality rates in the world, partly ex­ plained by an embarrassed govern­ ment as due to overcrowding and resultant inefficient treatment in the Alice Springs Hospital. The govemo­ ment line now is that things are getting better all the time — over­ crowding has been lessened and in­ fant mortality has declined. Rather puzzling to those who know that aboriginal children are still dying like flies, but explicable when you look at the new admittance regulat­ io n s at Alice Springs Hospital — every aboriginal mother and baby now admitted count as one patient (relieves the overcrowding figures no end) making Alice Springs the only hospital in Australia with such an admittance scheme. Are babies who die in hospital counted as half? (relieves the mortality figures.) All, says Pat, a deliberate election-year manouevre.

She feels a Labor government would make a more sincere effort to help — ‘There are some good people in the Labor Party, but they aren’t always strong enough to hold out against the others,’ — but she is pessimistic about a change in govern­ ment bringing about any major al­ teration in the plight of the blacks.

‘The pressures against acknowledging our land rights will be the same, no matter who’s in power, and an up­ rising by one percent of the popul­ ation couldn’t do anything about it.’

Her platform includes dual voting rights for aborigines and designated black seats, plus the embassy. At this time she says this is the only way that blacks will get the oppor­ tunity to vote for their own repre­ sentatives or to take any real part in the decision-making process. She would also rationalise the present system of compulsory voting for whites and voluntary voting for blacks — although against compul­ sory voting as such, she says while it is compulsory for some and not for others it is discriminatory.

Other planks of her platform in­ clude, predictably, the granting of, or compensation for, traditional lands; increased attention to aborig­ inal health and education problems; repeal of abortion laws; free contra­ ception; dual voting rights and re­ presentation for women; worker participation and control; repeal of the Crimes Act; increased daycare centres, and increased opportunities for cultural reconstruction for her people.

No Angela Davis or Kath Cleaver, she is however, a tough articulate lady, and if she pan get her campaign under way (she has no money, no support from any influential groups and isn’t being helped by the fact that the usual publicity-raising forums like last week’s Citizens of Freedom meeting, are leaving her out o f their invitations to candidates), she might attract a protest vote and some at­ tention to'pressing problems apart from election-year opportunism.

As she says, when you measure time by how many aboriginal babies die each day, reforms can’t happen too soon.

and, like R.A.M., produces a news­ letter. Practical ideas on how to com­ bat interference have been discussed together with the wider aim of actual staff control of the programs they produce.

In the past ABC staff have been fragmented in organisation. They are members of a number of unions, the AJA, the ABC Staff Association, the Senior Officers Association etc.

Management had skillfully kept people in the same field, radio, news, special projects, isolated from each other, so the problem of reaching and communicating with other groups was impracticable.

The Committee at last provides a central organisation that can both exchange ideas and initiate action, that has some chance of being or­ ganised. It would seem that only the issue and the time remain to be decided.

If there is a strike, support from a key union, is likely.^ Jack Kreger, N.S.W. President of the Postal Tele­ communications Technicians Assoc­ iations, says his Executive will meet shortly to consider the question of support in the event of an ABC stop­ page.

Jack’s boys handle all the many sophisticated plugs that connect the ABC equipment. Should scab staff be tempted to have a go at the airing of a movie or two, the P.T.T.A. also control the land lines that run through every telephone exchange.

Without landlines most commercial stations would run only limited pro­ grams. P.T.T.A. cooperation could black all T.V. in support of ABC strikers.

The prospect of a full day without

TV and radio almost makes one wish they’d have a go now.

Unfortunately it is difficult to interview and directly quote any employee of the ABC. Not because they won’t have a go, but because they are all subject to the Crimes Act (1914-1966), Part 6, Clause 70 of which makes it an offence punish­ able by two years in the jug for any person who is a Commonwealth Officer to publish any fact or docu­ ment which comes into his know­ ledge or possession by virtue of his office.

Well, one bigger and better man present at the October 9th meeting, Don Simmonds, not only detailed his personal experiences of PMG inter­ ference and blocking of TV programs, he put it in writing. It was reported in full by the National Times.

Simmonds is one of the three TDT Executive Producers. He was respon­ sible for the brilliant “ I did it my way” TDT segment on the resig­ nation of former Prime Minister John Gorton. He has the talent to make a go of it anywhere, and did not appear worried.

Not that he need be. If only part of what he says about the PMG is true, the Liberal Government will not want any part of his charges aired in court. Simmonds has not been charged with any breach of the Crimes Act and we are betting he won’t be. He is, as they say in betting circles, as , safe as a draft dodger.

Ed. note: Hulme, the Post Master General, is also the minister respon­ sible for the ABC.

who! happen/ lo your heorl in o lube?

Once up and on, I stumbled towards the sea and realised that in my haste to get nowhere I had forgotten that which was closest to me as a child.

I had found myself in darkness, drowning, in the never ending circles of confusion and chaos of the city.

Energy going nowhere, coming from nowhere — nothing in harmony, just forces competing for supremacy over one another. . . . . . I looked at the Sea and suddenly I understood — in front of me was harmony, man trying to understand and flow with mother earth. Here were people in love with something that is real — the Sea.

track/

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N E X T ISSUE OUT 14th N O V EM B ER a v a ila b le a t m ost n e w s a g e n ts th ro u g h o u t A u s tr a lia

contributions are especially welcome.

TRACKS is the communication medium of these people. The essential link over the thousands of miles that separate the individual followers of this incredible society. It is an alternative society in the truest meaning of the word; they have evolved their own diet, their own dress, customs and habits, even their vocabulary so that they might become even closer to the sea. They are aggressive even possessive when they see people seeking to plunder and rob the treasures of the Sea and beaches to further thei r mechanical city ideals. Tracks is for all those who love the Sea and the beauty that surrounds it — it is for those that want to become strong in body and mind and flow with, not fight our common mother.

November 18 — December 2

The Digger

Stones — & 19 others — rostered for an orgy o f summer rock

Their Satanic Majesties resented

by Michael Zerman and Phillip Frazer The Rolling Stones intend to tour Australia late January or early Feb­ ruary.

Mick Jagger has announced his intention of taking the group through Hawaii, Japan and Australia, and only Jagger has authority to speak in these matters.

There is one major problem, in the form of (current) Australian minister for immigration, Dr Alex­ ander Forbes. Forbes distinguished himself in the eyes of conspiracy theorist s ' when he ordered the ex­ pulsion of Joe Cocker and friends last month on the grounds that they had been convicted of a drug of­ fence.

The Stones’ tour plans were an­ nounced early this month by Australia Jagger in London, and the group’s Australian record company, WEA received confirmation of the plan mid-month. Since then, speculation over which local promoter will “ get the Stones” has been heavy and largely unrewarding. WEA have clamped a no-comment on the issue, and radio stations that were initially

“leaked” the news have also pulled back. Their excuse is that excess pub­ licity would be likely to move Forbes to action as another pre-election votecatcher. More plausibly, no-one was talking because no-one had secured a contract to manage the tour.

First reports came from the Paul Dainty Organisation, who organised the Gat Stevens tour and currently, Buffy St Marie. Dainty’s office claimed to have the Stones and that they were intending putting them on at Kooyong tennis courts in Mel­ bourne, and other venues through­ out the country. Late last week Dainty’s Melbourne manager, Ron Blackmore, was evasive. When it was put to him that his organisation had the Stones and was keeping quiet to avoid riling Forbes, he said, “ You could be right. All I can say is, I’m in a really difficult situation.” He added, “Anyone who puts that story out now could miss out on a lot of stories later.”

Harry M. Miller would like to handle the Stones’ tour too. Miller is not put off by the outcome of the Cocker tour, his first rock tour for six years, and Miller brought the S.tones out on their previous

Banned book creates a sex object

In defence of O the m artyr

by Beatrice Faust One of the difficulties facing any­ one who wants to take on the job of untangling the censorship/pornography/corruption of youth/decline of The Australian Way of Life debate is that it is incredibly difficult to get hold of any banned material.

This means that the majority of people who really get their bowels in a knot over pom have never seen any. It also means that they will frequently get excited over quite harmless books, records and pictures, because their threshold of tolerance •is so low — like someone who’s never been vaccinated against cholera.

I commissioned everyone I knew overseas to send me a copy of The Story o f O, because it seemed to have something that no other banned book had — it is written by a woman, and it is recommended reading, accor­ ding to Jean Paulhan of the Academie Française, who should recognise the literary gems of his own culture.

When the Customs Department confiscated my copy, it took two conferences with my solicitor, some form filling-in, two letter-head let­ ters, and one four-way conference between the solicitor, myself and two representatives of Customs be­ fore I finally received a note with the emu and kangaroo crest of the Commonwealth telling me that I could pick up my $1.50 paper-back.

It was worth the trouble; it is one of the most sensitive, complex, and disturbing books I have ever read.

The pornography wrangle is com­ plicated because most people admit that they can’t describe porn in words, but they know it because of the way it affects them. D.H. Law­ rence described pornography as some­ thing so ugly it would make you ill, if it didn’t make you cry. One American judge is supposed to have banned anything that gave him an erection, and history tells he ban­ ned fewer and fewer books as he became older.

Others do not look at the effect of pom on the viewers, but at the intention of the authors who prod­ uced it. The DLP is particularly keen on the conspiracy theory of pom. Someone — probably Com­ munist — wants to destroy our civilisation and is trying to flood the country with plays, records, pictures, films and books which will exhaust everyone in an orgy of promiscuity, or masturbation. But one man’s erotic meat is another’s poison. A Chinese diplomat reported finding the march “ Stars and Stripes Forever” to be “almost unbelievably lascivious and suggestive of coitus” . And it is pos­ sible for people to work very hard at producing something they hope will be sexually rousing, only to find that their audience is bored.

Contrariwise, it is possible to produce a work of edification — like the Book of Leviticus, and find that small children thumb it to tatters looking for the dirty bits. So any definition of pom which refers to the effect or the intention of mat­

ELECTION DAY SPECIAL OR AS SPECIAL AS IT COULD EVER BE ON ELECTION DAY

Fran’k Moorehouse previews the thing, and Jenny Brown talks with Bob Hawke about the Labor Line, women, unions and Life.

Pat Mackie comes back, to fight Packer’s Consolidated Press in the NSW Supreme Court over what The Telegraph said about him back in ‘65 during the Mt Isa heat, by Wendy Bacon.

Talking to the girls who rub the boys down, Rennie Ellis interviews some massage parlor women.

How I didn’t meet Norman Nailer, by Laurie Clancy who spent time in New York trying to meet Mailer and didn’t.

More

amazing,

shocking

tales

for Norman Banks.

Page 3

money up front, with the balance to be paid in installments during the tour.

T Rex refused this offer, and at this stage the men on the make are attempting to reform a syndicate with enough bread to entice Rex here early December. They have an­ nounced tentative dates and begun soliciting ticket money.

But T Rex may not be a c e rt­ ainty.

Firstly, English pop paper NME reported last week T Rex would be doing concerts in Wembley that week (December 8—16), and secondly, Mark Bolan is now reported to'have suffered a collapse of some sort which will prevent him doing live appear­ ances for some time.

First up in the rash of confirmed tours is Kym Bonython’s excursion into blues rock. He has arranged the upcoming American Blues Festival, featuring the Buddy Guy—Junior Wells Blues Band and Arthur “ Big Boy” Crudup. Buddy Guy is house guitarist with Chess Record Com­ Forbes can bar anyone whose pany, and is considered one of the exclusion would be in the govern­ greats of the Chicago blues scene.

Junior Wells is a Memphis-born ment’s electoral interests vocalist, harmonica player and guit­ Rod Stewart/Faces and T Rex, arist, and Crudup is famous for being now look doubtful about Australian the major influence on Elvis. Sharing tours. the bill with these living legends will Negotiations for T Rex started to be Jean Lewis. fade as the Cocker tour shut down.

All tickets for the Blues Fes will Apparently the major backer, still be $3.75. unnamed, dropped out immediately The itinerary for the tour is as the busts occured, taking about half the initial capital back to the cor­ follows; Tuesday 28 November, Sydney — ridors of high finance.

Hordern Pavilion T Rex had demanded full money Wednesday 29 November, Canberra up front, and this withdrawal forced —Canberra Theatre the remaining backers to offer less

Thursday 30 November, Sydney — Hordern Pavilion Friday 1 December, Melbourne — Town Hall Sunday 3 December, Melbourne — Town Hall Monday 4 December, Adelaide — Thebarton Town Hall Hot on the heels of the blues greats will be current top forty bos­ ses, Three Dog Night. The group that has been taking more money and drawing bigger crowds than any­ one in the USA, will be touring on a double-bill with Canadians, Guess Who. This tour is being organised by the vast American organisation, Concerts West Promotions, working through local radio stations* Three Dog Night and Guess Who kick off in Auckland on November 28th, then open here in Brisbane for two nights, November 30th and Deeember 1st, under the patronage of radio 4IP. Thence to Sydney Showgrounds December 3rd, through 2SM who will charge $4.80 a seat, then to Melbourne’s Festival Hall on December 5th and 6th (promoted by 3XY); Adelaide on the 8th and 9th (with 5AD), and then to Perth.

Definite for January are Slade, Lindisfarne, Status Quo (remember them? “Pictures Of Matchstick Men” ) and Caravan. All on the same tour.

The Bovver Boys will meet the Madrigal crew at Randwick . . .

Slade will arrive Thursday Jan­ uary 25th, and the tour will opeh on the 28th at Randwick, followed

by Lang Park in Brisbane on Monday 29th, Subiaco Oval Perth Wednesday 31st, Showgrounds Adelaide Satur­ day 3rd, and Melbourne Showgrounds

on Sunday 4th.

New Zealand promoter Nick Adrian who is handling the tour says all shows will be in the sunny out­ doors in the afternoon except in Perth, where heavenly shades of night will be falling . . .

The Slade/Lindisfarne/Status Quo/ Caravain tour tickets will cost “ only $5 a throw, without a doubt the greatest value for money ever” , ac­ cording to Adrian. He’s expecting about 50,000 at Sydney Showgrounds, which is indeed a lot of people.

Dermott Hoy from Phonogram, who release Slade and Lindisfarne, has confirmed the tour is on.

Latest on the mooted tour by Grateful Dead is all bad news.

Now the story is that Pigpen is very ill with a cirrhosis of the liver and has even been given a poor chance of surviving through to the proposed tour date, March next year.

Not only that, but the Dead are reportedly no longer interested in touring at that time.

Gineld’s John Bloomfield assured The Digger “they really want to come to Australia” , but couldn’t give us any reason why.

Whatever happens to the Dead, Gineld claim to have firmed a nat­ ional tour for Yes — with “no confirmed itinerary” — " for the period March 18th through April 1st next year, and to have Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band “ definitely confirmed, with signed contracts” , for May ‘73.

Next up, Leon Russell, Freddie King, and maybe even J.J. Cale.

All three are Shelter Records

artists in the States, and local dis­ tributors of Shelter (Tempo Records) have finalised a deal with Denny Cordell of Shelter to cooperate in an Australian tour in the first week of March next year.

Tempo’s John McDonald saw the Russell show in Hawaii last Sep­ tember and has definite agreement on Russell, with his fifteen member backing team and their specially designed ten tons of sound equip­ ment. Cordell told McDonald blues great Freddie King was “ 80% sure to be in on the tour” , and negotiations are underway to have J.J. join in.

Cale’s new album is due for local release about that time.

The only problems McDonald sees are that Russell and co. could be put off by Joe Cocker’s Australian experience. Cocker’s comments on this country {Rolling Stone, Novem­ ber 23rd) were not so complimentary.

The other point in question is the timing. Cordell wants the tour to happen when no other major acts are in the country, and this is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure.

And finally, Sydney promoter, the John Collins Organisation have plans to bring out Black Sabbath on 13th January and Uriah Heap on March 24th. Neither date is con­ firmed, but Phonogram Records are preparing for the tours. Black Sab­ bath are Phonogram’s biggest selling rock artists in this country, with albums sales topping Rod Stewart and the Faces.

It looks like a long hot summer, if the Dr Forbes and Mr Stewarts of this nation can curb their lust to sup­ press.

erial will have so many exceptions that the rule will be proved and found useless.

The pom battle as it has been fought involves people who have a special reason for wanting to have an item around —like Michaelangelo’s David, or Last Exit to Brooklyn — putting in a plea which admits that the work could be considered dirty, but emphasises that it has redeeming features — usually called “artistic merit” , or sometimes “educational value” , that excuse its lubricity.You wind up with the scales of justice, filled on one side with the dirty

whether we know their names or not. If the names of A1 Capp, Jules Feiffer and Aubrey Beardsley and Ian McCausland were wiped off his­ torical record, we would have no trouble in identifying their works.

The difference is not so much in their message — although they may all be different — it’s the way they put it across that counts.

If we put The Story o f O in a line-up with other pornographic novels, it stands out as different.

The content is sex and sadism, but the style is individual, and often very elegant.

stand silently with her eyes down­ cast, until someone decides to use her, would make any liberationist Ms weep with rage. When O has learned submission, silence and avail­ ability, she is returned to the world wearing a ring of gold and iron, which identifies her as a graduate, makes her available to any member of the club who wants her.

Her lover gives her to his halfbrother, Sir Stephen, who in turn subjects her to further discipline, at the hands of a woman — a sort of erotic finishing school which prac­ tises cruelty too delicate to be in­

bits, and the other with the virtues, and see which side weighs heavier.

However, the scales of justice are not well balanced to begin with, and in any case, filth and virtue are not measured in ounces and pounds, or even grams and kilos.

The job of deciding what is porn is not one of looking at reactions, or at motives. And it should not be a battle between a smidge of smut and a bushel of merit. Pom can be pig­ eon-holed just as anything else by looking at its characteristic features.

If you want to know whether an animal should go in that part of the zoo reserved for mammals, you ask whether it is warmblooded and suckles its young. If you want to know whether it should go in the sub-section for marsupial mammals, you ask whether it has a pouch. If it is warmblooded, suckles its young, lays eggs, is as happy underwater as on dry land, has webbed feet and a duck-bill — like a bird — but has its body covered with fur where you’d expect feathers, then it has to go in a class by itself, labelled “ duck-billed platypus” .

It is easy to write out a list of features which mark out pom from literature. Some of the features also occur in literary works, for instance pom is anonymous but so is some literature which is so old that the author’s name has been lost, or so personal that the name is kept a secret. The reason why porn is anony­ mous is that the authors are catering for a particular market. Their own ideas, feelings and experiences are irrelevant; they are not expressing their own personalities at all, they must try to achieve a simple recog­ nisable style1. Creative writers and artists are and must be individuals,

The authoress, Pauline Reage, does more than tell a story which man­ ages to cram copulation, anal inter­ course, masturbation, fellatio, cun­ nilingus, lesbianism, flogging, bran­ ding, gang-bangs — everything ex­ cept bestiality and male homosex­ uality, in fact — into two hundred pages. She makes her heroine into a person — not the blow-up rubber doll who figures in most pom, but a woman with a childhood, a career, a flat with firewood to be brought in and breakfast to get. In particular, she avoids the pitfall that most male writers make; they describe their women as if they had men’s sexual aggression, curiosity, need for novel­ ty, readiness to be aroused. The women in pornographic writings have male attributes, because they are creatures of fantasy — the sort of vamp that men look for but rarely find. In fact, the only reason I can think of for banning pom is that it gives a misleading impression of wo­ men, and encourages men to look for partners that do not exist in the real world. This is not to say that women cannot be sexually ag­ gressive, curious, easily roused and adventurous; it’s just that they are not born that way — and our com­ munity conspires to keep women from picking up these things, so the pornographic heroine with a man’s morals hardly ever occurs in life.

And through O, who is predatory with women, but helpless with men, we learn something about the role into which women have been forced.

The way in which O is first consigned to Roissy, a school for sensuality, which teaches her how to completely submerge her own personality in catering for men who are strangers to her, to submit to whippings, to

flicted by men. She leaves here with her labia infibulated with iron rings that carry the insignia of Roissy, together with her own name and her owner’s, and Sir Stephen’s mono­ gram branded on her bottom, to show that as well as being a general slave to all the men who recognise the insignia, she is also a personal slave to one, who can dispose of her completely. The book offers a choice of two openings, and two endings.

When O is returned to Sir Stephen, “more open, and more profoundly enslaved, than she had ever before thought was possible” , she is made to seduce her girl-friend, for the pleasure of her lover, and finally taken to a party, even to the ex ten t of having her pubic hair shaved, and with her features hidden under a ballet mask designed as an owl, with real feathers; she is led by a chain attached to her pubic rings, and her transformation into “sex object” is complete. The dancers stare at her, and “ O stared at them with eyes that, beneath her plumage, were darkened with bister, eyes opened wide like the eyes of the nocturnal bird she was impersonating, and the illusion was so extraordinary that no-one thought of questioning her, which would have been the most natural thing to do, as though she were a real owl, deaf to human language and dumb.” The guests ex­ amine her, one flees in horror and contempt, another explains to his girl-friend that he wants to train her in submission. When all the dancers have left, O is gang-banged.

The book ends with the simple note: “In a final chapter, which has been suppressed, O returned to Roissy, where she was abandoned by Sir Stephen.

“There exists a second ending to the story of O, according to which, O, seeing that Sir Stephen was about to leave her, said she would prefer to die. Sir Stephen gave her his consent.”

The authoress can get away with this piece of cheating, because once O has lost her individuality and cannot live apart from Sir Stephen, she is already spiritually dead.

The Story o f O has the require­ ments of all good stories — a begin­ ning, a middle and an end. Porno­ graphic novels are intolerably repet­ itive. They run on like a circular tape, which brings you back to where you started and gives you more of the same. Each of the count­ less couplings and floggings in the book is different. All the time, O’s character is changing as she slips out of love with her first master, Rene, and comes to depend on Sir Stephen. We see her in many dif­ ferent lights, as a school-girl, h o rrif­ ied to have a girl-friend masturbate in front of her, as a child pondering on the Protestant text “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” , as a woman who makes love to women because she believes they are more attractive than she is herself, and in pleasing them she is passing on some of the pleasure^ she enjoys with men. As the book proc­ eeds, we never find out what color her hair is, but we learn the contours of her personality as intimately as we see the shape of her body, con­ stricted by corsets to produce the narrow waist and prominent, available breasts that appear in all pornography: But it is the personality, and its destruction that we remember, not the body, at least until the person­ ality disappears and there is only the body left.

Mile Reage tells each incident as neatly as she tells the whole tale.

She has a trick of winding up each event with a sinister little sentence that reminds us of what is past, or suggests what is still to come. At Roissy, O is taught not to wear panties, and always to sit with her knees apart, so that she will be always available. When she leaves and returns to her work as a fashion photographer, her lover throws out all her underwear and dresses that might protect her in some way. Just when 0 is beginning to feel happy with Rene, and her friend and model, Jacqueline, the authoress reminds us in a single line, and O, that she cannot undo her past, or avoid her future. “The rock salt scattered on the sidewalk crunched beneath their

feet and melted the snow, and O felt the icy breath it emitted rising along her legs and fasten on her naked thighs.” Pomographers have no time for any detail which is not related to sex. When one reads O and rereads it, so that there is no longer any shock or excitement in the eroticism, the pleasures of skilful story-telling, and exquisite language are still there.

Perhaps the most painful thing about the book is that it compares O’s training with the religious dis­ cipline which nuns and priests must undergo. When O first arrives at Roissy, she is told that the discipline is to teach her that she is “ totally dedicated to something outside her­ self.” When Rene comes in her mouth, we are told that “ she received it as a god is received” . As she begins to learn submission, she becomes ascetic: “ daily, and so to speak, cerepqniqusly^fpjled with saliva and sperm, she felt herself literally to be the repository of impurity, the sink mentioned in the Scriptures. And yet those parts of her body m ost constantly offended, having become less sensitive, at the same time seemed to her to have become more beautiful, and as it were, enobled . . .

She was illuminated by it, as though from within, and her bearing be­ spoke calm, while on her face could be detected the serenity and the im­ perceptible smile that one surmises rather than actually sees in the eyes of hermits” . The comparison with religious suffering keeps up through the whole book. The final clear statement that O is a martyr to her feminity comes when Sir Stephen nails up his whips, and riding crops, and ropes on her wall, so that “ O would have, opposite her bed, the complete array of her instruments of torture. It was a handsome panoply, as harmonious as the wheel and spikes in the paintings of St. Cather­ ine the Martyr, as the nails and ham­ mer, the crown of thorns, the spear and scourges portrayed in the painings of the Crucifixion.”

Pauline Reage has done more than tell a cruel story and give it beauty.

She has pointed out that the line dividing sexual ecstasy from the ec­ stasy of saints and martyrs is very slight. When we see O dangling from her chains, or impaled with many phalluses, we could be seeing St. Theresa receiving God’s phallic gol­ den spear; “The pain was so great that it made me moan: and yet so surpa$sing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.”

two visits. But Miller does not have the Stones — at least, not yet. His office is not so coy. Melbourne Miller man Brian de Courcy says, “ If we get them, we’ll yell it from the roof­ tops. But until we have everything signed, sealed and delivered, we don’t make any claims.”

Jagger has two dope convictions from England; one for speed in 1967, and one for grass in 1970.

Keith Richards has a suspended oneyear rap for allowing dope to be smoked in his Sussex mansion.

Forbes was reported in la^t Wed­ nesday’s Australian as saying; “ Brit­ ish subjects of European descent do not need visas to travel to Australia.

However, such people may be pre­ vented from entering Australia if there are any convictions or other reasons for taking such action. “ Should my department become aware of a proposal by the Rolling Stones to visit Australia I shall have appropriate inquiries made about the individual members of the group.”

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Page 4

The Digger

by Alan Roberts

His holy meditations subverted by satanically-inspired pornographic vis­ ions (otherwise known as naked ag­ gression from the Depths) Saint Aug­ ustine nevertheless won on points against the demon Lust. More dangerous still, he warned us, was the vice of vices scientific curiosity, meddling with things man had better leave alone.

Heedless of his warnings, Bruno speculated about the stars and was duly barbecued in 1600. Galileo fell on his aged knees and recanted in the nick of time. Boris Karloff lithped his way through dozens of celluloid repeats of Augustine’s warning, in which the mad scientist’s curiosity invariably leaves a trail of prone figures, their heads unfashionably back-to-front or even detached.

Even today — will the fools never learn? — some people push curiosity to its limit and try to work out how the whole universe is set up, even gaining a precarious living thereby as cosmologists. In a preliminary run for his own try at the Big One, Ein­ stein looked at some puzzling experi­ mental results that went right against commonsense. He decided that the results were right and common-sense was wrong.

Conclusions he convincingly laid down included: a clock at rest and a moving clock each run more slowly than the other; a ruler at rest and a moving ruler each look shorter than the other; two things that happen at the same time for a man at rest happen at different times for a man moving (see The Digger Nov 4—18).

The only solid thing left after Einstein’s demolition work is spacetime. When two things happen at different places and different times, their total separation — i.e., the amount of space-time between them — is the same for everybody. But how you carve this space-time up into a bit of space plus a bit of time depends on how you’re moving.

Hence the nightmarish results when we take distances and times separate­ ly* We left Einstein clutching this prec­ ious bit of certainty to his bosom.

Now watch as, armed with nothing else but a good script-writer (him­ self), he sets out to build the Universe with it. * * * When the hero of a thriller has certain death staring him in the face, no reader over the age of ten loses hope. Bitter experience has taught us that there is no real danger in that ticking atom-bomb or swarm of ravenous alligators. The hero is protected by a Higher Power, and will still be mowing them down in droves in the next book. The Higher Power that preserves him is that of the author’s greed, which will never allow him to bury a character still vigorous enough to bring in some bread in a sequel.

You would not expect, then, that after space-time had emerged so triumphantly in his first production, “ Special Relativity” , Einstein would discard this valuable character. Even a genius (and Einstein may even deserve this title, more usually allot­ ted to TV quiz winners, or perhaps to stock-exchange manipulators not yet found out by the Companies Squad) — even such men have a limited stock of such characters (“ideas”) and like to make the most of them once they feel they have really got them down.

Einstein indeed contemplated a sequel to “ Special Relativity” not “Son of Special Relativity” , but “ General Relativity” . (Snappy, and the same size on the billboards.)

Space-time was to become the key to his opus, but to see how this un­ folded first a critical look at what was missing in the earlier theory.

Einstein trims his pay-roll If we give up the idea of a space that’s the same for everybody, and a time that’s the same for every­ body, we can make (uncommon) sense of things. There’s a single back­ ground called space-time that is the same for everybody; and when we bring in the usual cast of charac­ ters in physics — billiard balls, stars, electrons, radio waves etc. — they can slip into this background and do all their usual tricks — knocking into each other, flying in orbits, pushing and pulling. And so long as we remember that it is Einstein’s space-time they are performing in, not old Time and old Space, then everything goes well. It’s a strange world but consistent — which is more than could be said for the scheme before Einstein.

But if you’re in the business of picturing the universe at large, you will ask where these electrons, radio waves and billiard balls came from, and what are they? And we’re told, they just happen to be around — they’re things you just have to accept like space-time itself.

But this is a bit like a coincidence in the plot of a novel. You can’t stop the author from pulling it, but he loses points for it. Wouldn’t it be. much neater and more convin­ cing, if these other characters — the cast of thousands known collectively as matter —could be made to emerge naturally from the space-time bit, instead of being dragged in by the ears from off-stage?

Indeed it would. We can get an idea of the gimmick that works by

Einstein Goes for the Big One

pondering on the Case of the Ter­ ribly Skinny Worm.

The cosmos adrift in a closed loop

When the worm turns This worm is so finely built that he has no sideways and lives on a line. (Stay with it, worse is to come.)

Wriggling his way along the line, he can see nothing but the next point ahead: he never gets that trapped feeling because the critter has never known any different and can't know any different. All the glorious out­ doors with its circles, planes and solids is beyond his ken. His universe is that single one-dimensional line.

One day, the monotony of life is broken. As he wriggles along, follow­ ing the line since he has no choice, a stabbing pain comes to him in the back of the neck. As he wriggles on, the pain shifts to his shoulders, then runs down his back and finally gives his tail hell. (Neck? Shoulders? Well, it’s a pretty human worm.) Once the pain has passed and life is back to wriggling normality, his mind goes to work on the strange experience.

(Did I mention that he is a physicist?

No? Well, he’s a physicist.) He recalls how once before he met another worm head-on, and how he had similar feelings (i.e., pain) at that time, when various segments of his slim, wiry frame were crushed into one another. This experience he had explained as bieng due to a force. At that time he had formul­ ated his First Law of Strange Feel­ ings: A force can shorten the dis­ tance between two parts of a worm’s anatomy and give rise to the Strange Feeling. Eureka! He has the explan­ ation. A force was being applied to him, crushing bits of him closer to­ gether: for its own devilish and in­ scrutable reasons (who can tell the way of a Force?), it had run down all his vertebrae in succession until appropriately eliminating itself at his tail.

Now hear the real explanation: somebody had put a bend in the line. Of course, the worm knows nothing of bends — save for unpleas­ ant feelings they may give rise to.

Life is just that line and you always go straight ahead.

But the crucial question is, was the worm wrong? Couldn’t he very well describe what happened in terms of forces? And couldn’t he cook up some story about things (like other worms, able to hit him at a point) which had collided with him behind his back, so to speak, where he can’t see?

Now, this last story would have been wrong —there were no “things” there, only a bend in the line that he automatically has to follow. But that bend is acting on him like a thing. It is pushing him around, just as a curved section of hosepipe would have done. And the only reason we know he’s wrong, is because we know about that “sideways” world that he can’t enter: we can see the bend.

Einstein shows a bent for it Back froin worm-lines to spacetime. The moral of the story is that a bend in space can act like matter — it can force bodies to move in dif­ ferent paths, push them away from certain points and so on.

But how to describe a “bend” in space-time?

It’s all been done mathematically long ago, so the strategy (more common than physicists like to admit) is simply to find the right maths books.

Now, most things that could be called a “bend” will be able to move from one part of space to another, just as we can squeeze a bend from one place on a bit of tubing to another; and they will be able to change just with the passing of time, too (remember, it is space­ time that the bend is in). But imagine a kind of bend that behaves like this; whenever the amount of it in a certain space decreases in, say, an hour, then this decrease must always be exactly accounted for by the amount of the bend that has moved out through the “sides” of that bit of space in the hour. (Most things you could call a “bend” aren’t like this — they can just vanish without any flow-on to account for it.)

Then this bendiness is behaving like something else we know —some­ thing that neither pops into existence nor pops out of it, but just redis­ tributes itself into different places from time to time. A simpler way to describe this behaviour is to call it “moving” , and things that “move” this way are called matter.

A nice beginning, but only a be­ ginning. Billiard balls, stars, electrons and such certainly behave like this, but they do lots of other things too.

Some of them have electric charges — how does that fit in? Others cling to each other with that very deep attraction we call “nuclear” . Some of them spit out other particles from time to time. What sort of “bends” can account for all this?

Let’s not get too demanding.

Einstein can’t be expected tb account for everything at once. It’s a pretty complicated world we live in, and perhaps his big, broad brush-strokes will get the fine detail filled in la)er.

Bits of matter can be electrically charged, or not; they can exert a nuclear attraction, or not; so we needn’t expect Einstein to show that his matter-like bendiness always looks charged, or nuclear-attracting — he would be wrong if he did show it, because not all matter is really

November 18 — December 2

worth mentioning, since it shows the difference between our ordinary idea of the universe —roughly, every­ thing that exists — and the way a scientist tries to make the idea precise.

The original Einstein universe was like this. The amount of space in it is a definite quantity — live long enough, have a liking for travel and you can see it all. It is curved back on itself every which way, so that however we travel we never hit up against a “wall” , we find no indicat­ ion of an “outside” , and yet there is just so much of it and no more.

It is just as though the worm wrig­ gled his way along the line, never hit any obstacles and yet found he was eventually retracing his old paths.

This could happen if some practical joker bent his line into a closed loop. In Einstein’s universe, any line we try to move on is a closed loop.

But couldn’t there still be an “outside” — just as there is a world outside the worm’s loop, even if he doesn’t know it? Einstein’s answer reveals either, how scientists reply to this age-old query — what is everything in? — or, if you prefer, shows how cunning they are at ducking awkward questions. He says;

Dodge for dodging dodgy questions.

like that.

A bit of gravity called for There is one way — and only one way — in which every bit of matter in the universe makes its presence felt to the outside world.

Near the earth,'this has the effect that what goes up must come down; further out, it makes planets go around the sun; further out still, it makes stars occur in clumps of mil­ lions called galaxies, and galaxies clump together in clusters. Nothing can screen it out and nothing can damp it down. If you’ve said matter, then you’ve also said, gravitation: The question now is, when Ein­ stein says “bendiness” , has he also said gravitation? Does the kind of bend he picked appear to attract other bits of bend, and do it in the right way? The right way means (as Mr Newton informed us many years ago) with a force falling off as the inverse square of the distance. (Twice as far away — then a quarter as strong; three times as far away, one-ninth as strong; and so on.)

If Einstein’s bendiness doesn’t be­ have like this, then it may be some­ thing that can flow like matter, something that can stick around for­ ever like matter, and all that; but it is not matter. Matter gravitates. All matter gravitates. Always. You’ll be pleased to hear that Einstein’s care­ fully-chosen bend in space-time in­ deed gravitates. And with the law of the inverse square — or near enough.

But not exactly — applied to a planet going around the sun, for instance, it gives a slightly different result.

This little difference shows up in looking at the shape of a planet’s orbit. These orbits are not quite circles, but a little oval-shaped, which means that there is a point on the orbit where the planet comes closer to the sun that it does anywhere else. (All right, two points — the flattest parts of the oval — one on each side.)

Einstein’s minor correction to the inverse square law gives the result that the orbit shifts slowly (other­ wise it would stay the same forever).

And when I say “slowly” , I mean slowly. That point of closest ap­ proach gradually slips around, as the planet makes orbit after orbit over the years, until finally it comes to be where the point of furtherest distance used to be — that is, in the original position of the sharp end.

(This slip can be spotted by lining the orbit up against the far-off stars.)

But it all takes a very long time — the fastest slipper among the planets is Mercury, which is nearest to the sun, and it does this flat-side-downto-sharp-end slip in a mere 750,000

Start from anywhere you like in my universe, and go a certain dis­ tance that I lay down. Now suppose something happens “beyond” your arrival point —but remember that we can get confused if we talk of time separate from space, or space sep­ arate from time. So say that this thing is happening just a little separation in space-time further away from your starting point than you. Now look at the way space and time are related in this part of the universe — my equations give it to you. No matter by how little the thing is separated from you in space-time, its ordinary old distance, in ordinary old space, is infinite. That’s the way spacetime just is in these here parts.

Now, if you want to talk about something happening “beyond” this point, tell me first how you would ever get to know about it — since you would need an eternity of time even for light to pass from it to you, or vice versa . . . But if you years. can't say how this infinite gap could But people have been patiently ever be crossed, then haven’t we got staring into telescopes and plotting better things to do than argue Mercury’s orbit for a long time now, whether things exist that we can and the little bit of slip each century never possibly know? or two was picked up long ago — As a conversation-stopper this is and found puzzling, since Newton’s pretty good, though you’re entitled theory calls for no such slip. Ein­ to keep yelling “answer the ques­ stein’s correction gets it right on tion, mug!” if you’ve been well the nose. enough trained at political meetings.

Not because it adds anything to Going After the Big One this statement of the But-How-WouldAfter a couple more similar performances, Einstein’s General Re­ You-Detect-It ploy, but simply for lativity started to attract some fav­ its beautiful one-upping British style. or. It may have involved some I quote Sir Arthur Eddington from hairy maths (to describe those bends another context but to the same in space-time, where there are four effect.

“Those who still insist . . . gener­ dimensions rather than the worm’s ally rely on the possibility that the single line), but the picture it gave was beautifully simple and simply resources of experiment are not yet exhausted and that some day a dis­ beautiful.

Dotted throughout space-time criminating test (read: a method of are many sharply knotted bends, communication across the gap) may which we experience as particles of be found. But the off-chance that a one kind or another. This knottiness twists the space-time around it, too, since it’s all one continuous sheet, into more gradual bends. Like the worm in the bent line, things just naturally follow the bends, and this tends to take them close to the par­ ticle-knots from which the bends start.

Seeing this tendency, we say the particle-knots are “attracting” others, and talk about the “ force” of “ grav­ itation” — but we don’t need to talk this way — it’s unnecessarily complicated. It’s simpler to stay with Einstein and see the whole slab of space-time just behaving as it must.

But if the presence of the particleknots involves more gradual bends everywhere outside them, this means that whatever overall bends exist in the whole box and dice are put into it by the sum total of particle-knots.

Or, less vaguely; the shape of the universe as a whole is made by the matter in it. Einstein is now in the cosmology business, mapping out the whole universe. Saint Augustine is spinning hysterically in his grave, the ghost of Giordano Bruno is clap­ ping its charred hands.

Now, a hitch. The bend that Einstein used to describe matter can be written down in mathematical terms, and you get equations to des­ cribe how space-time must twist to future generation may discover a show there’s matter around, and significance in our utterances is also how it can twist when there’s scarcely an excuse for making none. (These are the new versipns meaningless noises.”

That last sentence can be rolled of the “ Law” of “Gravity” .) But on the tongue like old Kent applesad to say, there are lots and lots of answers to these equations, or, wine, aged in oak and still acid to in other words, the universe could its bootstraps.

So there is Einstein’s particular take on very different shapes and universe, which unhappily was not still satisfy Einstein’s rules.

Naturally, people starting looking alone in satisfying his space-time at the various possibilities — Einstein conditions. Some of the other were among them. His first picture is weirder still, but all suffered from

a grave, defect quickly flourished in their face by Friedmann and others.

The defect was: they couldn’t stay put. They generally had to get bigger as time went on, blowing up like a balloon. At best, they could blow up for a while and then start to *collapse. Rut they must always be pa *thd move.

Well, maybe the universe was blowing up or shrinking down —who could tell? The answer is, the astron­ omers could tell.

Worm’s-eye view of a floating kidney Start off with the worm’s-eye view. His balloon would be just a circle expanding like a smoke-ring, since his world can bend in only one direction (that’s all there is!).'

His body (remember, all those scales and intestines are just knots in spacetime, and it’s his space-time that’s blowing up) will expand with it. Put another way, the distance between his head and his kidneys (we give him kidneys for convenience, and put them half-way down his spine, again for convenience) will increase as time goes on, and the distance between his head and his tail will increase as time goes on, and the distance between his head and his tail will increase twice as fast as that. (Since this distance is always twice as far, it must increase twice as fast.) Or put another way still, he will see his kidneys moving away from his astonished eyes, and his tail moving away twice as fast.

Move on to the diagram decorating this article. A real balloon is blowing up, dots are painted on it, and the distance between them is of course increasing as the balloon gets bigger.

Imagine that you are sitting on a dot — any dot. You will see the other dots all moving away from you. The ones that are twice as far from you will be fleeing from you twice as fast. The elegant way to put it is that they are all receding from you, and with a speed of recession that is proportional to their distance.

The world of the balloon, rich beyond the dreams of the worm, has two different directions to bend in instead of one. The universe we inhabit has three directions, up, across and into. So the “blowingup” is not so easy to picture, your imagination is all you have. Call the dots “stars” , locate yourself on one of them (or more comfortably, on one of its planets). You will see all the other stars (or at least the ones that aren’t too close) rushing away from you, and in the same way r- speed proportional to dis­ tance.

If we really saw distant stars behaving in this way, we would have an explanation ready to hand. Not that we are in a unique position, the sole sufferer in the universe from some sort of cosmic bubonic plague that sets the other inhabitants fleeing in panic —not at all. We would simply realise we live in an expanding universe, and that we would see the same kind of universal scramble away from us no matter where we happen­ ed to be.

But hold it right there. We are still back in 1920 or so when Fried­ mann and his crowd were pointing out this defect of the generalrelativistic universes — that they had to blow up. What was the evidence that this was indeed happening?

At that time, very dubious indeed.

But there is a long tradition in physics, that when good theories are in trouble the experimenters ob­ ligingly dig up the evidence to save them. Well, some theories get saved that way, at any rate — say, onetenth of one per cent of them.

(Don’t pay too much attention to this bitter snarl from a theoretician).

Help was quick in arriving. Before the twenties were at an end, Hubble and Hamason had shown that this scramble-away was indeed on, and in just the way the expanding uni­ verse predicted; far-off galaxies were receding with a speed proportional to their distance.

Star makes blushing retreat They did it by taking advantage of a commonplace effect, the way a train whistle drops off in pitch as the train passes and moves away from you. (The Doppler effect.) The same thing happens with light, only the “pitch” of light is its color. A neon tube gives off light of a wellknown color; but if you persuaded the tube to take off backwards at a good clip, you would see the color of the light change — it would become more reddish.

Stars are mostly blobs of very hot gas in a state like neon in a tube, and we know the colors they should give out. When these colors aren’t here, but redder colors are the most usual explanation is that those stars happen to be moving away from us, and we can easily calculate from the color change how fast they must be moving.

This “red-shift” , then, was used to show that the universe was in­ deed expanding. Once the evidence was in, the relation between speed and distance (remember, they are proportional) could be worked out and the whole thing turned around to find out the distance of a new star.

Prescription; find the red shift, work out the speed it implies, use the speed-distance relation to work out the distance.

Now cosmology and astronomy are feeding each other. The expan­ sion predicted by cosmological theories is used to fix the distance of very far-off objects indeed; in turn, data on the sort and number of these objects that are found at a certain distance is snatched up by cosmologists to check against their pictures. No final decision has yet been reached on which of the various pictures is the true one, but it shouldn’t be long now — we’re into the very border regions where the theories give different predic­ tions . . . and the sheep will get separated from the goats.

In all these theories lurk some traps. Recently astronomers have turned up anomolies that have cosmo­ logists scratching their heads.

One of these brain-teasers con­ cerns that stalwart pillar of astron­ omical respectability, the red shift.

You wouldn’t appreciate from the scant remarks above just how impor­ tant a tool the red shift is for as­ tronomers. Way out in the far reach­ es where the distant galaxies swirl, it’s the only way to get even the vaguest idea of how far away those galaxies are. Item of faith; the red shift comes from a speed of reces­ sion, the speed of recession tells us the distance. Conclusion; objects at the same distance have the same speed (because it’s a speed of ex­ pansion) and therefore have the same red shift.

The trouble is, it looks as if they don’t.

Something like a dozen cases have now accumulated, of objects with very different red shifts that are al­ most certainly about the same dis­ tance from the earth. In some cases the pictures are good enough to show bridges of gas streaming from one stellar object to the other. This seems to rule out a “coincidence” , where two objects look close together, but with one actually very far behind the other.

Unless some explanation is found for these maverick pairs, and pretty soon, a big question mark is put over a lot of astronomy. The irresis­ tible conclusion from these cases is that big red shifts can be caused by something other than a speed of recession. If this is so, what about all those distances that have been worked out by interpreting red shifts as just speed indicators and applying the expanding-universe idea? Just how good is our picture of the dis­ tant reaches?

Suggested explanations have been many and various, and none has yet convinced many people. Unless some innocuous . explanation turns up soon, w© will possibly drift into one of those crisis situations which have been so fruitful for science, in jolting us out of our complacency and forcing agonizing re-appraisals.

Whatever happens, it’s not likely that Saint Augustine will be happy with the results. People seem deadset on dreaming about the stars . . . * * *

Postscript In his red-faced, incoherent, blus­ tering way, the editor has demanded rudely that I add a note on my own connection with all this, which I am made brutally to understand is the only excuse I have for going on at such length anyway.

Many years ago various people suggested ways that light could get significantly red-shifted without hav­ ing a speed of recession. None of these proposals stood up on close examination.

This year two Parisians named Vigier and Pecker joined forces with me to present in the journal Nature a new and cleaned-up version of such a theory. The idea is that a light-ray loses energy in battling its way through the vast amount of light which already fills the space around a star — that light can collide with light and suffer in the process. The result of the sort of collision we suggest is precisely a shift of color towards the red.

We assume that a long-suspected trouble in sunlight (it’s a little bit too red) is due to this, and we work out how strong the new effect would need to be to account for it.

Then we see what would happen — given collisions of this strength — to the light coming from a star.

Now, the amount of light around a star depends on how hot it is, and it turns out that two bodies could indeed show very different color changes, provided one was sufficiently hotter. It would have a great deal more light around it — more ob­ stacles for the emerging light-ray to fight its way through. The extra heat needed comes out as plausible enough.

This would account for the differ­ ent red-shifts found in objects near each other in space, and would also imply that part of every red-shift arises from this effect rather than a speed of recession, so that distances need to be revised.

We discussed some other bother­ some data that could be explained on this basis, and described a labor­ atory experiment to check the whole idea.

We are still trying to get the ex­ periment done. It should conclus­ ively settle the idea one way or, sadly, another. At the moment I would neither give up the idea nor bet my meagre life-savings on it.

The Digger

November 18 — December 2 these rumors was not forthcoming on account of both DLP and Liberal unwillingness to speak to The Digger.

No one in the Maribyrnong elec­ DLP candidate Paul McManus (son torate needs to be told that politics of Senator Frank McManus) was is a dirty word, a look at the local both polite and direct in his refusal to be interviewed. He simply asked paper suffices.

Maribyrnong is a tender spot to for half an hour to check The Dig­ each of the major parties. A Liberal ger's credentials. “I’m sorry. I’ve seat from 1955—69, secured by been in touch with the central office DLP preferences, Dr Moss Cass him­ and they advised me not to grant self was mildly astonished when he you an interview.” Mr Webb managed won it for the ALP in 1969. Initially to waste a good deal of my time in concerned over the loss o f the seat, coming to the same decision. Init­ this concern grew to alarm for the ially he agreed with much good will Liberal Party and the DLP when, to be interviewed at one of his string over the following three years they of shoe shops in Keilor. On arrival I became familiar with the personality was told that Webb had been called and policies of the man to whom out urgently and had been unable they had lost. A progressive, out­ to find The Digger's phone number spoken member of parliament with (directory assistance is evidently be­ well publicised views on issues of yond him). I would be able to ring personal freedom, Cass is anathema him on Monday. On Monday mor­ to thé DLP. The Liberals view his ning he was out so I left my name radical, detailed health scheme with and number and suggested he call me horror. Moss Cass represents to both when he arrived. At four that after­ parties a threat of socialism, so often noon I rang again. “ You’re the young lady I stood talked about, so little seen in Aus­ tralia, and perhaps it is this fear, as up on Friday.”

“When can I see you?” well as the fact that only a 1.5% “ Oh, well. You see, when you swing is needed to unseat Cass, that has made this campaign one bf the rang I didn’t know anything about Digger or whatever it is, and I’ve dirtiest of the 1972 elections. ( One of the most obvious differ­ checked up, and I couldn’t talk ences between the campaigns of the to you because you have a court parties is their choice of contentious action pending.* I’m sorry but I issues. Cass sees the entire ALP didn’t know the police were on to platform as relevant to Maribyrnong you, so it’s npthing personal but I with special emphasis on education, won’t see you1.” The DLP is more and the inadequate funds available efficient than the Liberals in checking to local government. The Liberal credentials from head office.

Unlike Webb and McManus, Lance Party and the DLP are basing their campaign almost soley on ‘social’ Hutchinson, endorsed candidate for issues, such as abortion and drugs, D.O.G.’i^, willingly gave up his time. as well as state aid to private schools Hutchinson, whose preferences won and to a lesser degree, the threat of the seat for Cass in ‘69, is a man centralisation (and its implications with a remarkable physical resem­ of ‘nationalisation’). Predominantly blance to Lenin and an earnest desire they are interested in the issues they to save the world. He believes that the see as vulnerabilities in the outspoken state school system fosters goodwill Cass: drugs would hardly seem to among men — “real Christianity in be an issue of burning importance action. If the Baillieus were big to Ascot Vale, but not so in ‘72. enough they would send their child­ The effect of the choice of these ren to state schools and then, though issues is to reduce the campaign to they would still be leaders by birth, one of personalities. The issues they would be rubbing shoulders themselves have been largely lost with the men of the people, men beneath a barrage of high powered who will be working in blast fur­ rhetoric, and any attempt to bring naces and such.” He has no desire them back before the electorate to unseat Cass. “We just want to at this stage , is >,Mlikely to fail1 remind the ALP that enough people feel strongly about state aid to direct through lack of interest.

Certain aspects of this campaign their first preferences away from the bring little credit to either the DLP ALP.” D.O.G.’s does not direct the or the Libéral Party. On one occas- second preference of its supporters, sion it was reported to Cass that but Hutchinson feels anyone voting canvassers purporting to be from the D.O.G.’s would find, as he does, the DLP had begun their political door- Liberal Party’s “entire philosophy knock spiel with the words, “This repugnant.” He finds this campaign Jew Cass” . Liberal candidate Coun­ one of the most unpleasant he has cillor Rex Webb continually refers experienced in his long history of in letters to the local paper, to ideas civic and more recently, federal he does not approve of as “anti- politics. “With the Nazi’s putting Christian” . Clarification or denial of up Cass Young’s wife simply because

by Margaret McIntyre

—' Cable TV and the great drama series o f the future

D ial a movie, D ial a pizza, D ial a trip...

by Martin Gabinyi with help from Ponch Hawkes and Brendon Stretch The two foundation-stones for télécommunication systems of the future are the coaxial cable and sat­ ellite transmission.

The coaxial cable carries sound and picture information for tele-

vision and at the moment has the capacity to transmit 84 channels simultaneously with countless other applications. Community Antenna Television, better known as CATV or cable TV, uses the' cable as a way of linking individual TV sets with one master antenna. It was invented in the States by Robert Tarlton, a

Page 5

Nazis, DLP, Libs after Cass's blood;

Beware the M arxism in Maribyrnong Dr Cass is a Jew, how can the camp­ Gazette. The trend has been to smear aign be seen in terms of anything , Cass. In most cases a casual inference but personalities?” But he believes is enough, and in his own rather that the people of Maribyrnong will entertaining style Rex Webb has see through the dirt, and vote on the become a master at this.

The High Schools in the elector­ real issues. ate had been inviting the various Gary Scholes is as an Australia candidates to speak to the senior Party candidate should be: young, students. Dr Cass accepted and found middle class, respectable and what is the going tough. “It was hard to more, successful. His interest in politics began during the two years he spent in Niugini as Financial Educational Officer, where he be­ came disenchanted with the govern­ ment for the first time. Like Hut­ chinson, he has an impeccably local background. At 27 he can claim 20 years residence in Essendon. The most vital issues to Australia as he sees them are the devaluation of currency, decentralisation and the op­ position to foreign ownership. He expressed some alarm at the way the campaign in Maribyrnong is progressing.“ It’s being fought on phoney issues just to get at Cass, on drugs and abortion.” The Australia Party has directed its second preferences to Cass. “It would be tragic if Webb won. He would be merely another rubber stamp in parliament. I would like to have bracketed Paul McManus and the Nazi together as our last preference but you are not allowed to do that.”

The Nationalist Socialist Party of Australia does not appreciate the word Nazi around about election time. In fact it appears no where on the carefully worded pamphlet which is being distributed throughout the electorate. The Führer, Cass Young, has endorsed his wife Katrina to stand against Moses Cass, and the N.S.P.A. has made its own adaptions to the political climate in Maribyrnong. The first plank in their platform as set out in the pamphlet is “ Capital pun­ know whether some were sending me ishment for ‘big time’ drug pushers” . up or not. They were smart kids.”

Other issues to receive their atten­ Webb accepted and found a nest of tion are “ de-centralisation, a basic indoctrinated revolutionaries, “antiwage for pensioners, separate devel­ Christian . . . and against everything opment with equal opportunity for our civilised society stands for.” It aborigines, anti-pollution (both did not rub well with the readers. It moral & environmental)” and a plea is one thing to suggest a communist that “education (be) available free plot, it is another to call someone’s to everyone to the fullest extent of blue eyed child a red. On August >16 their intellectual ability” . They have came a letter from Webb claiming directed their preferences to Coun­ that he had been grieviousiy mis­ quoted, beginning: “ Dear Sir, with cilor Rex Webb, Liberal Party.

Much of the campaigning in reference to the article contributed Maribyrnong has been conducted by me to last week’s paper . . .” through the local paper, the Essendon He had actually meant to restrict his

small-town TV serviceman to bring in better signals despite the hills around his community.

The possibilities of this system io provide unlimited services are only now being realised. Basically it means that every house connected to . a cable set-up would be plugged into a communications web where not only information from normal TV stations could be received but also community video programs fed in at the amplificat­ ion point, transmissions from sat­ ellites and connection with data­ banks, computers and perhaps por­ table video recorders.

This web, with parallel grids laid over for two-way transmission, is going to not only change our heads but the whole emphasis of our city as a unit. Will people head out to the movies when first run features can be shown on y wall screens by dialling into databank with a choice of 3000 programs? Will people go to the office when the work can be done just as effectively if not better through a video and audio link-up?

Will people even LEAVE their house when all shopping and other essential chores can be done from there?

AWA is one of Australia’s big­ gest electronics firms and they’ve just formed a new division, AWARediffusion, in collaboration with Rediffusion in England. This has been set up to handle future com­ munications systems and cable TV in particular for Australia and they’re really turned onto the hardware possibilities. Their Chief Engineer forecasts that Australia will go cable as soon as color has been properly established, he comes over like a vid­ eofreak raving about the latest portapak. Australia should be in a good position because as with color TV we can check out what’s been happening in other countries and avoid their mistakes. When the US introduced color they quickly adopted a system which proved difficult to keep in phase compared to the Ger­ man PAL system planned for Ausralia. The color in the States is like a Rinso packet, all primary colors with no subtleties, very stark. Equally, unsatisfactory is the current status of cable TV in the U.S., a remarkable example of laissez-faire capitalism at work.

It was first developed extensively in the late forties because the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) realised the fuck-ups in network TV, the basic one being that the distrib­ ution of information was controlled

comments on the indoctrinaires to a minority of the staff of Essendon High School, those teachers working actively against our way of life.

“Predictably the Labor Parlia­ mentarians came out saying this is not so, that everything in our schools is fine, and to console parents that everything is as it should be; as they think it should be, not as it is.

“I further remind parents that part of the Marxism (sic) is to in­ filtrate the schools and universities with their Idealism, to indoctrinate youth, break down family discipline, flatter the ambitious, win over the wall flowers, and encourage divorce. “ Christian ethics are not hard to come by, but are damn hard to keep.

In this regard I would take a quotat­ ion from Martin Luther: ‘Here I stand I cannot do otherwise.’ ” In Maribyrnong, where the DLP polled 12.4% of primary votes in 1969, the old communist can still has a bit of a kick in it.

of America’s communication set-up if it had come 20 years earlier.

Now, however, with the small com­ panies becoming conglomerates or being swallowed by the giants, great pressure could be brought against such rulings. Although this one was to have come into operation on Jan 1, 1972, the cable companies con­ tinued to fight it and the situation is yet to be resolved.

So what’s going to happen, and what is happening with CATV in Australia? v The gddrush move to get hold of some of the bread (and power) to be made is on.

The lobbyists are working to get private interests an early hold on cable, a guy called Kauzlaric has proposed schemes as have various American and Canadian firms, and Sir Frank Packer is into a little more empire-building with an idea to introduce it in Sydney. At the moment they’re hampered by pro­ visions of the Broadcasting and Tele­ vision act, and the Australian Broad­ casting Control Board has only han­ ded out six CATV franchises into areas of poor receptivity, only per­ mitting local broadcast transmissions and refusing rights to any expanded services.

Nevertheless, aland owner in Adel­ aide has installed cable facilities on large home estates in anticipation of a general systems.

The Australian Post Office as THE telecommunications authority in Australia wants to keep its hands on the total network that’s coming The cable that binds — that’s what their charter is all about — to keep control they have to munication system. By 1969 there get control of CATV before the were -2385 cable systems controlled private operators do, there’s that les­ by many different companies, but son of how the telephone companies, small businessmen being what they in the US lost out. are, these systems became complete The APO has the technological extensions of the big networks, facilities to get into CATV oper­ picking up their off-air signals and serving up the same old shit. Com­ ation, but at the moment there’s munity access or open channels were a lot of energy going into the intro­ duction of color, and they haven’t lost possibilities.

The FCC started panicking over decided what will happen. They could retain nominal control as they this new trend and in April 1971 brought down a ruling that said do at the moment in poor reception cable systems with over 3500 sub­ areas; introduce the “ leaseback” scribers must begin broadcasting local- procedure of constructing and own­ originated programs on at least one ing the system then leasing it entirely channel. That put the chances for to another operator; or control and community use a couple of steps operate the system themselves.

The most probable decision will closer, but later in the year the ruling was vetoed by a federal court be for the APO to opérate the sys­ after pressures from the larger com­ tem, but lease out certain facilities to panies. The FCC didn’t give up, other companies and rely on the and finally proposed that at least ABCB to control entertainment cable one channel of every cable setup broadcasts.

Arthur Cowan is the spokesman must be open to everyone on a first come first served basis, a decision for FACTS, the commercial TV that might have changed the whole organization and he doesn’t see any by a few monopolistic empires, as in Australia. The FCC banned all new RV stations until some regulating laws could be passed, and cable TV spread as a cheaper way of receiving network broadcast signals than huge individual antennas.

Home-town businessmen got in at the bottom and began to create their own little empires, the big phone companies didn’t understand what was happening and by the time they did, cable wasn’t just a video-flashin-the-pan but a whole new com-

The Gazette also printed a letter from Mrs A. Linard who wrote to publicise the views of the candidates on the issue of abortion. At a meet­ ing of Jay-cees, which each of the candidates attended, questions were accepted from the floor, one of these asking whether or not the candidates would support the easing of current abortion laws. Lance Hutchinson, who answered that he would consider abortion if the life of the woman con­ cerned was in danger, was surprised to read Mrs Linard’s findings. She declared Cass, Hutchinson and Scholes for abortion (with no qualif­ ications) and Webb and McManus against. Webb himself, was moved to* write and suggest that her conclusions were a little unreasonable in the face of the actual question asked at the meeting. Although she did not men­ tion it in the Gazette, Mrs Linard is the endorsed DLP candidate for the seat of Melbourne. A letter followed on October 25 calling “ on the op­ ponents of abortion in Maribyrnong to see that, by voting against him (Cass), his conscience vote will not be there to proliferate abortion in the community.”

Cass’s attitude to marijuana is another rope with which his op­ ponents hope to hang him. He does not claim that it is harmless, nor does he advocate its use. As a man who neither smokes nor drinks he finds his junkie image odious. “ If ever there was a Puritan, it’s me.”

He sees the drug problem as a med­ ical problem rather than one in which legal and punitive action could prove effective. This is enough to link him with the forces of depravity in the eyes of his enemies. In a lettei to the Essendon Gazette on Septem­ ber 20, Dr Ross Cameron of Essen­ don said, “It could well be that elec­ tors will be called on to make decis­ ions in future on so called hard and soft drugs . . . some suggest there are soft ones which are not danger­ ous . . . There is a risk in the political field that beguiled by concepts of freedom, cheap laughs at law and order, the smoking of marijuana and sleezy, smutty literature projecting itself from every book stall, that we will be easy prey and dupes for rule by regulation, and dissipate our socialistic serfdom in the delights of sex and pot.”

The Roman Catholic Church has been only too happy to open some of its valuable channels to alert Maribyrnong to the dangers they face. Not long ago the ‘Parents aid Friends’ of St Bernard’s School, West Essendon, received their regular newsheet, packed full of the usual sports reports and fund raising in­ formation. “Your attention is drawn to a report appearing in the Essendon Gazette”, a report on the 23rd of

threat to network TV in cable sys­ tems; “ I can see some form of CATV coming to Australia but I don’t think it will revolutionize TV. I can’t see it developing as fast here as in the States, people already have four channels and they won’t pay for any more” . That would be true if cable was pushing the same shit you can get every day on TV, in every city, but if it was providing additional services and different types of pro­ grams its likely subscribers won’t object to the estimated $40 instal­ lation fee and the $4 to $5 monthly rental.

The key questions are whether the system will have provision for access channels and free airtimes, which would mean video. Portapak V2 inch video, capable of being plug­ ged into the communication net­ work and costing around $1000 or less for a second hand recorder and camera. Weighing about 20 pounds and completely portable. A travelling TV show.

Turning people onto video isn’t difficult, it can be a magical mirror trip of shooting tape, then replaying it straight back then taping reactions and feedbacks, and playing that back.

Video-freaks foresee it can do dramat­ ic things to us and our relations with each other. And all this could be plugged directly into cable TV sys­ tems and bypass the network res­ trictions.

Such an open-access television

August of a meeting addressed

by Cass of the Strathmore Branch of the Combined State Educational Or­ ganisations. “Such a report attributed to one occupying an important public position in the community must nec­ essarily exercise the conscience of a(l parents of St. Bernard’s.”

On 7th September Dr Cass wrote to the Parents & Friends of St. Bernard’s Association, requesting ah opportunity “to put my views direc­ tly to a meeting of tbe Parents of St. Bernard’s, so that they might question me on these views and then judge for themselves, rather than depend on views ‘attributed’ to me.”

He has had no reply.

The State Aid to private schools issue is perhaps Cass’s 'most vulner­ able spot. All it takes is a little selective quoting and a lot of in­ sinuation for the Catholic parent to gain the impression that the day Cass is elected for a second term the local Catholic school will be forced to close its doors forever.

A petition has been presented to Cass, “deploring” that same report in the Gazette that so upset the Parents & Friends of St. Bernard’s.

“We, electors of Maribyrnong, con­ sider that as taxation is levied on all wage earners, it should be used to assist all taxpayers children in the field of education.” There is no evidence as to where the petition sprang from, but Cass’s office sus­ pects a parishioner of St. Monica’s of Moonee Ponds, where Father Kelly has been rumored to put his views rather forcefully from the pul­ pit, has seen fit to ‘follow his conscience’.

Two weeks ago Dr Moss Cass’s words on the campaign were: “ Look I’m going to lose. The opposition are a pack of gutless cowards. Real N.C.C. tactics.” An air of frustration pervades Cass’s Essendon office. If he does lose the seat Cass says he will feel, among other things, “a sense of personal failure at not being big enough to overcome the prejud­ ice.” He believes the campaign has given him the image of ‘fa Jewish, homosexual, drug peddling, intellec­ tual communist, abortionist stooge of the Victorian Central Executive who does not live in the electorate and who won’t shut up.” In Maribyr­ nong that is quite some image to overcome. Each Saturday from now until December 2, people will be meeting at 4 Russell Street, Essen­ don at 9 o’clock to canvass for Cass.

•E d ito r's N ote: Webb's ill-inform ed. No court action is pending against T h e Digger. We have been harrassed by the police, b u t thus far the C hief Secretary has failed to au thorize a summons, if, indeed, th e police have made an infor­ m ation.

system would obviously open the door on coverage of controversies ignored by the sensitive capitalist media, and for individual expression capable of reaching vast audiences.

Some people are hoping for govern­ ment grants for video with equip­ ment, tape and air-time given through a scheme like the Experi­ mental Film and Television fund.

In New York TV stations operate from basements of apartment build­ ings, transmitting to occupants through an empty channel or through communal antennae.

Bert Dealing, a Melbourne film and video specialist, made a sub­ mission to the government to begin an Australia-wide video network in conjunction with the group to which I belong in Sydney and others in Adelaide.

The submission included shooting V2 tape on subjects of communal interest that haven’t even been con­ sidered by the networks and feed­ ing them back into the community through monitors in laundromats, cinemas, shop windows and video­ theatres.

When cable comes these tapes can be shown through that system and free the air waves for anyone to use. The raves of Gene Young­ blood and Buckminster Fuller begin to become concrete and feasible, changes in our consciousness directly related to changes in our communic­ ation systems.

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Page 6

The Digger

nigel roberts / does his bit / for women’s lib.

penelope / this poem is to say / that yr cunt is sweet salty & so it should be / to yr man’s tongue . . .

dresses schoolteachers orange ties men go to orange movies without their wives police wear the roadmenders’ orange disguise monotonous lines of blue container lorries jam-tight with shadows rumble to the wharves freighters wait on a shadowless blue sea

WE ARE POSSESED OF PERFUMES

& that without due regard for his & indeed / her personal safety / he seized the vaginal spray / & threw it / like a street fighter’s stone from the terrace / into the bay. do the fish await / tomorrow’s insult. . . pineapple flavoured / lubricating jelly?

Nigel Roberts, April 7.2.

mam Love Song

Abandoned with the anachronism of ar­ guments i tug and tear the catgut strings beyond my cricoid cartilege and you go gently to the keys and make blue music.

Pamela Cocabola Brown

Have Some Poem and Some Other Things

I’ve had enough of argument the ravages of time and earthly beauty the rose I sent you has long since stood naked of petals in an existential state of having been committed.

Need I say again my herb gar­ den shoots up when you’ve come and the grass in my windowbox turns its seedy top to the sun in your eyes.

Your hair of course we’ve been through that but it holds in its coils me like a fish breathing air.

For languish I do high on your skin I am lying swinging and ready for you, still in drag.

Paul Kavanagh

Wait! Hey you driving! wait for me!

Andrew Taylor

What Might Pass A Man As A Survivor

I see you lizard whitebait with legs pulse in your side pounding like an apopleptic head like I could be a threat to your biolgic survival like you haven’t weathered millions of years by just such evasive stillness grey posed on splinterwood only the pulse pumping what might pass in a man as fear . . . what might pass a man as a survivor and when you move the sun spears your side like it strikes the sides of smallfish arrowed in the shallows a watery shiver they turn and dive quick silver lizard under the hydrangea leaves the color of old spent blood past the tomato plants grown scraggy with the cold under thin lost bums of fowls left without feather over the sun’s weed beaten winter yellow over dry white sand black specked like whitebait eyes past where a fungus mounts feasting on tomato stems suddenly — lizards everywhere — loudmarch on dead autumn — live over dead leaves go retreating lizard feet.

J.S. Harry

Night Thoughts: Baby & Demon

Baby I’m sick. I need nursing. Give me your breast.

My orifices bleed.

I cannot sleep. My chest shakes like a window. Light guts me. My head’s not right.

Demon, we’re old, old chap.

Born under the same sign after some classic rape.

Gemini. Yours is mine.

Sickness and health. We’ll share the end of this affair.

Enter A Blue Day

It’s very blue & very new the clouds have shrivelled like lemons emptied their juice on the great blue salad for cattle and headed east reversed pioneers

Baby, I’m sick to death.

But I can’t die. You do the songs, you’ve got the breath.

Give them the old soft shoe.

Put on a lovely show put on your wig, and go.

The service station flags, denticulate plastic, snap in the wind.

Hunched seabirds wait

but there isn’t any sun no & no shadows traffic makes a New Orleans noise on the roof of a TV van a man in a boilersuit breaks off and chews a piece of blue chocolate fudge

for light to quench the unmeaning lights of town.

This day will bring the fabulous summer down.

Where are the shadows? in a blue world there should be orange shadows salesgirls should wear orange

All night salt water stroked and shaped the sand.

All night I heard it. Your bravura hand

Weather no memory can match will fade to memory, leaf-drift in the pines’ think shade.

chimed me to shores beyond time’s rocking swell.

The last cars leave the shabby beach motel.

Lovers and drunks unroofed in sobering air disperse, ghost-coloured in the streetlight-glare.

Rock-a-bye Baby in the motel Baby will kiss and Demon will tell.

* U *

Note: This collection.of po

by Norman Talbot from 1100 sent. It represents a rather perverse fame and concerns: but that was w Ezra Pound was one of the great writer poetry and his criticism, translations, letters, brought us Eliot and Joyce, and dragged modem writin News of his death came just as this collection arrived from N<

ji 1

One candle lights us. Night’s cool airs begin to lick the luminous edges of our skin. my love, and your ghosts fade in the sun.

Be sure I’ll have your heart, my love, when all your loving’s done.

When the bough bends the apple will fall Baby knows nothing Demon knows all.

Draw up the voluptuously crumpled sheet.

In rose-dark silence gentle tongues repeat The body’s triumph through its grand eclipse.

I feel your pulsebeat through my fingertips.

Baby’s a rocker lost on the shore.

Demon’s a mocker.

Baby’s a whore.

Gwen Harwood

4 koan

1.

there was a man imagined a goose in a bottle and let it out again

World of the happy, innocent and whole: the body’s the best picture of the soul

2.

couched like an animal in savage grace.

Ghost after ghost obscures your sleeping face.

there was a man with one arm clapped all night long until he heard the sound

3.

there was a man took a sphere and turned it inside out and held it in his hand and looked at it

My baby’s like a bird of day that flutters from my side, my baby’s like an empty beach that’s ravished by the tide.

4.

there was a man peeled a banana till he was free

Ross Bennett

And sift you through my hand, my dear, and find you grain by grain, and build your body bone by bone and flesh those bones again with flesh from all your loves, my love, while tides and seasons stream, until you wake by candlelight from your midsummer dream, and like some gentle creature meet the huntsman’s murderous eye, and know you never shall escape however fast you fly.

Unhoused I’ll shout my drunken songs, and through the streets I’ll go compelling all I meet to toast the bride they do not know.

Till all your tears are dry,

Stephen Williams August 3, (72.

Climax

As if opposition to the very act allowed the way to action, their own parodies, they lay in bouncing bed, toe to toe, poet to poet, not for art’s sake or to release strain too strenuously imposed by censorship or contraception, until the Moving Finger, the Muse, the White Goddess that What-You-Will in which neither believed, until climax rocked the bookended bed knocked them unconscious locked them spine with spine, immortals, though dead.

Graham Rowlands

So fair are you, my bonny poem for davnet / concluding lass, with a line from Bogart. so sick and strange am I, that I must lie with all your loves she / has left the party and suck your sweet­ - I’m addressed / with ness dry. the flat gentle statement And drink your juices dry, my dear, and grind your bones to sand, then I will walk the empty shore and sift you through my hand.

stand, Mid-way between image and reality, Captured far too briefly in a half-world Where I wish to remain, seeing myself Between that which is, and that Which I wish to imagine Outside, in the dark.

I go -

her purpose / air bed / night music —no need of us loves mafia / in lineup / she identifies no one in her hallway exit / to the street

Plainclothes Park

Thinking my old thought in the eye-stinging dark: The People Revealer. People are so undeclared.

A button, now, on a unit in your pocket — I was wiring that airy device in the mid-city park

Luminous face colours. Visible only to you.

Green for lying, yellow of course for the scared. asleep Violence? Red. When a man —even in her dreams throat / no reached intense pink, you’d seed hit him of me.

First. Or change tack. I’ve had various thoughts about blue. she feeds / the pigeons of the beautiful / she The man sitting next to me awaits / couriers though thought his out loud: from lawrence.

The body —you know? There are design flaws God left —shall I tell him that Hanging. Too many non-overhis hour / has come — rideable programmes. her beauty & being Why shouldn’t we will new effective teeth, new hair, new organs? like a handgrenade dropped Will-overrides, friend. We need in a barrel of fish. to start working on these, And shielding. Good God! All Nigel Roberts that soft rippable belly Without a bone casque. And non-retractible genitals!

Poem After James Bennett My trouble, 1 muttered, is with doubt, not knees.

A pleasant evening. “So wonder­ ful don’t you think, this de Grigny ‘Masse’?”

I smile and walk to the window, where I see A reflection of myself trapped in the glass: Where half I see the darkness, and half The life behind me. So here I

Night. The Veil.

Two-fish people, tender dawn paintings, Neptune just leaving, coffeestained poetry, Arcanic entrance, the stars are swept out and the cards shuffled to the left, music seeps.

Solitude. A crowd. Renegade.

Friends.

Solitude. Renegade.

The baptism wasn’t successful nor was it a failure. Gills received to breathe in visionary depths; a gift from Abraxas, Twelve births. Cups are domipant, the hanged man is found, his face in deep entrancement, water symbol and dream.

We wait and smoke cigarettes.

Two-fish people hanging; the card reads: life is a pause.

Some one thinks of the Heirophant reversed and puts another record on.

We wait. We mutter.

The cards say life is a pause, man a weaver of webs that explain the world but cannot hold the spidercrabs of the watery universe and the web woven in this night by the circle will be laid on the graves of the philosophers and then forgottten.

Coats are put on with a reluc­ tance to talk, the door is opened, the farewells short.

Twelve births. Waiting in the web of life.

A pause, a preparation?

Sunrise, unscathed by clouds, sends my shadow home to bed.

Colin Campbell

Memories Of A Second Night

Sitting at the edge of the bed if you smoked you would; or worse, lying back again in such a poultice of sweat the clouds pursue you heavily all the way down, then gag you; the weight is limitless, and your own . . .

A dozen years now, becoming another thing, a shuffle of cards, part of a catalogue: at sixteen the charge in your own cock was hair-triggered and came away like that at nineteen even the clean newspapers read hard things between your lines and at twentyfive a wedding night so quick to get away that five rapes at the end sub­ dued you in your wife oh you sweated “I love you I love you I love you”.

So the second night, with ignorance and haste no excuse, when she has prepared her body to the attachment, and you gently, truly begin to touch her to tremble she fingers your cock so shy so imperfect and wondering that you wither shrivel as any

'f ,

His face was no colour that be­ tokens guilt But I questioned him (and I think Ve questioned me).

No result. He left the park shortly after And vanished from sight in the city we had built.

Les A. Murray

>

V

m

November 18 — December 2

Page 7

for all Daddies, everywhere.

Fee & fie & foh & fum they might have heard, 0 yes they might had I been there, but I was not.

But only round them rose the songs & sweet shrill jargonjng of my birds.

The breeze was soft within’ my walls, my golden orchard’s quickening shade.

ems was edited poems solicited and i mixture of styles, ages, hat The Digger was after. s of the century so far for his and energy. He was the man who g in English almost singlehandedly into life.

Drman Talbot, so it seemed appropriate.

G.H.

old cord and your balls might as well be cut off.

What is there to be said for virginity?

I think we were the last gener­ ation of innocents, so young in ourselves that we truly believed and feared the myth of the phallus. Lost in ourselves and lost, lost doubly in that loss, the both of us panting, novices to our own bodies “lie quietly now” she whispers, “Just lie” (you think you will get up and die) “be close to me.” The brute is dismayed, the dagger sheathed and nothing between you except a beginning.

Thomas W. Shapcott

yr just a soup kitchen

yr just a soup kitchen spooning out mouthfuls (hot) of yr words no flesh no spices, too weak not even salt or pepper; a bit watery but plenty of it with a few bones of an idea swimming round; grains of rice clinging to the bottom little white lies this table would prefer to order a plate of meat (jelly shroud) cold tongue

Joanne Burns - .....Ì— ....-...

•

air the ants speck the pet’s plate congregating about aubade blebs of raw kangaroo the manic jackass hiccups and guffaws purple target-ringed rug at crows from the beach pines Schwarzkopf’s record-cover face ageless as ecstasy selfglasses of stale claret conscious as an anthem inside rusting anonymously the dawn retouching house the telephone screams a mondriaan print at itself someone else is bored with another spectacular sunset you’d gentled me and wants lead me into your pavilion (shape collides with space to be reassured it’s only night innuendo of motion come vermilion canvas) round again not perhaps eyes mute instruments the end of more than day in many do you blame me for lounges and closed-in verandahs daedelus pride? you roped me drinks are lowered and the pulled me down dregs and still my psyche is seared of Sunday music acknowledged by the rope-burn of as your picture an afterthought of vintages 0 my scapular on dog-eared menus already can love outstare the outrageous the odour of cooking asserts light of day itself 1 wondered as i walked shabbily upon the salivatory glands and away look your fly has been unzip­ ped T.H. Naisby through hours of visitors and no-one knew perhaps recall them ex­ Meditation plain you’re not prematurely senile after all it’s the long delay longueurs of evening reside of afternoon into another in transparencies of sun through lagging evening the silence rings cloud a high whistle of with an absence of crickets bird flight vaguely flicks petals drop the vesper clogged ears the plop onto earth and the cat’s tongue plate lulls in a thin juice of grates in a slow half-circle on word ferment the neck muscles the twitch and creak beneath taut cement under an abrasive skin and a loose crimson square tongue that too late pauses of mylon in the slowly cooling failing f to distinguish between the for­ mic bite of ant flavour and the mulled blood of marsupial time to engage with the radioed day’s news sports results road accidents election speeches bank robbings such a busy day to stifle a yawn at while nine are born on«1dies and dinner elsewhere is not served Bruce Beaver

a quality of loss

Hichard Harris

'fire* they cried in the middle of the dance, wheyfaced girls and weary men came pouring out their faces rekindled by a vivid life because it was a fire: a need — somebody’s house was burning up.

It could have seemed that what he had was burning in that house. It could have seemed he saw his days on fire, and the leafless trees stood away tike fishbones, in the dark.

His chairs were on the coals where the flames died and the smoke trailed out uncertain as a dog.

And ‘fire’ the dancers cried, again, as a latecoming wave surged out; they held him back when he tried to go inside the burning doorway of his golden house; late one had asked, and he hadn’t remembered, what it was, of his life, that he’d lost that he could have brought out, if he’d had the time — from the glowing bones of the liquid fire — He’d long remember something else how a dog might try to re-take a haunch had and buried years before — vague, a trace, the dimmest _scent — Late he circled round the black down-drop­ ping struts, held, by their stares, as perfectly as a bee, by a glass around a flower.

J.S. Harry

Pacific Giant

Lying on his back like a beetle he flung his arms out — one hand clutched a palm-tree on the skyline, the other sought his mother’s hand but she was in the bedroom multiplying with her eyes shut.

Graving support he stretched out his feet — one foot idled on the Philipines, the other rested obliquely on the Andes showing its sole to the eastern seaboard.

His head was at Townsville in the Memorial Park.

And when he spoke his voice reflected from the ionosphere all over the world.

Mother, he said through night and day 3 times the round world around.

And the land shifted And the fingers of an estuary roved through his hair.

It was Mother Nature come to her boy.

The west-going shadow came over his body like a blanket.

The islands of the Pacific are his sole remains.

Noel Macainsh

In A Forest Green like God was there and the blue shock of Heaven.

Joan Mas

Fee & fie & foh & fum I might have roared, 0 yes I might had I been there, or I might not.

I’m past my black ram­ paging youth & would not want to chew the louts.

0 bitter to me is my cry but only surprise made me cry out.

Fee & fie & fo h & fum I did not boom, although 1 might have when I came, but I did not.

All that I bellowed at that time was “Out, you little thieves, that’s mine!”

—& so it was, & yet my voice fell like a curse of olden­ time.

Fee & fie & foe & fum is not a curse, & though I might have thrown a curse, yet I did not.

To think my voice should be the blast that blighted all this garden bare, should be a spell to spill the leaves & lovely life I treasured there!

Fee & fie & foh & fum they never heard, although they might did I feel hate, but I do not.

To see the feathers fly, the flowers reel out of nature from my cry . . .

0 many an age my labours last to still the fear I amplified.

Norman Talbot

Verdict

There’s blood upon the ceiling and I really can’t explain why the neighbours are all shouting that I’m the one to blame The cockroach corpse I under­ stood is underneath my feet its tongue is turned inside its shell there’s nothing left to eat The shark within my heart is still lurking in this room when I turned out all the lights I left him to his doom A prison in a leper is a lonely place to be I’ve never seen a sacrifice but I’ve seen them see me There’s blood upon the ceiling & I really can’t explain why the neighbours say they’ll testify that I’m the one to blame

A cockroach is so innocent yet knows more than a shark can you explain why they say they will keep me in the dark?

a visit from the out of this world sex object

There’s blood upon the ceiling & I really can’t explain why the neighbours are still whispering of how I was to blame

opened the door and there stood my friend the Fat Freak laughing and holding the most gigantic , I’m not exaggerating , the most impressive bag of aphrodisiac rhinoceros horn and ginseng root I’d honestly ever seen, can I come in? she said.

Alan Simpson

Ratwar

I had this idea once; See rats making war in the electronic battlefield: Ratsoldier zippo’s thatched rat hat chewing gum: Ratfortress zeroes on breathing enemy from forty thousand feet: Ratgunships, advancing, chop burning ratshit out of the sky over howling ratvillages.

Somewhere in the sensitized mud snails mate with sweet viol­ ence, rearing up and arrowing each other with spermy darts.

And far beyond our space of reason A man in a sheaf of lead over bandages of silk kicks the dust of the turning moon.

something like the Tarkus tank I think it was slowly combed my scalp roots, somewhere far out in the Pacific huge masses of land turned upside down and sank , over -turned by her , half slap happy flesh, half ocean. all the little ships at sea started pumping out distress flares at the sky , Atlantis strained in upthrust through the earth’s crust and I thought I heard a thousand centuries of winds fleeing from the world , stoned into silence by the sudden seismographic cortex quiver of her happening there.

If that’s the way you feel, she said , I think I.d better go.

Richard Roper

Holding Change In My Hand

In a Burke St. tram I held change in my palm which edged like a knife into the creased skin lines

Which she did , her tits and the cheeks of her arse flapping like landed fish.

Ross Bennett

Muse

when slowly, the lines began to part and peel back upon themselves exposing muscles in rolling blood strands The bands were led by light to shred and break separate, revealing moist cells packed in dripping lanes The membranes, because of the drying wind spl it and empt i e d atom constructs which jerk ed awa y to in icles part and burst!...

Planning to leave again, were you? pinchpenny, ponce, pack-rat!

I caught you draggle-tailed slinking the easy way out, hoping for disguise in those shapeless rags!

And what’s in your bag, rag-tag, slag?

You shrug and unzip . . .

There pour forth: albigensian, borsch, tantivy tantalize, liquorice, Lusit­ ania . . .

Trash, all of it!

Take it! Good riddance!

I’ve had enough!

You look past your straggled hair into me and say not one word; but now I am walking down the garden past the orange-blossoms and through the gate with my rags, and draggled hair and my bag of nothing.

Jean Talbot

Strophe

I could feel the thrust of explosions against my other hand, as I felt for the word —‘hand’ which had disappeared from my arm as if it were a fist vanishing into an open palm.......

We were still laughing when, for the third time she tried to spin the band.

“Here,” I said, “let me!” but I felt her hand tighten and the laughter stop.

Lee Shiply

A.llen After man

Page 8

The Digger

The law is an afterdinner speech

The Christians and the foetuses -from St. Augustine to the D IP breaches of mystic acquiesence, and of Christian charity toward possible offspring, as well as defilement of the sacrament of marriage.

On the special opposition of Good & Evil in monotheistic systems, see Franz Steiner, On Taboo.

In the Fuss, abortion law reform was seen as “the thin edge of the permissive society wedge” , or part of “modem paganism” .

Seived Soup Christian theology about abortion was first put down at a time when the wisest men knew less about the biology of reproduction than our Miss Troba, i.e., s.f.a., and the wise guys were unsure when “life” began.

The male chauvinist attitude was that all the character of “life” was latent in the semen, and the womb was as passive as a plowed field.

From that juice to humanoid was a magic step, and some believed that the foetus was not “ensouled” until the 40th day if male, or the 80th day if female. This view was accep­ ted by SL Augustine, in the third century. We see it in the semantic shuffle in this passage: Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or

by Bruce Hanford curel lust, comes to this, that they a couple even procure poisons of Suppose Miss Nooki Troba, 16, sterility, and, if these do not student at Hornsby Girls’ High work, extinguish and destroy the School, attends her local physician foetus in some way in the womb, in his Asquith rooms, and requests preferring that their offspring die her pregnancy be terminated. Now, before it lives, or if it was already will he say, “ But Miss Troba, what alive in the womb to kill it before you suggest, Augustine calls lustful it was born . . . cruelty, or cruel lust, and Gregory This passage gives both contra­ stigmatized as a homicide; ergo, I ought to refuse you”?; or, will she ception and abortion the same treat­ retort, “ Aquinas taught, an act prod­ ment, as sins against the sacrament of ucing a good may be done blame­ marriage. But Augustine’s acceptance lessly, and after him, Sanchez, SJ, of the distinction between early and reasoned that where there was no late abortion led him to consider temptation, the tendency towards that only late abortion was a injustice was slight. What I request “killing” . Augustine was a heavy, is not pleasant, and personally I and this distinction survived in Cath­ am contrite; the good sought is my olicism until the 19th Century, but family’s well-being; ergo, you ought there have always been other pos­ itions in the Church, and the dis­ to oblige me”?; such converse is not tinction was never an article of faith. normal! .

In the 6th Century, theologians In this far decadent province, our culture is attenuated; girls and phys­ bamied over the rostering of the Feast of St. Mary’s Conception. Some icians don’t converse this nicely.

Now, is abortion natural? Spine say wanted it scheduled for seven months “ yes” , because it is obviously a prior to her birthday, but the ninemonthers carried the day. normal part of human sexuality.

On the gravity of aborting an Others say, “no” , and they say “unformed” foetus, Augustine pres­ normality is not Natural. Eloquent cribed a fine as penance. However, St. John-Stevas wrote: “ Normality is a statistical concept, but ‘Natural’ the Council of Trulla suggested the is essentially an abstriction of reason, death penalty. Canon lawyers diver­ considering man as he ought to be.” ged from moral theologians and from St. John-Stevas opposed abortion each other in the valuing of abortion.

Pope Gregory IX’s Decretals, the law reform in England, and his ar­ guments were imported for the Aus­ basis of canon law until 1917, were tralian Fuss. He chose to say that the promulgated in the 1230s. Decretals data offered by pro-aborters was were slightly ambiguous, but declared often cooked, but always irrelevant. both wilful contraception and wilful He called Kinsey’s Reports “no more abortion “homicide” . The document than a somewhat distressing glosses shifted the notion of when life began on the doctrine of original sin.” For slightly — the key word there was him, the actual effect of law on “animated” , rather than “ formed” .

A clause in the Decretals let a human behaviour was secondary, for he felt the main purpose of secular Carthusian monk off the hook for law was to serve the common good, accidentally causing an early abortion.

Despite the Decretals, justifications and for him the common good was that intangible cathedral of Western for abortion were developed in the Civ, the abstraction of reason, the High Middle Ages. These justifications system of moral ideals. St. John- were passionately opposed within Stevas defended the old English law the Church, but their opponents as “a relic of more Christian times” . overstepped the mark, and were This section of our book is an stamped heretical. The distinction account of how it felt to be in the between early and late abortion is Fuss . . . would we could give a maintained in these controversies.

During the Fuss in Australia, anti-. lucid account of moral notions about abortion, especially these recondite Catholic polemicists would argue that ones, but our conceit is, rendering the Church had abruptly shifted its a clear potted history of such ideas ground on the ensoulment issue. The is as difficult as boiling mud from a “shift” is usually ascribed to Pius IX’s soup. Abortion is a moral topic Apostolica Sedis (1869) which drop­ where the light of genius is pale, ped a modifier in the usual formula, and reflected from lesser minds so, and by that grammatical parsimony, as the Drapier Dean would say, abolished the distinction between “ . . . mingled, abscured, or discol­ young feoti, and older ones, who oured by Passion and Interest.” Yet now were no more soulful. This is . . . during the Fuss, we see the old unfair, for Pius was giving reserved notion of “potions” prompting a judgement on an argument that had priest to compare pot to contracep­ been hot for at least two centuries, tion, and heroin to abortion, and to and he went no further than an make it a natural law that one thing English parliament had done 32 leads to another. In another place, years previously. Anyhow, modem a man argues that the basis of morality biology seemed to make the case for is science, and science declares that a continuity of human development abortion is murder. Further we wit­ from the moment of gametic fusion.

Some Catholic intellectuals revived ness Bishop’s loose use of the pre­ cise term, “murder” ; con a political the “ensoulment issue” during the party averring that the abortion stat­ Fuss, in the Melbourne Catholic ute was a bulwark against commun­ Worker. But the argument that early ist invasion . . . how can we under­ abortion was more moral than later stand these things? Our conceit is, to abortion came chiefly from antiCatholic polemicists and non-Christ­ serve three moral entrees. ians.

Short Soup Bob Santamaria, the only layman In Patristic days, any contranatal on the Catholic’s Australian Epis­ behaviour was associated with a copal Committee, told us: “It seems complex of sexual sins, such as inter­ to me that from the moment of course in odd positions, cunnilingus, conception, there is no doubt in the fellatio, buggery and bestiality, which continuity of that being which were “unnatural” . Contranatal be­ ultimately issues as a child and final­ haviour was sometimes equated with ly becomes an old man, and dies. killing a close relative. “ Potions of And I believe there is a lethal act sterility” were especially con demend, (if abortion is done) and if the for they were connected with black Church said that there wasn’t a magic, and so implied acceptance of lethal act, I wouldn’t believe the other magic potencies than that of Church.” the One God. God alone should con­ Issue Stew trol the mystery of generation. In­ Institutions are media of ideas. terference with His dominion were

A Colonial History of Abortion; P a rt 2

V

J

Sometimes the message continues for I centuries after the message becomes meaningless. When Augustine was the mouthpiece, the Manichees were an especial enemy. This competing apocalypso maintained that while ejaculation was the sole means of purifying the world, giving birth to children was the chief means by which Evil was preserved in existence.

The Christians took an opposite line: they maintained that lust was res­ ponsible for the transmission of orig­ inal sin, that lust was a component of sexual pleasure, and that getting offspring was the sole moral justif­ ication for the pleasure in ejaculation.

Whatever the respective merits of the cases, the Christians outbred the Manichees, who were ultimately sup­ pressed; they had a residual influence on Western Civ through Augustine, who was a Manicheean turncoat, and whose rather stricken attitude to­ ward sex might have been conditioned by the hard time he gave his old lady during the youth he spent purifying the world.

The Christian doctrine of original sin became fuzzy during the High Middle Ages, when St. Thomas Aquinas, a less worldly man than Augustine, offered a brighter view of pleasure. Aquinas, the optimist, held that pleasure was morally neut­ ral, and pleasure found in right ac-, tion was a good.

This complicated things. One could no longer recognize evil sim­ ply by the way it felt (good), nor virtue, by the way it felt (terrible); and, Aquinas had to devise a com­ plicated system of moral navigation to arrive at the same ports as his predecessors had found by the seat of their hairy pants. Though Aquinas himself did not argue for abortion, other theologians found they could make great voyages with his tables and quadrant. The valuing of sexual pleasure after Aquinas caused prob­ lems within the Church, for those who preferred to hug the rocky coast

Bolte: “The heifer is more afraid o f the calf than the bull. ” suspected those who went away on the blue, of passages of isles of Delite, and worse.

In 1653, Innocent X declared the Jansenists, who were extremely reac­ tionary on sexual pleasure, heretics.

Some say the Jansenists ahd a lot of influence on the Irish brand of Catholicism. Symmetry was preser­ ved by Innocent XI, who condemned a long list of “laxist” propositions in 1679. Among these unsafe propos­ itions was Sanchez’s argument that abortion could be justified on a variety of grounds. The laxists, who weren’t considered heretical, were still valued as “minority opinions” until well into the 19th Century.

Ligori gave them a guernsey, and in France, the lax position may have been the de facto doctrine of the Church, if only because the Church could not breast the tide. Between 1771 and 1850, the French birth rate decreased from 38:1000 to 26:1000.

Sex wasn’t the big theological issue of the times; the beginnings of capitalism, and the justification of usury, occupied the bright young casuists . . .

Making Up The Laws After the fall of the Roman Kings, three reporters were sent after the law of the old Greek Republics. Their report was codified, classified, and held secret by the patrician class, who thus kept a monopoly on Jus­ tice. Then a couple of scribes leaked details to the public, and as a re­ sult, the lower classes got into the lawyering industry. The industry has always been pragmatic and a power unto itself. Burns remarks that when the law did not seem to fit the sit­ uation, the courts just made one up. This is writ in Philmore’s edition: These innovations o f the learned lawyer and the praetors will not surprise those who reflect on the jarring powers which composed the

November 18 — December 2 ample of “that utter incapacity for anything like correct language or consecutive thought that was one of his (Coke’s) greatest characteris­ tics.” However, teh position was ac­ cepted, and as late as 1895 a Mel­ bourne woman (Emma Williams, con­ victed of infanticide) was hung while pregnant, as the executive was sat­ isfied that she was not “with a child of a quick child.”

The common law, then, isn’t concerned with the early foetus.

However, the Australian colonies Roman State, which made it.more copied an 1861 English statute difficult to procure new laws to be law against abortion. In Victoria enacted by public authority to meet new emergencies, than it is and NSW, this law has remained with us to procure an act o f parlia­ unaltered in wording for nearly ment. And in truth something o f a a century.

similar nature has happened in the laws o f all nations, and among ourselves. Plowden . . . says “The judges have frequently explained the words (of an act o f Parlia­ ment) entirely contrary to the text, and sometimes have taken things by equity contrary to the text in order to make them agree with reason and equity. ”1• Roman law was made by lawyers, court officials, by legislature and plebsecite, by Imperial Edict and by the bureaucracy, and from time to time, the Roman practice was to consolidate the mess, and codify it. In the 6th Century, Justinian, the Christian Emperor, sponsored a Civil Code that survived the fall of the Empire. This code was law in Britian for 360 years, before being submerged (though not destroyed) by customary law of Saxon, Dane, and Norman. Verbatim fragments of the Justinian Code survive in English common law.

Under this Code, abortion was criminal, according to judge John Barry, but “an unborn child was not regarded as a human being but as part of the viscera of the mother” . Noon­ an has it, that it was an offence to abort a woman without her husband’s consent. Whether English common law ever regarded “early abortion” as a crime is moot.

The two earliest surviving scripts on common law, De Legibus Angliae, and Fleta, date from the same century as the Gregorian Decretals.

On abortion, they virtually parrot Greg, and call the act “homicide” .

Some confusion stems from the sit­ uation in 13th Century England, when separation of Church and State was a hot issue. In some parts of England, there was a secular court system; in other parts, the Church had sole control of courts and pris­ ons; in many places, the two systems competed.

Later authorities have called De Legibus & Fleta “corrupt” , and “notoriously inaccurate in criminal matters” . The Law Times Journal gave the opinion, early this century, that “there is a strong possibility that abortion before the period of forty days had elapsed was nto an offence at common law, but it was no doubt an ecclesiastical offence.”

Canon is made by canonists, but common law takes cases. Maitland makes this point:— “In every cen­ tury from the twelfth onward, there has been a good deal of ecclesiastical law that has not been enforced. At times a good deal of temporal law has been in no better case . . ” .

Sir Edward Coke wrote authorit­ ative statements of the common law position during the early 1600s. His famous definition of murder goes: When a man o f sound memory and o f the age o f discretion unlawfully kills any reasonable creature in being, and under the King's Peace, with malice aforethought, either express or implied by law, the death taking place within a year and a day.

Coke’s formula for abortion does not treat it as “murder” , but “ mis­ prision” . A child in the womb is not held to be “in being” . He seems to follow the Decretals “ animation” , by choosing the word “ quickening” as the crucial stage of pregnancy. 2 However, in Coke’s understanding, early abortion is no crime: I f a woman be quick with child, and by a potion or otherwise killeth it in her womb, or if a man beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she is delivered o f a dead child, this is a great misprision, and no mur­ der; but if the child be bom alive, and dieth o f the potion, battery or other cause, this is murder, for in law it is accounted a reasonable creature, in rerum natura, when it is bom alive.

Learned but sharp-tongued Stephen called the. passage an ex1 . This passage is fro m a 19th Century Anglican com pendium . Ecclesiastical Law. It is a good an tid ote to the vulgar attitu d e th at law is m erely w hat is w rit. Law is w hat is construed, and unlike natural law, it has a m ultitud e o f Authors.

2 . L E X IC O G R A P H Y 'Q uickening' is one o f 17 terms w e'v e collected fo r "stages o f pregnancy"; it as generally accepted to take place be­ tween the Wth to 17th week after c o n ­ ception.

Advances in biology have made it less precise, fo r it's now in evidence th at the foetus moves much earlier.

'Misprision' is obsolete in Coke's usage, where it means "a dereliction o f rightful d u ty " , or a "c o n te m p t" fo r w hat is valuable. Treason was once a Great Misprision. In our tim e , the legal sense has contracted, and the w ord denotes the 'concealm ent' o f a fe lo n y or treason.

Even when the words of a statute law remain unaltered for a century, the effect of the law is always in a flux. Later acts of Parliament can shade or amend the meanings of words entirely contrary to the text, so that the common law floods back towards the legislature’s sandcastles. A government policy can change the administration of a law, and so can more obscure ahd inter­ esting developments within the police force or Crown Law department. It so happened in Victoria that the statute law changed in all these ways, without the words being altered, and in such a tortuous and complex way, that a time would come when no reasonable man could say with cer­ tainty that he knew what the law meant in practice. * * * After some years of hassling with the draughtsman, Lord Darling suc­ ceeded in riding a hobbyhorse through the English Parliament. He had per­ ceived a loophole in the law protec­ ting nascent life — until an infant was separate from its mother, it was not protected by laws against, and after it had left the womb, and was passing through the vagina, it could not be “aborted” . Certain methods of dealing with difficult birth, such as craniotomy, destroyed the infant. There was no law pro­ tecting it during the birth process.

This protection was extended by the Infant Life (Preservation) A ct 1929.

A proviso was appended to the act: Provided that no person shall be found guilty o f an offence under this act unless it is proved that the act which caused the destruction o f the child was not done in good faith for the pmpose only o f preserving the life o f the mother.

During 1935, a committee of the British Medical Association com­ plained of the vagueness of the law on abortion. One committee member was Mr. Alec Bourne, a gynaecologist. * * * In 1937, a 13-year-old girl was invited by some troopers to come look at a horse with a green tail.

They gang-banged her, and she be­ came pregnant./The girl’s parents are said to have been so respectable, “they did not even know the address of an abortionist” . Four doctors, including the police surgeon, thought the gi,rl ought to be aborted, and Mr Bourne was contacted. In a letter replying, he said: I have done this before and have not the slightest hestitation in doing it again . . . I have said the next time I have such an opportunity, I will write to the Attorney-General and invite him to take action.

The defence was determined to clarify the meaning of the law, but it seems that when the trial started, they took a more cautious course than they had at first determined.

So they put propositions which had more merit as appeals to the hearts of the jury, than as lard tests of the wording of the act. The first propos­ ition was: had the girl carried her child to term, she would have be­ come deranged. The second was: the girl was so young, that pregnancy would have damaged her immature pelvis.

The first belongs to that species of proposition which cannot be proved. Medical opinion candidly agrees that the second proposition is not true. However, many eminent medical men were found to swear at Bourne’s trial that both of these considerations were very profound.

Perhaps the propositions were not tested very rigorously by the pros­ ecution. The objective results of the trial depended less upon the incisive­ ness of Bourne’s defence than upon the ingenuity of the judge, Mr Justice Macnaughton.

Macnaughton told the jury that the case swung on the meaning of the word “unlawfully” in S.58 of the ten 77-year-old Offences Against The Persons Act. To explain the meaning, he imported the proviso of the nineyear-old Preservation Act. He said, “ to preserve a woman’s mental health was, in effect, to preserve her life.”

Psychiatry used to prevent a change in the law.

The jury acquitted Bourne.

Macnaughton would later be in­ dicted not only by those who felt the result ran counter to the law of God, but by lawyers who ,thought he’d done a particularly sloppy piece of work.

Making Up A Law In 1938, Bourne’s case was con­ sidered in Victoria. The venue was an after-dinner conventicle of the Medico-Legal Society, which was addressed by Mr John Barry, a lapsed Catholic who later became a judge.

Barry’s remarks were printed in an edition of 300, bound, and distrib­ uted to appropriate people; they became the de facto law on abortion in Victoria until the start of the Fuss, when the police returned uni­ laterally to the strict interpretation of the statute’s words, in certain cases. (After the Fuss raged on for a while, the Government had the satisfaction of seeing one of their judges deliver Barry’s opinions in a court of law, which gave them greater brilliance in the eyes of the dimmer apparatchiks.)

Barry noted that the Infant Life (Preservation) A ct had not yet been imported in Victoria. He reviewed the law, and showed that the same result (Bourne’s acquittal) could have been achieved in other ways, and criticized Macnaughton’s charge to the jury. It was a fragile piece of reasoning, and considering the low place of that trial in the hierarchy of the courts, it could be simply set aside by a number of Courts of.

Appeal. Bourne’s Case, he said, was not finally binding on Victorian courts.

Barry then promised to construct a sturdier defence of abortion before his audience’s very eyes, which he did He used the principle of “justificat­ ion” , expressed by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen: An act which would otherwise be a crime may in some cases be excused if the person accused can show that it was done only in order to avoid consequences which could not otherwise be avoided, and which, if they had followed, would have inflicted upon him or upon others he was bound to protect, inevitable and irreparable evil, that no more was done than was reasonably neces­ sary for that purpose, and that the evil inflicted by it was not dis­ proportionate to the evil avoided.

Barry alluded to R. v. Dudley & Stevens, a case where two ship­ wrecked sailors were hanged for eating the cabin boy. This case seem­ ed to limit the application of “jus­ tification” , but Barry disposed of it, as, in Stephens’ words: “ A legal conclusion upon a questionable and

Reid: Catholic AttorneyGeneral, was B olte’s referee on abortion law reform. theological conclusion . . . rhetor­ ically expressed.”

The argument went, that a life could be taken that a life be saved.

As to which life was weightiest, that of the mother, or of child, Barry came down on mother’s side, and cited Stephen’s draft code: Nothing herein contained shall justify any person in any act or ommission by which the death of the woman is caused in order that any child of which she is preg­ nant shall be bom alive.

He noted that Macnaughton’s rul­ ing made it an offence for a doctor to refuse to abort, if such refusal resulted in damage to the mother.

Barry said he did not think a refusal to abort could amount to a criminal offence.

His prescription for doctors oper­ ating in Victoria amounted to this: They could abort on serious medical grounds; They could charge a fee for the service, and operate in private hospitals — this was “in no way fatal to the defence” . He put the most important point right on them: “Practically speaking, the best protection a medical practitioner can have when he comes to deal with this problem is the opinion of at least two colleagues, and the more respec­ table and eminent in the profession they are, the better.” .

In questions transcribed after the speech, a Dr Ostermeyer rose and argued that the law ought to be changed to say what it meant. He was concerned at the expense a prosecution might entail; even legal vindication would not offset the expense. Ostermeyer put it, that the law ought to be amended so it was not ambiguous.

Barry, a wiser man, replied, “ I lean towards a definition of the law so far as it is possible, but I feel that on a subject such as this the reaction of the average person to it is not intellectual but emotional,

and that in those circumstances, it is not a fit subject for debate in pop­ ular assemblies or in the Parliaments that we have, having regard to the extent to which, unfortunately, the quality of Parliamentary representatives has deteriorated.”______ ■

In 1970, I asked a Liberal MLC if he thought the scandals of the Fuss would affect the outcome of the State elections.

“Why should it?” he replied, “everybody already knows pol­ iticians are crooked.”

In 1949, the Victorian AttorneyGeneral, Trevor Oldham, brought down a consolidation and amend­ ment of the Crimes Act. One of the amendments was the importation of the English Infant Life (Preservation) A ct 1929, which the Liberal Govern­ ment wanted to adopt “without mat­ erial alteration” .

Oldham told the House: “ It will be noted that on the trial of any person for child destruction the pro­ secution must prove — and this is important in view of a number of cases in recent years — that the act was not done in good faith to preserve the life of the mother” .

A few members asked questions about the proviso, and one, Mutton, criticized the existing law, and police practices.

At a later date, Keon rose to ob­ ject to the proviso. Keon was a Catholic Labor man who would go with the DLP after the Labor split of 1954. He said the proviso might: “ lead to a greater freedom from apprehension of persons guilty of these ghoulish crimes than seems to be the case under the law as it now stands . . . we should not write into the law a principle which would encourage what is a flourishing trade in the commun­ ity, the destruction of the unborn child. It is unfortunately true that there are medical men in the com­ munity who are false to everything they have sworn faith to, and are prepared to betray every decent instanit of the human race by engaging in this trade . . . it is now difficult to prosecute suc­ cessfully the ghouls who pursue this unholy trade in the com­ munity. What will happen when a medical man participates in abor­ tions and is called by the defence as a witness to prove that the act was done to preserve a mother’s life?”

After a slanging match with Mutton, Keon asked Oldham if the proviso could be deleted. The house recessed for an hour, and Oldham returned with this opinion: “The position at common law now is that, if it is necessary in the opinion of a reputable medical man — a second opinion is ob­ tained wherever possible — to save the life of a mother, the act con­ templated in the proviso can be done legally. That would be the common law defence of a person charged with murder, which would lie in the circumstances to be covered by the new crime of child destruction. As that crime is now being placed upon a stat­ utory basis, it is necessary also to place the proviso upon a stat­ utory basis.”

Mutton and Keon argued across the benches. Keon said that judges should do as Parliament told them, and asked to speak privately with Oldham. He wanted to “obviate what is naturally a most distasteful discus­ sion which does not belong to the realms of public debate.”

Schilling objected to Keon’s ar­ guments, which he said were against the ideal of British justice. If the law were so framed, an accused would have to prove his innocence.

Fulton rose and spoke: “ Any legislation which will help to preserve our race will be the interests of Aus­ tralia.”

Dunstan, the deposed Premier, shouted that if the Government was taking out the death penalty for certain offences, it should weaken the law no further.

Oldham, with courtesy, skill and intelligence obviously rare in that room, met the sundry objections and got the members to pass the subdivision with its proviso intact.

However, he couldn’t make it stick.

The next evening, at the third reading, George O. Reid, one of the few Catholics in the Liberal Party, made a speech. The speech was more urbane than those delivered by his co­ religionist, Keon, and gave some his­ tory or the law. Reid said that the proviso had been controversial in committee of the Mother of Parlia­ ments, and that Lord Darling had not been satisfied with the act. He put the personal view: “that the onus should be placed on the defendant to prove innocence in a case of this kind” .

Reid later became Attorney-Gen­ eral, and during the Fuss, Sir Henry Bolte would refer all questions from the press about abortion law reform to Reid.

Keon weighed in. He told the house that 5500 criminal abortions were done in the State each year; that in 1940, there had been 50 deaths,, but only three arrests and one conviction. In 1945, he said, there had been 15 deaths, seven

November 18 — December 2 arrests, and no convictions. The proviso would weaken an already dangerously weak law.

Reid, had put the only jurisprud­ ential case on the proviso, though he had not said the proviso was crucial to Bourne’s case. Keon had put the only sociological case. No one cavilled, and Oldham’s capacity for redargution was exhausted. He had a mammoth bill to pass, and the proviso was only a minor point; the hot issues were the reductions in the amount of hanging and whip­ ping prescribed in the Crimes Act. He cooled it: “ A conference will be held at an early date in which all interested may take part, with the view of framing an effective amendment which can be moved in the Coun­ cil.”

In an, excess of delight, Keon shouted “half-baked Commo” at Mutton, and Mutton shouted back. It took several seconds to restore som­ nolence.

We will never know what hap­ pened at that private conference, but the law changed. The bill was passed on to the Legislative Council, and in a debate which reads as farce, the proviso was struck, and the words “unlawfully” inserted in several places of the subdivision.

The effect of this upon the weight of Bourne’s case in Victoria was never explicitly discussed. We now know no one knew what the ef­ fect would be . . .

The Abort Industry Degenerates Peter Drucker says we live in an age of discontinuity. Industries es­ tablished during the Victorian era have matured, and verge on senility.

Although they assimilate new tech­ nology, their basic means of produc­ tion is inefficient and their manage­ ment is trad-bound. New technology creates products that eat into trad markets, and the market itself changes. Typically, the old industry refuses to change with the times, and calls out for protection.

The Melbourne abortion industry matured during WWII. Technologic advances, in antibiotics, and especial­ ly in anaesthetics, made the service safer and less unpleasant for con­ sumers. Demand for the service, al­ ways subject to seasonal fluctuation, remained strong. PR-wise, we see that the industry was keeping out of the newspapers, and in the few in­ stances where it attracted unfavour­ able attention, key personnel weren’t involved, and the courts were lenient.

Commonwealth statisticians kindly worked up some figures for us, and from 1945 to 1958, we believe 10 Victorians were convicted of abort offences; 9 of them were women, and most of these were older wo­ men; the average sentence was less than a year’s gad, and the sentences tended to decrease over the period; some convicted persons got bonds.

The industry’s regulationship with its regulatory agency was mature. The regulatory agency’s trad function is to assure the public that the public interest is being guarded, and to guard the interests of the industry it re­ gulates. In genteel Melbourne, the oldest permanent protection racket is the police force. They regulated the abortion industry by busting seedy incompetants or pushy arrivists, so neatly upholding the myth of the law, protecting the consumer, and restricting competition for their

The Digger view, she was generally sent to a shrink.

We spoke to the Honorary psy­ chiatrist at one Melbourne hospital who considered himself pro abortion.

We are grateful for this doctor’s co­ operation, because generally, psy­ chiatrists who took an interest in the Fuss were the most suspicious element we approached. Compared to the psychiatrists, the police and the Knights of the Southern Cross were positive Bedouins of hospitality.

In his opinion, the patient should be exposed to no greater risk in carrying a pregnancy than in any other medical procedure, although he found himself in an ethical bind, because the evidence about postpuerperal psychosis is terribly con­ tradictory. This difficulty dovetails with his other ethical bind; he is not acting as a therapist, but as a judge.

The psychiatrist’s opinion goes to two senior Honorary obstetricians, who have a veto power over any recommendation to abort. A medical magazine ran a survey in Australia and produced an interesting finding.

Psychiatrists and paediatricians are the two specialist categories who most commend abortion; obstetricians, who do the work, are the most emotion­ ally opposed to the procedure.

The psychiatrist thinks his obstet­ rical colleagues often misunderstand that social pressures are not as im­ portant as the patients reaction to them. He has some insights into his colleagues’ psychology. The older ones have been taught at medical school that a condition severe enough to warrant abortion warrants steril­ ization — the talion principle. We said we had heard of cases of this happening, but he denied that it happened in his hospital. He did feel that older surgeons had a punitive at­ titude towards pregnant single girls — “if they can have a roll with their boy friend, why can’t they have the baby?”

In the White game, the player may be billed according to a means test.

Grey abortion is covert. Usually performed in private surgeries or private hospitals, but surgeons whose status ranged from obscure to notor­ ious, the rules of the game accom­ modated most women who had a bit of nous and money, and the case load numbered in the thousands or tens of thousands, most years. The house rules depended on the indiv­ idual practice, where the level of avarice had to be adjusted by the perception of risk. So the screening procedures varied markedly.

Some doctors employed “inter­ rogators” to check out patients before agreeing to scrape; others did their own interviewing. Most wanted to see the putative father, and/or the woman’s parents. Few grey doctors operated on women who were definite medical risks. Some doctors operated in groups, so that they could claim that two opinions were sought; during the Fuss grey aborters began referring patients to psychiatrists for opinions.

The grey doctor’s greatest asset was his consumer’s determination to score his service. Repeat business was important; not all the grey men bothered dispensing contraceptive advice. Some aborters began working as locums or junior partners in es­ tablished practices; others bought retiring doctors’ goodwill and ad­ dresses. Druggists and GPs referred to some practices. Word-of-mouth was a source of business, and of

“ .. the only contraceptive for unmarried young Christian people is'no'.” clients in the industry.

The industry used several medical techniques, including hysterotomy and amniotic replacement, but the basic service was dilatation and cur­ ettage, “the scrape” , also called D&C, However, the technical med­ ical details were of less functional importance than the several social modes through which thev service was supplied. We shall call these modes the White, the Grey, and the Black, so the reader will automatically know how to feel about them.

White aborting was pukka. Per­ formed in public hospitals by Hon­ orary doctors, the rules of the game excluded most women, and the case load numbered in the hundreds or less, most years. Honoraries have performed for free, from a sense of noblesse oblige, but they have not been immune from the wave of greed that has washed the medical profession in recent years, and are now agitating for some money.

The rules of White abortion were adapted to the rationale of Bourne’s Case, and the player had to prove that continuing her pregnancy would, within thd meaning of the rules, make her a mental or physical wreck. Since the art of medicine’s advances have eroded each year the purely physio­ logical indications for abortion, her best bet was a psychiatric indication.

The player could enter the White system from the street, or by referral from her GP, or, if she was a smart gameslady, she swung a referral from an Honorary. After the initial inter­

danger.

Black abortion was non-U. Per­ formed in an imaginative range of scenes, including bathrooms and kit­ chens, by pregnant women upon themselves, or by “ unqualfiied people” , there were no rules except the laws of probability. Some amat­ eurs worked without thought vof gain; some “backyarders” charged more than the most common “ grey” fee. The “backyarder” was the bogie man of the Fuss, although a few of the black operators had a better record as surgeons than the worst of the grey doctors, for surgery is more cerebellar than cerebral.

The White aborter believed they were without sin, let alone crime, most of the grey aborters were slight­ ly wiggy from the heat, but they usually felt they were on the margin of legality — as PJ said: “ You can count on a jury for a lot of support.”

The black operators usually Ijad to settle for a self-righteous sense of persecution, and the money. Though the grey and the black were more concerned with direct profit from scraping, there were subtle payoffs they shared with the brahmin Whites, and it is a mistake to view the in­ dustry as rigidly stratified. Every aborter was concerned about social danger, and one reason for the ve­ hemence of the Fuss, which began with raids on the grey sector, was the insecurity of the White doctors.

The White, Grey and Black all had to think of their political pos­ ition, and the regulatory agency.

There were less stylized concerns, informal link-ups. White referred to grey, and consulted with them, from respect for superior experience, in difficult cases. Grey doctors referred to black operators under some cir­ cumstances — including respect for superior experience. And the romance was shared: — all the roles, the sur­ geons, police, pregnant ladies, their lovers and relatives, priests, politicians, bag carriers and fixers, toads and greasers, grassers, hitmen, academics and media people, nurses and clean­ ers and corner chemists, the GPs and the storemen of gossip, everyone under their own wig had an exper­ ience enriched by connection with the copper cortext of industrial paranoia and guilt machines, sparks of large imminent threats, tang of smells, gris gris of uncertainty and ambiguity, sweets of intrigue, fast money, power and sundry frizzes . . . what’s your kink?

A Living Legend Peggy Berman b. 17 Mar 1923 Broadmeadows Catholic hospital, bastard babe of girl with bad lungs; farmed out to her Mick grand-uncle and -aunt, the Costellos, Pa Costello told her something: “I can remember this clear as a bell,” says Peggy, “he gave me three pieces of advice. Never be late for work. Always join the union. And if you fall off a tram, lie on your back — you get a million quid, ‘cause they can’t prove you haven’t got a crook back . . .” .

Peggy quit school at 14, and worked — she was always a good employee. But Ma Costello’s strict­ ness abour racing, cards, gambling, drink, and books by Russian authors, bothered her. A little friction. She got pregnant, she says, and “ I really didn’t believe it, because I really hadn’t had intercourse as, such, uhm, people talk about this, uhm, I’ve seen it so many times with patients, with­ out, uhm, full penetration, and this had occurred to me.” Madonna got married when the pills didn’t work, and her daughter Helen, was bom, ill, blind, in pain. Her husband joined the Army and went to be a hero in WWII. Twenty to eight train, up the lift in the Royal Children’s Hospital, just sit there to watch angelic Helen, blond translucent child with cataract eye writhing for . . . three-and-a-half years to die.

Her husband away, she made friends, worked in the rope factory, the car plant, the glass makers, and read and tried to work it out. She read The Golden Bough, Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, the Irish in­ surgent, Power. What was it all about?

Her hero came back, got another child on her. The marriage sagged and slagged and she sent her son Peter off to school, and got a job in the University. She cut sandwiches, and met interesting people. She be­ came good friends with Norval Mor­ ris, the great criminologist, and met a lot of people on the Jimmy Watson’s scene. She got her first nice abor­ tion (she’d had two backyard jobs before) from Dr Lew Phillips, in Bourke St., City, above the Bank of New South Wales . . . and came skipping down the street nearly sing­ ing because she’d gotten 2 Pound 5 Shillings change from the 45 Guineas. Her luck changed. Phillips gave her a job, as receptionist«.

Three weeks after hiring Peggy, Phillips sold his practice to Dr Arnold A. Finks. Following the sale, a de­ tective (Peggy swears) rang her, and rendezvous’d with her, and she be­ came the baglady for the practice’s 50 Pound monthly stipend for the regulators. That was in 1954.

In the words of W. Kaye, QC, who sat as Board of Inquiry in 1970: “She was a dominant figure in cor­ rupt practices with police officers extending over fourteen years.”

Bagladies come and go, but Peggy’s career was especially interesting, be­ cause she rode the spiral into in­ dustrial senility, and some even thought the metaphor for the disease was Peggy’s cancer. * * * In 1957, Finks moved shop from Bourke St. to Hoddle St., East Mel­ bourne.

By then, Peggy was indispensable —she was receptioniste, baglady, chief interrogator of patients and supervisor of staff, with the right to hire and fire. Peggy’s lovely; we thrilled when she walked from the courtroom that day, and winked, and said to us, “Sarah Bernhardt is not dead.” She had a sense of humour about the way she acted, but she always played hard, and the force of her will could make it hard to share a scene with her.

Paula Green, a tall well-chiselled lady who has worked both at Hoddle St., and at the rooms of Peggy’s bete-noir, Dr John Heath, said Peggy got on her back. She remarked the contrasting atmospheres of Peggy’s shop, where there was continual tension, doorslamming, whispering and secrecy, and of Heath’s place in Collins St., where the staff were instructed to behave gently and with dignity, and not run around in an. harrassed fashion. There were a lot of people working at Heath’s. Heath did most of the interviewing, and some of the internal exams, but left the scraping to younger doctors.

We know that Peggy caused dis­ sent outside her practice, too, for as early as 1955, she was the topic of

an argument between Gracie Fields, Melbourne’s oldest and best-respec­ ted backyard aborter, and Grade’s chauffeur, Belle Lewis.

Perhaps Peggy hyped the industrial tension for the same reason that the Military-Industrial Complex hypes international paranoia; it’s good for business, and fear is power fuel. The industry was normally quarrelsome.

The law does not protect illegal contracts, so aborters can’t take their disagreements to court. In .1957, the partnership between Bretherton the Younger and Jimmy Troup was sundered in acrimony, and Dr Troup came over to Hoddle St. Jimmy’s work drew a complaint, which cost 600 Pounds to square off.

Peggy carried 300 Pounds through her contracts, and Jimmy sent another 300 Pounds through Bretherton the Younger’s bagman, black operator Brookes.

Jimmy became partners with Finks in 1960. By then, Peggy was set. Jimmy had loaned her money to buy a house behind the surgery in George St:, and she was meeting more police, like Gentleman Jack Mathews, and Jack Ford. She had begun to square off complaints for a number of small-time practices. She was making herself indispensable not only to the well-being of Finks and Troup, but to the standard of living enjoyed by the Masonic faction of the CIB. Who then could read the signs that the industry was sliding into a superb fuck-up? * * * 1961 was an election year. In case you’ve missed the last 18 years of Australian politics, the DLP is a Catholic party formed after the Labor Schism of 1954-5, and its bastion is Victoria. Though not a single DLP man sits in state parliament these days, the party’s preferences deter­ mine who governs Victoria. In 1961, the Liberals received 39 Assembly seats. Labor got 17 seats. Although the Liberals polled only 37% of the first preference votes, in 26 seats DLP preferences were sufficient to tip the Liberal candidate into office.

The Liberals were in trouble.

The Labor candidate for the state seat of Essendon was Dr Leslie Fran­ cis Edmunds. A week before the election, the police turned him over for aborting. Essendon went to the Liberals.

Dr Edmunds spirited self-justif­ ications during his committal hearing make a Sweet read, e.g.:

“Mothers abort their daughters, sisters abort one another, neigh­ bours will help one another. I had one street where they handed the Same piece of wood over the fence for 26 houses, only two got a temperature of 105° and had to go to the Women’s Hospital, the rest aborted satisfactorily . . . the law is regarded as archaic and obsolete except in so far as it applies to “charlatans” . . . I never failed to give 10 Pounds to the lady of the house [where he did sig scrapes] because she had a considerable family and rearing them well [sic], as for the other 30 Pound — well, it went back to them or to charity or the News Boys’ or the State School. I never thought it would be discovered, you know, even Gladstone tried to reclaim prostitutes and got Hell for it. I’ve never made any claim for charitable bequests and if the income taxation like to trace that one out with me we will find they owe me money . . &c.

Edmunds first trial was aborted, after jury-tampering. (His solicitors were the McMennemins, one of whom was the former deputy head of the CIB.) In the second trial, the judge ordered that Edmunds be acquitted, after police evidence was heard, but the jury convicted his nurse. She was given a bond. Edmunds was charged again several years later, but died during an adjournment of proceed­ ings. He was 65.

Page 9 We rang Sgt. Percey Cooke, the police prosecutor of the case, and asked if he would background us on the conduct of the proceedings. He told us he preferred to “let sleeping dogs lie.”

Also in 1961: a research assistant in criminology announced to the newspapers that he was trying to get some facts about abortion. We haven’t gained access to Reg Worthy’s research, but Beatrice Faust told us that it was “thorough and narrow­ minded” . We rang Worthy during the Fuss. He had achieved the emin­ ence of Director of Aboriginal Affairs for Victoria, and he said he wouldn’t be interviewed. He did add: “I think my efforts in starting to look into this have proved well worthwhile in the light of current events.” * * * Edmunds demonstrated the polit­ ical utility of busting aborters.

Worthy was the omen of Johnston’s statements, and Faust’s epic trek through the purlieus of the industry . . . resolutions at Liberal Party Conferences? Teach-ins at uni? All that to come . . . but first: Tech­ nology struck, in the shape of an anovulant pill. This striking devel­ opment accompanied subtler but profound changes in the industry’s traditional markets.

Economic Distress In The Womb Zone In the early 1960s, about half a million Australian women started taking the Pill. The side-effects were stunning. Due to an ambiguous clause in Victoria’s obscenity statute 3, the mass-media have been reticent about contraception, but the editors of the women’s mags decided to be brave about the Pill. When they weren’t busted, the whole climate of public discussion about sex began to thaw.

The aborters were concerned about the other side-effects. When Truth did a pill story, Whitton discovered that the best library of overseas liter­ ature on the physiological contra­ indications and side-effects of anovulants was in the private library of an aborter. Though the aborters of the grey sector developed a sideline in Graf rings, there’s no doubt the Pill hurt. Peggy felt it, and she blames the Pill for making everybody in the industry greedy and hungry.

Nobody in the industry under­ stood that a change in the Australian breeding pattern was occurring.

Transitionally, the effect was a slight increase in the birth rate. The trend was for women to marry much younger, to men only slightly older.

(The CEDA figures show that the number of women who gave birth within six months of marriage was higher than during WWII.) The emer­ ging pattern was for this generation to complete their child-bearing stint by an age when their grandmothers were just beginning to bear children, and then go onto a reliable contra­ ceptive program.

Although the reduction in case load affected most grey doctors, some suffered relatively more. The latter 3. The classic English case on obscenity is R. v. H icklin (1 8 6 8 ); obscenity is there defined as a tendency to "deprave and co rru p t" those whose minds are sus­ ceptible and into whose hands th e pub­ lication might fall. Th e notion th a t the to pic o f birth control was per se obscene was dismissed in England by Cabinet fia t in 1922.

However, V ictoria's laws on obscenity are more stringent, fo r statute law and local cases have been grafted onto Hicklin's judgement. In V icto ria, the author's motives and literary m erit are irrelevant, and the " m in d " assumed in the test is defined as the most susceptible passible m ind. E xpert opinion is no t admissible on these points. " I t is fo r the court to decide questions relating to the standards o f the co m m u n ity."

S tatute bans any article th a t "u nd uly emphasizes matters o f sex, crimes o f violence, gross cruelty or h o rro r." In ad dition, arr ambiguous statute prohibits references to V D , "sexual intercourse or sexual abuse", pregnancy or any gynaecol­ o g y m atter — though this clause may apply only to advertisements . . .

factor probably was the most dis­ ruptive.

Inside the industry, the quantitat­ ive change was obvious — our in­ formation is pretty unreliable, but sources complained of a 25% to 50% loss of business. They noticed other vexing developments: consum­ ers began shopping around for a good price, and spoke more freely about the service.

The qualitative change in the mar­ ket was not well understood, but the relative deprivation of some practices was probably related to the different referral and selection procedures.

One grey doctor dealt with many of the city’s “beautiful people” ; another had a large number of Tasmanian referrals. A city practice with high prices handled difficult medical problems, and rich and powerful clients. Some doctors seemed to have had a much higher percentage of Catholic patients.

A practice with a large clientele of married protestant repeat custom­ ers probably suffered more than one that was well patronized by single university undergraduates, given the straight doctors’ reluctance to pres­ cribe the Pill for single women during the early 1960s.

It is typical of Australian in­ dustries to seek governmental inter­ vention in times of crisis. We’ve noted a few incidents to show how the industry responded to crisis.

Finks left Hoddle St., claiming he had a bad heart. Peggy took over, with Jimmy as the junior, working partner. Finks showed up for work in Collins St.’s calmer ambience.

Though Peggy denies it, it looks like she was bugging her friends in the Homicide Squad. The Homicide Squad investigates not only murder, but infanticide, abortion &c. In 1963, they took a couple of marginal doctors to task in the coroner’s court, and busted several backyarders. They later swore that Peggy had supplied the information, and pestered them about matters.

The personality and economic con­ flict between Peggy and Heath was expressed in this way, too. The two practices had different connections in the CIB — Heath was friends with Micks. Peggy’s mates went down to Collins St. and harrassed the staff there on many occasions, and Heath’s mates retaliated. It must have made for a strain in the Russell St. canteen.

A nurse at Hoddle St., Joyce Mann, recalls those stirring times.

Peggy would get a tingle, clear the surgery, throw the medical records in a car boot, mid command Sister Mann to drive around until the coast was clear again.

Perhaps if left to themselves, the executives of the industry, and the more1sober men in the regulatory agency, might have sorted things out.

But people who hadn’t a clue about the industry’s problems began shoot­ ing off their mouths. * * * Dr Arthur Fox, Catholic bishop, said: “Premarital sex is a mortal sin which kills the soul, thus separating it from God.” Reverend Cant said: “The only contraceptive for unmar­ ried Christian young people is ‘no’.”

Sir Henry Boite said: “ When I was a boy in the country, we always used to say the heifer is more afraid of the calf than the bull . .

The Premier shared a common delus­ ion, to wit, that fear of pregnancy deters young women from fucking.

People gripped by this delusion viewed the Pill, and the increased sexual candor of the 1960s, with alarm. They thought if more people were talking about it, more people might be tempted to do it, and what’s more, they might be getting away with it.

Deeply ingrained world-views are not altered by the facts, but the facts are, that parental and religious stric­ tures, and the fear of VD and preg­ nancy, are very weak deterrents to non-marital fucking. We can prove that most young Victorian women were fucking during the 1960s, and that contraception had little to do with it.

Prof. Carl Wood’s survey showed that 71% of Victoria’s lower-class mothers did some “pre-marital” coitus — usually with the men they later married — but only 5% used any reliable contraception.

However, the phantasy was that sex was epidemic, though it was more likely chronically endemic.

The strength of the phantasy upon the media and the phantasizers at the top of Spring St. may have ex­ plained the media’s increasing interest in the abortion industry — an interest that grew in such a way that it seem­ ed to many people that business was booming! Melbourne’s more reac­ tionary priests preached that women who used contraception had made a moral choice that made it likely they would resort to abortion . . . * * * Beatrice Faust knew more about abortion than Sir Henry Boite ever could. Her bad lungs meant that no one would risk using a general anaes­ thetic on her, so her direct exper­ ience of the industry was vivid.

In 1963, Faust wrote a no-bullshit article about abortion for the Mel­ bourne University Magazine. Though she didn’t speak to Peggy, she used one of her lines — “the only com­ munity service which hasn’t increased in price for 15 years.”

Elsewhere on campus, Senior lec-

turer in Criminology, Stan Johnston, said the state would be better off without the law against abortion. He was quoted in the press: “A law which is enforced half­ heartedly, without that justific­ ation which would remove any ap­ pearance of caprice in enforce­ ment, lends itself to abuse for blackmail and narrow political purposes . . .

“The first duty of the police is to keep the community running smoothly as a going concern.

“It is not to apply the machin­ ery of the law rudely and rigor­ ously in such a way that the machinery itself cracks under the strain.”

Academia is not so removed from the “real world” , and don’t we all know, since Heisenberg, that we can’t investigate a phenomena without becoming it? * * * The reporters went around Selwyn Porter, Chief Commissioner of Police, and asked him about what Stan Johnston, strange bhuddist boffin, was putting down . . . Porter reckoned that there were opposing “pressures” upon his cops. The notion that police ought to uphold the law as writ conflicted at times with the view that police should take a common sense course of action. He reckoned: “In a force of 5000 men, there could be 2000 views of what is common sense.” * * * In 1963, Sgt. Barritt of Mildura, up on the Murray, rang down to Russell St. CIB. He had found out that a local girl, Violet Martha Phil­ lips, was going to the big city for a scrape. Sgt. Barritt’s common sense view of things was that the Homicide Squad ought to take his information and go make an arrest. By a complic­ ated process, which involved the dis­ appearance of 1,400 Pounds from Dr Hamilton Catchlove’s bank account, the Homicide Squad avoided arres­ ting anybody. Barritt came to town, and got into a shouting match with Jack Mathews in the CIB head’s of­ fice. Supt. Clugsten calmed things down, and Barritt went back to Mildura, grumbling.

A few months later, in 1964, the first abort boomlet blew in the press.

It started when the Victoria police surgeon, Dr John Birrell, had the common sense to say he believed that 90.000 criminal abortions were per­ formed each year in Australia. Prof.

Henry Mayer published a similar es­ timate a few years prior to Birrell’s statement; but, Birrell was a cop, and he said it on TV, and that made 90.000 a story, Walter. He said it on Norm Banks’ TV talk show.

90.000 Walter! Nearly every paper in the country felt compelled to beat up a story from this bland assertion.

Mind boggles at the shit Walter put down. 90,000 was an “expert” figure, reiterated until it acquired the patina of hard fact. There was little additional fact — but plenty of mis­ information. Most of the articles Walter wrote took a reactionary line — “there is no need for an illegal operation” — and inventing reasons for the line, e.g., “unwanted babies were eagerly snapped up by couples seeking to adopt children” , and “ the prejudice against unmarried mothers is dying” . Walter pedalled the impres­ sion that abortion was for single girls who wanted to hide the con­ sequences of their sin — but beyond that ignorance, was ignorance of things that a little legwork would have revealed, such as, that Victoria has about the worst record of child fostering and adoption in the world, and, that prejudice against single mothers was (and is) pickled deep in the social services legislation.

Compounding the confusion, Wal­ ter and his brother reporters stood up their pieces by ringing around and getting short snappy quotes from “experts” . Especially moral experts.

The Salvation Army said it was im­ moral, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral said: “It’s murder” . A medical super­ intendent thought the answer was a rehabilitation program for unmarried mothers. Truth ran a pic of a bawling baby, with the caption, unwanted, but not unloved.

Faust was finishing her thesis on the novelist, H.H. Richardson. She wrote an editor a letter during the flurry, about the crap Walter was purveying. Her literary studies gave her a background that made abortion seem interesting in a special way — as a mythic thing. The study of 19th Century lit had given her an ear for anachronism, and it seemed “every­ thing said about abortion was gener­ ations out of date.” * * * Dear Phil, This brings us from the fall o f the Roman Kings to 1964. A fter 1964, things began to fall apart — business was bad, the police went mad, and the Fuss began. Letters to the editor o f Age, influential aborters busted, &c. Police found to be crooked in 1971. Law remains un­ changed, except Menhennitt ruling gave some formal legitimacy to John Barry's afterdinner speech. 92 lbs. o f notes on this phase, cannot redact it in allotted time and space. Promise nothing for next issue.

Love, Bruce.

Page 10

The Digger

November 18 — December 2

Women's own cinema;

Hcan’t cope, I just keep crying...’

by Ponch Hawkes

Photo: Kaye M artin

ment over one thing, just of getting to know one another. Sometimes we’d Take control of your mind, take feel resentment that our idea wasn’t control of your body, take control accepted so we kept talking and talk­ of your IMAGE. Movies don’t have ing about everything. In the end it to be made by men, women don’t was hard to know where the ideas have to be caricatured as whores, came from.” precious flowers, sex goddesses or Marriage as an institution is under bitches. seige, but the fact is that most wo­ This week I went to see A Womans men are still in it. A Womans Day Day, a 12 minute long, $270 budget is a very straight very direct movie, flick made by a Sydney women’s depressing in its chronicle of a house­ collective. A film made without hier­ wife coping with the concrete fact archies, without specializations, with­ of her survival, it cites the situation out a director as superstar. A first and leaves the course of action up film scripted, directed, shot arid to you. What has happened when edited collectively by Kaye Martin, the film has been screened is that Margot Knox, Robynne Murphy and discussion has moved immediately Virginia Coventry who despaired from the film, to the issues it pre­ and laughed a lot collectively too. sents. A woman turned to me at Sitting sipping Reschs 'Dinner Ale the end of the film and said, “ I in a tiny backyard on rusting beer- think I’ll go home and burn my garden wrought-iron chairs I talked stroller” . A trendy guy in a brown to Margot and Kaye about what they suit started to say, “Mainly, I thought got out of making the film. it was overstated . . .” His wife “It was so terrific, we learnt we interrupted (erupted?) “Who worked could use technical equipment, we as a secretary while you went through could project by ourselves. Most of uni?” us had never touched a camera before, The projectionist, a small burly and we did it all ourselves. We were man said, “ It was very true to life, pressed for time and money . . . I know what they go through.” there was no room for mistakes. I wondered if he really did. I thought The whole process of coming to agree­ about the Valium Syndrome, how at

Robynne Murphy — on location for “A Womans Day” .

A gentle giant overlooked The Road to Ruin — John and Beverley Martyn — Festival SIL 934104 by Cynthia Dyer-Bennet One of the loveliest records to come out of England in recent years has been sadly overlooked by the buying public. With a musical line­ up of some of London’s cream studio musicians, including Paul Harris (now with Stills/Manassas) on piano and co-producing with John Martyn, I’ve been playing this record for al­ most two years and it still sounds fresh.

It opens with “ Primrose Hill” , a melody inspired by sunsets. Ray Warleigh plays some very tasty sax­ ophone, simple but dignified. “ Parcels” is a gentle love song sung by John.

Take your sadness make it mine You felt my madness in your mind Well you know we have gifts to exchange Turn around, I'll show you mine.

The space between us growing small | In time, you know, we'll lose it all . 1 .

Paul Harris plays such a lilting piano it almost makes me weep. “ Auntie Aviator” , sung by Bev­ erley, tells of an intense love affair. “ New Day” has Lyn Dobson on an incredibly lyrical flute, weaving her notes over, under, around, and through John’s acoustic guitar and Danny (Pentangle) Thompson’s

double bass.

Not what you say and not what you hear N ot who you love and not who you fear What you feel is real Savk your days and save your time You save yours and I'll save mine Drink your water, Drink your wine You drink yours and I'll drink mine . . .

What you feel is real .

Side two opens with “ Give Us a Ring” , with John and Beverley sing­ ing to a smuggler friend.

Give us a ring when you get there Try to bring me something back With the customs man Make sure you don't get caught With the things that you've bought . . .

On “ Sorry to be So Long” , a raunchy rocker, Dudu Pukwana does the most impossible things with his sax. “ Tree Green” opens with John gently gliding over his acoustic guitar.

I been thinkin ’ 'Bout the wine we're drinkin' 'Bout the line we're sinkin',. . .

Good year comin, cornin' runnin' Good year cornin' soon.

A n ' I been takin' all the lobe you makin ' Just to keep from shakin' Just don't care if it just don't come 'Cause I know my time's for free Just don't care if I just don't come ‘Cause I know the call's for me.

Young as a fool and green as a tree happy as a man can naturally be Livin' in the middle o f a mystery with you And it's no use grieving

some stage most women I know have gone along to their local G.P. and said in exactly the same words as Megan the housewife of A Womans Day, " I can’t cope, I just keep crying all the time” , and how you feel more fucked over when the downers put you even further out of it.

It was easy for Megan to act out that scenario, because it’s one she’s been through before, and on the sound-over, her husband just repeats what he’d said when it happened, “ It can’t go on like this, night after night, something’s wrong, you’re sick because you can’t cope, you have to do something, the doctor’s the only one who can help you” .

The Tired-Mother Syndrome, the 16-hour day, 7 days a week in an isolated house with no-one to talk to but the children, and the narrow horizon of the house, shopping centre and T.V. set. A doctor played the role of local G.P. in the film and Virginia laughed, “I think he thought we were a bit simple, he talked a lot about how you get silly women coming in for that sort of help.”

A beautiful image from the film is Megan riding the escalator in Grace Bros, supermarket, one kid by the hand and the stroller and second kid in the other, through a huge arch­ way of P.M.U. cardboard soup cans.

The collective had flashed on the display the week before of Mothers Choice Flour, when they arrived it was gone, but P.M.U. seemed just as good. Making the film they spent about eight hours under the neon in Grace Bros, one day. “We were very conscious we were filming, but really never realized what happens there, actually the same things that went into the film. We were trying so hard to make the filming good, but the at­ mosphere was so depressing and there were so many nappy changes . . .”

Megan helped make script changes, getting things right, the little things that drive women crazy. I never knew prams were so complex, trying to go upstairs, carrying one child up, then going back to pick up the other and the stroller, where you put the groc­ eries so it doesn’t overbalance, how you fold the damn thing up.

The film’s final statement is some shots of Megan arriving home to begin the round of endless repetitive tasks that homes and families require.

Sitting on the floor unpacking the groceries and just freaking out with despair. They leave it there.

A Woman'js Day poses a multitude of questions — hopefully fhey’ll be taken up by other female film­ makers.

It was great to go see a film that didn’t have the woman portrayed only in relationship to her physical appearance and mating relationships.

Movies are a problem. If you decided to boycott flicks that showed women in fucked-up ways (assuming you could somehow discover this before you forked out for the ticket) you’d never see any. films. One answer could be in the words of a famous freak broadcaster in San Francisco, “If you don’t like the news go out and make some of your own.”

'Bout the things you're leaving ‘Bout the lines deceiving . . .

Just don't matter at all. “ Let it Happen” reminds us that we can’t fight love, growing old, and other inevitabilities. “ Road to Ruin” , the title track, starts out softly on acoustic guitar.

Sun's red and the sk y ’s blue, and I went rowing on the road to ruin , How do you make a day like that?

How do you make it real?

Geese were makin' an evening sound and I went raving down the crazy paving How do you make a day like that?

How do you make it real?

Every day's just a joy to hold You was new and bad times was old flow do you make a game like that?

How do you make it real?

At which point the music comes to a rest, only the harmonics on the guitar reverberate through the studio. Suddenly the piano comes rockin’ in, the drums, notably Rocky Dzidzornu on congas, start thrashing a syncopated beat, and Dudu and John trade lead on alternate bars for an amazing finale that makes me want to jump up and cry for an encore.

The lyrics and melodies are so tightly woven together I wish I could put the music down on paper as well as the words of this amazing record.

In short, this album is a masterpiece.

There isn’t a bad track on it. Buy it. “ At the risk of being quoted (pause), after close scrutiny and due consideration (emphasis) we think we can safely say quite categorically (emphasis) that this music has nothi ng to do with dying or anything like that. (Lots of love — John and Bev.)”

BonzerBob, Ace of the Dead freewheeling escape from a strungout relationship^ This - song IS the highway . . .

It's bringing me down I'm running around, blind in the light o f the interstate cars passing me by the buses and signs bunching like stones from a sling­ sh o t on mars.

B ut I'm here by the road bound to the load that I picked up in ten thousand cafes and bars.

The blackthroated wind howls on his head, blowing up clonclusions like now what's to be found in racing around, you carry your pain wherever you go . . . bringing him to that weary mo­ ment when he decides to pack it in because ‘you ain’t gonna learn what you don’t wanna know.’ He flashes that his woman has done better by him than he’s done by her and turns around heading home.

The third cut on the album, “Walk in the Sunshine” , is stoned philos­ ophy. Ace is telling us to slow down, take a good look at ourselves and “be all these things you’re able to be.”

It’s easy to take this kind of advice.

Listen to his way of fathoming time

ACE Robert ‘Ace” Weir of the Grateful Dead

by Pamela Cocabola Brown Robert “ Ace Weir is going to treat your heart and soul to a cele­ bration of very special music, and he’s brought the family with him.

His solo album is a neat collection of eight songs he has co-written with Barlow and Robert Hunter, who wrote the poetry of Workingman's.

Dead. The family behind daddy Ace’s acoustic and electric guitars contains Billy Kruetzmann’s drums, Phil Lesh’s sexy bass, Keith Godchaux tripping away on his beautiful “pianner” , Keith’s old lady, Donna, making magic “chick vocals” and Captain Trips Garcia, master of the pedal steel. The record was mixed

by Jerry Garcia and produced by all the musos involved.

Are you ready for it . . . racy hoofbeat drumming, a wild wild whoop, a crazy piano roll and you’re » speeding into an ultrazany rockalong I number with horses riding up out of ™ the rain and a silverbuckled stranger appears at the door. They get into some very leapy rapping . . . camp up from behind me sitting on a fence, you'd get what you want if y o u y had any sense, you know the one thing we need is a left-hand monkey-wrench, so he comes in with his eyes on the floor said you ain't got a hinge you can't close the door. as I stood up I felt six foot ten I said you can't close the door when the wall's caved in.

They drink a little wine, rave a little more and the song circle ends where it begins in the first verse. It’s called the “ Greatest Story Ever Told!” “ Blackthroated Wind” is a hitch­ hiker’s blues with powerful images describing the lonesome liberty of a

You've got to deepsix your wristmtch, you've got to try and understand the time it seems to capture is Just the movement o f its hands. “ Playing in the Band” is simply a musician rejoicing his music. The guitars wind glass threalds around the intricate piano . . . this family is playing somewhere in space and you are being lifted right off the planet into acid timelessness. Stoned out on sound. “ Some folks live in treetops just looking for their kites” While Ace goes on ‘playing in the band.’

THE ALL-TIME GREATS Last issue we invited readers to indulge in an essentially useless exercise, namely to name the ten albums from the annals of rock (or anything musical) that the reader might fantasise as the All Time Greats.

We also suggested an All Time Top 10 singles, for those in the ranks of radio listeners. (“ Leader Of The Pack” was oft-mentioned around the office.)

The response is as yet not en­ couraging, only this entry seems to bear the marks of a considered and definitive judgment. It comes from C. Dawson, address unknown; ALL-TIME GREAT ALBUMS 1. Just Another Band From L .A J The Mothers 2. Uncle Meat/The Mothers 3. School's Out/Alice Cooper 4. Hot Rcfs/Frank Zappa 5. Electric Mud/Muddy Waters

6. Killer/Alice Cooper 7. Sun, Moon and Herbs/Dr John 8. Sex, Dope and Rock V Roll: Teenage Heaven/Daddy Cool 9. E,L&P/Emerson, Lake and Palmer 10 Were Only In It For The Money/ The Mothers C. Dawson said he/she couldn’t give a list of ALL-TIME GREAT SINGLES, claiming not to know what singles are.

There are no prizes for sending these lists, just the satisfaction of knowing that those idle hours of pointless classification some of us indulge in our addled consciousness­ es might result in our thoughts being read, even printed . . . at least filed in The Digger archives.

Send ALL-TIME GREATS to The Digger, 58 Canterbury Road, Middle Park, 3206.

of a lot of canning. Their music, since the departure of Balin, has suppos­ edly lost its power, and their politics is usually now put down as over­ bearing and pretentious. Almost every album from Blows Against the Em­ pire has been greeted by hostile Jefferson Airplane, ‘Long John Silver’ reviews, not least their latest, Long John Silver. The criticisms, of their by music at least, have some accuracy, John Tapp as witnessed perhaps by the sloppi­ San Francisco, 1967. The Summer of Love, the Trips Festivals, the ness and sheer lack of enthusiasm Be-ins; Kesey and the Pranksters; of much of Bark.

Despite all this, Long John Silver the Fillmore, Family Dpg, the Dig­ is a damn fine album. It resurrects gers; free concerts in Golden Gate park with the Quicksilver Messenger much of the drive and fire that was Service, Grateful Dead, and the Jef­ missing on Bark, and the high spots ferson Airplane. This was Haight- of the record are magnificent, with Ashbury, and it was soon to die — some great lead-base-fiddle combin­ but these were also only the trap­ ations. “ Aerie” and “ Milk Train” in pings, the external celebrations of particular show that they have re­ something far more potent. Haight- tained their ability to excite and in­ spire, and Grace Slick is still able Ashbury was an explosion of con­ to produce those star, haunting, sar­ sciousness, the decisive juncture donic lyrics. As for their politics, where the kids of Amerika began both “ sunfighter” and this latest to realise that repression and liber­ ation was not something that related release show that they have lost none of their outrageousness, defiance only to the blacks, to the Vietnam­ ese, to the Third World — but rooted or spirit, that they are prepared to both lay down strong political state­ in their own existences.

Right from this beginning, the ments.

Jefferson Airplane has been the most consistent, articulate and sub­ versive musical expression of the movement’s emerging consciousness.

Their songs, from the “ Feed Your Head!” of “ White Rabbit” , to Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker!” , of “ We can be Together” , have pro­ vided biting, sarcastic, forceful con­ As of next issue, The Digger will demnation of the Enemy, and at list all albums received for review. the same time joyous, romping, Any reader is welcome to submit irreverent, acid-inspired celebrations a review of any record album, and of our lifestyles and aspirations. Add receive one new review record to this the soaring, bitter-sweet har­ (obligation zero) in return if the monies of Grace Slick and Marty review is printed.

Balin, combined with the pounding Send reviews, which need n o t juggernaut rock of the rest of the follow the standard reviewer’s crew, and you have some of the handbook, to 58 Canterbury Rd., most exciting and stirring music on Middle Park, 3206, marking envel­ record. opes Reviews. (Mention your pre­ However, since Volunteers, the ferred new album off the list.)

‘Airplane has become the subject

A irplane rises again

Jerry Garcia’s pedal steel wails and cries and Ace is singing a very sad love song which gently moves bit­ terness into beauty . .".

It's alright, I love you, that's not gonna change, run me round, hurt me again and again, but I'll still sing you love songs written in the letters o f your name and pray the storm to come, for it surely looks like rain.

Every note of piano strikes a silver tear . . . was just that I got used to having you around, my landscape would be empty if you were gone.

“Mexicali Blues” is a zippy spot of mariachi madness about being stuck in Mexico and not really knowing why, but getting drunk and keeping street company with a sweet fourteen year old ‘cos livin and drinkin is all I have today’. The hottest piece on the album is a solid rock and roll number called “ One More Saturday Night.” Keith Godchaux is ripping it apart in Jerry Lee Lewis style, Ace is bopping like uncle Chuck, really raging along and working up to a wild explosion of screaming and screeching . . . aaaggghhh . . . you can feel that sweat.

“Cassidy” is a very beautiful, gentle song that sets you humming along with Donna Godchaux’s sweet, sweet harmonies . . .

Fare thee well now, let your life be seen by its own design, nothin' to tell now, let the words be yours undone with mine . . . and it’s over but you’ll be humming the tune for hours. This record is made of feeling, trimmed with flashes of lyrical brilliance and it’s all tied together with musical genius. Or, more simply, Robert “ Ace” Weir of the Grateful Dead is bonzer.

ASTRAL ECLECTION Getting o ff on Van M orrison The greatest album in rock and roll history may well be Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, a concept album recorded and released in the US in 1968, but not here locally until 1971. A lot of people who have been sending record reviews to The Dig­ ger seem to think so. More Van Morrison LP reviews have been cropping up in the mailbag than any other of a different name.

So we’ve decided to host a special Van Morrison comer, and what we will do, without committing ourselves because it de­ pends on quality rather than quantity is to print the best or the best of the Astral Weeks reviews. The prize, seeing as how people who own Astral Weeks seem to wear the grooves out, is an all-new Astral Weeks disc, composed of the finest vinyl.

You can run it to 30,000 words or keep it short, viz: “I’m so overcome when I hear it, I can’t say anything.”

AN INVITATION TO CARTOONISTS Flushed with the success of the first Digger Poetry Supple­ ment, The Digger plans a Cartoon Supplement.

There are no conditions, except that artwork must be in black-on-white (or tones of black), and that artists who want their material returned should enclose a stamped s.a.e., big enough to hold the art.

Entries will be assessed by Ian McCausland, Digger artist, and all material used will be paid for at $50 a. half-page (10” x 7 columns).

Deadlines for cartoons is Friday December 8th (and that’s a final deadline folks).

Send material to Ian McCausland, 58 Canterbury Road, Middle Park, Vic., 3206.

READERS’ RECORD REVIEWS

NOVA SOUND 4 commercial rd. highett. phone

95. 4766 .

November 18 — December 2

The Digger

Page 11

Jenny Brown talks to Ross Wilson

Daddy Cool (Phase 2): Established rock band seeks drummer & guitarist David Porter

In Ross Wilson’s back yard the trains go by like the city’s fury. I guess they’re not really in his back yard; maybe they’re ten feet outside the fence. We spoke through the mid-week 5 p.m. peak.

Visitors came and went: Gulliver Smith, formerly of Company Caine, now of Daddy Cool II. Gully, with dark, bemused eyes and a ringer of a demi-smile. We started off on a happy note, listening to a tape of Norman Banks and Listener, on Digger and Planet. . . and ended off on one; Ross cooked my first healthy meal for some time and it even tasted good. He sang harmonies to the records Harry and I were playing while he cooked, and that was even better than the food because Ross sings a treat and very inventively.

Harry will be Daddy Cool’s new bass player . . . he is tall and gently enthusiastic and a little lost in Mel­ bourne, having lived and played in Sydney for years with both Jeff St. John’s Copperwine and Wendy Saddington’s Copperwine, and, in bet­ ween the two, Red McKelvie’s Third Union Band.

Ross Wilson is a very delicate and careful conversationalist . . . conver­ sationalist rather than a raver. The talking we did was dialogue, not monologue; he asked me a few ques­ tions about myself that afternoon and at times, it seemed I was talking as much as he . . .

joined. tic when people can let go . . . with­ We landed in Hollywood and out having a drink. It used to happen. there was all this Hollywood-type I ‘thought it was really neat when stuff going on . . . you just didn’t that happened. feel part of it . . .

A schoolkid’s dream .

A triologue: Ross Wilson, Jenny Yeah. But it served its purpose Brown, and Harry, on the subject . . . we got a recording contract with of packaging concepts and health Warner Brothers outa that. hazards.

I’ve got no idea how our albums Ross W.: “Shit you’re smokin’ a sold. I think the second album sold lot. Dangerous to your health . . .” more. I haven’t got any figures, J.B.: Yeah, I know.” “ Eagle Rock” , the single did o.k., in Harry: “I haven’t smoked for a few states it was in it was a hit, but not enough to make the national five months now, and it looks like I charts. It was really big in Texas might be into it again.” apparently.

Ross W.: (Aside) “Landed in Mel­ I had a fan, from America ring bourne and got stuck into Hanna’s me up! Saying, you know, come Temple Bar.” back soon, and tell us what we can J.B.: “ I’ve got this great collec­ do to help you, and that kinda thing? tion of Marlboro packets . . . five I think that’s really gas. And places hundred and seventy-three or some­ where we had return bookings . . . thing.” lotsa people came back to see us.

Ross W. : “I got a packet of Law­ How did American crowds react? rence Olivier cigarettes the other Really wild. American audiences day — wanna see ‘em?” are much freer. Much more relaxed, J.B.: Yeah.” the whole thing . i . they go along (He hurries off to fetch.) to hear some music, and if there’s Harry: “ Sir Lawrence Olivier a chance they can get off on it, they cigarettes?” really try hard to get off on it . . .

Ross W.: (Returning fast) “ I It’s gone back to that self-conscious­ found ‘em at Lindsay Farr’s place ness here now. Nobody does it any the other day. He says you get ‘em in more. (Laughs wryly.)

Chapel St. for eleven cents a packet I think that a lot of it is because . . . Isn’t that insane?” bands just don’t play music that They examine the box, which is people can express themselves to, small, wierd, and rather battered. dancing. That’s why I like the type J.B.: (Examining the lone fag of music that we did, and that we’re* left) “That one’s been through a Love On A One Track; going to do — because I like to bit.”

Burning Song Books dance.

Ross W.: “ Eleven cents a pack’s It .all started off with the first When Daddy Cool first started pretty good value, isn’t it? A cent group Hanna and I were in, called we had a few ideas like dress-up each for the cigarettes, and a cent for The Pink Finks. Then I left school and all that. You know, a bit of a the pack, ha. It’s about fifty years and Hanna went to Tech, and the giggle. That was in the days of the old, that photograph.”

Pink Finks broke up and later be­ Melbourne Arts Co-op and T.F. J.B.: “It looks like one of those came the Party Machine . . . and Much. But all the jumping around Fantales photographs . . .” that went through various changes arid stuff was pretty natural. It came Ross W.: “It’s gas, the smoke and ended up with Mike Rudd and with the Sons of the Vegetal Mother. that’s curling up from his hand isn’t myself and Peter Curtain. And just I’d never done it much before, in it, with the cigarette held there ; . .

Two lead singers outside the Transylvania Restaurant. . . Gully and Ross Wilson. around the time that that started, other groups . . . but it was such a looking suave . . . I reckon that’s we were starting to write a lot of relief to be playing again, and it really strange.” material. was such powerful music, that I atically put on a show. It’s the way We’ve got Harry to play bass but with Capitol Records. They haven’t out of place for a long time, until He turns to Harry.

We were all at school, most of us automatically started leaping all we’ve still gotta find a drummer and got very many major acts, yet they’ve we got a little bit pissed. we react to our own music; the show “Game to smoke it?” But Harry then. We just played at weekends but around the place. another lead guitarist. was a part of the music. But I imag­ just grins and shakes his head. The got a lot of personnel just waiting And yet your music can g e t we had a hit record. ine it would be entertaining to the thing has rain-spots. * * * It’s gonna be quite a problem to do something. They’ve done a through to a lot o f people.

What was it called?

I hope our new music can . . . public, and a certain amount of Ross W.: “ Bloody crazy. We were Jerry didn’t want to go back to finding a drummer. The music we’ve really good job on him. The only “ Louie Louie.” thought went into it. thinking, they should have different got in mind is fairly simple; basic big acts they have are Grand Funk (pensively).

America.

We were flying back to the Kinks?

It’s a real drag though, when brands, you know, different people Is strong audience reaction impor­ in construction, with lots of room Railroad and The Band, and that’s » .

Well The Kingsmen was the one States again, for the third time, and to improvise and put modem ideas about it. you’re doing all that and there’s tant to you?

Jerry said he’d rather leave than do that we knew. The Kinks did do a Yeah. That’s why I don’t dig just nothing happening, no reaction.

J.B.: “ All-Australian ones . . .” on top. But the basic thing is really You Told Me I Was version of it. But we did a really that. It was too much commitment, primitive . . . a tribal sort of thing. playing pubs. For the first half of Everyone’s got their backs to you, A small pause. arid he’d been rather freaked out on Cheap And Dumb. Huh? wild version, sorta like The Pretty having another beer;, and saying, the gig, before everybody gets pis­ Ross W.: “Graham Kennedy cig­ We want to get some jungle drums Things might have done it ... . you the last trip. So we said o.k., and going. Just stompstomp-stomp-stomp “’ere, it’s a bit loud!” Heh, and they arettes?” sed, they just lounge around. All the we got Ian Winter.

He joined us, we I think we may have been a bit know, all-out blasting? It was recor­ finally get a little pissed and think Harry: “Wait till they have pack­ stuff, without letting up. premature with the second album. people in the audience, drinking . . . let’s have a groove on the dancefloor. ded on a one-track machine, with rehearsed for about two weeks, ajnd And you’re really-knocking yourself ets with Ross Hannaford on them.”

But it’s hard to find guys like then we left for America.

So he was Some of the material we didn’t play »everyone singing and playing at the And they do that, and they start to out, trying to enjoy yourself. Like J.B.: “I think there’d be a limited that, who can really lay it down and same time. We did two takes and used working his way into it while we still stay on top of it all the time, terribly well. The “Love In An F.J. when Hanna and I, anyway, and the get into it then, it starts to warm m arket, . . ” were playing over there.

And then, Suite” ended up playing better live. the first one. We put it out, and it up a bit. I reckon its fucking fantaswithout overdoing it.

And there was definitely some old band — we just used to automwas the worst record . . . it’s got while we were over there I decided Daddy Cool has worked up to some interesting moments . . . every­ that when we got back we’d try how because Gary and Wayne were reaction against the title. I thought it was really smart to have that one was so enthusiastic. All our something else. Ian rejoined Carson able to do that . . . title — (Sex, Dope and Rock ‘n ’ school friends bought it and they . . . he enjoys it, he gets on with all Are you going to go back to Roll; Teenage Heaven) but businesshad to start playing it on the radio. those guys . . .1 think eventually Ian America? wis0 it was really stupid. That’s Cause it started to sell a bit, and be­ wants a band of his own.

That’s what we really wanna do. why they called it just Teenage cause we got really behind it and You Can Hear I don’t wanna put Australia down, Heaven in America. And changed told everyone to buy it. Eventually The Guitars Play . . . but I really couldn’t enjoy staying some of the tracks on it. the highest it got was number here for another couple of years.

What instruments will be used in We did sell a phenomenal amount sixteen . . . on 3DB. It got to twentyThere’s just nothing new to stimulate of the first album and the first couple seven on 3UZ, they were really re­ the new Daddy Cool?

Two guitars (drums) bass. It’s you. I just don’t feel like having to of singles, simply because a lot of luctant to play it, heh.

That was the only hit we had; always been that way . . . In the play pubs, and the same old round parents would buy it for their kids — we put out a few more records beginning, when we were four piece, of gigs — which are very few at this I’m sure that was the reason. And I had tos, play some guitar; but I time . . . Once we do get going, I because they liked it themselves . . . and then we, turned into the Party $6 for 6 months or $12 for 12 months really feel we need two all the time. hope we can put in three or four it was good, clean, boppy kinda Machine . . . they put out one record months getting it together here, and Guitars are the best, the most ver­ stuff.

To: William and John, 184 Sussex St., Sydney. 2000 called “We’ve All Got To Go” . We The American record company had problems with that too, ‘cause satile; they suit rock ‘n’ roll really go.

Please send me the next....................issues.

We haven’t got a deal with War- decided it would probably be better it was about half an hour of saying well. From now on I don’t feel like Name .................................:......... to change it. The company out here, you’ve all got to go, you’ve all got Address............. .......................................... .......... .

Sparmac, didn’t wanna do it either, “ . . . I feel really removed from normal society; sometimes I to die sometime, but it was sung ....................................................... P/code ...... they thought it wasn’t such a good happily. You might as well accept it wonder, do I know what’s going on — ‘cause I know that I don't idea. It’s been changed in Australia folks, you’ve all gotta go, you know. know what’s going on with the normal-type people who make up. now. They’re using the American There was a thing in the paper the population of Australia. Even the kids seem strange to me cover, calling it Teenage Heaven. It’s when the Party Machine songbook . . . I really can’t relate to them in any way. I see something that got the same tracks, it’s got the same got seized which said, “The boys o f illustrates it and say, Wow! I’ve lost contact along the way . . . ” record inside which has always been course have had some trouble with out in Australia.

— Ross Wilson their record, some stations refuse Do you mind them doing that? to play it because they think it Oh I don’t care, you know? I’d might offend old people/ ” Might I wanna play guitar at all, ‘cause ner Brothers any more. They didn’t upset old people who’re worried other people can play it much better. pick up their option. I think our rather sell records. I thought I was It was only in the past I did play managers over in America are shop­ being real smart at first. I mean, I about how long they got left.

And then all this shit about Vice it . . . ‘cause nobody could quite ping us around to a few other people. didn’t think it would get such a Another reason I want to get violent reaction. I knew it would get Squad detectives saying they may go get it how I wanted them to on a away from here is everything is just a reaction, but not that bad. They’re along to some dances tonight where couple of tunes . . .

I can show Hanna a tune, and so inefficient. The tour we did in still talking about Vnaybe removing the group The Party Machine are was extremely well- it from the shelves. The Vice Squad, playing . . . to make sure they don’t the wierd, crude kinda way I play America play some of the songs from the song- guitar gives hint ideas. But we’ve organised, so business-like. They send all this “Teen Pom” stuff; it even been working together for so long a guy around with you, (as well as got mentioned in that . . . it’s been book that they object to ....

They got upset ‘cause there was now that we know exactly what each- having a roadie), to make sure you out a year now . . . they still haven’t one song in the book called “ ID on’t other is talking about, what we mean get on planes and so on. He also wat­ done anything.

That whole episode for me was like Believe Your Kids Should Be Vir­ when we say, play this like . . . I ches each gig and makes out a report gins” . That’s more or less all it was like the stuff that he writes and he on it to send back to the office. To a re-entry into contact with actual say how you’re going, how the aud­ society. Because I feel really re­ about . . . it said why be a virgin, it’s likes the stuff that I write.

What about Gully? How did he ience reacted, what you’re doing, moved from normal society; some­ a real drag, when you can go around what your attitude is; all that kinda times I wonder, do I know what’s screwing and stuff •. . . we didn’t come into it?

I was thinking about the people I’d stuff. Which is pretty smart, I think going on — ‘cause I know that I say it with any four-letter words, but I think they really objected to seeing dig to work with. I thought of him. it keeps you on your toes. That just don ’f know what’s going on with the the word “virgin” in print, and teen­ And we can use his lyric-writing shows how business-like the whole normal-type people who make up the talents . . . I ’m not terribly prolific approach is. population of Australia. Even the kids agers were listening to it too! Really I can imagine Jerry was freaked seem really strange to me . . . I upset ‘em. They raided Go-Set and at that. I like what I finish up with, when I finish a song . .. but it might o u t Wes it a young guy, who knew really can’t relate to them in any ended up having a court-case — which take a long time. I just get half an a bit about music?

I wasn’t invited to. I read about it way. I see something that illustrates idea and I wait till we’re playing it Oh yes. A lot of the guys they had it and I say Wow! I’ve lost contact The sale of our 6th edition, despite police intimidation. in the paper . . . . they’d decided to till I finish it off. working for them were ex-musicians. along the way . . . That episode bum ouf songbooks.

Gully’s one of the few guys It was good getting with Warner re-established contact, on one level Features include: — Please Please America, Hear around this country who seems to Brothers in one way, it was just . . . I realized what was happening — My Plea I Want A Million have compatible ideas . . . who good prestige to be working with that things had changed, but only Bucks, Lord, It’s Not For Me . . .

Sex Lib Demonstration, Dennis Altman interview, The Cockettes, A Matter of Oppression, Abortion seems to be heading in the same them, for an Australian group. They for me.

Law Reform, Every Woman Should Have Control of her own Body, Task Force Gay Liberation, direction. were a really big company. We got When we went to America the first It’s pretty strange just to travel Is Gully just going to sing with our records released there and all. It on a tram. I went along to a pub Homosexuals are Human, Bolan Boogie — T Rex, Thesis Genetic Homosexuality, "Cabaret", time, I had been feeling we should the band? enabled us to sell ourselves to people, the other day to see Lindsay Farr, a have had more to offer than we did, John Tasker interview, Bobbie Gentry, Film Reviews, Rock'n'roll, Book Reviews, Personal Yes, sing, and we’re writing songs being on that good label, being well- sax-player. He’s going to America. and when we got there I saw that I Classifieds. with him. That was one of the main promoted. was right. I’d been getting a bit Gully and me and Harry were sitting It was bad in another way. In at this table . . . and after a while I crapped off just playing the oldies reasons we wanted him in the band.

96 Pages. Full colour centre spread.

12 pages of uncensored male nudes.

And play tambourine, and cowbells that they have so many incredibly said to them, Gee . . . do you feel . I . it took up all my time and I Available at some newsagencies, by subscription and at the offices of "William and John". and stuff . . . he got a saxophone good artists on that label, that the didn’t have any time' for the Sons out of place here? It was just normalabout a week ago, from Jerry Noone. initial reaction, if your record sales type teenage pub people, having a (of the Vegetal Mother) . . . So Suite 4c, 3rd Floor, 184 Sussex St., Sydney. 2000.

I think he’s got a lot of potential lag a little, is to stop trying to push groove to their music on a Saturday I tried to combine them, and I thought we’d need another instru­ as a performer. I hope we can bring you. afternoon . . . but they seemed like it out in this band. ment, that’s how Jerry Kellock Rick Springfield is lucky . . . he’s another race . . . but we really felt

'W illia m a n d « Jo h n '— a homosexual magazine that’s not afraid toboso...

SUBSCRIBE

announcing...

November 18 — December 2

The Digger

Supplement I

SYDNEY FLYER containers outside, open 24 hours where you can dump steel cans. Con­ A.C.T. A Iternative Community Telephone tainers Ltd, cnr Forest & Durham St, (698-2652). Box 23, P.O. Rd Hurstville, (587-8944); Surrey Hills is a network of people, resources, 33 Phillip St, Cabarita materials and ideas run (73-3241) and 28 Smith Chatswood by a collection of people S t , (40-5122).

These next interested in fostering alternatives. If you want two places take steel and information or have aluminium cans. Gadsinformation on whats den-Hughes Ltd, 59-75 happening and how to Queens Rd, Five Dock survive in the counter (74-2138) & W.E. Smith cnr Webb & culture, freak, alternative Ltd, scene phone 698-2652 — Boundary Sts, Croydon (747-5999).

Its free.

Glass Bottles — Your A.C.T. has published a local bottle-o will buy poster —size information your wine and beer sheet, if you want it, send them 12 cents in empties for about 10 cents a dozen. stamps.

Paper — Try the neighborhood fish & chip shop or local boy scouts.

A.C.T.

Women

WOMENS LIBERATION Womans Centre, 25 Alberta St, Sydney (no phone yet) and 67 Glebe Pt Rd, Glebe (660-4687).

These two addresses can turn you onto the WL group in your area, and tell you about groups like high school, working women and teachers groups or MeJane, the womans newspapers has a contacts list.

Men

Abortion Send a stamped self -addressed envelope to us — The Digger, 8 Norfolk St, Paddington, 2021, and we’ll send you a great little pamphlet called “Abortion is Free and Legal” .

Womens Abortion Ac­ tion Campaign, C/Womens House, 25 Alberta St, Sydney.

Abortion Law Reform Association (36-6016), Box C35, Clarence St P.O., Sydney.

MENS LIBERA TION Meets Monday night 7.30 p.m. 67 Glebe Point Road (660-4687).

G A Y LIBERATION Gay Lib Centre, 67 A.C.T. (Alternative G lebe P o in t Rd (660-4687) 7 p.m.-10 Community Telephone) p.m. Monday to Friday. (698-2652) has a GestetCamp Inc. Box 5074, ner which a good cause GPO Sydney (82-4023). can use at cost.

Tomato Press, 117 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe.

Offset press, reliable work.

Pierre (82-4837) Free Wheel 368 Cleve­ Cheap printing for alter­ land St, Surrey Hills. native type groups. 1250 Into recycling frames and press, platemaking facili­ parts, repairs also. ties, IBM typesetter.

Sydney Council Clean R ic Jo hnston Up Lots of good stuff (623-4060) Press and gets thrown out in these duplicator. drives, if there is one in Dave (623-4060) your area go out and Cheap printing. scavenge about. Also give A.C.T. Alternative Com­ munity Telephone a call (698-2652), they make A L T E R N A T 1 V E regular runs looking at LEARNING other peoples rubbish.

Guriganja Community Steel Cans. All of School 444 Oxford St, these factories hav e Paddington. (827-1191).

Printing

R er cycling

Learning

Nimrod Street Theatre national black theatre in BASICALLY BLACK

Directed by Ken HORLER, w ith Aileen CORPUS, Gary FOLEY, Zac M ARTIN, Bob ‘M AZA

and

Takes kids 5 years and up. They need teachers for next year.

Free School in Chats­ wood.

Ring Carol (41-5068). A community of adults and kids.

Glenfield Farm Free School (602-8095). Run, with a minimum of structure by secondary students for secondary students.

Secondary School Students Union. Phone Dave (822-2751).

Next year a secondary progressive is starting in Terry Hills (449-1950).

Politics

Ecology Action, 189 Clarence St, Sydney (29-6717).

Organises through the legal and political scene. Their Ecology Shop has a great selection of books about Planet Earth.

Public Interest Research Group PIRG. Nader style consumer ecology or­ ganisation based at Sydney Uni at the moment. C/- SRC level I, Wentworth Building, Uni of Sydney.

Total Environment Ac­ tion, 3rd floor, Argyle Centre, 18 Argyle St, Rocks (27-4714).

CARP Campaign against rising prices. 2 Rivenoak Ar, Padstow 2111.

Checking our prices rises in all sorts of areas food, dentists, land, furniture etc, and then pressuring them that upped em.

Consumer Affairs Bureau, 53 Martin Place, Sydney (2 -0 3 4 4 ).

Government body that follow-up consumer com­ plaints about things like faulty ap p lian ces, crooked car deals, decep­ tive advertising etc.

Draft Resistors Union.

P.O. Box 85, Newtown 2042. Meetings every Wed. night, at 16 Belmore St* Enmore.

Womens El ec tor al Lobby. P.O. Box 24 Neutral Bay Junction, 2089 (36-2245).

Revolutionary Marxist Group. P.O. Box 13, Balmain 2041.

Socialist Youth Alliance (SYA) 139 St Johns St, Glebe (26-2121).

Australian Labor Party, 377 Sussex St (26-2732).

Glebe A n ti-Expressway

Group, P.O. Box 82, therapy, acupuncture and SYDNEY HOSPITAL, [exchanging views. herbal remedies.

Glebe (660-5835).

Royal Prince Alfred, 'it needs shareholdCommunist Party o f PREGNANCY TESTING Royal Alexandra Child­ rs at $5.00 a throw, gives Australia, 4 Dixon St Take a small early morning ren’s Hospital, the Rachel ou a vote in the com­ (26-2161). urine sample to Park Regis Forster Hospital (women mon meeting and noonly), and the Royal Pharmacy, cnr Park and one can have more than Castlereagh Sts, pay your Newcastle all run special one vote. Box 2598 G.P.O. $4.50 and phone back (26- VD clinics, too.

Sydney 357-24585. They 3533) a couple of hours la­ FAMILY PLANNING AS­ ter, for the result.

SOCIATION OF AUST­ DRUG REFERRAL CEN­ RALIA, 92 City Rd., Chip TRE, 43 Craigend St, Dar- VENEREAL DISEASE pen dale. Tel: 69-5211.

NSW HEALTH DEPT., 93. FPA’s doctor explains the linghurst, Tel: 31-2579.

Macquarie St., Sydney, at different ways of prevent­ 31-2132. Also at 91 Pittthe corner of Albert St. ing pregnancy. Women get water Rd., Manly, Tel: Men and women enter the explanation, plus an ex­ 977-2197. The centres are through separate doors, so amination, for the common 24-hour, and provide in­ formation, medical and le­ check out the signs at the ^ fee. A full range of contra- ! entrances. By all accounts, ceptive aids is available gal help, a place to rap with someone, and group this is Australia’s most cob- on the premises. therapy. The director, Trevor Wilson, says, “ it’s a cool place to get infor­ mation, or to come when you’re freaking out.”

Dope & Booze

WAYSIDE CHAPEL CRISIS PROGRAM, 29 Hughes St, Potts Point (35-1010 & 35-6577). II you’re hassled by dope or booze problems, oi are just unable to cope with whats coming down. Wayside Chapel has a 24-hour counselling with a full referral systems. Non-evangelical, they do try & help.

LANGTON CLINIC, Cnr Dowling & Nobbs Sts, Moor Park. Tel: 31-2196. Dry­ ing out for men & women; admission through the out­ patients department, open 10-7, Monday to Friday.

ALCOHOLICS ANONY­ MOUS, 550 George St., Sydney. Tel: 26-6968. AA involves people in sobering each other up.

AL-ANON FAMILY GROUPS, Caritas Cottage, Cnr.'Bourke & Burton Sts., Darlinghurst. Tel: 31-9668, 31-4430. For families and friends who live with al­ coholics, to share experi­ ence, support. 9.30-3.30 Monday to Friday.

The Sydney and Melbourne Flyers are sup­ plements to The Digger, a national fortnightly newspaper available at newsagents in all states except Victoria, where The Digger is sold in shops that sell Nation-Review.

5000 copies o f The Flyer are given away in each city.

This issue o f The Digger contains the following articles: Page

Dr B.B. Wainer plots for abortion on demand 1 South Australia’s “liberalised” abortion laws, not so liberal The ABC staff revolt gathers momentum Pat Eacock, black, female, stands for parlia­ ment in the A.C.T. The Rolling Stones,:and nineteen other bands, hope to tour Australia this summer The Story of O', a pornographic classic reviewed.

The shape o f the universe, reassessed by a cosmologist (redly) Moss Cass fights his image in the electorate o f Maribymong 5 Cable television; a videofreak’s projection 5 A tribute to Ezra; The Digger’s first poetry supplement 6-7 The Christians fight the heathens in Victoria, abortion’s progress 8-9 Ross Wilson outlines the next phase foifDdd^y Cool 11 ♦Plus, reviews, a cartoon by Ron Cobb, and another by lan McCausland.

Thé Digger — all this, for 30 cents, on sale now.

Body Su rvival

‘Rock around th e clock’ BILL HAYLEY & HIS COMETS also ELVIS PRESLEY “Jailhouse Rock”

Land

GREEN ELEPHANT

get-it-on

Saturday 18: Band of Light, Bakery, Gary Young’s Hot Dog Friday 24: Blackfeather, Carson, Amber Saturday 25: :Blackfeather, Carson, Home Friday 1: Madder Lake, Headband, Lizard Saturday 2: 69ers, Sun, Madder Lake

220 O xford S t., W oollahra. 38-3338

266 ANZAC PARADE, KENSINGTON

GET YOUR DENIMS FROM

Wholesail & Retail

BOTTLE

Is a i Managed Personally and are Exclusive Agents for: SHERBET, LA DE DAS, C O U N T R Y R AD IO , P IR A N A , BATTERSEA HEROES, SUN, 69ERS, HOME, L IZ A R D , H EA DB AN D , SEBASTIAN H A R D Y And from Melbourne: BLA CK FEA THER (Nov 8 -2 6 ) ; G A R Y Y O U NG 'S H O T DOG (Nov 1 3 -2 6 ); CARSON (Nov 2 0 -2 6 ); PENDULUM (Dec 4 -1 0 ) ; M cK ENZIE T H E O R Y (Dec 11—17); CAPTAIN MATCHBO X (Dec 11—17); D A D D Y COOL (Dec 2 2 -J a n 2).

sunrise management 32 Underwood St., Paddington 31-2111 All Hours

ROCKM il PRESENTED.BY McPHEE ENTERPRISES I-TAMBU PIRANA BARRY McASKILL 8c CLEFS LA DE DAS DOUG PARKINSON CARSON McPHEE BLACKFEATHER SHERBET Sounds by Tarel 2,000 Watt PA System Total Involvement Light Show — Films Advance Bookings: D.J.’s, Mitchells, Hordern Pavillion Tickets: $2.00 plus Booking Fee- 20<)

H ordern Pavilion SU N D A Y N O V 2 6 th Doors open 2.00pm

If you want to get away from the city for the weekend, take camping

gear and good Vibes to Kulnurra Reserve. Pacific Highway towards Gosford, take Central Man­ grove turnoff until you hit Spring Rd and its on the comer of Spring and Greta Rds.

CONTENTS

genial VD clinic, and treat­ FPA also runs a vasectomy ment is free for gonorrhaea clinic every Friday. You’ve got to be 16. FPA has a and syphillis. large number of suburban United Dental Hospital, venues, where you can at­ 2 Chalmers St, Surrey tend if you don’t want to | Hills (211-4322). Full travel.

ALTERNATIVE 'dental care. A means test MEDICAL determines how much CENTRE, 195 Bourke St you pay. Only problem is (near William St) (33you have to wait ages to 5453) offers a wide variety get your appointment.

TAKE TO THE HILLS of natural and cosmic ther­ Go in though, because apies. Donation according they don’t make appoint­ ILand buying co-op. Why | pay $200 an acre when col­ to means. Treatments and ments over the phone. services include naturo­ Aboriginal medical ser­ lectively you can buy at pathy, massage, relaxation vice, 11 Regent St, $20. Ring A.C.T. (698(2652) Redfem (699-2493).

Chest x-ray centre, 697 Glenfield Farm is a com­ George St, Sydney munity, a place of peace, Vintage Film Group (211-0366). Free, no j historic farm, conference referral needed. i centre, place for SALUTES THE ROCKING FIFTIES 8p.m. Sunday 26 November Union Theatre, Sydney Uni.

Bindi W ILLIAMS.

Tuesday—Saturday at 8.30; Sundays 7.30. 31-3754.

are experimenting in meth­ ods of organic farming and need weekend gardeners (60-2895)

Jeannie Lewis steps out on the national blues tour with Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Big Boy Cmdup on November 28.

FIRST WITH THE WORST IN VERSE Nicky De Plumes’ Slim Vol of Verse

Concerts &Dances Sat 18th: Avalon Com­ munity Centre: Simba.

Wyong Memorial Hall: Pirana.

Sun 19th: Freedom From Hunger, Blacktown Showground: Sherbet, Blackfeather; Miranda Kingsway Theatre, 7.30 p.m. $2: 69ers (with Creams Final Perform­ ance).

Tues 21st: Bailey Hall, Chatswood: Battersea Heroes.

Wed 22nd: Chatswood Town Hall: Sun, Pirana.

Frid 24th: Liverpool Town HalL, 7.30, $1: Elegy. Paddington Town Hall, 8.00 p.m. $2: Blackfeather, Carsen, Abatross, Home.

Sat 25th: Maccabean Hall, 146 Darlinghurst Rd, 7.30-12.00, $1.50, Carson, Blackfeather, Lizard, Randwick Town Hall: Pirana.

Sun 26th: Contemporary Rock Festival: Hordern Pavillion, 2.00 p.m. $2 Hanbu, Pirana, Barrie McCaskill & Clefs, La De Das, Doug Parkinson, Carson, McPhee, Blackfeather, Sherbet. Day­ light Concert No. 1.

Seymour Shore Oval Miranda 3-8: Jeff St John, Whistler’s Mother, Nitro, Gunga Din, Wendy Saddington, Buffalo, Hanu. Ashfield Apollo Theatre, 3:30 and 7.30, $2: Sherbet with Cream’s Final Performance. Mona Vale Hall: Albatross.

Ashfield Town Hall: Sherbet.

Frid 30 th. American Blues Festival, Hordern Pavillion $3.75, Jeannie Lewis, Buddy Guy / Junior Blues Band, Arthur Big Boy Gruddup.

paddo town hall

40^ at your friendly bookshop.

BLACKFEATHER CARSON ALBATROSS HOME

THE AMERICA^

8PM FRIDAY NOVEMBER 24th. ^ ^ S T lV A ]

BUDDY GUY & JUNIOR WELLS Blues Band ARTHURBig Boy’ CRUDUP The men who made the Rolling Stones roll!

Plus J E A N L E W IS N e x t W eek!

T w o perform ances only at the Hordern Pavilion November 28 and 30 at 8.15 p.m.

B ook now at H ordern Pavilion, M itchell's and D.J.'s ALL Seats $ 3 .7 5 incl.

Party concessions avail­ able — 'phone 33-3769 Brought to Australia Kym Bonython

UTOPIA RECORDS 'A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR YOUR HEAD'

Artists stay at Koala Motels and Motor Inns

60 P AC IFIC HWY ST. LEO NARDS 2065

256 D A R L IN G ST. B A L M A IN 2041

Flying

AINISETT

so w n : SUN 19 NOV SUN 26 NOV COCKER in “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” Don’t Miss It 2 great performances MANLY METRO THEATRE (right at the beach) 4.30pm & 7.30pm $2.00

B O T T L E AT A SH F IE L D & M IR A N D A SUN 19 NOV Miranda Kingsway Theatre On film, “ Cream’s Final Performance” On Stage, the zany unpredictable 69ers One performance at 7.30p.m. $2.00

SUN 26 NOV Ashfield Apollo Theatre On stage, Sherbet On film, “ Cream’s final Performance” Two performances 3.30pm & 7.30pm $2.00 Bookings for all BOTTLE productions at Mitchells - 297949, 297364.

« H IM

JKSUS CH RIST SUPERSTAR “the Rock Opera of the century”

RELIVES

AGAIN

Sunday December 10th

GREEN ELEPHANT KENSO

portnoy production/ pre/ent/ C A R SO N BLACKFEATHER L IZ A R D and SE L F-D E FE N C E E X H IB T IO N $ 1 .5 0 Maccabean Hall, 146 Darlinghurst Rd. Sat. N o v em b er 25 — 7 .3 0 —1 2 .0 0

Book.at Capitol, Mitchells, D.J’s, Grace Bros., Play box. Nightly at 8.30 p.m. plus Fri. and Sat. 6 p.m. Group Concessions 211 0199

CAPITOL THEATRE Tel. bookings: 212 3677

M artha’s Record Farm Sydney’s top progressive record shop now offers you a wide choice of the latest cassettes and cartridges.

As always, if we haven’t got it, and you want it, wé’ll get it!

GALLERY LEVEL G39 IMPERIAL ARCADE 28-4023

November 18 — December 2

The Digger

Supplement II

SYDNEY FLYER Marriage Action Group, 4/33 North Parade, Campsie. (977-1028 days Bryants Manly Vale & 48-0477 evenings).

Hotel, Condamine St, SYDNEY DAY NURSERY Manly Vale Sat 18th — & NURSERY SCHOOLS Robin Sinclair, Battersea ASSOC’ (Inc). 39 Park St., Heroes, bands every Fri Sydney, Tel: 26-5421; 26& Sat, talent quest Wed 5300. A central office for 13 day care centres. The & Thurs.

Chequers, 79 Goulburn organization says it tries S t Sat 18th Ted Mulry, especially to help working Buffalo, Hanbu; Mon mothers of children from 1 20th Band Of Light, month to 5 years. The Sebastian Hardy, Carson; Centres are open 49 weeks Tues 21st to Thurs 23rd each year; medical and den­ Sebastian Hardy, Carson; tal attention is given to the Frid 24th Sebastian kids.

Hardy, Siren, Sherbet; Here are the schools: Sat 25 th Sebastian Hardy, Siren, Black- Erskineville (88 Swanston feather; Mon 27th Band St.) Tel: 51-2097; Forest Of Light, Sebastian Lodg& (24 Arundel St.) Hardy, Barry McKaskill; Tel:l360-1207; Riverwood Tues 28th to Thurs 30th (rear of 142 Belmore Rd.) Sebastian Hardy, Barry Tel: 53-4265; Marrickville McKaskill; Frid 1st (251 Illawarra Rd.) Tel: 56Sebastian Hardy, Barry 4221; Cremome (33 Briefly McKaskill, Wolf; Sat 2nd St.) Tel: 90-4271; Sebastian Hardy, Barry Newtown (131 Burren McKaskill, Bakery.

St.) Tel: 51-1521; Crows Green Elephant, 266 Nest (8 Rodborough Ave,) Anzac Parade| Kensing­ Tel: 92-3627; Paddington ton Sat 18th Band Of (33 Heeley St.) Tel: 31Light, Bakery, Gary 2621; Redfem (143 Suther Young & Hot Dog; Frid land St.) Tel: 69-6877; 24th Blackfeather, Car- Bondi Junction (Cnr. Ebson, Amber; Sat 25th ley & Newland Sts.) Tel: Blackfeather, Carson, 38-5400; Woolloomooloo Horne; Frid 1st Madder Lake, Head Band, Lizard; Sat 2nd 69ers, Sun, Madder Lake, Jeff St John.

PUBLIC SOLICITOR, 55 Monaghans Wine Bar, 9 Market St., Sydney. Tel: Pittwater Rd, Manly Sat 61-6581. Legal assistance 18th Nitro, Gary Young for people who pass a & Hot Dog. Live music means test. every night.

Royal Hotel Bondi, 283 LAW SOCIETY OF NSW, Bondi Rd, Bondi Sat 170 Phillip St., Sydney, 18th Gunga Din; Wed Tel: 25-5395; 25-6339. A 22nd Simba; Thurs 23rd slightly less stringent Blackfeather; Frid 24th means test.

Simba; Sat 25th Simba LEGAL SERVICE BUR­ (2.45-5.45 & 7.10) plus EAU, 32-34 York St., more.

Sydney. Legal assistance, Stagecoach, 147A King including fair rent court Sat 18th Lizard, House hearings, for servicemen, band: Headband. ex-sfervicemep , their Whisky A Go Go, 152 families and dependents.

William St, Kings Cross ABORIGINAL LEGAL Sat 18th Kush; Sun 19th SERVICE, 142 Regent St. Sebastian Hardy, Gary Redfem. (699-1109) Legal Young & Hot Dog; Mon assistance for black espec­ , 20th to Sat 25 th Barry ially those who’ve got no McKaskill & The Clefs; help at the other places.

Sun 26th Barry McKas­ DRUG REFERRAL SER­ kill & Bakery, plus more VICE, 42 Craigend St., in the following week.

Darlinghurst (31-2579 & Theres live rock music at these places too — 31-2132). Offers legal Denison Hotel, 59 Ox­ counselling to its clients, ford, Bondi Jnctn; Grape especially in regard to dope Escape (Wine Bar), 139 busts.

Blues Pt Rd, McMahons COUNCIL FOR CIVIL Pt; Millers Oceanic, Carr LIBERTIES, 149 St. Johns St, Coogee; Oxford Rd, Glebe (660-7582) Hotel, 134 Oxford St, WAYSIDE CHAPEL, Le­ Darlinghurst; The Polaris Room, Kingsgate Build­ gal Advisory Service, 29 ing, Cnr of Victoria & Hughes St, Potts Point (35-1010 & 35-6577) Kings Cross Rd and the Windsor Castle, Windsor RADICAL LAWYERS A.C.T. Alternative Com­ St, Paddington. munity Telephone would love to hear from you (698-2652)

Hotspots

The Law

A spare bed

Food

We haven’t checked out Buying in bulk can make these listings, so if you have any info about them eating much cheaper, or ' maybe it will mean there or other places to crash phone us (31-5073) or tell will just be more to eat.

Baulkham Hills Whole­ A.C.T. (698-2652) salers, 4 James St, FOR MEN ONLY Baulkham Hills. Huge CITY NIGHT REFUGE, selection of foods, mini­ 531 Kent St, (61-6136) SALVATION ARMY, 64 mum purchase $6 and you have to pay cash.

Foster St (212-1065) & Southern Cross Supplies, 56 Albion St. (61-2367) Gibben St, Camperdown.

CENTRAL METHODIST A.C.T. Alternative Com­ MISSION, 2 Francis St munity Telephone, Box (31-2471) 23 P.O. Surrey Hills has Y.M.C.A., 325 Pitt St. published some food (26-1061) not cheap, $4 information sheets. Send for B & B. 12 cents in stamps.

FOR WOMEN Phone them (698-2652) SALVATION ARMY, Old Cable St, La Perouse. (661 for information on cheap food sources. Cheap eats.

2765) & 471 Dowling St, Malaya, 787 George St Moore Park (31-5586) (21 1-0946) Chinese HOSTEL FOR WOMEN (Catholic), Marion House. food, curries and sambols.

161 Castlereagh St (26Valencia, George St, next 5289) to the Malaya. Spanish Y.W.C.A, 189 Liverpool tucker.

St. (26-2451) Beggars Banquet, Mait­ Two others, land St Balmain. MicroPEOPLES PALACE, 400 biotic.

Pitt St. (211-5777) You Natural Foods Restaur­ must have some luggage ant, 150 Liverpool St. with you! $2.60 per night. Eastern Restaurant, 52 C.B. CHAMBERS oppos­ Dixon St. Great short ite the Peoples Palace, soups. ' $2.50 per night.

Tibbys (30-1440). If Check out the classifieds you’re attacked by a of the dailies and try uni­ severe case of the versity notice boards munchies phone up and they’ll send around a delectable dish. Only 50 cents charge for the ,•'*) Divorce Law Reform home delivery.

Association, P.O. Box R 325 Royal Exchange (85-3211).

Parents

Film Group in the Union Tues 21st & Thurs 23rd. Thurs. mat; 2.00, Prices: Theatre, U. of Syd., Three’s Company by $6.00 with dinner.

The Best o f Parramatta Rd, Glebe. A n th o n y H opkins/ Meniories Cream’s Final Appear­ Dinner Engagement by Six Years Killara 680 ance (also appearing, Lennox Berkeley, Con- Coffee Tieatre, 680 Sherbet) 3.30 & 7.30 $2, serv ato riu m O pera Pacific Highway, Killara Apollo Theatre, Liver­ Season at the Joseph 498-7552. Tues-Sat at Ascot, 246 Pitt. The pool Rd, Ashfield. Mad Post Auditorium 8.00 8.30 Nov. 18 & Dec. 2 at Adventures of Barry Dogs & Englishmen 4.30 p.m. — and at 2.00 p.m. 3.30. Concessions for & 7.30 $2 Metro on Saturday 25th. $2 children & students.

McKenzie.

Mother Goose Young Theatre, 42 North (Stud. $1).

Barclay, 681 George. A Steyne, Manly. Rock Wed 22nd to Sat 25th. Peoples Theatre, AMP Clockwork Orange.

Century, 586 George. Around The Clock/Jail- Pirates O f Penzance/Trial Theatrette, AMP Build­ Circular Quay house Rock 8.00 p.m. By Jury.

Strathfield ing, Salzberg Connection.

38-2992, 25th Nov, 2nd Vintage Film Group in Light Opera Co. at the Collaroy Classic, 109 Pittwater Rd, Collaroy. the Union Theatre, U. of Latvian Theatre, Strath­ Dec. 18-22 The Fall Of The Syd., Parramatta Rd, field. 8.00 p.m. Mat Sat Northsidc Ballet Com­ pany Orpheum Theatre, 25 at 2115.

Roman Empire, Carry Glebe.

Wed 22nd, Fri 24th & 386 Military' Rd, Cre­ On Up The Jungle; 23-29 Tues 28th. 2 films, Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde, directed by Elia Kazan & Sat 25th. Love For Love mome 90-5241. Nut­ cracker Suite, 29th, B lood From The Henry Cornelius, as part by Congrove. ConservaMummy’s Tomb; 30-2 of National Film Theatre torium Opera Season at 30th, 2nd at 8.00 p.m. A Mash, Butch Cassidy & screenings at 7.15 p.m. the Joseph Post Audi­ program of six ballets on 1st at 8.00 p.fh. Prices the Sundance Kid. Commonwealth Centre torium, 8.00 p.m. $2 $4.50, $3.50, $2.50.

(Stud. $1).

Classic Cinema, 9 Spit Theatrette, cnr Phillip & Relatively Speaking by Rd, Mossman. Alyse & Hunter St. Fri 24th. Madrigals & Alan Ayckbourn dir.

Chloe.

Folk Songs The Leonine Margaret Prior. Intimate Dendy, 360 Pacific Wed' 29th. Invisible Consort at the Sir John Theatre, 768 Military Tracks (a surf movie) Highway, Crows Nest.

C lancy Auditorium, Rd, Mosman. 982-6972.

8.00 p.m. $1.50.

Union 18-at least 22 Harold & UNSW 8.15 p.m.

Wed, Fri & Sat at 8.00 Theatre, U. of Sydney, Maude (Watch for Sun 26th. Wagner, Saint- p.m. $2.00. Concessions: Parramatta Rd, Glebe.

Violent People).

Saëns & Schubert 8.00 $1.25 students, $1.00 Embassy, 79 Castlereagh. Thurs 30th.East O f Eden p.m. Sydney Symphony Great Escape (till 27th) (dir. Elia Kazan)/2?end Orchestra, Cond. Robert children.

The Removalists by O f The River (Anthony Forum, 749 George.

Mann). National Film Pickier, solo. David Preen David Williamson dir; Scrooge. (cello) Sydney Town John Bell, •Playbox Gala, 238 Pitt. 18-23 Theatre screening 7.15 Theatre, 136 Phillip St. Commonwealth Hall. Free.

One Day In the Life of p.m .

Tues 28th. Haydn Elgar, Ivan Denisovich; 24-2 I Centre Theatrette, cnr Rimsky-Korsakoff, | 1 221-2814, Tues. to Sat. at 8.30, Sun at 6.00 Fri Phillip & Hunter St. Can Jump Puddles. p .m .-1 .5 0 .

Sydney & Sat mats 6.00. Prices: Liberty, 232 Pitt. Follow Symphony Orchestra, $ 4 .0 0 , Concessions: Me (finishing date uncer­ cond. by Robert Muller. students $2.20, Tues, tain — watch for Sydney Town Hall. Free. Wed & Thurs.

Rentadick).

Opening Wed 29th. The The Spring Heeled Terror Lyceum, 210 Pitt. What’s French’s Tavern, 86 Merry Widow by Franz Up Doc. Oxford St, Darlinghurst. Lehar (dir: Bernd Ben- O f Stepney Green by & Mayfair, 73 Catlereagh. (Permanent weekly prog. taak) Mon to Sat 8.00 dir: Stanley Walsh, Music Cabaret.

Mon 5.30-7.30 Dick p.m. Sat mat 2.00 p.m. Hall Restaurant, 156 Military Rd, Neutral Bay, Metro, 530 Oxford, Hughes, 7.30 Blues prices $6.20, $5.20, 909-8222 Mon to fSat Bondi Jn. 18-23 Bed­ Spirit; Tues 5.30-7.30 $3.50, $2.50.

8.30 —dinner from 6.00. room Mazurka; 24-2 Dick Hughes, 7.30 Dick 2/12/72. Bartók Concert Mon-Fri $2.70, Sat. Ryans Daughter.

Hughes Trio; Wed Kambala Girls High $3.20 (not including New Arts Cinema, 166 5.30-7.30 Graeme Bell, School, Rose Bay, 8.00 food & drink).

Glebe Pt Rd, Glebe. 7.30 Colonel Crint; p.m. $2.50.

Taming O f the Strew by Kama Sutra.

Thurs 5.30-7.30 Graeme William Shakespeare dir: Orpheum, 386 Military Bell, 7.30 Harbor City Robin Lovejoy. Old Tote Rd, Cremome. 18-24 Jazz Band; Fri 5.30-7.30 T h e a tre C om pany, Hospital/You don’t Need Dick Hughes; Sat 7.30 Parade Theatre, UNSW, Pyjamas At Rosies; 24, Blues Spirit.

Anzac Parade, Kensing­ 27, 28 Dance Poem/The Jazz is played at the Story of The Hunipack Albury Hotel, 6 Oxford Bakes on Broadway and ton, 663-6122. Mon-Sat at 8.00, Sat. mat at 2.00.

Horse.

St, Paddington (Thurs, Piccadilly Lily, musical Opens: 21st. Prices: Mon Paramount, 525 George. Frid and Sat afternoon), revue at Bonaparte’s to Fri. $3.50 Sat even.

Theatre Restaurant, 152 The Godfather.

Jason’s Restaurant, 269 Paris/ 205 Liverpool. Crown St, Surry Hills William, 212-2666. Mon. $4.00, Concessions to students: Mon, Tues & They Call Me Trinity.

(Sun nights), the Jazz to Sat. from 6.00 p.m. to Sat mat $1.00, Wed & 3.00 a.m.

(Show 'runs Plaza, 600 George. 18-20 Room at John’s of , Chato’s Land (following Newport, 387 Barrenjoey 8.30-10.30) $7.00 - Thurs $1.50. program uncertain).

Rd, Newport (Sun concessions for groups. Fools Paradise by Peter Rapallo, 527 George. nights), Rocks Push (a Basically Black, An Coke, dir. Dennis Allan'.

Carry On Henry. wine bar) 109 George St. Aboriginal Revue dir. Arts Theatre, Surf Road, Regent, 487 George. J.W. (Mon to Sat) • Ken Horler. Nimrod Cronulla. 523-6888. Fri. Coop/ To Find A Man. Street Theatre, 10 Nim­ & Sat. at 8.15 p.m.

Concessions: State Theatre, 49 Mar­ rod St, Darlinghurst $ 1 .3 0 .

31-3754. Tuesdays to pensioners 50c, students ket. Frenzy (finishing date uncertain. Watch for Pact Folk, YWCA Saturdays at 8.30, Sun­ $1.00, children 70c.

The Groundstar Con­ Cellar, Liverpool St, — days at 7.30. Prices: The Ghost Train by Tues, Wed, Thurs — Arnold Ridley, dir. Peter spiracy). every Sat. at 8.00.

Com­ Royal George Hotel, $2.00, Fri, Sat, Sun — C ollingw ood.

State Theatrette, 49 Theatre, 2 $2.50. Concessions to munity cnr King & Sussex Sts. — Market. 18-23 Percy; Marian Street, Killaura actors, students and 24-2 Dagmar’s Hot Pants every Sat. at 8.00. Folk members: Tues, Wed, 498-3166. Tues-Sat at music has sunk back Incorporated. underground these days. Thurs — $1.50, Sun. 8.15, Sun. 7.30, $3, Village Twin Cinemas, $ 2 .2 5 .

Concessions: If there are still any $1.75.

377 New South Head students & pensioners Bye Bye Birdie, MacArRoad, Double Bay. folkies around we’d dig thur Girls High School, $1.50. for them to let the rest Opening 1st December by John Cnr MacArthur and Godspell with, in Cinema 1, of us know where they Thomas Sts, Parramatta. Michael Tebelack dir: can be found.

Deliverance & Cinema 2, Rich18th, 24th, 25th at 8.00 Sammy Bayes The Emigrants. p.m. $1.50. Concessions: brooke Theatre, 150 Elizabeth Street, Sydney.

75c children.

A Delicate Balance, by 61-9880, Mon to Thurs Edward Albee dir. Doug­ - 8.30, Fri & Sat 5.40 & las Hedge. Genesian 8.40. Prices: Mon to Sat Frid. 24th. The Gorgon Theatre, 420 Kent even. $3.50 & $4.50, Fri Experim ental music 29-6454.

Fri & Sat at & Sat mats $2.80 & poetry & sound sculp Sat 18th. Seven Samurai $3.80. Concessions^ Vi 8.15. ture. (dir: Rick Billing(dir: Kurosawa) 7.30 price to children & Dirty D ick’ s Theatre hurst) 8.15 $2 (stud. $1) p.m. Union Theatre, pensioners to mats.

Pitt St Congregational Restaurant, 313 Pacific Innovation II choreo­ University of Sydney, Highway, Crows Nest.

A Centre, 264 Pitt.

Parramatta Rd, Glebe.

M argaret musical entertainment g r a p h e r s Sun 19th. Mad Dogs & Chappie, Christine Kolbased on ‘Elizabethan Englishmen 4.30 & 7.30 Graeme Watson. days’. Tues. to Frid $7, tai, $2 Metro Theatre, 42 Bodenwieser Dance Com­ Sat. $8, Sun. $5.50.

8.10 North Steyne, Manly. p.m. to midnight. Book­ pany, Teachers Federa­ Cream’s Final Perform­ tion Auditorium, 330 ings 929-8888. ance (also appearing, the Enter A Free Man by Sussex 212-3000. 20, 21 69ers) 7.30 $2 Kingsway Stoppard, dir. at- 8.15 p.m. $2.50.

Theatre, 520 Kingsway, Sat 18th. Der Freis- Tom chuetz by Weber (dir: Hayes Gordon, Ensemble Concessions: children & Miranda. students $1.50.

Tues 21st. The Hustler Evelyn Klopper) 8.00 Theatre, 78 McDougall An Isolated Case o f Sydney Opera Street, Milsons Point, Heter-Chromia by R.C. (dir: Rossen) National p.m.

Film Theatre screening Company at Teachers 929-8877, Mon to Sat Herbert- dir; Shirley Federation Auditorium. 8.00, Sat. mat. 5.00. Broadway, New Theatre, 7.15, Commonwealth Prices: Mon. to Thurs & Centre Theatrette, Cnr 330 Sussex $3.00, $2.50, St. Peters Lane, East $2.00. II Trovatore by Sat Mat. — $2.75 & Phillip & Hunter St. Sydney 31-3237. Opens: $2.25.

Fri. & Sat. Eves.

Thurs 23rd.

British Verdi (dir: John Milson) Sat. Nov. 4, also Sun, $3.00 & $2.50.

Experimental films — Rockdale Municipal Or­ Nov. 5 then every Fri, Concessions to students: Adventures O f X, San chestra & Opera Com­ Sat, Sun at 8.15. Price: Francisco One O f The pany, Rockdale Town Mon & Tues. $1.00, $ 2 .0 0 .

Concessions: remainder reduced by Missing, The Park, Hall. $3.00 (stud. $1.50).

Students, $1.00, children $0.50.

You’re Human Like The Sun 19th. Beethoven, Dear Father & Pensioners, 70 cents.

Tchaikovsky Father Rest O f Them National Prokieff Come Over Here by Ron Jesus Christ Superstar by p.m.

Sydney Film Theatre screening 8.00 Harrison dir.

Ron Fer- Tim Rice & Andrew Orchestra 7.30 p.m. Common- Symphony Lloyd Webber, dir: Jim rier.

Australian Theatre, w ealth C e n t r e cond. Vanco Cavdarski, Sharman, Capital cnr.

Lennox & Probert Theatrette, cnr Phillip & solo. Margaret Powell Theatre, 13 Cambell S t r e e t s , Ne wt own (piano). Sydney Town Hunter St. Haym arket, 51-3841.

8.00 p.m. St reet , Frid 24th. The Mender Hall. Free.

212-3677.

Mon to Sat at 20-29 Preview Showings’ o f Nets (dir: D.W. Tues 21st. Gala Concert 8.30, Fri & Sat mats ($1 a seat).

Official Griffiths) & The Big by the Sydney Opera 6.00, Prices: $5.20, opening 30 th prices Parade (dir: King Vidor), Company, 8.00 p.m.

Town Hall, $3.50, $2.50. Conces­ $4.20 & $3.20. Conces­ National Film Theatre Sydney sions: Party bookings. screening 7.30 p.m. AMP $3.70, $2.70, $2.00. sions for students.

Sydney Hospital Revue Glinker, Strauss, PonThe Mavis McMahon Theatrette, AMP Build­ with Gunga Dir. Union chielli, Tchaikovsky, 1 Show dir: James Fishing, Circular Quay.

Sun 26th. Marx Brothers p.m.-1.50 p.m. Sydney burn, MacLeay Theatre, Theatre, Uni. of Sydney, Orchestra 81 Macleay St, Potts Parramatta Rd, Glebe.

A t The Circus/Laurel & Symphony Hardy’s Laughing Twen­ cond. Vanco Cavdarski. Point, 35-0433, Mon. to Nov 22-25, 8.00 p.m. ties, 4.45 p.m. Vintage Sydney Town Hall. Free. Sat. 8.30 (dinner at 6.00) Where Do We Go From

M ovies currently snowing

Jazz

Theatre & Dance

Folk

Movies; oneshots

Experi -mental

Classical &.Opera

Here? by Helga Burgess dir: David Goddard, Independent Theatre, 271 Miller St, North Sydney. 929-7377. Sat: 2.00 Prices: $1-2 adults, $0.60 children. A chil­ dren’s play.

White With Wire Wheels

by Jackson Hibberd dir: Leila Blake, Independent Theatre, 271 Miller St,.

N orth Sydney, 929-7377. Wed to Sat at 8.15, Prices: $3.00, $2.00, $1.00 Sat $3.00 & $2 .0 0 .

Concessions: students, $1.50, $1.00.

M ind Su rvival

NEXUS GROUP - P.O. Bo* 325 St. Mary’s - group of people all of whom have previously undergone some form of institutional therapy.

Seems that a lot of people are very unhappy with the deal they receive from the psychiatric establish­ ment. Any groups with al­ ternative ideas looking into this scene we’d like to hear from you (31-5073) Here for what it’s worth CALLAN PARK PSYCHI­ ATRIC CENTRE, Balmain Rd, Rozelle, 2039. (826601)

New Books Self-Love, David Cole Gordon. Penguin $1. A candid discussion of masturbation. This book doesn’t tell you how to do it, but then you already know that, right? Rather, it clears away the guilt and anxiety feelings as­ sociated with masturba­ tion, and even allies it with Zen. An attempt to come to grips with the Universe? Perhaps that’s why Alan Watts calls it ‘a little classic .

Massage Book, George Downing, Bookworks, $4.45. Similar to ‘The Art of Sensual Massage’ but more informative it really tells you how to do it. Has little line drawings, lots of know how. All you need is a body, some olive oil and the book.

PLACE, No. I. Natural Wonders Inc., $4.50.

Sub-titled '‘A working­ mans guide to the Universe’, this fat quarter­ ly magazine tries to pass itself off as Son of Whole Earth Catalog. It uses some ex-WEC staff and its bias is literary with short sto ries, photographs, poem s & Gurney Norman. All high class stuff — another best magazine in the world, but who can afford it?

Cold Comfort, Vol I, No. 5, 20c, Aust Union of Students. Always in­ teresting this issue has information on the Learn­ ing Exchange and also reprints an article on ReTooling Society by Ivan Illich, the Thinkingmans Guru.

Memoirs of a Trivialist, Samuel Rosenberg, Pen­ guin $1.35. Want to know why Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein? Why she was hungup about her father and who fucked her on her mothers grave?

Why Meman Melville was buried standing up and what his tombstone means? Why anyone would drop out of Harvard at age 13 and devote his life to collect­ ing streetcar transfers?

This has to be one of the great books with totally absorbing essays about not very much. Digger HitPick of the Fortnight.

Qantrill’s Film Notes No. 11.

This magazine put out by the enfants-terribles of the local filmscene is one of their best thus far. The Cantrills have for the last few years been trying to push the local filmscene into an awareness of its debts to the European and American under­ grounds of the last 50 years or so. In doing this they haven’t retained many friends, but have certainly stirred the possum. Their magazine is the written equivalent of their screenings and conversation-a collage of technical information, manifestos, comment on approved filmies, and in this issue a rather cosmic article from Gregory Markopoulos.

Markopoulos is one of the most influential and important American, film-makers, and in his article called ‘A Supreme Art in a Dark Age’ he seems pretty pissed off.

Filmnotes is available from most bookshops or from Box 1295L GPO Melbourne.

area? Preferably close to city. Phone Phil Noyce 660-11420ne Central St Gallery has large space, with lights and kitchen FAT JACK’S TECHNOL­ available for non-com­ OGY SHOP. People using mercial artwork-music/ technology not technology h a p p e n i n g s / p o l i t i c a l using people (389-1815) event. Ph. Peter 31-7219 BLISS APOCALYPSE (evenings). mass outdoor celebratory ritual, in rehearsal, needs Sydney Yoga Centre, participants. Phone Don 188 George St, Sydney.

(38-6461) Lessons 6 p.m.-7 p.m.

YOGA MEDITATION Mon t hr u Thurs CENTRÉ, 198 Day St. 3rd (604-5483).

Floor (61-2456) Free lectures and group meditat­ Dew Drop Inn, 433 ion Thursday 8.30-9.30pm. Crown St, Surrey Hills.

Informal shop wants Drop-in Centré, 71-83 Forbes St, Woolloomoo­ crafts in small commis­ loo. Chance to learn lots sion basis. of crafts. Thurs & Fri 7-12 p.m. and Sunday 2-9 p.m.

Country Craft Market, 1421 Old Northern Rd, Glenorie (opp. Cattai Ridge Rd on way to Wiseman Ferry. Sunday noon to sunset.

National Film Theatre o f Australia, 96 Phillip St, Sydney (221-2434). Has great films (see Flyer — Movies, Sydney Film-makers Co­ op and Film-makers Cinema, are looking for a place for their cinema/ workshop/office. Know any warehouse, hall, terrace house, big enough for a 100 seat cinema, offices and maybe living

Help Overseas

Here are a few information/help places in Europe etc. They are culled from a list provided

by BIT the best informa­ tion service in England.

As we hear of more useful * contacts we’ll print them too. So if you know any, let us know.

VIENNA: Club 2000, Mariengasse 4, 1170, Wien, Austria. * SINGAPORE: Singapore Return to the Stars, Erich Scene, c/o Tony Tan, Von Daniken, Corgi, 448c, Block 35, Circuit $l.'25.!His ‘Chariot of the Road, Singapore 13.

Gods’ was spectacularly LONDON: BIT Informa­ successful. This second , tion Service, 141 Westbook is more of the same bourne Park Rd, London.

— long on theories, short NEW YORK: Middle on facts —interesting but Earth Switchboard. 271 Boul evarde to tally unconvincing. Nassau Give me Einstein any old Garden City South New York 11530 (516) time.

292-0100.

Everywoman, Derek PARIS: Contact Informa­ Llewellyn-Jones, Faber, tion, 74 Rue des Saint $2. This book by a local Peres, 75 Paris VI. author has become an GHENT: Informatieceninternational classic. Its a trum het SAS prins ‘gynaecological guide to albertstraat 132, 9110 St postbus life’ and looks like Amandsberg, becoming the definitive 645,9000 Gent. book about all sexual AMSTERDAM: JAC Am­ aspects of womanhood. sterdam, Amstel 30, tel 020 24-2949,24-9087.

Natural Foods Cook­ HAMBURG: Release, 2 book, Beatrice Trum Hamburg 6, KarolinenHunter, Pyramid, $1.20. strasse 7-9 43-4541.

This is THE BOOK on OVERLAND TO INDIA AND BEYOND: BIT natural foods, and is now broadsheet crammed full out in a mass circulation .paperback. Every other of info, on visas, health, health food book refers to student cards, dope laws, it — it’s been in print 12 border hassles, the blackyears an;hasn’t been market, food, shelter, hitching, buses, trains, bettered. beats, planes, prices, etc.

Jail Notes, Timothy etc. for every inch of the Leary, N.E.L. $1.70. Big route from Istanbul to Sur, Jack Kerouac N.E.L. Indonesia — plus BIT’s European $1.35. Two books in a compl et e series called Underground address network. 5Op Classics. A couple of even since devaluation! heavies from way back (or $2.50 airmail) mini­ telling it like it was. mum ‘donation’ . . . all Leary’s book is about the money to BIT Informa­ jail term from which he is tion Service, 141 WestPark Rd., currently AWOL, thanks bour ne LONDON W ll IBQ. to the Weatherpeople.

M ore

Fora listing phone 315073 Sydney 697446 Melb.

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The Digger

November 18 — December 2

Supplement HI

MELBOURNE FLYER PEAL ASSOCN: 94-1540 VICTORIAN SECOND’Y STUDENTS UNION: 804 Brunswick St. Fitzroy.

PRISONS ACTION GROUP 82 Storey St. CITIZENS ADVICE BUR­ Carlton 347-3693 EAU, 107 Russell St. Melb. CARLTON ASSOCIATION 63-1062.

Box 52 Carlton Post Office.

LIFE LINE 662-1000 FITZROY RESIDENTS PERSONAL EMERGENCY ASSOCIATION 124 Napier ADVICE SERVICE 41St, Fitzroy 41-2050 5678 POISONS INFORMATION FRIENDS OF THE EARTH 72 Studley Park SERVICE 347-5522 Kew. DENTAL EMERGENCY TRANSCENDENTAL SERVICE 347-4222 MEDITATION CENTRE LARUNDEL 469-2911 29 Drummond St. Carlton ROYAL PARK PSY­ 347-6216 CHIATRIC HOSPITAL DIVINE LIGHT MISSION 38-8151 Cnr. Faraday & Cardigan ALP: 347-3777 COMMUNIST PARTY OF St. Carlton.

VICTORIAN COUNCIL AUSTRALIA, 1st Floor, FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES 197 Lonsdale St. 663-3965 Box 137 PO Carlton, SOCIALIST YOUTH AL­ LIANCE: 136 Queensberry 25-4137.

UFO RESEARCH SOC St., Carlton 347-3507 Box 43 Moorabin.

WORKER STUDENT AL­ AUSTRALIAN UNION LIANCE Box 2710x GPO OF STUDENTS 344 Vic­ Melb, 52-3545. toria St, Nth Melb.

329RADICAL ACTION 7666 MOVEMENT: 57 Palmer­ ston St. Carlton. 347-5640 AUSTRALIA PARTY: 70a WORKING PEOPLES AS­ Chapel St. St. Kilda 948095.

SOCIATION (anarchists) CARLTON FREE COA­ 42 Smith St. Collingwood CHING.: 120 Rathdowne DRAFT RESISTERS UN­ St. Carlton ION Box 55 Highett Post ENVIRONMENTAL Office or CICD ACTION LEAGUE 783CONGRESS FOR INTER-' 1320 NATION CO-OPERATION WOMENS CENTRE: 1C & DISARMAMENT (CICD) Little Lonsdale St. 347208 Little Lonsdale St. 1564 663-3677 ABORIGINES ADVANCE­ GAY LIB Box 85 Melb MENT LEAGUE, 56 Cun­ Uni. Union. ningham St. Northcote ABORTION LAW R E 489-8467

Phone guide

W om en Women’s Centre 16 Little LaTrobe St. 3471564 Abortion Law Repeal Association 941540 — for information on sex education, free contra­ ceptives, abortion, volun­ tary sterilization, and zero population growth.

— pregnancy counselling service — where all the possible alternatives can be discussed, see ad. below — to join ALRA write to PO Box 158 South Carlton

Consu mers

At the moment there is really no organisation with any practical/political punch. Perhaps the PIRG’s being set up in Ralph Nader’s wake will have this when they get going. Listed below are some groups that might be able to help, and a

¿couple to steer clear of.

Victorian Consumer Af­ fairs Council Consumer Protection Bureau. Both are at 100 Exhibition St Melb., phoné 651-6945.

These organisations were set up under the Consumer Protection Act and are subject to the limitations of anyone operating under the Libs.

The Council is basically there to advise the Minister & disseminate information etc. The CPB are the ones you ring up and complain to.

They can take action to redress wrongs done to consumers but only after the consumer has tried himself. In other words you have to complain to the seller or manufacturer first and if he won’t help then write or go and see the CPB. They are very friendly even if they haven’t got enough power.

The Abortion Law Repeal Association offers: —

pregnancy eoun/elling

All the possible alternatives can be discussed

In Melbourne, ring 94-1630 or 94-1540, between 7.30 pm and 9.0 pm, Monday through Friday. The organizers hope to announce a weekend service, soon.

The A B O R T IO N postal address:

LA W R E F O R M A S S O C IA T IO N P.O. Box 135, Carlton 30 5 3 , Vic.

Th4re are other groups that conduct research and product evaluation.

Notably the Australian Consumers Association who publish Choice.

Choice is pretty good, but doesn’t get to all the people who buy stuff.

The Australian Con­ sumer Benefits Associa­ tion, Mastercash and like organisations are ripoffs.

Steer clear.

Environ mental Groups NATIONAL: Ecology Action, 189 Clarence Street, Sydney, NSW 2000. ($6. Minors $3. Students $2. “An independent national or­ ganisation of individuals and groups involved in issues of the present environmental crisis.”

Nat i onal newsletter.

Ecology Shop discounts.

Special reports. Oppor­ tunities for action: re­ search, education, meet­ ings, publicity, cam­ paigns.)

Zero Popul at ion Growth (Australia) PO box 403, Broadway, NSW 2007.

(Meetings, re­ search, publicity, news­ letter.)

A ustralian Conserva­ tion Foundation, 191 Royal Parade, Parkville.

Vic 3052. ($5. 7000 members.

“Actively engaged in conservation work con­ cerned with the total environment.”)

Wildlife Preservation Society of. Australia, Science House, Glou­ cester Street, Sydney.

NSW 2000.

Organic Food

. Angelo D ’Agostino, 601 Station St Box Hill 89-1957 is the authorised distributor of bio-dynamically grown fruit and vegetables in Melbourne.

Below are the places he supplies. Shops or res­ taurants other than these who claim to use organi­ cally grown food ought to be treated sceptically. If you want good vegetables go and see him.

Leslies Hamm & Beef Shop, Lygon St Carlton.

347-3585.

Shakahari, 329 Lygon St Carlton.

Foodmill, Main Rd Ferny Creek.

Ringwood Vitalfood.

Maroondah Motel, 768 Whitehorse Rd Box Hill.

Bruce Standish, 723 Glenhuntly Rd Sth Caul­ field. 53-7248.

Capers, 90 Collins St Melbourne.

AT THE HOUSE OF STRIPES ELIZABETH ST & AT REFLECTIONS — TIVOLI ARCADE

Anti-Expressway Cam­ paign Committee, C/Leichhardt Municipal Council, town hall, Leichardt. NSW 2040.

The Colong Com­ mittee, 18 Argyle Street, Sydney. NSW 2000.

Annandale Associa­ tion, Ph: 660-3468.

Balmain Association, Ph: 82-3956.

Globe Society, Ph: 660-5279.

The Rocks Residents’ Group, Ph: 27-6792.

Clean Air Society of Victoria, 191 Royal Parade, Parkville. Vic. 3052.

Save Westernport Co­ alition, box 113 Frankston. Vic. 3199.(Com­ prising 21 member organisations around Port Phillip and Westernport.)

Victoria: Conservation Council o f Victoria, PO box 104, Springvale. Vic. 3171.

Zero Po pul at io n Growth Society (Mel­ bourne), Cf- Dr I. MacBean, Genetics de­ partment, Latrobe univer­ sity, Bundoora, Vic 3083. ($2. Aims and activities similar to ZPG (Aust) — Albion Hotel, comer Fara­ see above.) day and Lygon St., Carl­ ton. Most things including Friends o f the Earth (FOE), 72 Studley Park avocados, asparagus, steaks the odd curry and stewy Road, Kew. Vic. 3101. things for under a buck.

Ph: 86-8667, 86-9042.

Williamstown Conser­ Reasonably healthyful for vation and Planning carnivores.

Society, 157 Nelson Mergellina Pizza House, Place, Williamstown. Vic. Glenhuntly Rd., Elstern3016. (Ph: 397-5881. $1. wick, between Orrong & “Busily working on about Kooyong Rds., as well as a dozen different fronts — pizzas pretty reasonable eg. people having to live, Italian type food and sal­ next to industrial in­ ads. Fill you up for a buck fernos.”)

50. Open til 3am week-, Altona Pollution ends.

Abatement Association, 130 .Grieve Parade, Pulcinella Pizza in Elgin St Carlton is like that too.

Altona. Vic, 3018.

The more authentic Italian League for Eastern Victorian Environmental cooking.

Responsibility, C/- Mr G. Joannas, cnr Elgin and Rice, Bairnsdale. Vic. Canning St., very cheap 3875. but they don’t cook so We ste rnpor t and good.

Peninsula Protection Taj Mahal, Chapel St., Council, 12 Kerford Prahran. Curries and stuff.

Street, East Melbourne. Ton of good stuff for Vic. 3002. (A member of 2.50. the Save Westernport KaiKai, Spring St., end of Coalition.)

Cheap Eats

M dye p.f. promotion/

buddy guy

ND EVERYTHING ELSE THAT MAY HELP

2102 .

Coalition o f Resident Action Groups, Ph: 662-3161.

W IT H

WHEREVER OUR KIND OF MUSIC IS SOLD

Luscious lines tolayin,

National Health Foun­ dation, 130 Hampden Road, Artarmon, NSW 2064. (Ph: 412-3233. $5.

The search for pure air. water and food, & against consumer exploitation.)

STATE: New South Wales: Nature Conservation Council of NSW, 3 Coopernook Ave, Gymea Bay, NSW 2227.

Junior Section, Royal Zoological Society, 80 Berry Street, North Sydney.

NSW 2060.

(Monthly meetings, films, field trips, etc, for school students.)

North Harbour Con­ servation Society, C/- Mr G. Porter (hon. sec.), Ph: 949-2005.

(50 cents single; $1 family.)

Clutha Committee, box K659, Haymarket, NSW 2000.

Myall Lakes Com­ mittee, 202 Woorarra Ave, Narrabeen. NSW

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Saturday 18th:

“PLAY THE BLUES’ inaustralia on A tlantic M l

Friday 24th: Saturday 25th:

355 Exhibition St. City Friday 1st.

Contrary To The Auction Board We ’re N O T Closing

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NEW RELEASE ALBUM Produced by Eric Clapton Featuring — Dr John — J. Geils — Eric Clapton — Carl Radle and Jim Gordon

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The Shark, Friends, C ountry Radio Madder Lake Musos N ight — Battersea Heroes, Tank Miss Universe, Madder Lake M iddle E arth, Mississippi, Friends Sid Rum po S .A ., C ountry Radio Musos Night: Guests, Friends, Tank M ighty Mouse, Carson

YEARS

F A S H IO N

E V E R Y T H IN G H IP , ISSI C A N L A V U N IQ U E

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Sat 18: Sun 19: Th ur 23: Fri 24: Sat 25: Sun 26: T h ur.30: Fri 1:

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ROCK,

Little Bourke St., Anton­ io cooks Jamaican curries etc. $1.50.

Sishkebab, in Russell St before the copshop, cheap good Lebanese food. $2.

II Bistro, Bourke St., down from Pelligrinis, lunch joint but terrific on Satur­ days.

Yugoslav Restaurant in Brunswick St., Fitzroy just up from Johnson St. away from the city. Big­ gest schnitzels in the world. 80c.

Chinese Restaurants in Little Bourke St: The first alley down from Russell St., turp right and go up the concrete stairs. Best crisp skin chicken outside of Peking. And the Singlee in Celestial Lane. Tiny but terrific. 10 people can eat for $12.

L'Alouette & Le Fiacre in Victoria St., Nth. Mel­ bourne 3 or 4 bucks but reasonable facsimile of fiench cooking. Sometimes people sing in your ear.

The Chinese Mandarin, Toorak Rd. down from Chapel St. $4 but the crabs are great.

Borbles, Elgin St., Carlton.

Carlton push restaurant food, well, alright but the vibes are great. $2 all in.

Golden Age, King St.u Journos pub but good pub food. $2.50 depen­ ding on how mubh you drink.

AUSTRALIAN TWIN, CINEMA TWO

IM lM & No. 1 Spring St. City 63-2513 Saturday 18th: CARSON, CLOCKWORK STRAW BERRY Sunday 19th: ATLAS, LEO DE CASTRO & FRIEN D S Saturday 25th: MISS U N IVE R SE , JADE, SESSION Sunday 26th: M ID D L E EAR TH, IN D E L IB L E MURTCEPS

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APG PRESENTS

Thé men who made the Rolling Stones roll!

Plus J E A N LE W IS

This Week!

T w o performances on ly at the Melbourne Town Hall December 1 and December at 8.15 p.m.

CLUB

Book now at Myers, Hotel Australia & Celebrity Services ALL Seats $3.75 incl.l Party concessions avail­ able — 'phone 63-1101 ^Brought to Australia by, Kym Bonython Artists stay at Koala Motels and Motor Inns Flyin g

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Dec 1 - Dec 23 Pram Factory 325 Drummond St Carlton Wednesday—Sunday 9pm Friday and Saturday 10.30 too Bookings: 3477114 M^NIC DEPRESSIVE ROCK THEATRE^

SAT .25 SÄL 18 MISS UNIVERSE SESSION MR MUSE THE PIG EDISON LIGHTS

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The Digger

Supplement IV

November 18 — December 2

wsto}MELBOURNE FLYER [ M ovies Albany: Miralce of Love; then Klute; Dirty Harry from 23rd.

Athaneum: Hello Dolly; Carmen Jones Australia 1: Summer of ‘42 Billy Jack; then Deliverance from 23rd.

Sun. 19th: Mad Dogs & Englishmen Australia 2: Blue Angel; then Summer of 42, Billy Jack from 23rd Balwyn: Ryan’s Daughter Bercy: What’s Up Doc? Capitol: Adventures of Barry McKenzie Chelsea: Henry VIII and his Six Wives Dendy Malvern: Murmer of The Heart Dendy Brighton: Blushing Charlie Eastend 1: Clockwork Orange Eastehd 2: Decameron Eastend 3: Stork Esquire: The Magnificent Seven Ride/Halls of Anger Forum: Carry On Matron Metro: Gone With The Wind Midcity 1: Cabaret Midcity 2: Fiddler on the Roof Midcity 3: Hickey & Bogg Midcity 4: The Last Grenade Midcity 5: Butterflies Are Free Odean: I Am A Dancer Rivoli 1: Garden of the Finzi Continis Rivoli 2: Macbeth Rapallo: Endless Night Star: Monique Swanston: The Candidate Roma: Bedroom Mazurka Times: Bedside Dentist Trak:2001

Sun 19: Johnny Pace & Harriet Thur 23: Gerry Gerrard Fri 24: Jeff Phillips Sat 25: Dorothy Baker Sun 26: The Arthurs Pier Hotel Sat 18: Jack Carmello Sun 19: Vestrey Roxas Sat 25: Tony Parlano Sun 26: Kinsmen Polaris Inn Hotel, 551 Nicholson St Nth Carlton Folk Music Wednesday nights; Jazz Thursday nights; Folk Friday nights; Jazz Saturday nights Union Hotel, 78 Fenwick St, Nth Carlton Folk Friday nights Joanna’s Cellar Cnr. Elgin & Canning St Carltdn Jazz: \L0pm—3am—Fri & Sat; 8pm—lam —Sun. La Mama, 205 Faraday Si Carlton NIAGGRA Mondays 8prr 80c. Jerry Kellock, Bruce Woodcock, Graydon Neil

T heatre

PramTactory: Australian Performing Group/Nindethana Theatre: Brumby Innes, by Katharine Sus­ annah Prichard.

This play was written in the 20s but has never been performed before mainly due to its requirement of a black cast. Its a pretty exciting play about a racist/chauvinist station owner in the north west and the compromises involved in his and the blacks relation­ ships. 31st Nov. Tues to Berties Sun at 8.15, for 4 weeks.

Sat. 18: Carson, Clock­ Bookings 3477133. work Strawberry Sun 19: Atlas, Leo De Claremont Theatre Castro, Freinds ¥4 Clarennont St Sth Y Sat 25: Miss Universe, FLASH JIM VAUX, by Jade, Session Ron Blair. Thurs. To Sun Sun 26: Middle Earth, at 8.15. About a singing Indelible Murtceps convict who was bawdy.

Sebastians Sat 18: McKenzie Theory; Russell St: Russell St. near Flinders St. A Touch Spectrum of the Poet, by Eugene Fri 24: Tank, La De Das Sat. 25: Mighty Mouse, ONeill. Nightly for a Madder Lake month. Good provincial Fri 1: Lobby Loyd’s repertory, if you like that Coloured Balls sort of thing.

Q Club St. Martins: Birds on the Sat 18: Miss Universe, Wing, By Peter Yeldham.

Session, Mr Muse, The Old Pig; Edison Light and La Mama Phillipa wrestling her Nothing definite for the Mighty Appendix fortnight as of going to Sat 25: Lobby Loyd’s press. Something usually Coloured Balls, Pendulum, turns up.

Terraplane, Pig, Brown Eye Lights.

Garrison Sat 18: The Shark, Friends Country Radio Busts: Sun 19: Madder Lake Advice on what to do if Thur 23: Musos Night, you get busted for the Battersea Heroes, Tank many things you might Fri 24: Miss Universe, get busted for: dope, Madder Lake national service, at a de­ Sat 25: Middle Earth, monstration, d & d, ob­ Mississippi, Friends scene publications, frameSun 26: Sid Rumpo, Country Radio ups or whatever — has Thurs 30: Musos Night, to be tempered with the Friends, Guests, TAnk, facts of life. You might Fri 1: Mighty Mouse, have to decide that the Easyrider !policeman is being gen­ Sat 18: Mint, Issi Dye, uinely friendly in which floorshow case you might co-operate Wed 22: Clydehouse and show him around, Thur 23: La De Das you might decide that you Fri 24: Big Push want to talk rather than Sat 25: Reflections get beaten up, you might Thurs 30: Coloured Balls decide that you’ll stick to Fri 1: Big Push the letter of the law. What­ Winston Charles ever you decide it is essen­ Sat 18 & Sun 19: Kinsmen tial that you know your Tues 21 to Sun 26: Moon rights. There aren’t many Impressions of them.

Top Hat Arrest: Sat 18: Noel McKay You are arrested if a pol­ Mon 20 to Sat 25: Tony Parleno iceman detains you. If he wants you to go to the Distillery station or somewhere Sat 18: Jack Carmello, with you, he has to arrest John Pace & Harriet.

Tues 21—Sat 25: you. And if you are ar­ John Pace & Harriet rested he has to tell you what for, the charge. He cannot detain you merely to ask questions. You do Southern Aurora not have to provide him Sat 18: John Rupert with any information, Thur 23: Country Radio Fri 24&25 Keith Humber though it is usually wise to give him your name San down Park and address. If you are de­ Sat 18: Rim De Paul tained or arrested for most Fri 24 & Sat 25: Pat Steer offences connected with Waltzing Matilda driving, you DO have to Sat 18: Noel McKay provide name, address.

Thurs 23, 24,25: Johnny Once you are arrested do Pace & Harriet not make any statements.

South Side Six The police will offer deals, Sat 18: A’noon, Friends, leniency etc. but it is Night Blue Echoes Sun 19: Clockwork Orange mostly crap. You are Wed 22: Talent Quest liable to give away incrim­ Thur 23 to Sat 25: Blue inating evidence if you Echoes talk. Keep telling them Sat 25: A’noon La De Das that you do not want to Sun 26: La De Das make any statements un­ Dorset Gardens til you have consulted a Sat 18: Johnny Pace * solicitor. Ask to make a Harriet phone call, and get some­ Fri 24 & Sat 25: Colleagues one to come and bail you Sun 26: Johnny Famham out.

Tottenham Hotel Sat 18: Kinsmen

Discos

Law

Pubs

Search Warrants: Police can enter your home or office without a warrant to arrest someone or to recapture an escaped person. If they do this they have no right to search, or take anything awav. If they do, give them a ring and say that the matter will be placed in the hands of your solicitors if they don’t give the stuff back.

Or if they start nosing around tell the officer in charge that you will do this unless they stop.

Don’t take any shit, but be reasonable and cour­ teous. The police cannot enter your premises with­ out your permission merely to question you.

Either tell them to go away and make an appoint­ ment with your solicitor, or talk on the front steps.

There’s no point in up­ setting the workings of your house or whatever.

Usually you will have nothing to say, but its probably wise to avoid pissing them off too much by telling them things they can find out easily from records or ring­ ing up your parents.

Courts: Court hearings are elabor­ ate games with rules and rituals. Unless you have good reason toupset these procedures it isn’t wise to do so. You might want publicity or to go to jail or something but remember that unless its a spectacular offence or the P.R. has been organized in advance its all hot air. Respect for the rituals, and close at­ tention to the formalities of the summons, and to the time you have had to prepare your defence may mean long useful adjourn­ ments. Use the rules of the game to your own ad­ vantage.

Legal Aid Committee: Floor 9, 480 Collins St., Melboumejhelps people unable to pay legal costs.

Tele: 612022. Public Sol­ icitor (Attorney-General’s Dept.) 272-282 Queen St. Melboume;offers legal aid in criminal matters only for those unable to pay.

Tele: 600461.

Melbourne University Law Faculty: 180 Palmerston St., Carl­ ton is a legal/referral ser­ vice conducted by stud­ ents — Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, from 6—8pm.

Monash University Law Faculty: at C.A.B. 107 Russel St., provides a legal service on Monday, Thursday, morn­ ings and Wednesday after­ noons. Also at Springvale Community Aid and Ad­ vice Bureau.

Festival Hall. the crowd on some trip; Toilet paper is by now they don’t see him. but a dream of the past, And maybe all the but an unmistakable push about stage acts has SKROOK. SKEREEK struck Billy as right, or from Billy’s guitar plays maybe he’s just developed havoc, with the mass in it, but he’s opened out the ladies. Legs twitch, some. Moving happy eyes glance round, wide across the stage, hands and rolling; heifers stretching for words, legs trapped by a sea of shaking, hips rocking, knees knocking, dammed urine . . .

The Aztecs show on­ Glorioso! Back to the restrung stage to a cannon-balling shagged-out, of teenage gang noise. guitar for a new number Behind them, across the . . . More melodic, more back of the stage, banners complex. A song started strung, proclaiming “ Aus­ in a backroom on a tralian Entertainment Ex­ twelve-string; a lifter, a change” ; “ Havoc re­ rocker, and finally, (yes, cords” , “ 3XY” ; and, it had to be) a screamer.

An hour and a half rather strikingly, “The Aztecs fly great with Pan after “ CC” , the encoric end of “ Oo Poo Pa Doo” Am” . has slashed down the Billy strides round out seale, and, utterly fucked, front of the stage, the Aztecs bow out. grinning vast vibes at it all, *** with a smile like a can of Somewhat peculiarly, foster’s reflecting an colored balls were billed oceanic sunrise. Just to finish a long, flattening looking at him makes night of blood and sinew them yell with joy; rock’n’roll. Perhaps AEE everything’s fine, every­ dream of slotting them thing’s alright; look at the way that dude is busting into the room at the top the Aztecs leave, and his head apart, just perhaps they will fit that smiling.

And shit, the Aztecs slot, if the kids say so . . . look like a healthy young they played tight as murder on that hot night, bunch of steers up there, they buck into “CC fresh from some fantastic Hop with shorn heads, Rider” and from here on in it’s capable of any­ and grins from the sheer adrenalinic release of thing. They’re jiving in Edward Keogh the aisles they’re jiving on playing.. .

Thorpie rocks off. the seats, they’re yelling But while this odd thousands-strong, pubes­ When Mr Billy Thorpe November 11th, at Mel­ enough tickets to cram and hollering so; half the cent gang celebrate the and the Aztecs say bourne’s Festival Hall. the centre aisle, and still time you haven’t the *** leader, they won’t elect goodbye, it’s with a bang, they keep on coming . . . faintest idea what the another. That’s not how During sets by A EE not a whimper.

The ladies’ bog is band is playing. it’s mean’t to be.

The volume’s massive Madder Lake, wall-to-wall Thorpe has seared bands dolly-cuts If the Rolling Stones through hordes of Aus­ Friends, and Carson, the and bubbling bladders. If enough to induce com­ had appeared after the pulsive reaction or shell­ tr a lia ’s underground stadium slowly packed to you count the queue, Aztecs left that night, Aztec-worshippers over capacity the crude non­ there’s hundreds . . . shock . . . a gargantuan, they wouldn’t have the last couple of weeks; light show. By the (although, due to some uncut, euphoric wall topped the bill. No shit, feeding a bopping, danc­ interminable “intervals” oversight on the part of which drives the bouncers Lord help them, no shit. ing, piss-sucking multi­ . . . dragged. The Aztecs the designers, there were manic; one decides he’s at tude in a tour of his were due time, the only four (4) female the fights and socks some Jenny Brown. interstate strongholds usher-door-men, the or­ toilets and one (1) ladies’ yelling chick in the which climaxed on ganisers, or both, had sold washbasin installed at mouth, but he’s alone in

Bye Bye B illy

Surreal!

Surrealism exhibition (National Gallery, Vic­ toria until November 19, then Art Gallery South Australia, December 1January 2, 1973. If you live in NSW or Auckland, you’ve missed it).

The turn of this century saw just about everyone getting serious about everything. Includ­ ing the arty-crafties who were getting very serious about not being serious, just to show everyone that things shouldn’t be taken too seriously, and the things which had been taken as not being serious were what they intended to make serious. Art that is.

Except things got out of hand, and the serious non-seriousness became overwhelmingly and Melbourne Filmmakers pedantically serious. This Co-op, 161 Spring St., was the Dada philosophy, Melbourne which started about the same time the Aussies NOV 26: Linsey Martin — were getting the rough Light show, films and end of the cannon at the slides. Matt Butler — short Dardenelles. The artists films (Digger hit pick of were having their own the month) private war against art, Bulk Food but for art, if you can dig Raw suger, dried fruits, that. skim milk, yeast and oats Frank Ballantyne 109 Mar­ ket St Sth Melbourne.

Rice, honey cheese, from Producers Co-op 539 Flinders Lane Melbourne.

A NIGHT IN RIO Earth Peoples Food Co-op & OTHER BUMMERS 3 Theatre Place Canter­

by JACK ACTOR AND bury 8366131. Sells at THE SUICIDE PACT. Carlton Flea Market, Pram Factory 325 Drum­ This is new show mond St. Carlton 5-9 Fri, opening at the Pram 10-2 Sat. Factory on December 1, is impossible to describe. I Renaissance Fair Montsalvat Dec. 2&3, say this advisedly because 10—6. Wandering min­ whilst some people claim strels, jugglers, puppets, they know what it’s music, fortune tellers, about, they are usually stalls. $2.50, $2.00 in the ones who haven’t seen costume, $6 family. More any rehearsals. In fact info Robyn: 4397712; seeing rehearsals wouldn’t Sally: 3477117. be much help either Working Peoples Assoc­ because they keep chang­ iation, 42 Smith St ing too. Some things are Collingwood, 413004. for certain, like there will Free Legal Advice: Wed be a healthy emphasis on norming; Free Medical Advice: Monday morning; sex and all abberations, also on music, as part of Free Store: open every­ day; Open Meetings; Sun­ Jack Actor is part of day afternoons.

Toads Nitely.

To try and clear up this Self Management — mystery I asked one of Community Action Con­ ference the particpants, a Mr Saturday & Sunday 25—26 Vacarro, about the show.

November, Canp Eureka.

Q. Whats it about?

Details 413004 I A. O dunno, man. Sort of

M ore

After a while the Dada patres sufficiently con­ fused everyone who thought they knew the state of the track.

The Dadaists said things like “art is green table with fruit, but only on Sundays” and other m e a n i n g 1ess/ meaningful things.

Anyway in 1924, Surrealism was born, under the direction of Andre Breton. It was officially born, that is.

Now you see it, now you don’t type art, and lots of people continued to do their surrealist art. Then in 1972, a collection of some of this stuff was lent by various organisations and brought to Australia and put on display in the National Gallery so people could go along and appreciate it.

So that’s the story of how this collection came to be where it was last week. If you’ve been to the National Gallery, and most Americans who stay at the Southern Cross have, then you’ll know all the art sits behind a couple of turnstiles.

it then, it seems a bit odd to do it again and again.

Still it was his trip. His “Please Touch” was also there. Sort of a nipple thing, but behind perspex so the object was de­ feated.

Also a couple of Dali’s which were pretty good, and a couple of Picasso’s which showed how easily he made his millions, and a few from Max Ernst, which showed he was talented, and etc. Rene Magritte’s probably took the cake, with “Portrait” Rene Magritte, Palace o f Curtains, III, 1928—9.

Actually its pretty At these turnpikes you catalog for $1.50, which stupid trying to describe pay 20 cents, which is the you can use for recapitul­ art, if that’s what it is, and appreciation fee these ation afterwards on the nb-one’s saying it’s not. days, and inside you get drive back to the suburbs. So if you’re interested, go The exhibition was along, because you can to see as much art as you from the spend a reasonable pleas­ can handle. You are not borrowed allowed to smoke inside, Museum of Modern Art in ant hour or so in that except in the toilets if New York, so it should room, avoiding people they don’t catch you, but have been pretty good, walking backwards trying you can get away with and all considered, it to find optimum obser­ eating, and the Gallery wasn’t too bad; however vance point. You’ll find a lot of work was com­ even has two places where boring in a few spots.

For a start there was pleted before 1924 which you can eat —a restaurant Ducham p’s makes it not Surrealism, if and a cafe. In the cafe you Marchel can get coke and pies and “ bicycle wheel” , which is you want to live by sandwiches, so in a way what is says. This was his definitions, but if you like camels and the gallery is a bit like the third bash, after losing the burning MCG, but with less first two, and this one was people you can see drama. Thé Surrealist done in 1951. Since his through and lovers with exhibition is in the room first was done in 1913, shrouds on their heads, which houses temporary before “ Dada” was “ in­ don’t make no difference, exhibitions. You can get a vented” , and considering as Scott McKenzie almost * rather nicely set our why he would have done said.

Suicidal SexRockTheatre

Carol Jerrems

Jack Actor practices gymnastics before the Curtain. rock theatre I suppose.

Q. Whats that?

A. Well we’ve been doing a lot of gymnastics and drinking to get us in the mood for some trans­ sexual creepies, you know, and well, man, its kind of, like, cool.

Q. But also a Bummer?

A. You might say that, because, well, man, like,

the scene isn’t too hot at the moment, and we think that thats cool, and we kind of reflect the vibe.

Q. You wouldn’t say that the vibe was Up, Then?

A. I wouldn’t but some people might. We’ve kind of been through a lot of trips man, and we’d kind of like to share them. We

see the counterculture as finished man, trans­ cended by other trips and even when it was around there were a lot of bummers, and we all been through em man.

Q. How do you see yourself in relation to David Bowie?

A. Well I’d like to be in front of him man haw haw but frivolously man we’re more like Alice Cooper.

Q. What do you mean by that you prick?

A. Well you know rock and roll death, rebirth spies you know. Like Jim Morrison died when he was having a fuck in a bath in Paris and his heart gave out. In Paris! man.

Think on that!

Q. Will it be like Oh Calcutta?

A. No man you’ve missed the whole point. Its not bourgeois sexrock theatre man, but liberating deathrocksextheatre. Like all

the experiences of a poor rock band and various women and men and actors and overseas, you know, all in the Last Rock Theatre Show before the curtain drops on us all for the last time.

Q. That sounds depres­ sing. Whats the moral of the story?

A. Well actually the more gymnastics you do the more optimistic it gets viz a viz the culture, so I would say that in the mornings it will be optimistic and in the evenings sort of desper­ ate. Gymnastics you know contradicts all the dope experiences I’ve ever had. Depressing.

At this point the lead in my gestetner ran out & Mr Vacarro did too.

Rehearsals he said. Any­ way more communica­ tion is expected, and as some guru said: don’t worry be happy, what me worry?

Dope & Booze

Manresa, 345 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn Nusic, food, light show crafts, 865199 (Gerry)

Alcoholism Clinic: St. Vincent’s Hospital, Vic­ toria Parade, Fitzroy.

Handles medical and social problems resulting from alcohol. Tele: 410221 ext. 704.

Alexandra Clinic: 6 Alex­ andra Pde, Fitzroy offers treatment for alcoholics.

The Learning Exchange, Tele: 415738.

503286, 1078 High St Alcoholics Anonymous: Armadale They write of themselves 104 Wellington Pde, East Melbourne where Alcohol­ in the first edition of ics get together to discuss their paper . . . mutual problems. Tele: “The local community is * 415384/5385. a reservoir of information and skills and often the Bouyancy Foundation of problem is how Victoria: 236 Drummond only those who wish to learn Street, Carlton. Offers O.D can find those willing to assistance, treatment and teach. The attempt to research into drug depen­ create a situation whereby dence. Tele: 347-5166, ideas and information can 347-5323. be freely exchanged has Psychiatry involved us in three ways.

A telephone and mail You have a hang-up. It’s service, a regular public­ too heavy to handle. You ation in the newspaper decide — presumably be­ format and a learning cause all other psychic resources shop. support systems don’t appeal — to seek psychiat­ The Phone Service: The basic operation is as ric aid. Here’s how. simple as its aim. SupposPrivate Psychiatrists ing a Mr Brown of Heidel­ You need not necessarily berg feels that it’s time his be put off by the cost. If lemon tree was pruned but he is not sure of the best you are thinking of going way of doing it. Mr Brown to a private psychiatrist, knowing of the Learning the first thing to do is Exchange, rings 503286 join HBA. or some other explains his request. medical benefits associat­ and The Learning Exchange ion. If you are hard-up ask makes a search of all the the psychiatrist to lower listed resources on pruning his fee — many will do this and Mr Brown is advised if you really can’t pay (but of all the people who could possibly help him you must be in HBA). and how and when they Remember the first visit can be contacted. If the always costs more than later visits (you get a big­ information is not readily to hand then members of ger HBA refund too.) the group will go out and Out-patient Clinics find someone who has the particular knowledge and Psychiatric services are provided by Mental Health who, which is more impor­ tant, is willing to share it.

Authority clinics and the Of course, particular re­ psychiatric units of large gard would be given to general hospitals. These those information resour­ services cost little or noth­ ces that were nearest to ing. Most people are seen Mr Brown’s home. It’s as as out-patients (i.e. you simple as that. don’t actually live in). Get The Newspaper: your local doctor to refer It is envisaged that future you. editions of the Learning Malvern Clinic, 321 Glen- Exchange publication will ferrie Rd., Malvern, 3144. totally be given over to a comprehensive coverage Phone: 201520. of currently available Observatory Clinic, Birdlearning opportunities. We wood Ave., Sth. Yarra are therefore anxious to 3141. Phone: 63-7621. receive information con­ cerning classes, films, Prince Henry’s Hospital, St. Kilda Rd., Melbourne. seminars, travel opportun­ ities, materials etc. avail­ Phone: 620621. able within Victoria.

Bouverie Clinic (for child­ Priority will be given to ren): 233 Bouverie St., those resources for learn­ Carlton. Phone 341720. ing which are both free and not widely known.

Hospitals Publication costs will be If you feel you are not covered by a minimal coping to the extent that charge of about 10 cents. you want to go into hos­ The Shop: pital for a while, Larundel Early in the project the is probably the best and most friendly psych, hos­ group’s time and efforts pital in Melbourne. Larun­ were channeled into the creation of an Educational del Psychiatric Hospital, Resources Shop at 1078 Plenty Rd., Bundoora.

High St., Armadale. The Phone 4672911. shop sells toys, games, Again get your local doc­ books, and craft products tor to refer you, or if nec­ and the response to it has been enthusiastic and en­ essary, go out and see the couraging. It operates admitting doctor. If the under the name of The doctor at the hospital does­ Lexicon Firm which is a n’t think you need to be non-profit making concern all monies coming from it admitted ask him tor ad­ vice on where you should go into the cost of main­ taining the go for help.

Learning Exchange. For­ If you do go into hospital mal registration under make sure you apply for the Co-operation Act is sickness benefits from the being investigated. government. The Social The amount of involve­ Worker at the hospital will ment one decides to have help you do this. in the operation of the Learning Exchange de­ Health Department, 136 Gertrude St., Fitzroy. If pends solely upon the in­ under 16 years, you must dividual. This also applies to those people who have be accompanied by a agreed to act as inform­ parent/guardian or have ation resources. Many written consent. Various people have filled in ‘avail­ hours for men and women ability forms’ on which on weekdays. Tel: 411954. they state the information For women and girls only or skill they have (e.g.

— Queen Victoria Hospital, wine making, cigarette card collecting) and how Tel: 666046 and Royal often they would be free Women’s Hospital, Tel: to talk to someone about 340951. it and how they should be contacted. The number of Note: There are a lot of referrals in any given time things going around that can be limited so that produce sore genitals be­ participants will not be sides syphillis and gonor­ inconvenienced by contin­ rhoea, but government uous enquiries. clinics seem best at diag­ The phone and mail en­ nosing and treating the traditional diseases. How­ quiry services will be prov­ ided without charge. One ever, everybody ought to of the sources of funding get over this bashfulness is the shop. In addition, about going down to VD we hope to maintain the clinic every so often. enquiry services and news­ There are the usual ethical paper from voluntary sub­ reasons — why share an ill scriptions. We suggest $1 for students and pen­ with people you like; sioners, $5 for adults, but beyond that. The $15 for organisations. The Digger recommends VD newspaper will be delivered clinics as entertainment. to all subscribers.

The Learning Exchange

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Published by Hlghtim es P ty L td , 5 8 C anterbury Road, M iddle Park, Printed by Peelprint, Queensberry and Peel Streets, M elbourne.