The Big Issue Australia #661 – Food For Thought by The Big Issue Australia

Ed.

661 13 MAY 2022

OBI-WAN KENOBI CATE LE BON and DEMOCRACY SAUSAGE

xx.

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Contents

EDITION

661

26 SMALL SCREENS

Tour de Force Rising star Moses Ingram takes us to a galaxy far, far away as Inquisitor Reva, a Jedi in the muchanticipated Star Wars series Obi-Wan Kenobi.

28 MUSIC

C’est Bon When Welsh muso Cate Le Bon’s partner painted her portrait, the artwork stirred something inside her. And inspired her sixth record, Pompeii.

SHOPPERS STOCK UP INSIDE FOODBANK’S GROCERY BUS

12.

A Fare Go by Anastasia Safioleas

Petrol, rent, fruit and veg – the cost of living is on the up, and millions of Australians are going hungry, affected by food insecurity. We spend the day on Foodbank’s grocery bus, and find out how they’re helping people to put food on the table. cover photo by Levi Brown/Trunk Archive/Snapper Images cover typography by Kate Pullen @katepullendraws contents photo by Ilana Rose

THE REGULARS

04 Ed’s Letter, Your Say 05 Meet Your Vendor 06 Streetsheet 08 Hearsay & 20 Questions 11 My Word 18 The Big Picture

24 Ricky 25 Fiona 34 Film Reviews 35 Small Screen Reviews 36 Music Reviews 37 Book Reviews

39 Public Service Announcement 40 Tastes Like Home 43 Puzzles 45 Crossword

46 CLICK

Political Sizzle No matter where you sit on the political spectrum this election day, there is one thing that will always cut the mustard: the democracy sausage.

Ed’s Letter

by Amy Hetherington Editor @amyhetherington

Below the Breadline

here are a few things that truly divide our nation: AFL versus NRL; pots vs schooners; milk bars vs dairies; the pronunciation of “cicada”; potato cakes vs potato fritters or…come now, potato scallops are just not a thing! It’s the same with the humble barbecued snag. Do you call it a sausage sandwich? A sausage in bread? Or a sausage sizzle? Freud dubbed these gulfs “narcissisms of minor differences” – a possible explanation for neighbouring communities engaging in mutual barbs over small differences. Thankfully, no matter where you live, or how you vote, come election day we’ll all be united under the one moniker: the democracy sausage. While we unwrap the historical origins of the political banger in this edition, we also report on a real social fracture: food insecurity. More than 1.2 million children went hungry in Australia last year, according to Foodbank’s annual hunger report. While one in six adults experienced

LETTER OF THE FORTNIGHT

severe food insecurity, meaning they were forced to cut down or skip meals, with more than half going a whole day without food at least once a week. That’s more than four million Australians who were unable to put food on the table at some point. While food relief organisations were overwhelmed at the height of the COVID crisis, demand for their services was rising even before the pandemic. Last year, The Guardian reports, OzHarvest provided 36 million meals and SecondBite 41 million meals, while Foodbank distributed 46 million kilos of food, providing groceries to a million people every month. Now, the rising cost of living means food banks remain vital, as Anastasia Safioleas discovered when she visited Foodbank. “It’s really important to be able to get food from Foodbank,” Lisa, a food bus customer, told her. “I’m on JobSeeker but I’m also studying, so after rent and school and with prices going up, I don’t have much money left. I get a bit of food this way.”

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The Big Issue Story The Big Issue is an independent, not-for-profit magazine sold on the streets around Australia. It was created as a social enterprise 25 years ago to provide both a voice and a work opportunity for people experiencing homelessness and disadvantage. Your purchase of this magazine has directly benefited the person who sold it to you. Big Issue vendors buy each copy for $4.50 and sell it to you for $9, keeping the profits. But The Big Issue is more than a magazine.

Your Say

I would like to let everyone know how grateful we are to George, who sells The Big Issue in Station Street, Fairfield (Melbourne). My son lost his wallet while running between a few shops. There wasn’t any hope that it would be returned, let alone exactly intact as it was when it was lost. An expensive wallet with a significant amount of cash for an event, and all the usual cards – it was impossible to believe that it would be seen again. But thankfully George happened to be the one who found it and returned it. How great is that? Please, next time you see him, say hi if you can! And if you are in a position to purchase a magazine, I know first-hand it couldn’t be from a more deserving individual. LEANNE MELBOURNE I VIC

Hi Lieu, thanks for sending me my Big Issue subscription. I like reading the book reviews because I’m a writer. I hope you and your family are keeping well in the rainy weather. MARGARET KATOOMBA I NSW

• Our Women’s Subscription Enterprise provides employment and training for women through the sale of magazine subscriptions as well as social procurement work. • The Community Street Soccer Program promotes social inclusion and good health at weekly soccer games at 23 locations around the country. • The Vendor Support Fund will offset the cost price of products for vendors, allowing them to earn a larger margin on their own street sales. • The Big Issue Education workshops provide school, tertiary and corporate groups with insights into homelessness and disadvantage, and provide work opportunities for people experiencing marginalisation. CHECK OUT ALL THE DETAILS AT THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Leanne wins a copy of Eloise Head’s new cookbook Baking It Easy. You can check out her recipe for Apple Crumble Mug Cake on page 40. We’d also love to hear your thoughts, feedback and suggestions: SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU

YOUR SAY SUBMISSIONS MAY BE EDITED FOR CLARITY AND SPACE.

Meet Your Vendor I’m a man who lives in the moment. I like to stick my life in cruise control and forget about the bad times. I don’t have big plans or expectations for the future. In the past, life threw more stuff at me than you’d think. I was born in Northam and grew up in the Wheatbelt. The Department of Child Protection took me away from my parents when I was very little, and me and my sisters moved around a fair bit. I try not to think about my childhood – and school wasn’t a fun experience either. I went through different schools and told them to get stuffed when I was 18. I’m 28 years old now and I like where I am in life. I live in supported accommodation with my mate Ben. We’re both gamers and have sessions on our PlayStations sometimes until the early hours. We play a wide range of games, but mainly Grand Theft Auto V. I’m also a train buff; my 00 gauge miniature train tracks are taking up my spare room and I like to go in there and build on it. It helps me through the hard times and keeps my mind at peace. A couple of friends got me to sign up to The Big Issue in 2015 and it helps me in more than one way. The extra money gets spent on the train set and I like how the flexible work gives me freedom and breaks up my week. I also enjoy the vendor community, going around and talking to other vendors, sharing tips and helping them if they are new and want to know where they can find their pitch. Selling the mag also gave me the idea and confidence to start a side business: Big Dog Scooters. I’m on YouTube. I save scooters from junkyards. I bring them home, take them apart, replace what needs replacing and sell them for a bit of a profit. I love scooters. I used to have a couple and would take them to the skate park sometimes. Nowadays I have one that I’ve built for the streets. You’ll see me flying down the malls in Perth on my way to work and back. I take my scooter everywhere. I would like to say a big thank you to all my customers, my regulars, the first‑time buyers and the ones who haven’t bought one off me yet but will see this profile. Come and say hi if you see me on my pitch, I’ll show you my shiny scooter and I love a chat.

JOSHUA

SELLS THE BIG ISSUE OUTSIDE DAVID JONES, MURRAY STREET, PERTH

PROUD UNIFORM PARTNER OF THE BIG ISSUE VENDORS.

13 MAY 2022

interview by Simon Grammes photo by Ross Swanborough

Streetsheet

Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends

VENDOR SPOTLIGHT

BRIAN WITH MANY OF HIS WILLIAMSTOWN REGULARS

BRIAN

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his May, I reach a milestone birthday: 65! There have been a lot of good times, and some ups and downs over those 65 years. When I was younger, I left New South Wales to travel around the country – and that ended up taking 24 years! I did odd jobs here and there, whatever I could to keep me going. I did labouring, worked on farms and in abattoirs, I also worked on Hamilton Island at Club Med, where I did maintenance, cleaning and picking up people as they arrived. I started selling The Big Issue in Brisbane in 1998, then moved to Bendigo, before finally settling in Melbourne. I’ve been selling the mag in Williamstown for

over 15 years. The local Williamstown community have always been welcoming and supportive of me – they have become my friends and I will often go out for coffee or lunch with my customers. When I became very ill and unable to work, I was overwhelmed by the care and support shown to me – the community all chipped in and fundraised to buy me a scooter. As I reach this milestone birthday – which I never thought I would meet – I want to say a big thank you to the Williamstown community. Your support has meant a lot to me. Even though I am reaching retirement age, I have no plans to finish up yet! BRIAN WILLIAMSTOWN I MELBOURNE

PHOTO BY MARK AVELLINO

When I’m 65!

Taking Care We have taken in some Ukrainian children that came to Australia because of the war. Unfortunately they have lost their parents. My wife and I are registered with Child Protection because we’ve cared for foster children before. There are two boys, who are 13 and 15, and a three-year-old girl. They’ve only been here for four days. They aren’t able to go to school yet, but when they do, they will go to a specialised school that will help them learn English. At the moment, the way we communicate is by using translation apps on our phones. It’s amazing technology! I have tried to give them trust and safety so they can relax. They’re not as tense as they used to be because they know there’s no harm in Australia that will hurt them. They know that I’ll do my best. The oldest

one wants to come to work with me, but unfortunately he can’t because he’s too young, and it’s best if he stays with his brother and sister. RON K ZUMA’S CAFE, NORTHPARK WOOLWORTHS, ELIZABETH SHOPPING CENTRE I ADELAIDE

Keep the Peace For generations, people have died to end wars. The role of politicians, in eliminating “othering”, is to ensure that military personnel are not called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice. In my view, armed conflict is the politically lazy way out. Addressing othering as the basis of racism, sexism and xenophobia will free all peoples, not just minorities. Together, we can reunite, conjoin and celebrate mateship. And not shirk our responsibilities by hiding behind military and border posturing. There are speed and cost

benefits to smart-trust. Now is not the time to blind-trust. ANDREW SUSPENSION ESPRESSO CAFE, BEAUMONT ST, HAMILTON I NEWCASTLE

I’ll Be Back Many people know me as the cat lady – my name is Cheryl. You might not have seen me and the cats on our pitches in Errol Street, North Melbourne, or the Vic Market for a while. It’s because I’m undergoing therapy for incurable cancer, and my doctor has advised me to take a six-month break, at least. I am feeling really positive and healthy, and just taking each day as it comes. I’m missing everyone’s smiling faces and having chats – and making money. Thank you for all the well wishes, and hope to be back soon. CHERYL NORTH MELBOURNE & QUEEN VIC MARKET I MELBOURNE

ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.

The Write Stuff Jim Browne, one of the Brisbane authors from the Fiction Edition, visited my pitch in Toowong to help promote the stories Ed#654. The edition is a good representation of the best writers and Jim was good to give up his time. I can express myself verbally, but I’m not good at literacy like the writers. We can’t be good at everything. Most people aren’t perfect, and some areas need to be worked on. We make mistakes and should learn from those mistakes to improve our lives.

SPONSORED BY LORD MAYOR’S CHARITABLE FOUNDATION. COMMUNITY PHILANTHROPY MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN GREATER MELBOURNE AND BEYOND.

TICKLED INK: TED ON PITCH WITH WRITER JIM BROWNE

13 MAY 2022

TED J TOOWONG, AVID READER & WEST END MARKETS I BRISBANE

Hearsay

Andrew Weldon Cartoonist

ago were creating art around a fire at night, with flickering shapes and shadows.” Dr Andy Needham, from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, on findings that cave art was often created at night, deduced from heat damage to the painted stones. SCIENCE DAILY I US

For a long time, it felt like the only thing that was mine was my sex life.

“Getting a mullet was a necessary step to becoming the person I’m proud to be today. I don’t see it as a haircut, but a true personification of my essence.” Mattia, a model, on his new 80s-inspired ’do. His hot tip for mullet maintenance: sea salt spray after washing creates volume. GQ I UK

Singer Harry Styles on the life of a boy band member being something of a Ken Doll existence.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS I US

“We saw the fries and were like, ‘This is unreal. How on Earth are these fries still in this bag and how are they preserved so well?’ It was wild.” Home renovators Rob and Gracie Jones on finding a half-eaten order of McDonald’s fries in the wall of their 1959 Illinois home – still crispy, brown and intact some decades later. But no, they weren’t tempted to pop them in the microwave.

“I played cricket in the backyard with Shane Warne, I danced in the garage with Kylie Minogue, I sat and had dinner with Barry Humphries dressed up as a monk.” Actor Pete Rowsthorn, aka Brett Craig, on news that the four-bedroom Melbourne home used to film Kath & Kim was being demolished. It’s O-V‑A-H!

CNN I US

“Ozzy’s very well known in Ukraine, I think they’d be happy.” Sharon Osbourne on how she and rocker husband Ozzy came to be hosting two families of Ukrainian refugees on their country estate.

“It would have been a lot easier if Herschel had his way and it was called George.” Jonti Horner, from University of Southern Queensland, on the oft‑mispronounced planet Uranus, which astronomer William Herschel wanted to name Georgian Sidus, or George’s Star, after King George III, when it was discovered in 1781. ABC I AU

ABC I AU

NME I UK

“In the modern day, we might think of art as being created on a blank canvas in daylight or with a fixed light source; but we now know that people 15,000 years

“If you can’t shave your hair off while we’re living through what we’ve lived through, when are you going to do it?” Hair historian Rachael Gibson on the way many women appear to have embraced the buzz cut during the pandemic as a way to take ownership of their identities. THE NEW YORK TIMES I US

“Ultimately, sleep-deprived magpies were slower to attempt the reversal learning task, less likely to perform and complete the task, and those that did the test performed worse than better-rested birds.” John Lesku, from La Trobe University, on new research that sleepy magpies don’t get the worm. THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD I AU

“There’s not a ton of us out there who have publicly lost our freedom, had breakdowns in front of everyone, become punchlines and fought our way back.” Actor Drew Barrymore on why she’d be uniquely placed to interview pop star Britney Spears on her talk show. VARIETY I US

20 Questions by Rachael Wallace

01 In which US state would you find

the Ozarks? 02 What is software engineer Josh

Wardle famous for inventing? 03 What European capital has the

same name as the horse ridden by the Duke of Wellington in the Battle of Waterloo? 04 What does NFT stand for? 05 Which nation has the only two-

sided flag, with a different emblem on each side? 06 In which year was the arcade game

Donkey Kong released? 07 In which city did Banksy’s street

art first appear? 08 What does Wee Willie Winkie wear

when he runs through the town? 09 Which airline has the slogan

“Either way I’m rooted.” Matthew Isabella, general manager of Darwin’s Char Restaurant, apologises in advance for lopping one of the city’s landmark trees, as its roots are interfering with the building’s plumbing and cracking the floor. NT NEWS I AU

“Can you imagine six years of your life with a penis swinging on your arm? It’s been a nightmare, but it’s gone now – the little bugger.”

THE SUN I UK

“Nowadays everyone wears sheer dresses, but back then that was not the case. In a sense, it’s the original naked dress. That’s why it was so shocking.” Kim Kardashian on the iconic Marilyn Monroe dress that the reality star wore to the Met Gala, 60 years after the Hollywood siren wore it to famously serenade JFK. VOGUE I US

“Something that people forget all the time is, people don’t really want to leave their country unless they really have to. It’s really out of necessity.” Singer Dua Lipa on why her parents fled Kosovo for London as refugees from the Bosnian war – returning to Kosovo when she was 11.

“A great way to fly”? 10 True or false? Cleopatra lived closer

in time to the building of the first Pizza Hut than to the building of the Great Pyramids. 11 What is the most common Spanish

surname: a) Garcia b) Gomez c) Diaz or d) Lopez? 12 What word was invented by

Australian scientists to describe the distinct earthy scent of rain in the air? 13 Where is the 2022 FIFA World Cup

set to be held? 14 Pears, raspberries and apples are

part of which botanical family? 15 In M*A*S*H, what was the name of

Hawkeye and Trapper John’s tent? 16 Manasseh Sogavare is the prime

minister of which country? 17 On the London Underground map,

what colour is the Bakerloo line? 18 Is water more dense as a liquid

than as a solid? 19 At the official opening ceremony

of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, who rode in on horseback and cut the ribbon before Premier Jack Lang? 20 Which singer is also the founder

of cosmetics brand Fenty Beauty?

NPR I US

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ANSWERS ON PAGE 43

13 MAY 2022

CNN I US

Malcolm MacDonald, who was left with a replacement penis, made out of his own skin, grafted to his arm for six years after his original “fell off” due to a blood infection.

“(My skin colour) is something I “I reckon raspberry thought of every pancakes will taste day when I woke much nicer than up. I thought: blueberry pancakes, ‘What trouble is Iggy – after all they’re in season!” my skin going A harried grandma trying to to get me into convince a toddler to eat their today?’” brunch – as overheard by Queer Eye star Lorraine in Heidelberg, Vic. Tan France on bleaching his skin when he was nine, saying he wanted to appear as “non-Asian as possible”. EAR2GROUND

My Word

by Vin Maskell

ach morning, about seven o’clock, I search for the plastic-wrapped newspaper. It might be in the driveway near the letter box. Or under the car. Or in the garden. Or on the nature strip. Or nowhere at all. These days newspapers seem to be on life support. Then I walk two doors down to look for the paper for Harry. Given Harry is 90 and doesn’t get out much, last year I took it upon myself to find Harry’s paper each morning and place it a little way up his driveway, on the gas meter, in the shelter of the carport. (Like Harry, the car hardly moves either.) We read different types of newspapers, so likely have different opinions about things, different world views. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be neighbourly. Sometimes the papers are late. Sometimes we get each other’s papers. Or we both get the same newspaper. Or nothing shows up at all. Problems with the printing presses, apparently. I’ve been reading the paper since I was 10 years old, possibly earlier – whenever I started to understand football and cricket. My days start with the sports pages and a bowl of cereal. Lunchtime is a sandwich, some of the front pages and the arts pages. (The arts page, singular, to be more accurate.) Evenings it is chocolate and the crossword. Maybe the obituaries. Harry may have a similar routine, albeit held for 30 years longer than my own 50-year habit, and punctuated by naps and medication. In healthier times Harry would shuffle up the street in his lawn bowls uniform to the corner to catch some sunshine and enjoy neighbours’ front gardens. Maybe a little chat. Maybe he’d even go as far as the milk bar. A short walk can be a long walk as you grow older. One morning I looked up after collecting Harry’s paper and saw him watching me from his front window. We nodded to each other before I left the paper on the gas meter. Had Harry known it was me all along? Or did he think it may have been the neighbour who mows his nature strip? Or the neighbour who does his bins?

One morning I saw that the previous day’s paper had not been collected. The next day, the same. A neighbour said Harry had fallen. That he was in hospital for a hip replacement. Then weeks of rehab on the other side of town. I asked about Harry’s wife Joanna, once a livewire. “She doesn’t leave the house. Stays in the sunroom most of the time. Doesn’t even step outside the front door. That’s probably why the newspapers are still there.” For some weeks – two or three – Harry’s newspaper did not arrive. Had he temporarily cancelled the delivery while in rehab, or was it the troublesome printing presses again? When Harry’s papers returned on a regular basis, I guessed he was home again. I now put the paper on the front doorstep. One morning there were no papers at all – I checked several times. At about 10am I saw a stooped old man trying to stand up a little straighter, aided by a walking frame. “I thought it might be under the car,” he said softly. “No papers today,” I said. “I’ll pop around to the milk bar and get you one.” “I could call the delivery service,” said Harry, still bent over. “Not worth it mate. Only take a few minutes.” By the time I returned Harry was inside, at his window. We nodded and I went home for breakfast. The next morning – both papers on time – I found a note simply saying “Thank you” on Harry’s front doorstep. Plus a few coins. There was no need for the coins but I did not want to deny Harry’s gratitude. I also noticed that there was now a vertical handrail, waist high, on the edge of the porch, an aide for Harry. I’ve started balancing the paper there, so Harry doesn’t have to bend down or lean over. We both know, without ever talking about it, that newspapers have been on death’s doorstep for some time now, that the printing presses will eventually shut down for good. Here’s hoping it’s after Harry’s time.

Vin Maskell is a regular contributor to The Big Issue and the editor of music memoir site stereostories.com and sport site scoreboardpressure.com.

Vin Maskell has got himself a paper route – delivering to Harry two doors down.

13 MAY 2022

The Daily Ritual

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LISA AND HER FELLOW SHOPPERS BOARD FOODBANK’S GROCERY BUS

A Fare Go The rising cost of living means it’s getting harder and harder to put food on the table. Anastasia Safioleas and photographer Ilana Rose spend the day with Foodbank, and learn how they’re feeding millions of Australians. by Anastasia Safioleas Contributing Editor

13 MAY 2022

e are gathered in the carpark of a megachurch. Babies with their mums, toddlers with their dads, sweet elderly couples, young people with phones, middle-aged people with cups of coffee. Most tote shopping bags and trolleys. We squint in the morning light that bounces off the concrete. And while the thrum of passing traffic threatens to drown out any chatter, the sense of community is palpable. We’re here for Dorothy, parked nearby. At 18 metres long and a deep shade of purple, Dorothy is hard to miss. An articulated bus built to ferry passengers between airport terminals, she was recently converted into a mobile supermarket by Foodbank, the largest hunger relief organisation in Australia. As soon as her doors open, the waiting group will board to browse the shelves. Today there’s tins of tuna and coconut milk, bags of rice, pasta and chickpeas, as well as fresh fruit and vegies like bananas, apples, pears, potatoes and whole pumpkins. In the refrigerator sits milk, yoghurt and ready-made bolognese. More people wait in the church for their turn. By the end of the day, some 120 people will have climbed aboard for food to take home. Dorothy is visiting Hoppers Crossing, in Melbourne’s western suburbs, for the first time. It’s part of the municipality of Wyndham, a pocket of entrenched disadvantage that has the third-highest unemployment rate in the state. Here, food insecurity is a huge problem – as it is around the country.

photos by Ilana Rose

@ilanarose_docophoto

@anast

LISA

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LEANNE AND TROY PICK UP INGREDIENTS TO MAKE SOUP

JUDITH COLLECTS FOOD FOR A FRIEND WHO IS TOO ILL TO COME HERSELF

PHOTOS BY ILANA ROSE. COST OF LIVING FIGURES SOURCED VIA THE ABS

I’m on JobSeeker but I’m also studying, so after rent and school and with prices going up, I don’t have much money left. I get a bit of food this way.

Nationally, one in six Australian adults haven’t had enough to eat in the past year, and 1.2 million children have gone hungry, according to Foodbank’s 2021 Hunger Report. Hoppers Crossing is where Leanne and Troy live. Like a lot of couples who have been together for many years, their playful banter includes a tendency to finish each other’s sentences. They exit the bus laden with full shopping bags. Leanne’s had two strokes and extensive brain surgery, and Troy is now her full-time carer. They share three boys – and they’ll soon be fostering a pair of brothers for six weeks. “Their parents are in a bad way at the moment,” explains Troy. “But we’re here to help.” If it wasn’t for Foodbank, Leanne says, they’d be left eating “noodles, noodles and noodles…nothing else”. Adds Troy: “The price of meat is ridiculous. Milk, bread and potatoes have all gone up. And a lot of fruit and veg have gone up too.” Life is suddenly very expensive. Prices haven’t increased this quickly in two decades. There have been sharp increases in the cost of petrol, most fruit and vegetables, and meat. House prices have also continued their steep upward trajectory. Anglicare Australia’s Rental Affordability Snapshot, released in April, found that out of almost 46,000 rental listings, only eight are affordable for a single person on JobSeeker. For a couple living on the age pension, just 1.4 per cent of listings are in their budget. A single age-pensioner? Only 0.1 per cent. And if you’re single and working full-time on a minimum wage, only 1.6 per cent of rentals are affordable. When I ask about their hopes for the future, Troy is unequivocal: “Cheaper bloody electricity! And for petrol prices to go down. You get a lot more kilometres out of our car if you make sure not to stop and start and it’s one straight drive. But around here, you stop and start all the time and you’re always losing petrol.” Today, Leanne and Troy have picked up a carton of long-life milk and a pumpkin, which they’ll turn into soup. Any leftover food will be given to their next-door neighbour, who has just had a baby. According to Foodbank Victoria’s acting CEO Matt Tilley (the one from TV and radio), being food secure means different things for different people. “For some people it’s being able to feed their kids, or not going a couple of days without food,” he says. “We don’t really have a definition that everyone should be able to have three square meals a day because it’s just too generic. It’s way more than that. Food security also involves the dignity of choice – being able to eat foods that are culturally appropriate. It’s about food that’s good for you and enables you to have good mental and physical health.” Foodbank describes itself as the “pantry to the charity sector”. A national organisation that operates in every state,

FOR MORE, VISIT FOODBANK.ORG.AU.

THE COST OF LIVING Petrol

35%

Vegetables

12.7%

Beef

12.1%

Lamb

7.1%

Coffee, tea and cocoa

8.2%

Tertiary education

6.4%

Gas

7.3%

Motor vehicles

6.6%

Water, soft drinks and juice

6.3%

Rises in the 12 months to March

13 MAY 2022

ESPIE STOCKS UP

it seeks donations across the entire food sector – including from farmers, manufacturers and retailers – and distributes that food where it’s needed most, either through charities, schools, churches, or at the front line, like today. The food it rescues also helps combat Australia’s massive food wastage problem – last year they saved 92.7 million kilos of CO2 emissions. Unfortunately, the food they supply is still not enough. Presently, Foodbank provides food to more than a million people each month, and they reckon they could feed as many more. Next to come out of the bus is Gemma. In 1967 she left her home in Malta for Australia. Now a widow who lost her first husband to cancer and her second to suicide, she lives with her daughter and three grandsons. “I’m on the pension, and my daughter helps a little bit because she works. I manage. But I’ve got rates, water bills, electricity and gas bills, insurance…I just get by. I don’t buy as much in the shops so I’m very grateful for today. Every bit helps,” she says. Today Gemma has picked up a bag of chickpeas, some tomatoes, and a can of tuna so she can make tuna dip for her grandkids. Lisa disembarks from the purple bus. She has had to access food relief on and off throughout the past few months after the break-up of a relationship. “I’m trying to get my house in order,” she says, clutching her groceries, which include a container of ready-made bolognese and noodles for her five-year-old son, who loves them. “It’s really important being able to get food from Foodbank. I’m on JobSeeker but I’m also studying, so after rent and school and with prices going up, I don’t have much money left. I get a bit of food this way.” Stories such as these are all too familiar to Tilley. But there is one story, of a young boy, that sticks with him: “He was in trouble one day for chewing gum. He explained to the teacher that it wasn’t chewing-gum, it was cardboard. His mum had told him that if he got really hungry and couldn’t concentrate, to just tear off some cardboard and chew on that to stop thinking about it. The school was shocked and sent him home with some food.” During the pandemic, Foodbank saw an increase in the number of people seeking food relief for the first time – as many as 31 per cent were first-timers. “We heard people say ‘Gosh, I used to give money to you guys and now it’s just so embarrassing to ask for help,’” says Tilley, who emphasises there are many things that can lead to food insecurity: an injury, illness, job loss, bills, shock individual events and traumas. “Family budgets are such a delicate balance, and you only need to tip once and then you never get ahead of yourself,” he says. “We’re trying to say to everyone as loud as we can, this [increase in the cost of living] has hit all of us, and if we’re learning anything from COVID it is that it can happen to anyone, so reach out. That’s what we’re here for.”

Be Be Be Be

Seen Seen Heard Heard

Young people have a vital part to play in the decisions that affect us all. Scan to get informed

Doing Time While Living in Freedom I can’t afford to put my health care on the back burner any longer, having become more fragile and high maintenance. The range of medication I need costs a fortune. There is my broken denture to be repaired and I need treatment from a podiatrist, but these luxuries I can’t address at the moment. The hardest part is uncertainty. I swear that a fiendish goblin is looking over my shoulder to make sure I’ll never get ahead. As soon as things start looking promising, he arranges a setback, or worse, an emergency. A couple of weeks ago I was at the supermarket where someone dropped a bottle of detergent that spilled all over the floor. I slipped and tried to break my fall by holding out my hands, badly injuring a finger that swelled to twice its size and turned blue. I also hurt my right hip. What distressed me more than the pain was having to pay for a taxi from the hospital’s emergency department after the X-rays and first aid. I had no spare money. Because of the rent I can no longer afford, I have been sent a notice to vacate. The looming eviction is my worst nightmare. I feel trapped. Even if I’m lucky enough to get emergency accommodation, I will have to dump (or give away) all my belongings because I can’t afford to pay for storage. These comprise a few pieces of furniture, cooking utensils, the usual stuff that most people accumulate. They may not be much, but they mean a lot to me. With no cooking facilities, life will be even more constrained and expensive. Time is not an infinite resource, and at 77 years of age, I have precious little of it left. I spent years doing what was necessary just to keep afloat. It feels as if I have frittered my life away, barely surviving, with nothing meaningful to show. Poverty is a zero-sum game. Whatever effort you make to help ends meet, life snatches the result from you, leaving you with nothing. Anita Glass is a pseudonym.

f time is money, then being poor is very expensive. It eats up your whole life. I can trash an entire day by standing in a queue, getting my laundry done for free with Orange Sky, visiting a food bank, and looking for a cheap room to rent (they are either elusive or non-existent). The poverty traps are out there, and I have managed to walk into all of them. My first mistake was to rent a flat that was way over my budget – but it was the only one available. My pension barely covered my rent. Once you are behind, getting alternative private accommodation is virtually impossible. My second mistake was to adopt a rescue cat. Over time he developed a chronic, life-threatening illness that meant lots of trips to the vet for tests, treatment, a special diet and costly medication. These wiped out my life savings and then some. It even cost a fortune to bury him. Borrowing money is a no-no, even if one is desperate, because it guarantees problems further down the track. Lesson learnt. Helping Out, a guide to finding support services in Melbourne, lists a diverse collection of agencies that offer food, clothes, showers and laundry, but one should not use them on an ad-hoc basis. You need the mindset of an army general, because logistics are tricky. Unless you co-ordinate the available supports, you could run around in circles all over the city. Agencies are open at set times, or you may not be in the right catchment area to access them. Some of the services do not live up to their promise. For example, you may be given a clothing voucher, but on arrival at the opportunity shop find stock is unseasonable, or there is nothing to fit you. After a few more trips I discovered that men’s jumpers are the warmest (if available). Visiting the market shortly before it closes can save you money if you have some, as I found you cannot rely solely on a food bank for meals. Even so, I am grateful for every single donation. You can survive on cereal.

13 MAY 2022

Poverty steals your time, full-time, writes Anita Glass.

XXXX series by Nathan Poppe

The Big Picture

Running on Empty For those living below the breadline, nutrition is a luxury not always on the table.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

by Nathan Poppe, The Curbside Chronicle

ne in six adult Australians – and 1.2 million children – did not have enough to eat last year, according to Foodbank’s 2021 Hunger Report. That’s more than 4 million people. More than half of them went a full day without eating at least once a week. Food insecurity means a lack of consistent access to healthy eating options. And the reasons for it are multiple – skyrocketing rents and the vastly increased cost of living, coupled to wages that are being outstripped by inflation, and welfare payments that have long been below the poverty line. Work insecurity – not knowing how many hours you will get next week – compounds

food insecurity. Indeed, two-thirds of those Australians going hungry are employed. So what does food insecurity look like? Our fellow street paper, Oklahoma City’s The Curbside Chronicle, has taken a snapshot. They asked five of their vendors – some recently housed and others still transitioning out of homelessness – to keep a food diary for five days, then photographed what they ate in a day. While vendors’ means of securing food varied – from visiting food banks and soup kitchens to convenience stores and fast-food restaurants – cheap and readily available food, often highly processed and low in nutrients, was the order of the day.

Breakfast 7-Eleven coffee

Richard Richard, 47, is currently sleeping rough. It’s common for him to skip meals and some days he doesn’t eat at all – especially if the weather makes it hard for him to get around. He relies a lot on food from service stations or convenience stores – he aims for cheap and filling – and almost always finds a way to start his day with coffee. Often, Richard eats one large meal a day.

13 MAY 2022

Dinner None

COURTESY OF THE CURBSIDE CHRONICLE/INSP.NGO

Lunch 3 microwave burritos Soft drink

Breakfast Oatmeal Cream Pies 7-Eleven coffee

Danny Housing changed Danny’s eating habits, as he can more easily snack at home throughout the day. Before, he used to bounce between shelters to make sure he could secure three meals. Today, it’s rare for Danny, 61, to skip meals, and he’ll often share food with friends. He’ll have at least one soft drink daily and sometimes relies on shelters and charities for a meal as well. Normally, Danny spends a few dollars a day on food or snacks, but on this day he splurged on a pizza. He stretched it over two meals.

Dinner Leftover pizza Soft drink Lunch Pizza Hut pizza Beer

Breakfast French toast Eggs Milk Dinner McDonald’s Double Cheeseburger Fries Soft drink

William says when you’re on the streets, eating can feel like a chore: “It’s not an enjoyable thing. Just get it in your stomach and get out.” He usually skips at least one meal a day – usually lunch or dinner – but he often secures a snack. On this day, he wouldn’t have eaten breakfast without the help of a friend. Most days, he’ll spend less than $10 on food and relies on food stamps. If he eats out, then it’s almost exclusively near where he sells Curbside.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

William

Lunch Soft drink

Breakfast Sausage patties Oranges Coffee

Justin Lunch Hot dogs Soft drink

Dinner Coffee

Lunch Burrito Coleslaw Water

Dinner Fried Chicken Mashed potatoes Corn Water

XXX

Jim Jim, 57, relies on a local shelter and donations from churches for most of his meals. Although he appreciates the food, Jim says he’s often still hungry throughout the day. He has a tall build and a good appetite. He doesn’t skip meals and often saves donations so he can snack between meals. Jim currently lives in a community housing project.

13 MAY 2022

Breakfast Porridge Toast 2 eggs Hot chocolate Water

Justin, 43, recently secured housing, and says he’s thankful for a fridge to store food and an oven to cook in. Even so, securing food after experiencing homelessness remains a challenge. Justin relies heavily on donations from food banks and friends. He often snacks on apples, oranges and almonds throughout the day – and he skips a few meals throughout the week.

Ronni Kahn, founder and CEO of food rescue charity OzHarvest, on feeding Australians on the margins, finding her voice – and why anything is possible when it’s for the common good. by Anastasia Safioleas Contributing Editor @anast

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

y 16-year-old self was a bit wishy‑washy. She didn’t show strong character and if I bumped into her now, I’d think, Wow, she’s got so much to learn. She was a very young woman who was a little nervous and didn’t have the confidence to share her opinions broadly. She was a bit of a follower, but really excelled at sport – I had energy even back then – but wasn’t confident about her academic credentials. I didn’t think I was pretty. I knew I had a good figure, but I wasn’t very comfortable in my body. Perhaps wishy-washy is a little harsh! I came from a family with two older sisters. We were three girls and very close. I adored my older sisters. At 16 I was going to parties and was very involved in a youth movement. Really that was my obsession. Going to this youth movement was this wonderful outlet where

PHOTOS BY MARK ROGERS, PETER RAE/SMH, NIKKI TO

Letter to My Younger Self

This Is What I Was Destined to Do

FOR MORE, VISIT OZHARVEST.ORG.

EY I AT A SYDN TOP: RONN 2013 GROCER IN VEST’S AT OZHAR BOTTOM: T SAVE” RESCUED 17 20 “THINK EA IN FOOD FEST

13 MAY 2022

me. Honestly, I thought he was calling to say, “Thank you so much, you’ve been considered but try again next time.” When he said I was Australia’s Local Hero. I thought it’s just not possible. I was sure they’d made a mistake. Little Ronni Kahn! It was a big deal. I’ve got magnificent children and I’ve got beautiful grandchildren. I’m really blessed. I think the birth of my first grandchild was the most precious. But then it’s just continued because I’ve got six. It’s a lot of hugs and a lot of loving. My biggest challenge was when I was faced with the death of my daughter-in-law. She died six years ago. She was young and it happened very fast; she died in eight weeks. While there were challenges with the birth of OzHarvest these were all things one can get through. Whereas when we can’t control life or death, it’s very painful. It was one of the biggest learning experiences. A deeply, profoundly powerful experience: the grace in death and dying and recognising that this is all we have, really. I’ve always known this because my mother also died very young. If I could go back to any particular day or time in my life it would be the day I left South Africa for Israel at the age of 17. I thought I was going on the biggest adventure of my life. I hadn’t realised I’d never come back to live in South Africa. I’d left my boyfriend behind; I’d left my parents for the first time, and I was very, very close to them. I didn’t even like sleepouts; I would cry and want to go home. Now it was my first time on an aeroplane. I hadn’t planned to go and emigrate. I went to study overseas but never came back. I don’t miss South Africa. I miss the people. And there’s no doubt that the colour of its earth and its smell and sounds are deeply rooted in my soul. But I don’t miss living there at all. In fact, it’s certainly not my home. My home is here. I would tell my 16-year-old self to believe in yourself. You’ve got so much to offer, just know that it will slowly unfurl and develop. Don’t give up on yourself. Back then I didn’t know that I had the courage to do the things that I now know I can. Now I’m unstoppable. I don’t want to sound arrogant, it’s just that I believe that anything’s possible as long as it’s in the service and good of others. There’s so much to do and I just want to do it all.

we could talk about politics. It was also where our social life was, so I had a close-knit group of friends. One year later, I finished school. I had just turned 17, so I was young, and soon after I left the country to go and study overseas. I had also just found a boyfriend – the man that I ended up marrying. The youth movement was about encouraging Jewish youth to go and live on a kibbutz [in Israel]. It was very much against the realities of apartheid we were living under in South Africa at the time. It was our social freedom – we could talk politics. Because you couldn’t talk politics outside of that, because you could be heard and you could be jailed, whereas within the confines of our youth movement, it felt like we could be activists. The biggest surprise of my life has been turning out to be who I am today. I’m still in awe. If you ask people who have known me since I was young, they’re not surprised. But I am. I’ve always done what I’ve loved, I just had never done what I love that then became the most meaningful thing I’ve ever done in my life because it affected so many other people. It’s this notion that this is what I was destined to do – I knew that soon after I started rescuing food and started building OzHarvest. But as a 16-year-old my aspirations were not in any way, shape or form that I would start a charity, be given an Order of Australia… I still pinch myself that it actually happened to me. Yet nothing about OzHarvest’s success surprises me. When I found that alignment, the universe just started opening up to bring whatever it needed and continues to do that. Since COVID, OzHarvest has been busier. [The pandemic] shone a light on those who are vulnerable. It exposed the inequalities in our society. It’s not just vulnerable people who fell through the cracks, it’s people who are working but can’t afford to pay their bills. That’s what COVID has done, it’s literally exposed the economic inequity of our society. People need our food and services more than ever before. Many more people were added to those in need through COVID, people who’d never considered themselves needing relief in any way. It’s hugely important never to hanker back to what we had. We’ve worn masks but we’ve exposed ourselves – people have never shown so much vulnerability. My most memorable experience was when I received the call that I was chosen as Australia’s Local Hero in 2010. It was an out-of-body experience. It was just the most extraordinary moment when clearly it was Adam Gilchrist calling

Ricky A road trip can be drama‑free for only so long.

Sick and Tyred

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by Ricky French @frenchricky

hould you ever be passing through the northern New South Wales town of Moree and find yourself in need of some grain harvesting, let me thoroughly recommend the services of Mark Munro, of Munro Harvesting. Mark will look after all your cartage needs for wheat, chickpeas, barley, sorghum and fertiliser. Whether you need a semitrailer, a road train or a John Deere header, this top bloke will get your crops to market. But he’s also a roadside angel of a different kind. A road trip can be drama-free for only so long. We’d made it from Melbourne to within spitting distance of the Queensland border before it unravelled. I’m not sure why I thought it was a good idea to drive to Queensland. Maybe it was because my partner’s parents used to load her and her sister into the car every year and drive more than 20 hours from Melbourne to visit family in Childers, in the Bundaberg region. No overnight stops, no mercy. I don’t know how they did it, driving through the night, parents taking turns behind the wheel while the girls bickered in the backseat. My partner tells me one of the few acts of humanity her older sister ever displayed when they were growing up was to allow her feet to cross over the backseat dividing line and rest on her side during the dark nights of those hellish road trips. She could never sleep, so would stay awake all night, scanning the side of the road, waiting for a kangaroo or a cow to step in front of the car and put everyone out of their misery. Not being a complete psychopath, I decided we would take a few days to drive to Queensland. We stayed at a friend’s place in Narrandera on night one, and at a caravan park in Coonabarabran on night two. We were making such good time I decided we should make a short detour for a soak in the Pilliga artesian bore bath. Maybe the thermal water

addled my brain, because my next decision – I freely admit this – was poor. Rather than heading back to the Newell Highway I conferred with Google Maps on a shortcut through the backroads of grain country. I should have known that you must never trust Google Maps in a rural area. The useless app took us along dirt roads so corrugated that our heads punched dents into the car roof. It tried to take us down a road that was closed. It tried to take us along roads that required a ford of flooded irrigation channels. An hour wasted, we turned back and retraced our tyre tracks in the dirt to the hot pools, and the comfort of the bitumen. But the damage was done. On the outskirts of Moree the car started making a horrendous noise. We pulled over and examined the flat tyre. It looked like a dead squid wrapped round a hubcap. This was bad. It was Easter Sunday and even if we could find somewhere open, the cost would be eye-wateringly extravagant. I doubted we would make Queensland that day. I’m sure that Scott Morrison would describe what happened next as a miracle, because a guardian angel by the name of Mark pulled up behind us in his ute. Mark wasn’t just a contract harvester, he was also the town’s resident tyre man. He spoke magic words: “I might be able to help.” I whacked the space saver tyre on and followed Mark to his yard, where he fitted a new tyre with the efficiency of a Formula One pit crew. I could have cried. And what price to put on roadside salvation on Easter Sunday? Very little. I could have cried again. I begged Mark to let us pay him more, but he refused. As we drove off, I looked into the rear-view mirror and I swear I saw a halo appear over his head. I took it as a sign...to crucify Google Maps.

Ricky is a writer, drummer and road worrier.

by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman

Dance With Death

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND

I posted a photo of my partner – The Lovely Greg™ – sitting alone in his dressing-gown, eating his dinner alfresco in the backyard, next to the open kitchen door. He cuts a distant figure, seemingly banished like a naughty dog, since I’m clearly eating inside. But the distance is deliberate. It means we eat “together”, and can both watch Mad As Hell. He has COVID, I do not; we’re trying to keep it that way. One of my friends, concerned by the optics, frets in the Facebook comments: “Shouldn’t he be inside? He’s the sick one.” Ahaha no. COVID is an aerosol. COVID is airborne. Greg is huffing pathogens 24/7 like an automatic, plug-in, frangipani-scented air-freshener. Greg – who reported appreciating the cool breeze on his fevered brow, what with some COVID symptoms being menopause adjacent – absolutely sat outside. We waved, and settled in to watch Tosh Greenslade inhabit the skin of Peter Dutton. There is, it transpires, a dance afoot. The dance of dodging COVID, even though it’s officially Behind Us. Doneski. “It’s over!” shouted one middle-aged white guy at a mate of mine outside Melbourne’s Arts Centre. “Take the fucking mask off.” Define “over”. Australia is crawling with virus right now; it’s like ants on a dropped chunk of picnic chicken. Today’s time-of-writing

snapshot is 35 deaths, 43,000 infections, and the third-highest daily per 100,000 infection rate in the world – go us – and my socials are awash with photos of RATs with two lines and sad face emojis. We are trying to ghost COVID by telling ourselves it’s over, but girlfriend, you’re fooling yourself – we are very much still dating. And sure, COVID feels inevitable now – it’s more everywhere than Eddie McGuire in his heyday – but why are we framing it as equivalent to a cold or the flu? It’s… not. Omicron is labelled “mild”, but it’s not mild mild. It’s not “the cheese you give your four‑year-old because it has no flavour”. Omicron mild is measured against how likely it is to collapse the health system. “Mild” translates to “a manageable percentage of cases will need admission to ICU, intubation, and the phone number of a funeral home”. There’s no immunity with COVID; you can catch it multiple times. There’s a dumpster of reasons to not dismiss it as a cold, but the biggie is that it makes us underestimate recovery. Regular COVID – not even long COVID – can come with a side order of fatigue and brain fog that can last for months. It’s your body siphoning energy to deal with the viral damage. This is the new normal. Remember the Codral “Soldier On” ads? Everyone popping some tabs and back on deck to service capitalism? Do not do this; you will hurt yourself. It took 12 days for Greg to test negative. Bog standard. I dodged it this time. We’d kept the doors and windows open, I slept in the front room, and we had one masked outdoor “date” dusting chicken cloacae with anti-mite powder. Still dancing. A lot of us are. You will know us by our N95s. And the trail in our wake of people screaming for us to take our effing masks off.

Fiona is a writer and comedian, who could well be The Masked Avenger.

13 MAY 2022

ast year, during the great forgetting, I took an online solo jazz-dance class with Ramona, my favourite teacher, who moves like sunshine on water. It had been a year, more, away from swing dancing, and I creaked through it. Rusty? Shove me in the garden and call me a rustic sculpture. Lindy Hop is a joyous hyper-social partner dance that makes you sweat and puff like a buffalo, and was cancelled about 10 seconds after COVID announced itself as a thing. Ramona and I mourn the live scene. I miss…dancing.

We had one masked outdoor ‘date’ dusting chicken cloacae with anti-mite powder.

Fiona

In her biggest undertaking yet, Moses Ingram sets her sights on Obi-Wan Kenobi in a galaxy far, far away. by Merryana Salem @akajustmerry

Merryana Salem is a Wonnarua and Lebanese Australian author and culture writer.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

hile the pandemic has laid low much of the arts in recent years, Moses Ingram has quietly laid the foundations for a stand-out career. After graduating from Yale School of Drama in 2019, Ingram landed a role in Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, where her breakout performance as the whip-smart Jolene, childhood best friend of chess genius Beth Harmon, promptly earned her an Emmy nomination. After playing Lady Macduff in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), she’s now entering the ever-expanding Star Wars universe, becoming an integral part of the long-awaited series Obi-Wan Kenobi. For someone four years into their professional career, it’s a glitteringly varied résumé. When I switch to the Marvel universe for a moment and joke that she’s collecting roles like Infinity Stones, Ingram laughs: “I say that all the time; Infinity Stones is exactly what they are.” As diverse as her CV is – from dramatic biopics to Shakespeare to space operas – Ingram consistently binds her characters with a determination to find their humanity.

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Small Screens

Tour de Force

TOP: WITH JOEL EDGERTON AS OWEN LARS MIDDLE: EWAN MCGREGOR AS OBI-WAN KENOBI BOTTOM: RUPERT FRIEND AS GRAND INQUISITOR

OBI-WAN KENOBI WILL STREAM EXCLUSIVELY ON DISNEY+ FROM 27 MAY.

13 MAY 2022

The thing about these shows is that it means so much to so many people. All one really wants to do is make the audience happy.

asked me what I thought and defaulted to [my thoughts] about my hair,” she explains. “Thinking about kids at Halloween, all of these little brown girls and Black girls who have to wear these blonde wigs at Halloween every year…I wanted to be a character that inspired little girls to rock their thick natural hair.” Ingram is well aware she’s about to be seen – and judged – by one of, if not the, biggest and most zealous franchise fandoms. After four decades and a dozen films, comics and spin-off shows, Star Wars fans have a unique fanaticism – and a way of treating newcomers with red-hot scrutiny. On whether she’s worried about racist backlash, which has recently plagued actors of colour in the Star Wars franchise, Ingram pays it little mind. “[Reva] was not written using the colour of anybody’s skin, she was just written and then given to a person to embody,” she says. “And that person is me and I happen to be Black. With this character, if people have a problem, then I think it says more about them.” Ingram does, however, admit to finding the sheer size of the fandom daunting: “It’s large and I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t make me nervous, you know? It’s millions of people and if they like it or for some reason don’t like it, I’m gonna hear about it.” But, she says, there’s also a thrill in embodying something completely new: “I was able to have so much freedom because I didn’t have to try to live up to something that was already presented to people.” Ultimately, Ingram hopes she’s part of something that Star Wars fans, old and new alike, will enjoy. “The thing about these shows is that it means so much to so many people,” she says. “All one really wants to do is make the audience happy.”

Her turn as the mysterious Inquisitor Reva – a former Jedi who has turned and now is tasked by Darth Vader to hunt down Jedi Knights – is no exception. “With her being an antagonist, she doesn’t believe she is one,” Ingram says. “She just believes she’s doing what’s necessary.” But there is only so much Ingram can say about her character – she is sworn to secrecy on the juicy details of Obi-Wan Kenobi. “It’s tough,” she smiles coyly. Disney protects its intellectual property fiercely – as fiercely as Star Wars fans follow developments. It’s they who have begged for more of Ewan McGregor as the younger Obi-Wan, ever since Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise a decade ago. The enormous scale of the show and its fan base breaks new ground for Ingram. “This is by far the biggest set I’ve ever worked on and therefore so many more people to interact with. [I particularly learned from] Ewan and Hayden [Christensen], who’ve been a part of the franchise for so long and know what it’s like to be the new kid on the block and figuring it out and really getting out there in front of the people,” she grins. “Everybody across the board was really great.” Her praise extends to the series’ director and co-writer, Deborah Chow. She lights up at the chance to gush about Chow giving her creative control over Reva. “When we started, she told me she wanted me to be a part of developing the character and, of course, sometimes you think people are saying things. But she meant it – she cared about what I thought and there were so many conversations about who Reva should be.” That went as far as her character’s appearance – especially her hair. As a Black actor in an astonishingly popular family franchise, Ingram’s thoughts are with kids of colour who will see her. “Our department head had a specific vision that I didn’t align with, and Deborah immediately

C’est Bon

Music

Cate Le Bon

Getting back to the bass, back to Wales, and into a buried ancient city helped Cate Le Bon conceive her new album.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

@giselleanguyen

Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen is a Vietnamese Australian writer and critic based in Naarm/Melbourne.

t the peak of COVID-19 lockdowns, Cate Le Bon’s partner, the musician and artist Tim Presley, painted an abstract, lone figure. When Le Bon saw it, something awoke within her. Some sort of stirring, though she couldn’t say exactly what. “Tim said it was a painting of me, and at times I could connect with that, and at times it felt like something so ancient, and at times it felt like something so futuristic,” the Welsh musician recalls over Zoom. “It was almost like this flare had come from Tim, and he didn’t have any notion of where it had come from either... It was really profound.” A photorealistic interpretation of the painting graces the cover of Le Bon’s sixth album, Pompeii. She attempted to translate the feeling she had from seeing it for the first time to her music – or as she puts it, “the fluidity of one medium to another”. The idea of being at once primordial and new ripples

PHOTO BY H HAWKLINE

by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

through the album, which is awash with both despair and wonder. Le Bon, who calls the Californian desert home, had initially intended to make the record “somewhere very remote like in Chile or Norway” with her co-producer, Samur Khouja. But the pandemic had other plans, taking her from Iceland, where she was producing singer‑songwriter John Grant’s record, back to Cardiff, where she had lived 15 years earlier. It was here, living with Khouja and Presley, that Pompeii came to life. The album was written primarily on bass guitar, after Le Bon connected with the instrument in lockdown. “Playing bass had become meditative for me when everything was going south,” Le Bon says. “I would spend the evenings after work trying to learn Talking Heads basslines, just for something to occupy my brain so that I didn’t have a total meltdown, and it was something that I really, really enjoyed. “I wanted to make a record that felt like it had the same road from start to finish…a constant fluid

going to happen, but once you acknowledge that you really don’t – that no-one really does – that friction disappears.” Le Bon named the album after the buried ancient city, which she saw as a mirror to the strangeness and uncertainty of the modern world. “Someone mentioned Pompeii on the radio, and I became quite fixated with it and this idea of how it plays with our perception of time – these final moments that are permanent, and these really private moments that become so public,” she says. “We’re constantly living on the precipice of some kind of disaster, and we’re trying to find a balance knowing that, and trying to live a life that’s somehow meaningful or not encumbered by that knowledge, because it’s just part and parcel of living.” Now in her second decade of making music, Le Bon has found solace in another artform: furniture making. The musician spent 2017 studying at the acclaimed Waters & Acland furniture school in England’s Lake District, which reinvigorated her approach to music.

“I had been on this cycle of writing a record, making a record and touring a record for eight years or so. Music is something I love so much, and I was getting a bit worried that my motives had been shifted during that time,” she says. “I wanted to make sure that it was heart and not habit that was keeping me in that cycle. “A year of eight until six every day in the workshop doing design stuff was exactly what I needed to give myself the perspective to evaluate my relationship with music. It’s lovely when the onus isn’t on one thing – you have a much better relationship with it, it’s a lot more fruitful and you hold onto the reins less tightly.” Back to Presley’s painting, Le Bon saw it as a starting point for a continually evolving story. “It was a reminder of the ambiguity and the absurdity of something which allows a conversation to be continued, allows something to change and allows something to grow and move with you,” she says. “That’s something that really resonates with me.” POMPEII IS OUT NOW. FOR TOUR DATES, VISIT CATELEBON.COM.

motion and propulsion, and a groove. At a time like that, I didn’t want anything to be in danger of flatlining, because everything was pretty bleak.” Capturing the fluctuating atmosphere of apocalypse, Pompeii typifies Le Bon’s esoteric art‑pop sound, from baroque opener ‘Dirt on the Bed’ to the chiming echoes of the title track. She plays all the instruments herself, other than saxophone and drums (the latter contributed by Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa). She will be accompanied by a full band when she returns to Australia in June, performing for VIVID Sydney, Dark Mofo festival in Hobart, and gig initiative Always Live in Melbourne. Though Le Bon has never shied away from experimentation, here she leans even further into the absurd, creating a kaleidoscopic view of the contradictions of existence: “I’m not cold by nature, but this could bring me to my knees,” she sings on ‘Running Away’. But then, on album closer ‘Wheel’, “I could resign to the opulence of abstract optimistic love.” “The record is more of an exploration than anything declarative,” Le Bon says. “You hold on so hard to this idea that you know what’s

13 MAY 2022

I would spend the evenings after work trying to learn Talking Heads basslines, just for something to occupy my brain so that I didn’t have a total meltdown…

Downton Abbey

Film

Gentry Does It Britain’s favourite posh folk are back with A New Era – and the cast let us in on another decorously dressed, exquisitely mannered and engrossingly gossipy jaunt back in time. by Adrian Lobb The Big Issue UK @adey70

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

ince 2010 viewers have marvelled at the witty, wise and extremely wealthy Crawley family and their domestic servants on their lavish Yorkshire country estate. And now, after six seasons of entertaining TV and a blockbuster 2019 film, Downton Abbey is back on the silver screen. As the Wall Street Crash and subsequent Great Depression loom large in The New Era, clouds could soon be on the horizon for the landed gentry. But fear not – sexual intrigue, mild peril, culture clashes and exquisite one-liners are in no short supply. We caught up with Elizabeth McGovern (aka Cora Crawley,

Countess of Grantham), Dame Penelope Wilton (Isobel Grey – aka Lady Merton), and Joanne Froggatt (Anna Bates) – to find out how the newest Downton instalment continues to connect past and present. Elizabeth McGovern: It’s a funny thing, because when it started, people felt a real nostalgia for the era that it took them to. And now I think people feel a nostalgia for the era that they were in when they first started watching the show. So it’s nostalgia, but it’s kind of morphed into a different thing because the world is changing so fast.

DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA IS IN CINEMAS NOW.

TOP: SYBBIE AND GEORGE LEARN FROM MRS PATMORE, THE COOK MIDDLE: WIDOWER TOM BRANSON AND LUCY SMITH, THE MAID, GET HITCHED BOTTOM: LADY MERTON AND THE DOWAGER COUNTESS OF GRANTHAM ARE NOT BEST PLEASED

13 MAY 2022

They have different views about things and both stick to their guns. So we got a lot of fun out of those sparring matches. I’d live in the hope that he would let me win, but she usually got the upper hand in the end. EM: We’ve all gone through something together and grown up a little bit… I feel so proud of everybody. For the first couple of years, Michelle came to my trailer and I forced her to sing. Now Michelle and Michael [Fox, who has played Andy Parker since series five] are singing together, doing their own thing. There was always a big music element among the cast. PW: It was a bit like a theatre company because there’s a group of people of all ages and you work with them over a period of time. So you get to know one another very well and also get very close to the crew. We have a driver called Orest, who is Ukrainian and is at the border at this moment, trying to bring his wife and his mother to safety. So we’re sending him messages. I’m hoping he will get through. EM: My big issue? I have a real passion that people should be getting out and supporting theatres, supporting dance, supporting live music. People are really suffering in those worlds. We learnt about first responders, about the primary care workers that are of such value to society. And we have to now look again at the value of live arts to society, and people’s spirit and mental health and that sense of sharing and community. PW: My big issue is the standard of living in [the UK]. I was on Tottenham Court Road and people were living in doorways. When we hit the pandemic, we seemed to be able to do something about homelessness. It seems ridiculous that you can’t continue something that was working quite well. JF: How many homeless people could live in Downton Abbey? That is a great question. Wow. A lot – and it’s actually a really good idea. Although I think the family might have something to say about it. But thousands. Because it’s enormous. Including the whole estate, because there are other houses on the estate. I haven’t even seen most of the house because most of the upstairs is cordoned off even to us. But you could fit a village in there. Maybe a city.

FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE BIG ISSUE UK, ED#1508, BIGISSUE.COM @BIGISSUE. PHOTOS BY BEN BLACKALL/FOCUS FEATURES

Joanne Froggatt: I think the second movie is even better than the first. It is funny, it is poignant, it looks beautiful – it’s got all those things people love about Downton. It feels like you are getting a warm hug. And I think that’s what everybody needs right now, after the last few years and with what’s happening in the world. Penelope Wilton: What’s going on at the moment is just so upsetting and so terrible – in Ukraine, particularly – that it is hard to focus on anything else. But I think it will be diverting for a couple of hours. With everything going up, and fuel prices and everything, people are really up against it in so many ways, so I hope it will give everyone a lift. It’s a highly entertaining story. JF: Julian [Fellowes, creator] has always been very good at connecting the stories in the historical time with what is going on in our time. He tends to weave those parallels very subtly. I can’t say why, but the parallels are not economic or political necessarily in this one, but emotionally the parallels in this story are universal. It’s got such a big heart, this movie. EM: I don’t get many chances to work with Simon [Curtis, her husband of 30 years, who directs the new film], so it was a privilege. I was nervous because it’s so difficult to come into something that is already up and running, but I was so proud of him… He managed something very difficult – he imprinted his own personality on it. PW: I think you’ll see in the next film what the family do when they’re up against it, with their finances becoming depleted. Because, of course, it’s terribly expensive. You couldn’t run a house like that one now. Nobody could. It would be impossible, especially now – how could you heat it? EM: The new film? It’s everything that everybody has come to expect from Downton Abbey but I feel like in this one, the detail and richness and texture of the plot is at its best. Because the thing Downton Abbey does well, which is the clash of the old and the new, Julian’s found a very clever way of re-exploring that dynamic. It’s always on the horizon, this sense that modern life is slowly eating away at the life they’re enjoying. PW: Maggie Smith and I have a very, very, very, very good relationship. And Julian wrote wonderful scenes for us – it added a sharpness to the whole thing. They really rubbed each other up the wrong way but finally came to admire each other, although they would never give in to one another.

Steve Toltz

Books

Something From Nothing Steve Toltz’s third novel tackles the afterlife, our social media addiction and a pandemic – but it’s still funny as hell. by Doug Wallen

Doug Wallen is a freelance writer and editor based in Victoria, and a former music editor of The Big Issue.

PHOTO BY DAVID MORRISON

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

@wallendoug

ince debuting in 2008 with his Booker-shortlisted epic A Fraction of the Whole, Steve Toltz has delivered his next two novels at seven-year intervals. That’s ages in today’s high-turnover literary world, but it’s always worth the wait for the Sydney native’s distinctive brand of mind-bending dramedy and rapid-fire irreverence. After 2015’s Quicksand, which detailed the exploits of tragically unlucky Aldo Benjamin, Toltz has returned with a high-concept dark comedy about mortality. Here Goes Nothing opens with career-criminal-turned-husband-andexpectant-father Angus Mooney narrating from the afterlife. He’s been murdered at age 42, and while he navigates a mundane purgatory that’s painfully similar to our own, he pines for his surviving wife, Gracie. Adding insult to injury, Mooney is forced to admit that his scepticism about all things spiritual was – pardon the pun – dead wrong. “It amused me to have this laconic non‑believer wake up in the afterlife,” says Toltz. “Mooney’s voice became quite central to the story.” The author is chatting over Zoom from his front porch in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Los Feliz. He relocated to LA in part to write for television, where his high-energy,

Mooney’s chequered childhood as an orphan, but he says writing this particular story didn’t transform his own views on what might await us beyond this life. He’s open-minded, but doubts the existence of a literal heaven and hell. Though the afterlife seems like a fresh chance to start over, his characters mostly bring all of their baggage with them. Here Goes Nothing is also about worrying what others think of us, which feels ever-present thanks to social media. As Mooney’s effusive widow Gracie holds forth to large swathes of online followers and delivers wildly off-colour commentary as a wedding celebrant, it’s a reminder that we’re always creating content of one kind or another. “I think we’re all in deep trouble,” Toltz says of technology’s grip on modern life. “We’re a planet of addicts. I don’t know a single person who has a healthy attitude towards technology.” Another bleak-yet-true-to-life plot device in his new book is a dire pandemic that far outpaces COVID-19. Toltz actually researched and wrote that element back in 2019, partly to have something urgent happening outside of Gracie’s intimate drama at home, and then decided to keep it even after a real-life pandemic arrived. Beyond providing high stakes for the world outside Gracie’s doors as she waits

to welcome her baby following Mooney’s murder, a raging pandemic meant that the afterlife could be flooded with an unprecedented influx, staging what Toltz calls as “a trans‑dimensional refugee crisis”. As if Gracie doesn’t have enough on her plate, she’s also dealing with an unwanted house guest in Owen, a doctor with a terminal illness and absolutely no bedside manner. Even for a writer who specialises in potentially unlikeable characters, Owen is a combative, seething antagonist who rankles at every turn. “I thought it would be fun to have an old-fashioned villain,” says Toltz. “There’s no greater pleasure than writing someone who is just a really shitty human being. There’s a freedom that comes in writing a character like that.” Given his track record of indelible characters, it comes as no surprise that Toltz doesn’t subscribe to the idea of making his creations likeable just for the sake of it. Much like the outsized situations he depicts in his books, these figures often end up brashly appealing, if only as cautionary tales. “If you put that much work into writing something, it will come off well,” says the author. “You can’t help, as a reader, connecting in some way.” HERE GOES NOTHING IS OUT NOW. STEVE TOLTZ IS ALSO APPEARING AT SYDNEY WRITERS’ FESTIVAL THIS MONTH.

dialogue-driven style makes him well suited to acerbic gems like the Kate Beckinsale series Guilty Party and the US version of the Aussie police comedy No Activity. For someone who pens such sentences as Mooney’s declaration “My mind was a tour de force of what the fuck,” a hectic writers’ room is an ideal sandpit for his trademark cheekiness. “Writing fiction is very solitary, and you’re writing all the time,” says Toltz. “Writing for television is 90 per cent brainstorming and 10 per cent writing. And it’s social: you’re in a room full of people. It’s like being paid to be at a dinner party.” Ever since A Fraction of the Whole, Toltz has been singled out for the commitment to comedy in his books, which revel in ambushing belligerence and other zippy extremes. “I write by hand,” he says, “and the pen is a bit faster than the brain sometimes. So I guess I’m trying to amuse myself as I write.” Writing by hand means that when Toltz reads his work aloud to transcribe it onto a computer for editing, it’s like having an extra editor as he catches mistakes and repetitions. That added step helps him to hone his pointed flourishes all the more. Fans of the TV series The Good Place will no doubt appreciate the afterlife’s bureaucratic machinations in Here Goes Nothing, while Toltz cites a longtime love of afterlife movies like Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941) and Defending Your Life (1991). He examines faith in the book through

13 MAY 2022

There’s no greater pleasure than writing someone who is just a really shitty human being.

Film Reviews

Aimee Knight Film Editor @siraimeeknight

ravura performance from non-professional actor Swamy Rotolo is the sun around which Italian drama To Chiara orbits. Passionate and impulsive, the titular teenager (played by Rotolo) is driven by her middle-child whims. Chiara yearns for affirmation from her introverted father, Claudio Guerrasio (Claudio Rotolo), but her burning curiosity for the other side of closed doors soon gets her in hot water and the consequences of her mischief start to swell in this genre-blending depiction of malavita – the life of crime. Equal parts mafia thriller and neorealist missive, To Chiara is writer-director Jonas Carpignano’s third feature in a Calabrian trilogy. Like Mediterranea (2015) and A Ciambra (2017), it’s set in the port district of Gioia Tauro, where African migrants, a settled Roma community, and underground criminals live in discord exacerbated by poverty. A compelling film that examines morality without moralising, To Chiara explores crime as a means for survival. It’s refreshing to see this typically macho lifestyle through the eyes of a teen girl. Chiara is at once intrigued, cynical and self-righteous about her community’s cycle of amorality. Casting the whole Rotolo family as the Guerrasio clan anchors the film in an affecting truth. But Carpignano also weaves in moments of dreamlike surreality that make To Chiara wholly engrossing. This slow burn will captivate those keen on gritty crime thrillers, heartfelt family sagas, and complex coming-of-age stories. AK

TEEN SPIRIT: SWAMY ROTOLO

SUNDOWN 

While on a luxurious holiday in sunny Acapulco, wealthy siblings Neil (Tim Roth) and Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) – along with her teenage children Colin (Samuel Bottomley) and Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan) – receive news of their mother’s sudden death. What ensues is a story of one man’s disturbing passivity in the face of familial responsibility: Neil, pretending he’s forgotten his passport, stays in Mexico to drink, seduce a local shop owner (Iazua Larios), and lie on the beach. Sundown follows director Michel Franco’s controversial 2020 thriller New Order, but unlike its predecessor, this film doesn’t seem so sure of what it is critiquing. Heavy-handed metaphors for capitalist greed provide moments of off-kilter surrealism, but remain largely unexplored, and the film’s final minutes offer a disappointingly banal explanation for Neil’s selfish behaviour. Despite its bloated second half, Sundown shines in its scenes of Neil’s disconcerting apathy – beer in hand, ignoring his ringing phone, he raises his face to the sun and closes his eyes. LOUISE CAIN POMPO: THE CINÉPHILE

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

 | IN CINEMAS JUNE

Welcome to Nyallywood – anime director Takayuki Hirao’s relentlessly optimistic vision of Hollywood. This alternate world makes no attempt to reflect life: the titular Pompo is a pre-teen girl who happens to be a veteran B-movie producer, while her assistant Gene manages to land a major directorial gig through sheer pluck and friendship. As Pompo and Gene embark on creating a prestige film, and they work with a character named Nathalie Woodward, nods are made to Cinema Paradiso (1988) and aspect ratios are delightfully screwed with. Much of the fun lies in the idiosyncrasies of this saturated LA, where people prioritise their love for cinema above all else. The saccharine bent may be off-putting if one thinks too hard about the actual labour realities of both the film and anime industries but, as Pompo quips in an early scene, “Making a silly movie takes genius”. In a few moments – like an action sequence where a blade-wielding Gene slices through snaking film rolls for his final cut – she’s proved mostly right. CLAIRE CAO

HOW TO PLEASE A WOMAN 

Full of warmth, heart and depth, this uplifting comedy-drama is Renée Webster’s (The Heights) debut feature. Sally Phillips (Bridget Jones’s Diary) plays Gina, a timorous middle-aged woman, under-appreciated both at home and work. When an unexpected birthday present coincides with her unjust dismissal at work, Gina converts a flailing removalist company into one specialising in house cleaning and sexual intimacy. What starts as a predictably empowering story about older women’s desires morphs into something far more expansive about the nature of male sex work, reclamation and rediscovery, queer awakenings, and male vulnerability. The beautiful port city of Fremantle backdrops Gina’s rekindling as she finds solace in the sea, captured in breathtaking shots of her and her swimming buddies – a star-studded local cast of Tasma Walton (Mystery Road), Hayley McElhinney (The Babadook) and Caroline Brazier (Packed to the Rafters). An unashamed celebration of women, their bodies and their desires. SONIA NAIR

Small Screen Reviews

Claire Cao Small Screens Editor @clairexinwen

CAT CAFE MANAGER  | NINTENDO SWITCH + WINDOWS PC

THE ESSEX SERPENT

 | 16 MAY ON PRIME VIDEO

 | 27 MAY ON APPLE TV+

Sally Rooney maniacs assemble – the latest instalment in the Irish author’s TV universe is here. Following Normal People’s global success, this adaptation of Rooney’s debut novel centres on 21-year-old Dublin college student, Frances (newcomer Alison Oliver), her ex-girlfriend/BFF Bobbi (Sasha Lane), and their complicated romantic entanglements with posh married couple, Nick (Joe Alwyn) and Melissa Conway (Jemima Kirke). Produced by Normal People’s creative team, the episodes are perfectly paced, tonally subtle and beautifully shot. Directors Lenny Abrahamson (Room) and Leanne Welham imbue the show with understated intimacy and leave us enraptured by Frances and Nick’s quietly captivating affair. Their tension bubbles through lingering glances, flirtatious texts and exquisitely gentle sex scenes. Book loyalists may miss the psychologically messy themes found in Rooney’s introspective style but, with the novelist writing on the series, there’s plenty of repressed vulnerability to mull over inside the mind of her alluring, introverted lead. DEBBIE ZHOU

Steeped in symbolic gestures but lacking in corporeal bite, The Essex Serpent only manages to wade in the shallows of its gothic drama. Set between gaslit London and a coastal Essex village, the miniseries (adapted from Sarah Perry’s bestseller) navigates the rift between industrial modernity and traditional superstition. The story centres on Cora Seaborne (Claire Danes, Homeland), a wealthy widow and amateur palaeontologist who investigates rumours of a bloodthirsty sea serpent in “witch-burning country” while unexpectedly befriending the swoony local vicar (Tom Hiddleston, Loki). In the tradition of Andrew Scott and Jean-Paul Belmondo, Hiddleston handily effuses an ecclesiastical sex appeal; he’s first seen drenched, bloodied and writhing while rescuing a drowning lamb. Yet the show finds little else to sink its teeth into, its characters weighed down by its philosophical ambitions, and its big ideas handled clumsily. For a show about the terrors of mass hysteria and groupthink (more so than a literal aquatic monster), it has little imagination of its own. JAMIE TRAM

ecent years have seen greater openness about mental health – something almost half of Australians struggle with in their lifetime. Even so, the subject has been misunderstood for decades, leaving many adults reluctant to engage in the often nebulous process of treatment. The new ABC docuseries Space 22 focuses on the specific method of art therapy, led by psychotherapist Noula Diamantopoulos. Hosted by singer Natalie Bassingthwaighte – who opens up about her own struggles – the series is a sensitive look at the transformative power of art. The perceived inaccessibility of art therapy is acknowledged, with some participants initially considering it “wanky” and tailored for the upper class. But by featuring a range of guest artists and insight into the breadth of Australian lives, the tone is refreshingly frank and grounded. Creativity cannot be a cure-all, but it can be a gateway – to feelings long buried and to the hope for human connection. Space 22 airs 17 May. One of the grandest arenas for artistic expression is the annual Eurovision Song Contest, which is on this month in Turin, Italy. Everything we seek from Eurovision – the earth-shaking power ballads, transportive lightshows and avant-garde style – seem crystallised in Australia’s pick this year, Sheldon Riley. The Filipino Australian singer was crowned the winner of Eurovision Australia Decides and will now compete in Semi-final 2 then, hopefully, the Grand Final. Watch Riley live his dream from 11-15 May, broadcast live on SBS. CC

13 MAY 2022

CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS

NATALIE BASSINGTHWAIGHTE OPENS UP

In Cat Cafe Manager, you have escaped the hustle and bustle of the big smoke and taken over your grandmother’s cat cafe in the village of Caterwaul Way, home to eclectic townsfolk like fishermen, artists and witches. The game re-imagines the cottagecore escapism of Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley in a Diner Dash-esque restaurant management game. With the earnings from your business, you expand your cafe with cuter decorations, a wider menu of herbal brews and sandwiches, and of course, more cats. Both story and gameplay are simple – no wiki guide needed – and players hoping for deeper strategy or lore should look elsewhere. Manoeuvring around the world can also be finicky on the Switch, and the game’s many character and currency types could benefit from a less erratic tutorial. But simplicity and charm are all that’s required for an enjoyable time: Cat Cafe Manager slots neatly into the anti-corporate aesthetics of the cosy games genre and presents an easy reprieve from the stresses of the day. LENA WANG

Music Reviews

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

ennsylvanian indie star Alex G has created an original score for Jane Schoebrun’s Sundance hit We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. The film – about a teenager who immerses herself in the world of roleplay online and gains the attention of an older man – is an extremely eerie modern horror, and Alex G’s mournful suburban score is the perfect accompaniment. It had me thinking about other instances where accomplished musicians have lent their skills to produce wonderful original film scores. Genius minimalist composer Philip Glass penned a beautiful score for Paul Schrader’s incredible biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) – full of wind chimes, ominous orchestral sweeps and languorous guitar. It was one of his earliest film scores, with the composer going on to work on film hits such as The Truman Show (1998) and The Hours (2002). Dario Argento’s lurid, brilliant Suspiria (1977) was provided with a fittingly excessive score thanks to the Italian prog-rock band Goblin, who worked with the director on many of his Giallo horrors. The Suspiria score is a unique standout, however, where synths and screams combine to create an unnerving and sometimes ridiculous soundtrack. More recently, electronic music producer Daniel Lopatin, better known under his stage moniker Oneohtrix Point Never, created the perfect, anxiety-inducing score – filled with queasy, celestial synths – for The Safdie brothers’ feverish thriller Uncut Gems (2019) about a gambling jeweller. IT

XXX GOBLIN: SCARY

Isabella Trimboli Music Editor @itrimboli

OMNIUM GATHERUM KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD 

The most formidable aspect of King Gizzard’s mercurial run of 20 full-length albums is the ability to maintain cohesion while space-hopping between genres, styles and heady concepts. It’s earned the band a fan base akin to Deadheads or Phish-heads for the internet age. Omnium Gatherum, their latest, sees them embracing their jam band inclinations – for better and worse. Gizz’s albums range from focused genre excursions, lore-building fantasy, breezy psych-pop, and odds and sods collections. This outing is a case of all of the above, with the bonus of break-beat rap on ‘The Grim Reaper’. Gear changes begin to clunk when there’s space-pop, riff metal and bedroom-funk in the span of three tracks (‘Kepler-22b’, ‘Gaia’, ‘Ambergris’), while the lyrically potent anti-Murdoch screed ‘Evilest Man’ is sung with the urgency of a lullaby. Still, a keen sense of melody shines through even in weaker moments. With unrelenting propulsion and hair-metal duelling harmonicas, the 18-minute album opener ‘The Dripping Tap’ stands tall as a monument to the glory of Gizz. The rest is just a bonus. LACHLAN KANONIUK

ROTSLER’S RULES BLACK CAB

TO WATER A ROAD HONEY 2 HONEY

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For more than two decades, Melbourne’s Black Cab have been creating electronic and post-rock marathons that deal with very particular concepts, from 1970s-era Olympics to 1988 anime classic Akira. This time, inspiration comes from the late sci-fi author/illustrator William Rotsler, who penned a tongue-in-cheek inventory of dos and don’ts for attending conventions dressed in cosplay. Black Cab salute such dress-ups on the pulsing opener ‘Superheroes,’ complete with wheeling hooks and dramatic vocoder. The two-part ‘Hannah’ pivots from swooning synth-pop to kinetic disco, while ‘Halo’ deploys New Order-style bass lines alongside recurring touchstones like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. Multi-instrumentalists Andrew Coates and James Lee, plus drummer Wes Holland, began these tracks as loose jams overseen by producer Graeme Pogson (The Bamboos), and there’s a real sense of joy. For a band so driven by conceptual intricacy, Rotsler’s Rules finds Black Cab at their most open and playful yet. DOUG WALLEN

The long-awaited debut record from this Canberra/Sydney three-piece (Rory Stenning, Del Lumanta and Daryl Prondoso) is a pivot from their previous releases, which were characterised by dubby, hypnotic pop. Here, the band are exploring darker and slower textures, fitting for an album full of nocturnal meditations on lust, love and longing. The imagery conjured on the record is similarly noir-ish, comprised of late-night phone calls, hotel rooms and ocean rips. The sound – shadowy, gloomy, downcast – is cohesive, nestling itself in the crossover crevasse of R&B, adult contemporary and synth-heavy electronica. Singer Prondoso sounds like a disaffected, doomed lounge singer, listing off failed promises and regrets (a highlight, which demonstrates Prondoso’s wonderful, deep vocal chops, is the line “It’s deep sea, honey” repeated on track ‘Honey’). The album is an impressive and immersive listen, a testament to the group’s ability to create sumptuous moods with synths, melancholic guitar and sonorous vocals. ISABELLA TRIMBOLI

Book Reviews

Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor @melissajfulton

MY HEART IS A LITTLE WILD THING NIGEL FEATHERSTONE

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In George Haddad’s second novel, a complacent 19-year-old, drifts through life in Western Sydney. Joey sees the world happening around him, conspiring against him, and his nagging mother is copping most of the blame. Joey’s grandmother Elaine, a proud Lebanese woman, is also adrift. The novel alternates between the two perspectives and intersects when their paths cross, although their struggles are vastly different. Joey is dealing with toxic masculinity, drugs and the sense his life is not his own. Elaine is dealing with a gambling addiction, her role as a mother and grandmother, and reckoning with a past so distant it may as well have happened to someone else. Losing Face tackles intergenerational trauma, immigration, addiction and consent with tenderness and understanding. Haddad’s writing is off-chops: Joey’s obnoxious adolescent drawl chimes with an authenticity matched in Elaine’s inward reflection and female anger, which is so strong it’s clear Haddad has spent quality time with the women in his life. DANIELLE BAGNATO

What do we owe our families and ourselves? Mild-mannered Patrick Ash is a local council official and the carer for his domineering elderly mother. When decades of pent-up frustration erupt in a violent act, Patrick flees to the bushland homestead of his childhood holidays and finds unexpected love. The book is an elegy to the smallness of our lives and the tenderness that makes them worthwhile. Natural landscapes under threat from capitalist greed offer Patrick glimpses of wonder and connection beyond the constraints of filial obligation. Even as queer representation improves, love stories between middle-aged men are still somewhat rare, and Featherstone charts the experience of a cohort of closeted Gen X men whose upbringing during the AIDS crisis taught them to associate intimacy with death. Like its restrained narrator, the novel’s prose rarely experiments, yet this is a moving exploration of memory, romance and rebellion.

THE MURDER RULE DERVLA MCTIERNAN 

Bestselling Perth-based author Dervla McTiernan returns with her fifth novel, centred on a young law student who volunteers to spend her summer interning for a US legal team who are trying to get an innocent man released from death row. Hannah has given up everything to work for the Innocence Project, including her studies as a promising young lawyer, and her chance to nurse her mother through a life-changing illness. But is she really the selfless advocate she portrays herself as? McTiernan uses her own legal background to great effect as this mother-daughter story unfolds, the mother running from a truth that has scarred her for most of her adult life, and her daughter fighting to not only reveal it, but to also take revenge for both of them in the process. Two things will become abundantly clear to the reader: that no-one is entirely innocent in this tale, and that Dervla McTiernan has produced another stunning psychological thriller to reinforce her position as one of Australia’s most talented modern crime writers. CRAIG BUCHANAN

BENJAMIN HICKEY

LOSING FACE GEORGE HADDAD

13 MAY 2022

hat if the universe as we know it, life as we know it, is just God’s first draft? What if God created Earth like an artist, and we are now living in the time when he is standing back, looking at the canvas? This is the central premise of Sheila Heti’s kooky, imaginative and philosophical third novel, Pure Colour. It’s a short li’l book, a vivid burst of energy that’s grand in scope. It follows protagonist Mira from when she first leaves home to study, throughout her relationship with Annie, the woman who somehow breaks her open, and as she mourns the loss of her beloved father. But really, it reads more like a bible for modern times, a pep talk to us lonely readers in a world that seems destined to combust. “Are you sad to be living in the first draft – shoddily made, rushed, exuberant, malformed?” writes the omniscient narrator mid-way through the book. “No, you are proud to be strong enough to be living here now, one of God’s expendable soldiers in the first draft of the world.” With missives on the passing of time, the beauty of nature, the complexities of love and the importance of art, all expressed in Heti’s wonderfully irreverent and singular style, reading Pure Colour will jolt you back into your imagination, remind you that there is still some grace left in this strange world, and that indeed, we are made of strong stuff. MF

Public Service Announcement

by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus

Sometimes it’s nice to go off and do something else. It’s bold and exciting and challenging to do your own thing, to break away from the pack, to forge a future nobody even thought to imagine. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to just have a cup of tea in the bath. The road most travelled might seem dull and conformist, but we don’t always need to be striving. I cleaned behind the fridge the other day. This did not lead me to glory of any kind. Very satisfying though, and much more relaxing than all that striving business, which is admirable in its place but not required constantly. It is possible to do both, of course. To go the road less travelled by day – changing the world forever, discovering new things or whatever – and then to travel a well-worn path once you’re done. I have a friend who travels the path less travelled by day – negotiating new terrain, overcoming unforeseen challenges – and when she gets home, she grabs an old, incredibly unchallenging book and reads it for the billionth time.

Reimagining the future and forging a new path is so admirable. It’s also exhausting. So, the well-trodden path of watching irredeemably bad television for hours should not be considered a waste of time, but fuel for the times when you need the strength to adventure through life bravely. If we want to extend the metaphor here, it’s like the two paths converge for a moment and you get to sit down and have a snack and a bit of a rest. Looking out the window is a well-worn path. Each of us descends from a long line of people who have stared out of windows and done a bit of idle wondering. Noticed a leaf hanging from a spider web twiddling in the sun, or thought of something funny that happened years ago, or just lost themselves completely in the slowing down of time that tends to happen when window-staring. Old friends are a well-worn path. You’ve tested each other’s boundaries; you know the main characters in each other’s lives and even some of the bit parts. Even the things you giggle at are familiar. The things you argue about are familiar. Maybe their handwriting reminds you of high school or their absent-minded humming drives you crazy. It’s a well-trodden path, but it’s a safe and lovely one, and can sometimes even surprise you. There’s nothing wrong with ambition and creativity, or (to use a term from far too many annual reports) innovation, but the opposite of ambition (cruising familiar territory without purpose or intent) is not a betrayal of ambition. Because how can an adventurer change anything if they’re not familiar with the way things are? We could have gone on a bushwalk. We probably would have seen wonderful things. Things we hadn’t expected to see. Things that changed our perspective on the world for even a short while. But we didn’t. We stayed in our pyjamas and looked out the window and met a golden whistler and his mate, and I can tell you something for nothing: if you think the whistlers look lovely, wait until you hear them sing.

Lorin Clarke is a Melbourne-based writer. The new series of her radio and podcast series, The Fitzroy Fitzroy Diaries, Diaries, is is on on ABC Radio National and the ABC Listen app now.

met a golden whistler recently. Lovely chap. Some Australian birds are so audaciously colourful it seems like a design flaw in a world teeming with predators. Mr Whistler had a ridiculously yellow chest like someone had taken to him with a highlighter or he’d belly-flopped into a puddle of the paint they use for the yellow lines on the road. His partner, a lovely, soft, brown thing with watchful eyes and no apparent propensity for falling into paint of any colour, skipped about busily on the branch in front of where we were standing. We humans stood in that exaggerated hush that people sink into when in the presence of another species. Knees slightly bent. Hands to face. Maybe even deploying the shoosh finger, like people in a musical telling each other to be quiet so they can hear the cavalry approaching. Where did we meet this charming couple? Why, right out the front of the house where we were staying. We adults had a bit of time off work, and we had intended, that day, to go on a bushwalking adventure. We were intending to, as they say, take the road less travelled. Public Service Announcement: sometimes taking the road most travelled is fine too.

13 MAY 2022

Whistler in the Window

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas

PHOTOS BY FAITH MASON

Tastes Like Home XXX “Fitwaffle” Head Eloise

Apple Crumble Mug Cake Ingredients

Eloise says…

Serves 2

hen I was little, I absolutely loved food, especially sweet food and desserts. I still do. I get it from my mum, who would happily miss out on the main course and go straight to dessert. We were a busy family, with my sister and I doing gymnastics most evenings. We didn’t always get the chance to sit down and eat dinner together, but when we did there always had to be dessert. On cold Sundays, Mum and I would usually make something like roast chicken with roasted vegies, roast potatoes and gravy or beef stew with dumplings, which was one of my favourites. I always enjoyed chopping up the leeks and root vegetables, except for the swede… I hated chopping up swede. My knife skills weren’t the best and there was always the risk of losing a finger or the swede flying off the counter and across the room. After dinner was cooking, it was time to make the dessert, which on many occasions was a large dish of fruit crumble, apple a firm favourite. Occasionally, we’d switch it up with plum, but no matter how hard we tried there was always a stray stone in the cooked fruit. We would give a hazard warning before diving in. It’s a good job plum stones are big. I loved slicing the apples, eating the apple peel and making the crumble topping with my hands. There’s nothing like getting a bit messy while baking: it’s part of the experience. Even though I wasn’t the one having to clear it up afterwards (sorry Mum). For me, warm apple crumble is such a comforting dessert. Dad and I always enjoyed it with cold custard. Mum opted for something like clotted cream. This recipe brings back so many fond memories. It has all the flavours of a warm, classic apple crumble, but with much less effort. It’s made just for two and with only five ingredients. Easy as pie – or crumble, I should say! It’s perfect if you don’t have a lot of mouths to feed but still want to enjoy a delicious, comforting apple crumble at home.

For the topping 40g (4¾ tablespoon) plain flour 40g (3 tablespoons) sugar 40g (3 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cold and cubed

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan). Mix together the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl or mug until combined, then add the chopped apple and toss until coated in the mixture. In another small bowl or mug, mix together the flour, sugar and cold butter until combined. I prefer to do this with my fingertips until it becomes crumbly. Scoop the apple mixture into 2 separate ramekins or ovenproof mugs, then evenly crumble over the topping. Bake for 25 minutes until the tops are golden brown and the apples are soft. Serve warm with cream or ice cream. Yum!

PLAN TO RECREATE THIS DESSERT? TAG US WITH YOUR CREATION! @BIGISSUEAUSTRALIA #TASTESLIKEHOME

BAKING IT EASY BY ELOISE HEAD IS OUT NOW.

13 MAY 2022

15g (1 tablespoon) sugar ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 large apple, peeled, cored and cubed

For the filling

Puzzles

ANSWERS PAGE 45.

By Lingo! by Lee Murray lee.am.murray@gmail.com ELECTION

CLUES 5 letters Chad’s neighbour Char Extent, scope Lear’s second daughter Sends to the gallows 6 letters Inviting Calming, abating French painter, pupil of David Quit a job Running quickly 7 letters Deleting Dividing out One of the senses Scorching Taking notice 8 letters Removing wool

A H K I

Sudoku

Each column, row and 3 x 3 box must contain all numbers 1 to 9.

G S

R E N

by websudoku.com

5 8

3 9 9 8

4 9

7 6 1 3 9 8

7 2

9 1

4 5

Puzzle by websudoku.com

Solutions CROSSWORD PAGE 45 ACROSS 1 Impale 4 Windfall 10 Top secret 11 Logic

12 Rare 13 Avaricious 15 Enzymes 16 Measly 19 Violet 21 Allegro 23 Perry Mason 25 Knee 27 Nerve 28 Fabricate 29 Solstice 30 Crayon

DOWN 1 Internet 2 Paparazzi 3 Lieu 5 Interim 6 Delectable 7 Aggro 8 Locust 9 Graves 14 Employment 17 Legendary 18 Foreseen 20 Traffic 21 Amoeba 22 Opines 24 Rural 26 Liar

20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9 1 Missouri 2 Wordle 3 Copenhagen 4 Non-fungible token 5 Paraguay 6 1981 7 Bristol, UK 8 His nightgown 9 Singapore Airlines 10 True 11 A) Garcia 12 Petrichor 13 Qatar 14 Rose 15 The Swamp 16 Solomon Islands 17 Brown 18 Yes 19 Francis de Groot 20 Rhianna

13 MAY 2022

Using all 9 letters provided, can you answer these clues? Every answer must include the central letter. Plus, which word uses all 9 letters?

by puzzler.com

Word Builder

Election has always been about choice, just not always the kind that comes with a democracy sausage. The Latin verb legere “choose” and the prefix ex- “out” came together to make ēligere “pick [something] out”. You might ask, why is elect so different from ēligere, then? It’s because the present tense of English elect is actually taken from the past form of ēligere in Latin: electus “elected”. (There are quite a few English words that have electus as an ancestor: select, neglect, collect. More on these in future issues!). When you run for election, you’re a candidate. Candidates take their name from the white togas (known as candidum) worn by Ancient Romans when running for political office. (They definitely wouldn’t have risked a sausage in bread.)

Crossword

by Steve Knight

Quick Clues

THE ANSWERS FOR THE CRYPTIC AND QUICK CLUES ARE THE SAME. ANSWERS PAGE 43.

ACROSS

1 Skewer (6) 4 Jackpot (8) 10 Highly classified (3,6) 11 Reasoning (5) 12 Unusual (4) 13 Greedy (10) 15 Biocatalysts (7) 16 Paltry (6) 19 Type of flower or colour (6) 21 Musical term denoting brisk speed (7) 23 TV lawyer played by Raymond Burr (5,5) 25 Joint (4) 27 Audacity (5) 28 Concoct (9) 29 Shortest or longest day of the year (8) 30 Drawing implement (6)

9 10

13 14

DOWN

22 23

25 26

Cryptic Clues

Solutions

ACROSS

DOWN

1 Spike Sprite with beer (6) 4 Snake cave in Bonanza (8) 10 Harry Potter takes split second to get classified

1 Entertain assembly without a source of

(3,6) 11 Good reason to register one with cold (5) 12 Right age to retire, or not quite done? (4) 13 Greedy vicar a criminal with outstanding debts (10) 15 See my problem accepting neighbours? They are biocatalysts (7) 16 Spotted piddling? (6) 19 Deep Purple and Savage Garden’s final outing (6) 21 Al Gore left building quickly (7) 23 Bloody Mary consumed by one TV lawyer (5,5) 25 Keen to finish early for a joint (4) 27 Sauce bottle (5) 28 Fit bra, lace pants. Left without make-up (9) 29 Sadly it closes four days before Christmas (8) 30 Caught material in drawer (6)

1 Source of online information (8) 2 Professional photographers (9) 3 Place or stead (4) 5 Caretaker (7) 6 Scrumptious (10) 7 Provocation (5) 8 Destructive flying insect (6) 9 Places of burial (6) 14 Occupation (10) 17 Famed (9) 18 Predicted (8) 20 Moving vehicles (7) 21 Single-celled life form (6) 22 States one’s view (6) 24 Pastoral (5) 26 Dishonest person (4)

information (8) 2 They snap at blow-up in bustling piazza (9) 3 Place John on report (4) 5 Printer image conceals caretaker (7) 6 Democrat, preferred candidate possibly rich or charming (10) 7 Shocking gag and unlimited grog result in violent behaviour (5) 8 Essentially innocent, consumed by lust for country stripper? (6) 9 Plenty of bodies here in Vegas clubbing, including Radiohead (6) 14 Use my temple, no problem (10) 17 Blue and grey after the French celebrated (9) 18 Anticipated quartet act for audition (8) 20 Wind up with France in charge of trade (7) 21 It has one cell phone essentially stuck in a broken beam (6) 22 Holds pin between toes, removes shirt (6) 24 Popular Urban piece is retro country (5) 26 Cheat backtracks? (4)

SUDOKU PAGE 43

6 7 5 2 8 1 4 3 9

1 2 8 3 9 4 6 5 7

9 3 4 6 7 5 8 1 2

7 8 3 9 5 2 1 6 4

4 6 1 8 3 7 2 9 5

2 5 9 4 1 6 3 7 8

5 1 6 7 2 8 9 4 3

3 4 2 5 6 9 7 8 1

8 9 7 1 4 3 5 2 6

Puzzle by websudoku.com

WORD BUILDER PAGE 43 5 Niger Singe Range Regan Hangs 6 Asking Easing Ingres Resign Haring 7 Erasing Sharing Hearing Searing Harking 8 Shearing 9 Shrinkage

13 MAY 2022

Click 1972

Gough Whitlam

words by Michael Epis photo by Getty

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

t’s time. For our triennial democracy sausage – and what better man to celebrate it with than the grandest of Australian political figures, Edward Gough Whitlam, comic apron and all. Gotta love the 70s. As the men and women of Australia arrive at polling booths across the country, from the largest electorate of Durack, WA – which would be the 19th largest country in the world were it to secede – to (maybe) the Antarctic station at Mawson, voters will be greeted with the distinctive and unforgettable aroma of barbecued sausage.

It was in 2016 that “democracy sausage” really asserted itself, roaring up the charts to be deemed word of the year by the Australian National Dictionary Centre. It was kicked along by then Labor leader Bill Shorten, who chomped on a snag and declared it “tastes like democracy”. Pity that he bit into said sausage from the middle, rather than the end. Some things just can’t be explained. Aiding the cause were several websites notating sausage access at polling booths. Indeed, democracysausage.org carries on the campaign, reporting that

the seat of Ryan, Qld, is the most sausage-democratic, with more than 10 per cent of booths offering the humble snag. Moore (WA), Makin (SA), Spence (SA), Macarthur (NSW) and Adelaide are so far offering none, making them the wurst. The site also records booths where halal and vegetarian options are available. Oh, and the sausage‑on-bread emoji alongside Twitter’s #ausvotes didn’t hurt the cause. Gough, of course, was a big man, not averse to a decent feed. Lamingtons in his vicinity were said to be in danger. On election night 1969 (the night of Don’s Party), he played host. Despite a swing of 7.1 per cent and 50.2 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, he lost to John Gorton. According to his biographer Jenny Hocking, when guests departed, “leaving a backyard strewn with empty bottles, dirty glasses and discarded plates, Margaret Whitlam stood alone in the dark and cried”. All that washing up. Gough later dedicated his autobiography thus: “To my best appointment, Margaret”. Touché. And on the day that Australian democracy failed – 11 November 1975, when the representative of a foreign monarch dismissed a duly elected Australian prime minister – Gough drove from the governor‑general’s Yarralumla residence back to The Lodge and promptly sat down to have a steak for lunch. He later quipped: “I had my meal after the execution.”

The Big Issue Australia #661 – Food For Thought

Articles inside

Music Reviews

Tastes Like Home

Book Reviews

Public Service Announcement

Small Screen Reviews

The Big Picture

Streetsheet

Ed’s Letter, Your Say

Film Reviews

Meet Your Vendor

Fiona

Hearsay & 20 Questions

Ricky