The Big Issue Australia #618 - The Briggs Issue by The Big Issue Australia

17 OCT 01 NOV 2019

Ed.

618 21 AUG 2020

22.

JOHN WOOD

26.

MULAN

28.

KEV CARMODY

40.

and VEGIE LASAGNE

THE

B R

G G S

ISS

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ENQUIRIES

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Chief Operating Officer Sally Hines Chief Financial Officer Jon Whitehead National Communications and Partnerships Manager Steph Say National Operations Manager Jeremy Urquhart EDITORIAL

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Contents

EDITION

618 22 LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF

‘I Was a Bit of a Nerd’ Actor John Wood talks Blue Heelers, daily Zoom reading dates with his grandchildren, and how he almost missed his calling as an actor.

26 FILM

Mulan Strikes Again

12.

Warrior woman Mulan is back – for the streaming generation. Claire Cao takes a look at Disney’s live-action remake of the sixth century Chinese ballad, ahead of its small‑screen premiere.

The One, the Only, the Original...Briggs by Brodie Lancaster

Adam Briggs – rapper, label boss, writer, actor and activist – is a slashie supreme. Now, with a slew of exciting new projects on the horizon, he tells The Big Issue what matters most – speaking the truth, pushing against the system and making room for the next wave of First Nations talent.

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

BEHIND THE COVER

“We made it okay to be extreme I think… We opened up the spectrum of what Indigenous artists can be,” says Briggs of A.B. Original. photo by Tristan Edouard

28 MUSIC

Big Things Do Grow For decades, Kev Carmody’s honest, urgent songwriting has shared the stories of Indigenous Australia and inspired countless artists. Now, with the release of a revamped tribute album, the time is ripe to celebrate him.

Ed’s Letter

by Amy Hetherington Editor @amyhetherington

E FO RT NI GH T LE TT ER OF TH

There Goes My Hero

iberated during my hour-long constitutional around the streets of St Kilda this weekend, I ran into Spider-Man. He was out on his daily jog, fully suited up, spreading cheer in the Melbourne winter sunshine. He weaved his way along the foreshore, waving to folks and calling out hellos, leaving a trail of amused adults and excited kids in his wake. A hero for our times, Spidey was wearing a COVID mask over his superhero headgear. Peter Parker was sensibly taking no chances. It turns out our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man has become somewhat of a suburban legend during Stage 4 lockdown, with sightings of him popping up all over the web – his presence making a world of difference to those struggling with the loneliness and gloom of the shutdown. Our Victorian vendors are among those doing it particularly tough right now, unable to work due to the pandemic

restrictions. You can continue to support them by buying the mag from selected Woolworths supermarkets around the country, with sales benefitting the Vendor Support Fund. We’re also asking people to hero their local Big Issue vendors by sending in messages of friendship and support via submissions@bigissue.org.au. We all need our heroes. In this edition, we speak to the multi-talented Adam Briggs – rapper, label boss, comedy writer, presenter, author and actor – who reveals his childhood hero was AFL great Gavin Wanganeen. And how Briggs’ own search for role models inspired his new children’s book Our Home, Our Heartbeat, a celebration of Indigenous excellence. In the hip-hop world, too, Briggs is making room for the next generation of First Nations artists: “We opened up the spectrum of what Indigenous artists can be,” he says. “It gave licence to a lot of people to breathe.”

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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 24 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 really enjoyed the ‘Me, Myself and Iso’ article by Adelaide vendor Mark in Ed#615. I’m glad he took the time to keep a journal in isolation, and that he shared it with the rest of us. Keep ’em coming I say. The key thing that stands out to me is his normal day-to-day routine. I enjoy reading these kinds of accounts because it gives me an eye into the world of others, just normal people such as myself, albeit with a few more – or in some cases many more – struggles to cross along the way. With it comes a lot of perspective and a strong reminder to stop and reflect on what one is grateful for. Thank you again, Mark. Here’s to getting back to doing what you love most. LEE RATCLIFFE WELLARD I WA

Tonight, with a lot of help from my wife, I made Lara Lee’s Chicken Nasi Goreng from her recipe in The Big Issue [Ed#614]. It wasn’t perfect, but it took me back to a magical 1969 spent living in Sabah, North Borneo, as a child. Flavour, like scent, can carry you back half a century, like a magic spell. Thank you, Lara and The Big Issue, for the trip. JOHN HARDAKER CROYDON 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 19 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 Classroom educates school groups about homelessness. • And The Big Idea challenges university students to develop a new social enterprise. CHECK OUT ALL THE DETAILS AT

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Lee wins a copy of Clare Scrine’s new cookbook The Shared Table. Check out her hearty vegie lasagne recipe on page p40. 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

interview by Melissa Fulton photo by Peter Holcroft 21 AUG 2020

SELLS THE BIG ISSUE OUTSIDE WOOLWORTHS, POTTS POINT, NSW

PROUD UNIFORM PARTNER OF THE BIG ISSUE VENDORS.

Scott

I grew up in the Byron Bay area. Did I enjoy school? Yes and no. Things turned around for me when I did some leadership camps. One of the biggest things I learned is that you don’t need to be a full-on out-there person to make a change. You don’t have to walk on fire – you can go out and do something small and it will have a massive change in ways that you can’t think of. I’ve learned that backing down and following others can have more of an effect than being a loudmouth yourself. My experience at school was pretty much that I went from being a loner to just missing out on the captaincy in Year 12. When I was in high school I didn’t learn as much as I probably should’ve, but after leaving I was listening to podcasts, watching documentaries, just anything at all that I took an interest in – anything to do with numbers, even looking up things like mobile phone towers and learning how they operate. If I saw something on TV that sparked an interest, I’d go and take half an hour to learn more about it. I was self-taught in terms of general trivia, how things work, things to know in everyday life. Over the last few years I’ve taken a really keen interest in phones – buying and selling – when I can. And I’m not a master, but I’ve learned a fair amount of negotiation skills from it. I’ve learned some trade secrets. It’s a hobby for me, to try and improve on negotiation skills. You can always get better at those; it makes being able to buy and sell a bit easier. I’m really big on technology so I use my Big Issue money for anything to do with it. Something I want to try and get into is to start some stuff with YouTube. Next year I will have been selling The Big Issue for 10 years. I’m wanting to plan a community dinner. I’m in the process of trying to figure something out and hoping that COVID doesn’t hit hard and hang around. I have a lot of regular customers, and a few people who are really close with the support they’ve given. The best thing about selling The Big Issue is working my own hours and setting my own everything. I like feeling free. I’ve woken up early of a morning – the earliest I’ve ever got up and ready to go out and sell was 3.30am. I got a call from The Big Issue head office recently saying I won an award through the Potts Point Partnership – a sole trader award. It’s good to know the community’s still behind me – it cements my place, if that makes sense. Makes me feel proud.

Streetsheet

Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends

VENDOR SPOTLIGHT

TONY H

CALL RT OFRUISE! C ST PO A IR : F T ’S EN TONYRETIREM FOR

A Burning Question What has Daniel K been doing? It’s like “love is a battlefield” to quote Pat Benatar It’s been “burning an eternal flame” to quote The Bangles It’s like, “It’s a love story baby, just say yes” to quote Taylor Swift It’s like “I’ve been hunting high and low” to quote A-ha Trying to find things to do And I will admit I have got plenty of toilet paper And what has Daniel K been doing?

Time to Retire

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’ve been selling The Big Issue for 15-and-a-half years. But I turned 65 last January and I thought enough was enough – time to retire. I started at The Big Issue back in August 2004 after I saw an old workmate from Bedford Industries selling the magazine. He told me where the office was and gave me the incentive to join. My first pitch selling was on the corner of Gawler Place and Grenfell Street in Adelaide. It was good to be working and making myself useful for a change. After living with my older brother Michael for a number of years, I shifted into a ground floor unit in Plympton Park in November 2004. One of my best memories was being on an electric gopher in the 2010 Fringe parade alongside a Big Issue group. And one Christmas party, we had a lucky dip for big food hampers, and somehow I ended up with two. I shared them with my brother and sister – I did not let it go to waste, don’t worry! I was also featured in the 2009 Big Issue Calendar and was interviewed on Radio Adelaide on the Peter Goers evening program. I have made quite a few friends through The Big Issue – not only vendors, but customers as well. I haven’t done much in retirement so far, since the virus has been going around. But I’m looking forward to going on a cruise at the end of the year – to Tasmania for nine days. I have been saving for about six months – do you think I am not looking forward to that cruise? Wrong! TONY H FORMERLY SOLD THE BIG ISSUE AT COLONNADES SHOPPING CENTRE IN NOARLUNGA, COLES AT CHRISTIES BEACH AND AT THE TOP OF THE RAMP AT ADELAIDE RAILWAY STATION.

It’s like I’ve been learning Italian, German, Chinese and Korean And I’ve been burning an eternal flame (The Bangles, again) Watching Game of Thrones and texting my girlfriend And I’ve been writing poems, doing art And I’ll have a picture of Erin Phillips at the Hawke Centre during SALA* And I’ve been reading Destiny: How Port Adelaide Put Itself on the National Stage by Norman Ashton And reading New Koreans – The Business, History and People of South Korea by Michael Breen And I am currently reading Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson *South Australian Living Arts Festival DANIEL K WAYMOUTH ST AND HUTT ST I ADELAIDE

KERRY-ANNE THE BODY SHOP, ELIZABETH WOOLIES, HILTON I ADELAIDE

Back in Town First of all, I would like to thank all my customers for wondering what had happened to me during lockdown and if I was okay. I was also wondering about you all. Also, it was great to see Rebecca McWhirter – I first met her in the city when selling the magazines eight years ago. I was as surprised as she was when I saw her again, but couldn’t remember where I knew her face from. It was good to see you again – it is great when you find out that someone was wondering what had happened to you. I would also like to thank all the office staff who worked so hard to keep us informed on what to do in regard to the coronavirus. There was a private Vendor Facebook account for us to send in photos of what we were doing through the coronavirus pandemic – they sure did a great job keeping us informed. STEW SANDGATE AND NUNDAH I BRISBANE

Man at Work I have enjoyed going back to work. I really missed selling The Big Issue when we couldn’t work. Customers are happy – and I like to see them happy. It’s good. I liked

WAYNE A HUNGRY JACK’S AND THE BODY SHOP I ADELAIDE CBD

Cool to Be Kind On my way home from my pitch at Suspension Espresso Cafe, I was guided around a pavement reconstruction work, and I ate my vegetarian burger at the bus stop while waiting. I then noticed the other person at the stop, acting like a bus was approaching. I stood up, and he said, “You lost a card!”

Something of mine had just blown onto the road. I feared it was my Opal card. But no, that was still safe in my pocket. The bus arrived immediately, and I thought I’d have to wait for it to move along. But the kind stranger negotiated with the driver that the bus wait while he walked around the driver’s side of the bus and collected the mystery card off the road from underneath the bus. It turned out to be my Big Issue vendor identity badge! The section above the punched hole had torn. Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers – and for the patience of bus drivers. As a blind man, I am grateful to be living in Australia. Thanks to all concerned. ANDREW S NEWCASTLE I NSW

EDD

IE G OES

NOR

TH!

Surf’s Up! I went to Cairns for a holiday. The best bit was getting out of the city rat-race and walking around in shorts and a T-shirt during winter. I enjoyed Kuranda and Fitzroy Island – I even went snorkelling on Fitzroy Island! I’d recommend Cairns to anyone who lives in the southern states; come up and enjoy the weather during the winter months. EDDIE KELVIN GROVE MARKETS I BRISBANE

ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.

21 AUG 2020

My regular customers are happy that I am back out selling the magazine. Everyone has been so nice, with some asking how I have been and asking about my son as well. They are happy for the chats. So am I. I was so bored during the shutdown. So bored! Bored out of my brain! You can’t imagine how much I am loving being back. I am a whole lot happier! Thanks, The Big Issue. Thanks customers.

selling the ‘Welcome Back!’ edition. I even sold a back edition from one‑and‑a‑half years ago, the one with my vendor profile in it! I am pleased that Street Soccer is back on in Adelaide now, too. I look forward to going next week!

Bored No More

Hearsay

Andrew Weldon Cartoonist

“

Well, I’m a bit of a homebody anyway, so I’m good at amusing myself in downtime. I’m wiping everything down with Lysol, scrubbing the bananas with detergent…

So how do single people get their needs met in a pandemic world? The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment has recommended prudent hook-ups with one chosen partner. It’s called “sex bubbling”, apparently. VOGUE I AU

“If I’m truly honest, I look ridiculous – I look like a piece of blue cheese.” Londoner Chris Woodhead on inking himself every day of lockdown. Some of his designs include an NHS tattoo on his sternum, and “When will it end?” on the wrinkly bottom of his left foot. BBC I UK

Actor Geena Davis (Thelma & Louise) on keeping busy during COVID. She’s not all bananas – the Oscar winner also led the Bentonville Film Festival this month, promoting women and minorities in the movie biz. THE GUARDIAN I UK

“Don’t get lost because you find obstacles – because there will always be obstacles. You have to be strong.” Giuseppe Paterno on fulfilling his lifelong dream of graduating from the University of Palermo in Italy, with a degree in history and philosophy – six weeks shy of his 97th birthday. The university chancellor said it was an “exceptional result for any young man”. Giuseppe is considering a masters next. “I want to keep my options open,” he says.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD I AU

“It’s not uncommon to see caterpillars with at least five old heads stacked on top of the one they are currently using.” Dieter Hochuli, a professor of school of life and environmental sciences at Sydney University, on the Uraba lugens caterpillar’s habit of stacking its own moulted heads on top of each

other, creating a tall tower of dead heads as a diversion to predators. The Australian native has been nicknamed the “mad hatterpillar”. CNN I US

“Simply put, Facebook is screwing with our election.” Singer Neil Young on why he’s spending US$20,000 to remove Facebook and Google logins from his website, adding: “Sowing dissent and chaos in our country via political disinformation is something we cannot condone.” Keep on rockin’ in the free world, Neil. ROLLING STONE I US

“Meet with the same person to have physical or sexual contact (for example, a cuddle buddy or sex buddy), provided you are free of illness. Make good arrangements with this person about how many other people you both see.”

“Actors are infantilised. We’re put in a position where everything is taken care of for us. You go to set, everybody wants to carry your bag and you’re not allowed to do anything.” Actor Cameron Diaz on why she decided to quit Hollywood and retire six years ago. Happy to report, she’s now carrying her own bags. VANITY FAIR I US

“Unless we address demand along with supply, supply will shift to places like the internet.” Dr Jonathan Brett, specialist in pharmacology, toxicology and addiction medicine at Sydney’s St Vincent’s, on the demand for drugs such as Valium and Xanax, which has pushed the market underground. VICE I AU

“It is both fascinating and inspiring to see a similar multidisciplinary effort that we use in diagnosing and treating osteosarcoma in our patients leading to the first diagnosis of osteosarcoma in a dinosaur.” Seper Ekhtiari, an orthopaedic surgery resident at McMaster University in Canada, on evidence that dinosaurs living some 77 million years ago suffered from osteosarcoma

20 Questions by Little Red

01 In which capital city was the

first Australian McDonald’s opened in 1971? 02 Who is the author of the 2020 Miles

Franklin-winning novel, The Yield? 03 What does a person suffering

brumotactillophobia fear at dinnertime? 04 What image is found on the

Lebanese flag? 05 Which character from The Simpsons

was killed off in an episode in 2000? 06 What did the Washington Redskins

NFL team change their name to for the 2020 season? 07 Where was the automatic rice

cooker invented? 08 If Mars has Martians, what does

Jupiter have? 09 Who just won Artist of the Year

the face of the pandemic. In India, more than 10 million children are in forced labour, and activists warn that number is increasing due to COVID.

CNN I US

JAPAN TIMES I JPN

Overheard by Jules of Toowoomba, Qld.

“There’s plenty of porn online. I think if people want to see naked bodies they can go online and find it. Those of us trying to make good, serious work... why do we need to offer people gratuitous sex? It’s not necessary.” One-time James Bond actor Timothy Dalton on calls for writers and directors to stop including nude scenes in films. He’s revoking his licence to thrill. THE INDEPENDENT I UK

“Working under the sun was difficult as we were never used to it. But we have to work at least to buy rice and other groceries.” Maheshwari Munkalapally, 16, who along with her 15-year-old sister, has been forced out of school into farm work to support her family in

“I obviously didn’t have the typical high school and college experience and get to do things like prom. And, you know, I could be sad about it. But then, a lot of kids didn’t get to live their dreams at 12.” Actor-singer Zendaya (The OA) on the benefits of hitting the big-time before adolescence. INSTYLE I US

“I think they are a shot across the bow if you like, for anyone who is also thinking of being wilfully ignorant of those rules.” Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton on the 5000-plus fines issued by police during lockdown 2.0. Among those fined is a surfer who travelled over 140km to the west coast from his home in Torquay because there were “no waves on the east side”.

at the National Indigenous Music Awards for the second time? 10 What is philately the study of? 11 In which country did reality TV

show Big Brother originate? Bonus point for the year it premiered. 12 What is the name of the pilgrimage

of Muslim people to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia? 13 A puggle is the young of which

animal? 14 The Islas Malvinas are more widely

known by which name? 15 What does it mean if someone is

referred to as a “Hibakusha” in Japan? 16 Serena Williams is one win behind

the record for most Grand Slam singles titles in the Open Era, for men and women. What is the record? Bonus point for naming the person who currently holds it. 17 What is a nine-sided shape called? 18 Who wrote the 1981 short story

collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love? 19 LX is the Roman numeral for

which number? 20 Which four US presidents have their

faces carved into Mount Rushmore?

THE AGE I AU

FREQUENTLY OVERHEAR TANTALISING TIDBITS? DON’T WASTE THEM ON YOUR FRIENDS SHARE THEM WITH THE WORLD AT SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU

ANSWERS ON PAGE 43

21 AUG 2020

“What’s a vegetarian Mum?” “Someone who eats only vegetables.” “They can have mine.”

– a bone cancer, which is still around today – unlike dinosaurs.

EAR2GROUND

My Word

by Steven Oliver

o, I think we can all agree, it’s been a pretty crap year. Let’s see, bushfires, multiple (ongoing) deaths at the hands of authority, more than 750,000 dead worldwide from corona, and a devastating blast in Beirut, just to name a few global catastrophes. I could go on about the injustices and horrors of the world we live in, but you know what? I’m tired. Honestly tired. I’m needing to recharge. I’m needing to get my head back to a place strong enough to cope with not just global and national tragedy, but personal tragedy as well. With that in mind, I’m going to go on about an entity that I believe can help me and give me strength. It is an entity that resides in each and every one of us and that will continue to carry us through hard times. It teaches us things not only about others, but also ourselves. It enters our bodies and we convulse in ways that can be joyous. With it, we emit sounds that are the very shouts of our souls. I’m talking about music, but I’m guessing you’ve realised that by now. Music is a powerful thing. We have songs that represent our footy clubs, our political ideologies and even our nations. People sing praises to their gods. We have a song to sing for our birthdays, and we use songs to sell products. Yet despite being inundated with songs from everywhere about everything, a few years back I found myself missing music. I know, right? How could I live in a world that is so saturated with songs, and be missing it? I pondered this. I was missing music as if I were missing a person, and it made me question our relationship. What exactly does music mean to me? Last year, I was asked to work on Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky, a documentary about the 250th anniversary of Cook’s arrival on Australian shores, told through an Indigenous lens. Its narrative uses music by creating a modern-day songline. Songlines are used to map the land, as well as detail creation stories about the land on which we live. It seems redundant to say that music is an integral part of Aboriginal cultures, but I will say it. We use music to shape our identities. We talk about things being sung into existence as part of our creation stories, which for me aligns with string theory – but that’s a whole other article. We use songs if we want someone to fall in love with us. To place a curse, we “sing” it. This notion is

so powerful that even now as I type this, I’m jammy (scared) that someone will read these words and “sing” me – because culturally, for a lot of mob, it’s an act you should be scared of. Please don’t sing me unless you’re a sexy man at karaoke singing Aaliyah’s ‘I Care 4 U’ or India Arie’s ‘I Am Ready for Love’– because I am so ready to be loved and taken care of. Can someone please sing that into existence? But seriously (someone please sing those songs to me), we also use song to learn law, creation stories, and to teach us our values and morals. To be a songman is an extremely important role. Many of us start learning traditional songs and dances from an early age – not to do a talent show or to be famous – but to reaffirm who we are, not just as individuals, but as Aboriginal peoples, singing songs that have been sung for thousands upon thousands of years, that have passed from generation to generation and that say, This is who you are. This is what you’re meant to do. Songs give us direction and purpose. They get us to dance where our feet touch the ground, so we may return to Mother Earth the energy that she has always given to us. You know, it wasn’t just music I was missing. I was missing me. Not just me the songwriter, the performer or the Aboriginal man, but me: Steven Oliver. There’s so much music out there trying to get me to buy shit. So many songs trying to be hits, to make people rich or famous. We’ve taken music and made it a commodity to the extent that we’ve been ignoring our own internal songs. It makes me think that maybe, if we tried making each other better through music, we’d be living in a world that is a symphony rather than one that’s falling apart – because at the moment it feels like everybody’s trying to be the lead singer. I can only hope that humanity’s story will be one of love instead of hate. One of overcoming, not of woe. One of generosity, not of greed. One of coming together, not of falling apart. And I hope it will all start with a song. Imagine the whole world singing together, which makes me think of ‘Gangnam Style’, but you know what I mean. Now excuse me, I’m going to listen to ‘Man in the Mirror’ while thinking about flying home to do some Waddama (shake-a-leg/corroboree) with my mob.

Steven Oliver is an award-winning writer, actor and comedian. He is the writer and host of the NITV-presented musical documentary Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky.

The multi-talented Steven Oliver ponders the healing power of song.

21 AUG 2020

Facing the Music

The One,

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

The Only,

The Originalâ&#x20AC;¦

Briggs

Since the release of his debut record 10 years ago, and with a host of exciting new projects up his sleeve, Briggs has stayed true to his MO – to make space for the next wave of First Nations artists behind him.

by Brodie Lancaster @brodielancaster

“I’ve done so much cool stuff and they all hit different notes for me personally,” says Adam Briggs over the phone from Sydney as he takes his new puppy, Carmela, for a walk. (“She’s a half‑Lagotto and she’s blonde, so I was like, ‘Oh, you’re like Carmela from The Sopranos,’” he laughs.) When Briggs says he’s done cool stuff, he really means it. As well as his groundbreaking career in music, rapper Briggs is the label boss of Bad Apples, has written for TV’s Black Comedy and Get Krack!n, is a regular on ABC’s The Weekly With Charlie Pickering, acted in Cleverman and has written for Netflix series Disenchantment. But among that sea of very M-rated dream jobs, his new children’s book, he says, “might be the one”. Taking its lead from his track ‘The Children Came Back’, first performed alongside Dr G Yunupingu on Triple J’s Like a Version in 2014, the book Our Home, Our Heartbeat highlights the achievements of Indigenous Australians. It assumes the cadence of a gentle rap verse as it name-checks reconciliation campaigner (and footballer) Doug Nicholls; political activist William Cooper; musicians Dan Sultan, Jess Mauboy, Thelma Plum and Archie Roach; and sportspeople Adam Goodes, Lionel Rose and Cathy Freeman. Of all the figures Briggs offers up as heroes, there’s one that he says, without hesitation, provided inspiration for him as a kid. “Gavin Wanganeen,” the Yorta Yorta rapper says immediately. “That’s it, straight up.”

21 AUG 2020

Brodie Lancaster is a Melbourne-based writer and critic, and the author of No Way! Okay, Fine.

O’Brien last year: “There’s no point in me winning…if my success doesn’t reflect home.” Briggs got to work. As he describes on new single ‘Extra Extra’: “The mob need a leader…threw my hat in the arena.” Bad Apples, the record label he began plotting soon after releasing Sheplife, grew organically out of a desire to not just release the music of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, but also to nurture those artists’ careers as they navigate the choppy waters of the music industry. “That’s how it started: it was like, ‘Okay, I can help get this music out there.’ It wasn’t so much about, ‘I can get you a billion dollars’; it was like, ‘Let me share the platform that I have.’ I saw that it was needed, and I had the space and room to do it.” With a roster that features the likes of Birdz and Alice Skye, Bad Apples is also home to A.B. Original, a collaborative project Briggs created with Funkoars producer Trials. Their thundering 2016 record Reclaim Australia took aim at present-day apathy and the effects of white Australia’s continued racial violence against Indigenous Australians. It was pointed, with brilliant, often laugh-outloud funny wordplay – beginning with the album’s title, its own reclaiming of the name of the far‑right nationalist group. Reclaim Australia was, as Bernard Zuel wrote in his review in The Sydney Morning Herald, “The kind of album so rarely done in Australia that it comes as a shock to the system. A necessary one.” It went on to be named Triple J’s Australian Album of the Year in 2017 and had an undeniable influence on the station’s belated move to change the date of its annual Hottest 100 countdown the following year. Among other awards, Reclaim Australia took out the prestigious Australian Music Prize. Knowing this now, it’s hard to imagine Briggs ever described the initial decision to make the record as “career suicide”. “Me and Trials legit thought we were done. We thought, No-one wants to hear this record – but this is the one we want to make,” he says. He’s quick to clarify, too, that it wasn’t what he and Trials were singing that might’ve brought his work in music and TV – which by that point had seen Briggs export his talents to Hollywood as a writer for animated sitcom Disenchantment, created by The Simpsons creator Matt Groening – to an abrupt halt. It was that they had the nerve to write these ideas down in the first place. “It was the idea that these two Aboriginal guys would get so out of pocket – because they hate us when we do that. You look at Goodesy, you look at Anthony Mundine; anytime an Indigenous dude has a little bit more to say than, ‘Good game’… It wasn’t so much the songs, it was just everything we represented.”

PHOTOS BY TRISTAN EDOUARD

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As a seven-year-old, little Adam Briggs watched from the AFL-mad town of Shepparton in northern Victoria, as his favourite player – a Kokatha and Nurrunga man, who’d go on to work as a visual artist, painting stories of his Aboriginal lineage – won the Brownlow medal in 1993, the same year his Essendon Bombers took home the flag. “When I was a kid, there wasn’t anything beyond the superficial, ‘He’s the best. He’s my favourite,’” Briggs recalls. When he began carving out a career in music later on, those same Black role models proved harder to find. Briggs found himself part of the scene led by the Hilltop Hoods, the artists who arguably put Australian hip-hop on the map and signed him to their Golden Era label. But despite the genre’s roots in Black culture, oppression and liberation, the Australian offshoot was largely blindingly white. “Hip-hop in Australia has kind of missed a few pivotal marks,” Briggs explains. “It didn’t have its Public Enemy moment and didn’t have its NWA moment. It kind of missed a few culture milestones.” The genre was political at points, but largely sounded like commentary, criticisms of politicians and policy, generally devoid of the personal experience that comes from living as an oppressed minority and creating art from what you know, rather than just what you observe. “That’s not to say there weren’t great artists and fantastic people doing stuff,” Briggs offers as a disclaimer, “but I didn’t see a place particularly carved out for me.” He paints an analogy of looking for a job and there being an opening at “the only factory in town… So if you wanted to make hip-hop music, this was the factory that you had to work at.” While never self-censoring his rhymes, Briggs spent those early years stepping a little carefully, not wanting to be the upstart or the troublemaker. “It wasn’t so much that I wasn’t being honest,” he remembers. “It was like…you have to play by a certain set of rules and sounds. And you read the room, you see what’s getting played and you see there aren’t X amount of Black voices. So you figure out how to work it.” His debut record The Blacklist introduced Briggs as a new voice in Australian hip-hop, one that was only amplified by the success, in 2014, of his breakout album Sheplife. After that, Briggs could feel the ground shifting. The growth felt exponential and the potential was obvious: he had, in making his own work, crafted a kind of template that could benefit others. With a new weight behind his profile, he saw an opportunity to change the rules of the game he’d been playing. “I got in and I worked it out. And when I got to the place where I needed to be, I changed it,” says the self-anointed Senator Briggs. As he told American talk-show host Conan

OUR HOME, OUR HEARTBEAT AND THE ALWAYS WAS EP ARE OUT NOW.

21 AUG 2020

We made it okay to be extreme, I think. But, by doing that, we also made it okay to not be. We opened up the spectrum of what Indigenous artists can be.

Instead, Reclaim Australia cemented Briggs as a contemporary voice in a long line of Indigenous musicians, a lineage acknowledged in the record’s ‘Foreword’. It features Briggs talking with Archie Roach – whose landmark 1990 track ‘Took the Children Away’ served as a spiritual predecessor to ‘The Children Came Back’ and, in turn, Briggs’ new kids’ book – who offers a kind of permission for A.B. Original to pick up and carry the torch that Roach and his peers first lit. “Listening to your album, it just reminds me so much of those old days, when we did pump our fists in the air,” Roach says of the land rights marches of the 1970s and 80s. “You had to be in their face.” The same spirit is alive on Briggs’ new EP Always Was. The latest single, ‘Go to War’, speaks to the exhaustion that comes with fighting white Australia’s pressure to be what he describes in the press kit as “the palatable Black” – “‘Go to War’ is about having it up to here and asking yourself, Is this where you want to be?” Produced by Jayteehazard and featuring vocals by Thelma Plum, the single reflects the contradiction that still persists, where non‑Indigenous Australians hang dot paintings on their walls but bristle when confronted by the humanity, anger or reality of First Nations people. In a remix he did for rising artist Miiesha, Briggs sings, “They like us on the building and not in the building.” “They pay artists money to paint massive portraits of us. They like our artwork, they collect our art, but when it comes to employment and what’s outside of what pertains to their gain, what are we worth?” he says. As if to further drive the point home, he brought in his friend Reko Rennie to design the EP artwork. A Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay/Gummaroi artist whose work often features vibrant, repeating geometric patterns, Rennie has been met with the same pressures Briggs has experienced in music: “We spoke not long ago about someone hiring Reko to do some work. And they said, ‘Where’s the dots?’ We’re still there.” In getting in the building and propping the door open, Briggs is forging a way forward – and he’s bringing the next generation of artists along with him. “We made it okay to be extreme, I think,” he says of A.B. Original. “But, by doing that, we also made it okay to not be. We opened up the spectrum of what Indigenous artists can be; it doesn’t always have to be one-note, solemn and remorseful, mourning and we will overcome and the struggle – it doesn’t have to be that. After Sheplife and A.B. Original, we opened up that lane, which in turn opens up other lanes. It gave licence to a lot of people to breathe.”

Writing Between Languages How does the language you speak affect the story you tell? Author Lee Kofman shares her journey through three languages and how each shapes her thoughts, her experiences and her writing. Lee Kofman is an award-winning author of five books, including memoirs Imperfect and The Dangerous Bride and editor/co-editor of memoir anthologies Split and Rebellious Daughters.

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@leekofman

here are many ways I could describe the kind of writer I am. I could say I’m a woman writer, a confessional writer, a Jewish writer, a migrant writer. But none of these labels quite sticks. Each of them describes only a certain aspect of what I do. Several months ago, however, while browsing through a literary magazine, I accidentally found a

label that fits me – it’s at once precise and expansive. Apparently, I am an exophonic writer – a writer who doesn’t write in her mother tongue. To complicate matters, I’m doubly-exophonic, and an exophoniconly writer, having migrated twice and never written creatively in my mother tongue – Russian. I was 12 years old when my family moved to Israel from Russia. To master Hebrew, I decided, it’d be best if I wagged school to watch children’s TV shows that promoted literacy, and to devour books, always with Russian-Hebrew dictionaries at hand. That proved to be a fruitful decision, considering that in the provincial town where I lived our teachers struggled with the curriculum almost as much as their students did. Our history teacher, for example, had difficulty differentiating between the two World Wars. Sesame Street and Hebrew translations of The Famous Five worked their magic, and four years later my Hebrew was good enough for me to begin a career in journalism, and later even to publish three fiction books. Still, whenever I wrote in Hebrew, I always felt there were entire families of words I was missing, particularly the names of plants for some reason. And there was a certain foreign tint to my writing – my imagery featured inordinate numbers of snowflakes, and I had

began improving, I moved to books that interested me more but were still plainly written – biographies of writers, such as Colette and Anaïs Nin. The fact that they described their subjects’ struggles to forge their writers’ voices also helped me to maintain hope that one day I’d write again. Just in a different language… Later again, as my vocabulary grew more expansive and my reading advanced, I turned to reading contemporary Australian authors to understand the physical and literary landscape I was seeking to inhabit. I started with Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip, Praise by Andrew McGahan and Luke Davies’ Candy, all semi-autobiographical novels about youthful experimentation with alcohol and drugs, and so I grew convinced that since I’d never used heroin I stood no chance of publishing a book in Australia. Fortunately, several forays into libraries later I discovered that Australian writers sometimes wrote about other topics too, and so I began my second exophonic venture. Initially, I’d write a story or a poem in Hebrew, then

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illustrations by Hannah Lock

In each of the languages I speak, I experience the world differently and have a somewhat different personality.

translate it into bad English, then discuss it with my friend, a Russian-born poet, in Russian as he helped me to improve my English versions... Sound confusing? Well, it was! Gradually, though, I developed my own internal monologue in English, and this marked the point where I could write even first drafts in this language. Still, in my 17 years of writing in English, I’ve never submitted any work for publication without first having it copyedited. And I’m lucky. My editor gets my non-native-speaker’s errors. For example, when I write “the boy has asparagus syndrome”, he knows that I mean he has Asperger’s syndrome. In recent years, the revisions are getting fewer and increasingly more minor, but I still can’t envisage ever working without my editor. This says something not only about my still-tenuous relationship with English tenses and colloquialism, but also about what it means to be an exophonic writer. This label is much more than a demographic fact. It also marks a certain artistic sensibility: a creative, and even ethical, position of uncertainty, of never quite trusting yourself, of being more of an observer than an inhabitant. All writers are observers to some degree, but exophonic writers are more likely to also suffer from “imposter syndrome”, to feel less entitled to making claims about the observed and more likely to engage in self-scrutiny. Or, maybe that’s just me… In any case, as painful as my constant uncertainty is, it also helps me write more vigilantly. It helps me to maintain, to paraphrase Hemingway, my built-in bullshit detector – to be less susceptible to various common wisdoms. Being devoid of a clear sense of belonging, while also feeling unstable in the language I dwell in, means that whatever is familiar, and therefore normative, to others is likely to appear strange, and changeable, to me. I take things less for granted. And possibly, as an exophonic writer, I am even a touch more optimistic. And being twice-exophonic, I’ve been able to now choose a language that better suits my personality. Hebrew words and sentences are fairly short and concise, but my natural way of thinking, speaking and writing is more circular, with more clauses within sentences. You must have noticed this by now... The serpentine nature of English syntax and the dreamlike quality of the many long words in English – picaresque, metamorphose, strawberries – suit me. My writing voice in this language is stronger. In each of the languages I speak, I experience the world differently and have a somewhat different personality. In Russian, I’m a child frozen in time, timid yet excitable. In Hebrew, I’m more no-nonsense, direct, tougher. In English, I’m softer, possibly more philosophical and definitely more disoriented by life. To be all these people, as well as to be a human crossroad for three cultures, helps me, or so I hope, to broaden my perspective on whatever it is I’m exploring in my writing. It helps me to notice more sides to each coin than just the side facing up.

a certain dark humour which I hadn’t seen in other Israeli works – probably something to do with that infamous Russian soul… To say that my English was poor when I moved to Australia at the age of 26 would be an understatement. At best, I could articulate an order at McDonald’s. So at first I continued writing in Hebrew. But it was utterly unsatisfying living in one country and writing to be published in another. See, my books are what you call “literary”, which really means they’ll never make me rich. And that’s fine as long as I get other forms of satisfaction from writing, especially contact with my readers and with other writers. But I had none of that after moving to Australia. So I decided to do what seemed impossible – to start writing in English. To gain a new language, and I mean truly gain it – so that I could daydream in it, daydreaming being an essential activity for a writer – I had to do another bout of dictionary-bound reading. I spent lots of money on thesauruses and idiom books, and reading again became tedious, as I didn’t skip any unfamiliar words, always checking their meaning. It could sometimes take me two days of reading for the protagonist to finish a meal, depending on the richness of the author’s vocabulary. At first, I stuck to bestsellers, like Memoirs of a Geisha. Books that were more palatable for linguistic newcomers, being usually composed of recurring clichés and simply structured sentences. Once my language

series by Doug Gimesy

The Big Picture

Wombat Digs Wildlife photographer Doug Gimesy meets the orphaned baby wombats who are seeing out the pandemic in an innerâ&#x20AC;&#x2018;city Melbourne apartment. by Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor

DOUG GIMESY (GIMESY.COM) IS A CONSERVATION AND WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER. FOR MORE ABOUT THE GOONGERAH WOMBAT ORPHANAGE, VISIT GOONGERAHWOMBATORPHANAGE.ORG.

“Wombats are incredibly affectionate and can spend up to three years with their mum in the wild. I try to replicate that bond as much as possible while responding to their individual needs and ensuring they have the necessary skills to be released,” says Emily Small.

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ildlife warrior Emily Small lives in a very different kind of Melbourne share house. Sure, her flatmates eat weird food, keep weird hours and have very different personalities – Landon’s a party boy, Bronson’s sensitive and shy, while Beatrice is fierce and independent – but unlike most share houses, her flatties also boast buns of steel, body fur and a penchant for burrowing. After all, they’re wombats – orphaned baby wombats. “Wombats have more personality than any cat or dog I’ve met and each orphan has their own unique character,” says Small, who emphasises they’re not pets. Small founded the Goongerah Wombat Orphanage in East Gippsland, the region where these joeys were originally found. The orphanage is around 450 kilometres from Melbourne, in a tiny community that was devastated by the January bushfires. She runs the orphanage on a volunteer basis with her mother. All three wombats in her care are car-strike victims: Landon was rescued by a vet nurse, while Bronson was collected from a member of the public who found him in his dead mother’s pouch. Beatrice was also rescued by a member of the public – she was found late at night by the side of the road and kept safe and warm until she was able to be collected by Small. Usually the rescued baby wombats would be resting and recuperating at the orphanage, but COVID-19 restrictions make long-distance travel difficult. Small needs to be in Melbourne for her day job as a full-time operations supervisor for Wildlife Victoria, so the wombats have come to live with her in her flat in Melbourne’s inner north. As caregivers know, it’s not always easy to get your work done from home with the kids around. “They are so cute and distracting, and, like many children, when awake they need and want your attention,” she says. They need to be fed warm bottles of special wombat milk formula four to five times a day, and the washing machine’s on constantly to deal with all the messy sheets. Small’s also set up a run for them, and gives them loads of cuddles. In a few months’ time, when the joeys are well and the worst of the pandemic is (hopefully) behind us, Small will move them back to enclosures at the orphanage at Goongerah, so that they can get used to the sensations of being outside. From there, if all goes to plan, they will be released back into the wild. To prepare them for the transition, Small grows grass on her balcony that was taken from the site where the wombats will eventually be released. The wombats also chew on sticks and bark from Goongerah and fossick in specially collected East-Gippsland dirt – full of essential microbes and fungus to keep their guts healthy. But in the meantime, the wombats are thriving in their new city digs. And Small is finding their presence a salve in these strange times: “How can having baby wombats around you not be good company?”

Wombat joeys Bronson and Landon take a nap.

“Beatrice is an independent warrior wombat. Initially she would launch, growl and try to attack me… Now she is the sweetest, gentlest orphan with a playful and trusting heart,” says Emily.

Emily has been rescuing wombats for 17 years. Here she holds Bronson while preparing wombat milk formula, which the joeys feed on 4-5 times a day.

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Goongerah grass grows on the apartment balcony, with some fresh Goongerah dirt, from the site where the joeys will eventually be released.

Letter to My Younger Self

I Was a Bit of a Nerd Actor John Wood on Spitfires, Blue Heelers and how he almost never made it as an actor. by Anastasia Safioleas Contributing Editor @anast

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hen I was 16 years old, I was a bit of a nerd. I was easily influenced by the people around me. I was very naive about most things and about most of life. I’m sure the clothes that I thought were really cool at the time were really daggy. I was very socially inept and naive. It was also when I first saw Leslie who eventually became, probably against her better judgement, my wife. I fell madly in love. Head over heels. Dad was a storage worker in an abattoir and Mum was a housewife. I had a brother and two sisters. I remember going through a period from about 14 to 18 where I spent as little time at home as I possibly could. I would stay for dinner at friends’ places because I thought their mothers were much better cooks than my mother, stuff like that. Home life was very spartan. We didn’t have any money. We never, ever got any pocket money. I did paper rounds to earn enough to buy cigarettes and things. I did a paper round in the morning and in the afternoon, so I was up at five every morning, riding my bike loaded up with papers and delivering to houses. I was obsessed with wanting to be a Spitfire pilot. It was glamorous. They wore leather jackets and scarves and Spitfires were the ant’s pants – one of the most beautiful looking machines ever made. A work of art. Not that I would know. I’m a white-knuckle flyer at the best of times! But I used to look

JOHN WOOD’S MEMOIR HOW I CLAWED MY WAY TO THE MIDDLE IS OUT NOW.

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TOP: AT RINGWOOD TECH, SEATED IN THE MIDDLE MIDDLE: WITH WIFE LESLIE AND DAUGHTER LEXIE BOTTOM: AS SENIOR SERGEANT TOM CROYDON, WITH CO-STARS WILLIAM MCINNES AND LISA MCCUNE

there, a friend rang me to say he was forming a drama group called Melbourne Youth Theatre. Did I want to be involved? I certainly would! I was totally hooked by that stage. His wife brought me an application form for NIDA, I sent the application off, got an audition and got in. I [still] can’t believe it… One of the biggest surprises was when working on the book I realised how much I missed my parents. Dad’s been dead for 20 years and Mum’s been dead for 10 years. I was surprised by how much I regretted spending all those teenage years away living at friends’ places and not sharing it with them. I was surprised at how emotional I was about them. As a teenager I’d been very unemotional and unattached. And it’s a great regret that Dad didn’t live long enough to see the success of Blue Heelers. But that’s life and you can’t change it. My proudest moment was Meg being born. Followed closely a few years later by Lexie being born. Then the most thrilling moment was when Meg’s first child was born; Thomas being born was huge. He’s 10 now. I wouldn’t change anything. As they say, you make your bed, you have to lie in it. I’ve reached an age where I know you can’t change anything. You often dream of changing things or doing things differently, but I don’t know how much I would do differently. The things you do are the things that make you who you are, you know? Just to be an actor at all, you have to make an enormous commitment to the craft of acting and to the fact of doing it. That’s true of life too. If you want to succeed at something during the course of the day, then you have to pull your finger out and do it. If you want to make your life different, you have to do it by starting now. My entire life and career have been done in that way. Every day doing a show like Rafferty’s Rules or Blue Heelers, you’ve got a story that you have to tell and you have to commit to it and commit to the people that are in it and around it and do it to the best of your ability. I would tell my 16-year-old self to not lose heart. Don’t give up. Mostly, things aren’t as bad as they seem. You can work through a lot of the things that seem terrible. You can make a success of it. Your background and your lack of education or lack of money or whatever shouldn’t prevent you making what you want of yourself. Don’t give up.

through the pretend crosshairs of my Spitfire while riding my pushbike around these muddy paths delivering the paper. I loved school and I was a good student. I loved the whole idea of being at school and of learning. I really, really loved it. Ever since I read my first Secret Seven book by Enid Blyton I’ve been obsessed with books. That’s still an obsession. At three o’clock every day I have a Zoom meeting with my grandchildren and my brother’s grandson, and I read them The Hobbit. It’s a highlight of my life. We read a chapter a day. Today we’re up to chapter 12, ‘Inside Information’. Bilbo’s just about to find out about Smaug the dragon’s missing armour plate under his left arm. So that’s a big highlight of my current pandemic predicament. I don’t know where the acting bug came from but I certainly had the bug from an early age. I did a bit of drama at Ringwood Tech. There was no avenue there to get into theatre, but doing a fine art course might lead to it, so I moved to Ringwood High to get to university. But that didn’t work. I had formed a drama group at Ringwood Tech and we had done a few shows so I went to Ringwood High expecting them to be much more interested in theatre and drama because they did Shakespeare. But they had absolutely no interest in a drama club or anything to do with theatre. They basically poo-pooed the whole idea. It was very disappointing. It’s even more disappointing now that apparently one of my photographs is up on the wall as one of their dramatic alumni, but Ringwood High showed no interest of any kind. I didn’t get my leaving [certificate]. I went back to Ringwood Tech to see how everybody was doing and the leading man had dropped out of their end-of-year play. I said, “I’m not doing anything; l’ll do it.” I went and did the lead instead of sitting for the leaving exams. I had to go back the next year, which I felt terribly guilty about because my family was so working class and there was no extra money for anything. To have to go to school again for another year was a drain on them, so I worked like mad, but I got shingles and missed an entire term of school. Eventually I left. I was told that because I had missed a term, I couldn’t possibly pass, so I became a brickies’ labourer and dug ditches. Leslie talked me into getting a proper job as a clerk at the Victorian Railway. I worked in the dining car depot. We used to service the interstate trains – Spirit of Progress, Southern Aurora, the Overland. While I was

Ricky

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I remember thinking how one day I too would climb that stairway to first‑class heaven. It never happened.

by Ricky French @frenchricky

Boeing, Boeing, Gone

n July the last-ever Qantas Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet took off from Sydney Airport bound for its final resting place in California’s Mojave Desert. Of all the victims of COVID-19, this one was particularly close to my heart. One of my earliest childhood memories is of boarding a Qantas 747 at Wellington Airport in the mid‑1980s. I must have been four or five and I was making one of my annual trips from New Zealand (where I grew up) to see my dad in Kiama, NSW. I felt like royalty on those flights. This was back in the day when you dressed up to fly. The only thing I clearly remember about that plane was the spiral staircase leading to the upper deck: I remember an elderly woman being helped up the stairs, and I remember thinking how one day I too would climb that stairway to first-class heaven. It never happened. Qantas soon stopped flying the 747 on the Sydney-Wellington route and replaced it with the 767. I only ever flew on the 747 one other time – last year, from Sydney to Tokyo. I had a sense it would be the last time. The aircraft was already on its way out; too old, too fuel‑hungry and expensive to run in an aviation world quickly moving towards smaller, more economical planes for long‑haul travel. The 747 was already booked in for the scrapyard at the end of the year; COVID only hastened its demise. In this respect it was in many ways a stereotypical COVID victim: elderly and vulnerable to any sudden sickness. It did get a pretty good funeral though; in fact, it looked positively sprightly and full of life as it flew its final joy rides above Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra in its last days. I would have loved to be on one of those flights, but alas the plane was wise enough to keep away from the disaster zone that is Victoria. The last 747 left Australian airspace for the last time on 22 July, tracing the path of the iconic Flying Kangaroo in the sky

thanks to a unique flight path, before heading into the setting sun over the Pacific Ocean. Qantas took delivery of its first 747 in 1971. At the time it was a marvel of fuel-efficiency and economy. It made mass international travel possible for the first time. The plane also flew many notable rescue missions, evacuating 674 people from Darwin after Cyclone Tracy struck in 1974, flying in medical supplies to the Maldives and Sri Lanka following the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, and pulling Australians out of Cairo during the political unrest in 2011. Poignantly, its last rescue mission was to bring home Australians stranded in the COVID-19 epicentre of Wuhan, China, in February this year. But any large plane could have done all that. There was something else about the jumbo jet, something that got inside you. It was beautiful. It had that unmistakable shape with its bulging head (it clearly had a big brain inside there) and its long, straight nose. It looked like a huge eagle, especially on approach to land, with its undercarriage extended down like talons and its eyes focused on the prize. In contrast the Airbus A380, which succeeded the 747 as the world’s largest passenger aircraft, looks like a fat whale with a headache, ill-suited to the air. Its days are numbered, too. There was a fitting finale to the final Qantas 747 flight. After doing a flyover of Sydney it swooped south and dipped its wings to the airline’s first 747-400, now permanently parked as a museum piece at Shellharbour Airport. My son was there to watch that one land in 2015. It will live out its days in the shadow of Saddleback Mountain, near Kiama, the place where the beautiful eagle first carried me home.

Ricky is a writer and musician with an eye on the sky.

by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND

hen Melbourne went into Stage 4 hard lockdown, a couple of weeks or 83 years ago, if I’m applying Einstein’s theory of relativity correctly, I pumped my address into an online “5km radius from your house” map generator. Geographic containment is a new weapon in Australia’s anti-COVID arsenal. It turns out that corona is a slippery little sucker and harder to eradicate than those tiny static‑charged polystyrene beads that spill from burst beanbags. Aargh, get them off me! So fair enough, an 8pm-5am curfew to assist the police in tracking down nongs having Airbnb parties, and an enforceable ban on going further than 5km from our front doors as the crow flies. Or, to employ a visual aid, within the circumference of a circle drawn if you take the pointy arm of the compass and stab it into the ground at your front door, maybe on the door mat in the dead centre of the “C” in WELCOME, then stretch the pencil arm 5km distant, and draw that big-arse circle. Not that I needed to, really. I knew what I’d find. My local beach, Williamstown – aka Willy – where I’ve been swimming over winter, is not within a 5km radius. Not even if I breathe in and lie down to do the zip up. More like 8km. Intriguingly, due to kinks in the coastline, if I drove 12km I could almost reach Port Melbourne beach which is, crowwise, on the cusp of my circle. So, technically, if I travelled significantly further, I would be more compliant. Or should that be “less uncompliant”? Am I trying to be a little bit pregnant? Is going 500m outside your radius for a swim, but driving twice the distance to do it, better or worse than driving 3km outside of your radius but travelling half the distance to do it? If train A leaves the station at 8.04am at a speed of 70km/h, and train B, weighing 1500 tonnes and travelling north-west at 85km/h, has forgotten to stock the buffet with cheese and ham toasties…kill me now.

My first impulse was to find a workaround: a) look for loopholes and b) mentally rehearse the conversation I’d have if I were pulled over. It is, after all, a no-nonsense yet intriguingly specific fine of $1652. It’s almost like it’s intended as a deterrent. I’d need to communicate how important it was that I keep swimming, that I should be let off because I’m “only” a couple of Ks outside my radius, that it’s fine because I’m just driving to the water, swimming myself blue with cold, then driving home, and I can just about manage it within the hour limit. And by “just about” I mean an hour-and-a-half because once you’re out in the water time loses its meaning, and drying off and dressing takes a good 10 minutes when your hands are frozen. But that’s okay, right? I’m the exception, right? The rules don’t apply to me, right? Well. What a heaving vortex of privilege and entitlement that was. The truth is, I probably could “get away” with it. We’re not wearing ankle bracelets with GPS trackers. I’m a well-educated middleaged white woman. I can “get away” with most things except passing myself off as a teenager on TikTok. That doesn’t mean I should. The rules are clear. The bay is outside my zone. I can’t swim. So I won’t. I know, right? Give me a medal for self-awareness. We’re all being asked to do this. To preference the greater good over our own exceptionalism. Not that we’re exceptional; we just believe we’re the exception. We’re mostly not though. If everyone stopped excepting themselves for a couple of weeks, we’d be done by now and fewer people would be dead. So please, follow the rules. I really need to go for a swim.

Fiona is a writer and comedian who’s swimming upstream.

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Bay Watch

I can ‘get away’ with most things except passing myself off as a teenager on TikTok.

Fiona

Mulan

Film

FR OM LE FT ) MU LA N (TH IRD BATT LE PR EPAR ES FO R

Mulan Strikes Again

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Fierce and fearless, Chinese warrior Mulan finally makes it to the small screen to save her father and honour her family. Claire Cao explores the Disney remake for the streaming generation. Claire Cao is a writer from Western Sydney and a member of Sweatshop. You can read her work in The Lifted Brow, Rough Cut and Running Dog. @clairexinwen

he first time I heard The Ballad of Mulan, it was a part of a compendium of rhymes and fables Dad recited at bedtime. Each story was a lesson in disguise, designed to help young me become a better human. In the sixth century Chinese ballad, Mulan disguises herself as a man so that she can join the army – and so her elderly father, who has no grown sons, can avoid the draft. Mulan fights in a hundred battles over 12 years, watching her comrades meet grisly ends. When wartime concludes, she asks only for a swift horse to ride home. Although Mulan defied gender mores – through cross-dressing and growing into a formidable warrior – her radicalism seemed beside the point. The true core of the story is her steadfast filial piety: a daughter willing to sacrifice everything to protect her father. In this sense she always felt distant from me, a girl growing up between disparate cultures who could never live up to her stoic ideal. That is, until Disney adapted the ballad into the animated hit Mulan (1998), which is now having its own live-action adaptation 22 years later. What can we expect? The first time round, Disney reimagined Mulan as a nerdy klutz who struggled against

MULAN IS AVAILABLE TO STREAM ON DISNEY+ FROM 4 SEPTEMBER, FOR AN ADDITIONAL FEE.

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expectations, preferring to spend her time inventing chicken-feeders over upskilling into the perfect woman. The humour was distinctly American (see Eddie Murphy’s every wisecrack as dragon Mushu). And though Mulan learned how to fight, her action set-pieces celebrated quick wits over skill, as she overcame obstacles through the improvised use of cannons, fans and clothing. Elevating the Western value of individuality didn’t erase the heart of the original tale; Disney’s version celebrated the heroine’s selfless love for her father, and the power of empathy and cooperation to trump prejudice. The film’s visual style was meticulously sourced from traditional Chinese paintings, featuring inky mountain peaks, ornate swirls of smoke and gorgeous snowy negative spaces. The romance between the disguised Mulan and her general was a fitting successor to classic Chinese stories that flirt with queer overtones, such as The Butterfly Lovers, which features a woman who conceals her gender in order to study. Precisely because the film mixed these contrasting elements, centred on a girl trying to accept contradictory sides of herself, it resonated with me and many diasporic kids growing up in the West.

PHOTO BY JASIN BOLAND/© DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC.

The film arrives at a watershed moment for diversity in mainstream media.

The filmmakers behind the new Mulan are keenly aware of this impact. “People would come in to audition and would say, ‘Sorry, I know this is really unprofessional, but before I start, I just want you to know, the animated movie was the first time I saw someone that looked like me speak English in a movie theatre,’” producer Jason Reed told The Hollywood Reporter. “The stakes couldn’t be higher.” The film arrives at a watershed moment for diversity in mainstream media. Crazy Rich Asians (2018), which boasted an all-Asian cast, became the highest-grossing Hollywood rom-com in a decade. Disney has taken note, boosting minority representation with projects such as Black Panther (2018), Captain Marvel (2019) and Aladdin (2019). Continuing this push, the new Mulan features an all-Asian cast and is helmed by New Zealand director Niki Caro, whose films Whale Rider (2002) and The Zookeeper’s Wife (2017) follow defiant women struggling against societal limits. With a budget of US$200 million, the new Mulan is the most expensive of Disney’s recent slew of live-action remakes; clearly, Disney hopes its broadening of scope will resonate with audiences both locally and globally. Indeed, Disney is making a strong play for the huge Chinese market, where the animated film performed poorly. The new Mulan is strongly reminiscent of Chinese cinema’s wuxia genre – operatic martial arts films defined by gravity-defying wire stunts and romantic heroes – with Mulan leaping through epic battle scenes in a flowing red tunic. It joins a long tradition of action heroines in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, from Cheng Pei-pei’s “thunderbolt kick” in Golden Swallow (1968) to Maggie Cheung’s vengeful swordswoman in Hero (2002). Most of the songs have been nixed, as have comic relief critters Mushu and Cri‑Kee – replaced with a villainous witch and a sage mentor played by Chinese cinema heavyweights Gong Li and Donnie Yen respectively. And then there’s Mulan’s central star Liu Yifei, who is box‑office dynamite in China. Disney has primed itself for the difficult task of replicating the first Mulan’s local impact, while hewing closer to the ballad’s aesthetics and message – a balancing act complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Delayed from its original March release, Mulan is now one of the first major titles to premiere on streaming channel Disney+ (with subscribers required to fork out an additional payment to watch the film). Amid all this uncertainty, I keep returning to the heart-wrenching scene in the original where Mulan watches her father struggle to lift a sword. Replicated in the new trailer, this scene induces the same pangs of emotion all over again. If the latest adaptation draws from this shared well of familial love, it is sure to strike true.

Music

Kev Carmody

Big Things Do Grow Kev Carmody has been writing and singing songs that tell the stories of Indigenous Australia since the 80s. And right now, the moment is ripe for a revamped tribute album in his honour. by Sosefina Fuamoli @sose_carter

Sosefina Fuamoli is a music writer, content producer and music programmer based in Melbourne.

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ev Carmody is impassioned. Another moment of change has come, a moment when the plight of Black people the world over is plain to see on TV, on phones, on computer screens, so plain it simply cannot be ignored. Known to many for his collaborations with Paul Kelly, particularly ‘From Little Things, Big Things Grow’ (1993), which covered the Gurindji people’s Wave Hill walk-off that resulted in the first land rights legislation, Carmody’s body of work represents the beating heart of Indigenous Australia, both historically and in contemporary form. From protest music to songs that draw from his own life experiences, throughout his career Carmody has presented his work in line with the Indigenous tradition of oral history: the concept of passing down one’s history through storytelling. He’s been doing this since the 80s, across five studio albums and countless gigs. And in 2020’s restless and uncertain socio-political climate, his music has never felt more relevant. “Music over the millennia has played its part in transmitting ideas and things that the majority of people are concerned about,” Carmody muses from his home in Queensland, his voice filled with genuine warmth and knowledge, happy to share reflections on his youth and the unrest the world is currently facing. Carmody speaks of his early musical endeavours candidly, in particular, the memories of recording his

extraordinary debut album, Pillars of Society (1988). “Forty years ago, there was no way commercial radio would ever play our music,” he explains, tracing back his early relationship with the organisations who first supported his ideas as a musician. “The stuff that I wrote, a lot of it, was on community radio stations, way before I officially recorded it,” he continues. “I had to just walk down to the radio station in Brisbane, go on Murri Hour with a guitar. They’d record it, we’d have a talk and I’d sing a song; they’d whack it on a cassette and send it to Radio Redfern. Then Radio Redfern would send it to somewhere in Broome; it was all around Australia on Indigenous stations well before I ever thought about recording it.” In time, focus soon shifted from the music to the songwriter from up north. Blending folk-rock with a powerful urgency, Carmody found himself becoming a mouthpiece for those suffering injustice and oppression. Songs like ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’, ‘Comrade Jesus Christ’ and ‘Blood Red Rose’ unflinchingly challenged the white Australian landscape. Ground‑breaking in many ways, his music formed a backbone of strength for contemporary artists who can now express their own frustrations with injustice more freely. “I copped a heck of a lot of flak too from a lot of people,” he says. “They said that it was too full-on. It was confrontational. I got a lot of flak from it but so what? It’s gotta be said – let’s just say it. “For me, a lot of those songs I was singing, those songs are still relevant now,” he says. “I can sit back and just say: ‘Let these young ones go.’ We’re getting more young women – there’s more of a gender balance on stage and in music that we never had 40 years ago. They’re actually singing about what affects them. There’s so many movements that are coming together.” Those movements coalesce in a way on the re‑release – and updating – of the Kev Carmody tribute album, Cannot Buy My Soul. It was originally released as a double CD in 2007, with covers by a wealth of stars including Paul Kelly, Missy Higgins, The Drones, The Waifs and Tex Perkins, alongside Carmody’s originals. The record was a love letter to Carmody’s work and also a political statement. That statement has a new sense of urgency in the Black Lives Matter moment. So the 2020 version has an additional disc with six new covers, by Courtney Barnett, Electric Fields, Kate Miller-Heidke, Alice Skye, Mo’Ju and Birdz, plus Kasey Chambers and Jimmy Barnes. Its release brings Carmody’s original journey as a musician during some of Australia’s most precarious political and social times back into focus. “Coming from an Indigenous background, I’ve always had that sense of community,” he says. “We’ve become a musical family and they’ve done it in their way.” Sitting back and observing a new generation

vocalising his songs from the past 30-plus years, Carmody is confident communities standing up for their rights will be enacting global change – change that can no longer be ignored or suppressed. “It’s going to be awful hard for them to put it all back in a box, the powers that be... That appalling footage of the policeman with his knee on a man’s neck, that can’t be hidden,” he says, referring to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. “We know as Indigenous people and people of colour that this has been happening, but to actually have it on your television so non‑coloured people can actually see it...this isn’t Hollywood, this is real time. “The key to it is my concept of oral history. If you put it into song and you can sing it over and over, it’s like learning. It will get in your brain: from little things big things do grow.”

PHOTO COURTESY EMI MUSIC

KEV CARMODY’S CANNOT BUY MY SOUL 2020 IS OUT NOW.

Jillian Nguyen

Small Screens

Heart and Souls Actor Jillian Nguyen stars in the supernatural thriller Hungry Ghosts, a new SBS miniseries that exorcises the generational traumas of the Vietnamese community. by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen is a VietnameseAustralian writer based in Melbourne.

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n the 15th night of the seventh month in the lunar calendar, the gates of hell open and ghosts are unleashed. These spirits roam the mortal realm seeking food, entertainment and, sometimes, revenge. Families on Earth offer prayers, food and drink at elaborate shrines to both the ghosts and their ancestors, and after two weeks, the hungry ghosts find their way back to hell, sated for another year. This Buddhist festival is just one part of Vietnamese culture, which is rich with community and deeply connected to the ancestral past. It forms the backdrop for SBS’ new miniseries, Hungry Ghosts. The four-part supernatural drama follows the havoc caused when a powerful ghost is freed in Melbourne on the eve of the Hungry Ghost Festival – and multiple generations of three Vietnamese‑Australian families, as well as a white Australian former war

HUNGRY GHOSTS SCREENS ON SBS AND SBS ON DEMAND 24-27 AUGUST.

HUNGRY GHOSTS’ JILLIAN NGUYEN WITH CO-STARS OAKLEY KWON (MIDDLE) AND TIMOTHY NGUYEN (BOTTOM). “WE’VE MADE SOMETHING PRETTY SPECIAL AND PROBABLY A BIT WEIRD AND DIFFERENT,” SHE SAYS.

21 AUG 2020

how that trauma trickles down through generations – but Nguyen says these are human themes that transcend a culture‑specific context. “With [Lulu Wang’s award-winning film] The Farewell last year, that was very specifically a Chinese story, and people still walked away feeling something,” she says. “Inherited trauma is not just an Asian or Vietnamese thing, it’s universal – how that affects families through each generation and how close they are, how much they share with each other, how they can move on and heal from their pasts.” Hungry Ghosts’ characters are bound by their shared history. From grandmothers to granddaughters, estranged mothers to teenagers on the cusp of adulthood, all of these characters are distinctly Vietnamese-Australian, carrying a tapestry of stories within them. For many, their spiritual journey across the series is about grappling with their part in their culture and family – something that plenty of the Vietnamese diaspora, especially of the second or later generations, will relate to. Nguyen certainly does. She admits that, growing up, she “wanted to be white” and resented her parents sending her to Vietnamese school. “I used to hate them and be like, ‘Why am I learning this language?’” she says. “Now I’m like, my god, it only adds to me as a human being. I can use it in my art and in everyday life. If Vietnamese elements are right for my character, I’m always going to offer it to the director.” Nguyen’s interest in her heritage continues to grow, and being part of a show like Hungry Ghosts has only driven that passion. “I’ve been so much more curious, and I force my Vietnamese friends to ask questions because a lot of kids don’t,” she says. “It’s such a devastating but rich part of our lives – you shouldn’t escape it.” Of the impact she hopes the show has, the actress speaks simply: “I hope every single Vietnamese person alive watches it, and that they have some kind of cathartic experience, no matter how small it is, to see themselves.”

PHOTO BY BEN BAKER. STILLS BY SARAH ENTICKNAP

photographer, are forced to reckon with the past, present and future. The series features a cracking ensemble cast including Jillian Nguyen, who audiences may know from Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang (2020). In Hungry Ghosts, Nguyen plays Sophie Tran, a diligent 19-year‑old medical student who becomes possessed by these vengeful spirits. Nguyen’s own life differs somewhat from her character’s. While the Tran family has become wealthy since their arrival as refugees, with a doctor father and humanitarian mother, Nguyen herself was born in a Malaysian refugee camp. She came to Melbourne aged 14 months with her parents, and grew up in commission housing in Melbourne’s west. With Hungry Ghosts, the actress is thrilled to be giving voice to her multidimensional community. “I don’t think anything like this has ever been made,” says Nguyen. “With Sophie, it’s such a blessing: I get to tell her story, and just be a Vietnamese‑Australian girl. I never thought that was going to happen this early in my career. I feel like we have a responsibility to tell our stories authentically, rather than someone else telling it from a voyeuristic point of view.” Hungry Ghosts is in many ways a tribute to Vietnamese culture, peppered with the lilting language, scenes of traditional Buddhist spiritual rituals and a looming air of the superstition common among community elders. This realistic and loving depiction of the culture, which will be familiar to many viewers of Vietnamese heritage, is blended with trademark elements of the thriller and horror genres, making for a unique viewing experience. “It’s very much anchored in as much reality as possible,” Nguyen says. “It was always the intention for it to feel as real and visceral as possible. We’ve made something pretty special and probably a bit weird and different, and I think it’s good if people watch it and feel a bit bewildered.” This year marks 45 years since the fall of Saigon, which sparked the initial wave of Vietnamese refugees. Many of the show’s complex storylines explore the trauma of war for the diaspora, and

Cath Moore

Books

ST ILL CATH MO OR E: “I’M RE SS ” A WO RK-IN -PR OG

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In Black and White Cath Moore drew on her lived experience to write her debut novel – about a teenage girl negotiating her Black identity in small-town Australia. by Mindy Gill @mindykaurgill

Mindy Gill is a poet and Editor-in-Chief of Peril magazine.

Raised in a small Australian town, Dylan grows up fearing her own skin colour and what she believes it represents. She associates her Black identity with anger and violence – a dangerous and ever-pertinent stereotype. “So, it’s much easier for Dylan to envisage herself within this realm of whiteness, of perceived safety and security,” Moore says. “It’s easier for her to say that whiteness is good and safe, and Blackness is the complete opposite. And because nobody has ever questioned her ideas about Blackness, and about emotion and safety, it’s also reflective of a wider landscape we’re yet to interrogate.” Moore has written extensively about race and mixed‑heritage cultural identity in Australia. It is subject matter she feels compelled to return to because, “I’m still a work-in-progress. My sense of self is still to be reconciled.” Her essay in Black Inc.’s Growing Up African in Australia anthology also unpacks what it means to grow up without cultural representation – both in media and in daily life – and the impact that can

METAL FISH, FALLING SNOW IS OUT NOW.

21 AUG 2020

My whole lived journey has been avoiding my own skin, and dissociating myself from it. But it was the most important journey – stepping back into my own cultural context.

have on a young person’s sense of self. “The way people were othering [me] was always, to me, a sense that I wasn’t doing something right,” she says, “and I didn’t know what it was that I wasn’t doing right.” She adds, “Colour, identity and familial links are something that I’ve always been interested in, and I’ve tried to express it through the way in which Dylan talks to colour.” After her mother’s funeral, Dylan and her mother’s boyfriend, Pat, drive cross-country together. Pat is remarkably stoic – unless, of course, he is angry – and he struggles to process his grief, as well as the decisions he’s made for Dylan’s future. Dylan, in her gripping, distinctive voice, articulates Pat’s emotional withdrawal in a way that reveals that Pat, too, suffers beneath society’s expectations. While Dylan is trapped within what she’s been taught about the colour of her skin, Pat is trapped within the cast of Australian masculinity. In many ways, this is a novel about learning to live between binaries, and outside of mainstream narratives. Although it’s a source of anguish for Dylan, it can also be a great source of freedom. Moore says, “Everyone sits at the intersection of lots of different denominators, and I think that’s part of humanness, isn’t it? It’s learning how to acknowledge and embrace all of those different components. It’s a question again about that sense of place and space: how we situate ourselves differently according to the relationships that we have, both with ourselves and with other people. “I think the journey for Dylan has reflected my journey in that I’m not trying so hard anymore to only locate myself within that Anglo context. I am much more comfortable now sitting in that space in between, and thinking that it doesn’t have to be…you don’t have to lose one in order to value the other.” With more culturally diverse stories appearing in the mainstream every year, Moore says she is “cautiously optimistic” about seeing discourse around race in the Australian arts change. “While I’m buoyed by the fact that we’re starting to have conversations about diversity and representation. I also wonder: who is driving these conversations?” She adds that “cultures take a really, really long time to shift. We have to all start having conversations in lots of different contexts, and see where we sit, and why we think what we do, and start recognising that this is a collaborative venture. It’s a global conversation about equity, and we just need to keep having it.” As Dylan turns to the past to help her understand her uncertain future, so too does Moore think that the past is key to helping us contextualise and fully understand our present. “I think above and beyond that the conversations we’re having about race are really important, because it’s hard to understand how much our lives are dictated by race until we actually start interrogating what has sat in the landscape before.”

anberra in the mid-80s and 90s was very white, very middle-class. So, as a kid, you’re constantly looking for your own reference points,” says Cath Moore, screenwriter and debut young-adult novelist. We’re discussing her first novel, Metal Fish, Falling Snow, and how growing up in Australia with Anglo-Irish and Afro-Caribbean heritage influences her writing. The novel was originally a screenplay where the protagonist, Dylan, was an Indigenous boy. “I think I was always waiting to have a conversation with somebody who would challenge me about why I was stepping into this skin that wasn’t my own,” Moore says. “My whole lived journey has been avoiding my own skin, and dissociating myself from it. But it was the most important journey – stepping back into my own cultural context.” Metal Fish, Falling Snow follows 14-year-old, half‑French and half-Guyanese Dylan while she deals with the sudden death of her mother. Dylan experiences intertwined griefs – she loses both her sense of family, as well as her tether to her white identity. “I think the way in which she connects to colour is very much connected to my lived experience of growing up with a single white mother, and not having any context for Blackness,” says Moore.

Film Reviews

Annabel Brady-Brown Film Editor @annnabelbb

ith new releases rather thin on the ground this month, cinemas are hoping to lure back audiences with nostalgia-tugging, high-energy classics. There’s the swooning swordplay of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), the clash of lightsabers in Star Wars IV: A New Hope (1977), or – my pick of the bunch – the unfairly maligned 90s high-camp takes on the Batman franchise courtesy of the late Joel Schumacher, Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. Enjoying an anniversary re-release, Christopher Nolan’s Inception – a puzzle movie about a team of agents, led by a haunted Leonardo DiCaprio, who burrow uninvited into people’s dreams – first stomped box offices 10 years ago. This time round, the reality-bending spectacle is warming up audiences before Nolan’s latest Tenet finally comes to town. For something totally new and a little quieter, it’s wonderful to see the impressive microbudget indie Sequin in a Blue Room getting a limited theatrical run after garnering praise at festivals last year. Samuel Van Grinsven’s debut feature is an unabashedly queer thriller that trails a seductive 16-year-old named Sequin (newcomer Conor Leach) through

IMMACULATE INCEPTION

Sydney’s online world of casual hook-ups, reaching the enigmatic and alluring blue room – a strikingly original vision for Australian cinema. For Victorians stuck at home, there’s streaming. Check out the nailbiting Sundance prize-winning doco Boys State, American co-directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ fly‑on-the-wall look at a weeklong democracy camp for 17-year-old Texan boys, who form a mock state government from the ground up, now streaming on Apple+. ABB

LES MISÉRABLES 

WE’LL END UP TOGETHER

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

Bursting with heart and French superstars, director Guillaume Canet’s sequel to his comedy-drama hit Little White Lies (2010) follows the group of long-time friends as they reunite at an idyllic Cap Ferret summerhouse. Problems start immediately upon their arrival. First, they have turned up uninvited as a 60th birthday surprise for Max (François Cluzet), though the friends haven’t seen each other for ages. What’s more, he is about to sell the summerhouse where they were planning to stay, which no-one knows – not even Max’s ex-wife. It’s a recipe for a disastrously entertaining get-together. Combining a charismatic all-star cast, including an angsty Marion Cotillard, who plays a careless mother dealing with her unhappiness via a perennial state of drunkenness. With a script that navigates earnestly through the characters’ pent-up resentments, drunk confessions, horny outbursts and familiar banter, this is a foolproof and buoyant bourgeois comedy. Sometimes, that’s exactly the escapism you’re after. MICHELLE WANG

THE SWALLOWS OF KABUL 

Debuting at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, The Swallows of Kabul presents itself as a beautiful, sombre and challenging tale with its unflinching depiction of violence and complicated characters, but the animated film ultimately rewards a shallow reading. Atrocities under fundamentalist Taliban rule in Afghanistan at the turn of the millennium provide more than enough material for a compelling drama of personal rebellion, which centres on two couples whose lives become entwined. The result is an affecting story, with lingering moments and lovely watercolour-styled animation, but compared with Persepolis (2007), Marjane Satrapi’s animated, nuanced account of living under an oppressive regime in Iran, Swallows trades in poetics and listless cruelty. Directed by French duo Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec, adapted from the book by Algerian Mohammed Moulessehoul (under the pen-name Yasmina Khadra), and with a notable lack of Afghans involved in the project, you may wonder, whose story is this? BAILEY SHARP

A drone flies high above the Parisian commune Montfermeil, roaming over sun-bleached towers and packs of disenfranchised teens. It belongs to Buzz (Al-Hassan Ly), a gawky kid who spends his time spying on his neighbours undressing. Little does he know, he will soon capture an act of violence that catapults his district into chaos. Inspired by his own childhood in Montfermeil, director Ladj Ly’s Cannes award-winning debut feature lays bare the over-policing of poor citizens, particularly those of African descent. Our entry point is Stéphane (Damien Bonnard), a transfer cop stunned by the abuses of his new squad. The underwritten supporting cast are much more compelling: notably Issa, a troubled young thief (Issa Perica) and Stéphane’s colleague Gwada (Djebril Zonga) – a Black officer raised in the community he oppresses. With an explosive final act, the film lives up to its title – drawn from Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel. The incendiary final images are a long-awaited reckoning for both France and the world. CLAIRE CAO

Small Screen Reviews

Aimee Knight Small Screens Editor @siraimeeknight

THE TOWN THAT DIDN’T STARE  | PODCAST

I AM WOMAN

 | SBS ON DEMAND

 | STAN

Narrated by Black Comedy star Steven Oliver, Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky is a funny and thought-provoking look at the history and mythology of Captain James Cook (sardonically referred to as “Jimmy James”) from a First Nations perspective. These lesser-known stories make for a timely re-examination of the narratives shrouding Cook and the nation. The documentary coincides with the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Cook’s voyage to Australia this year and the recent global Black Lives Matter protests, which have prompted renewed criticism of monuments and events that celebrate colonial history, such as the Cook statue in Sydney’s Hyde Park. Looky Looky plays like an extended music video, as historical information is interspersed with performances by Indigenous musicians – including Alice Skye, Mo’Ju and Kev Carmody – who create a contemporary songline, backed by Oliver’s droll commentary. This fast-paced film is a fresh celebration of Indigenous creativity, country and cultural survival. TRISTEN HARWOOD

This Stan Original Film is a heartening biopic of the early life and career of Australian singer-songwriter and feminist, Helen Reddy. Starring a captivating Tilda Cobham-Hervey (Hotel Mumbai), I Am Woman pays tribute to second-wave rhetoric, though is ultimately a story about love, friendship, grief and survival. Director Unjoo Moon (The Zen of Bennett), writer Emma Jensen (Mary Shelley) and producer Rosemary Blight (The Sapphires) cultivate a poignant narrative marked by a strong female lens as Reddy grapples with a male-dominated music industry and a volatile husband to match. Shot in Sydney, Oscar-winning cinematographer Dion Beebe (Memoirs of a Geisha) strikes a warm and wistful picture of 1970s New York and Los Angeles, aided by thoughtful costume design, decor and architecture. The film’s drawback lies in thematic motifs that veer on clichéd, though this is salvaged by a compelling cast. Featuring numerous depictions of some of her biggest singles, avid Reddy fans are in for a treat. Premieres 28 August. LAURA LA ROSA

eneath the cherry-red sheen of Americana, a sour heart beats in Lovecraft Country. There, as The Crew Cuts croon in the premiere episode, life could be a dream – or a nightmare. Developed by Underground showrunner Misha Green, the supernatural series sends war veteran Atticus Black (Jonathan Majors, Da 5 Bloods) on a hero’s journey across the segregated USA in search of his AWOL father. Joined by erudite Uncle George (Courtney B Vance, The People vs OJ Simpson) and dauntless photographer friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Birds of Prey), Atticus encounters racist hayseeds, crooked cops and an unnerving secret society. But they’re not the only monsters lurking in Jim Crow’s long shadow. One of 2020’s most feverishly anticipated new shows, Lovecraft Country is based on the 2016 pulp pastiche novel by Matt Ruff. Sick, slick and subversive, this bloodshot adaptation is not for the faint of heart. Its surfeit of teeth, tails, eyeballs and tentacles evoke the bestial fears of HP Lovecraft, while its cultural commentary fillets the famed author’s abject racism and xenophobia. With Jordan Peele on board as executive producer, this 10-episode run exists in the same vein as Get Out (2017) and Us (2019), where old-fashioned jump scares and enduring hard truths coagulate into cunning chills and thrills. Mixing the viscera of horror, the mystique of science fiction and the existential dread of lived experience, Lovecraft Country is streaming on BINGE. AK

21 AUG 2020

LOOKY LOOKY HERE COMES COOKY

LOVECRAFT COUNTRY WILL SCARE YOU SILLY

Hosted by journalist Nick Hilton, The Town That Didn’t Stare is a six-part documentary podcast about the town of East Grinstead, dubbed “Britain’s Twin Peaks”, where the host grew up. Hilton is an engaging narrator, tip-toeing the lines between nostalgia, comedy and truth-telling by peeling back the layers of this so-called “safe haven of alternative belief systems” (“a lot of history, a lot of mythology, a lot of bullshit,” he points out). Early episodes cover the history of Sussex, the arrival of Scientology to the town, and an investigation into ley lines – invisible underground energy currents. Series guests run the gamut from local historians to author Jon Ronson and former Scientologists who go on the record about their experiences. It would be easy for this series to spin into the camp, sensationalist thriftiness of The World’s Greatest... book series. But Hilton remains curious and questioning, a steady tour guide through a world of cults and conspiracy theories. For fans of The Psychopath Test, Twin Peaks and Rosie Jones’ doco The Family. NATHANIA GILSON

Music Reviews

Sarah Smith Music Editor

ontaines DC’s A Hero’s Death is 2020 distilled. All of the muck, anger, dark guttural laughs and despair. The humour, the hope, the disillusionment. The raging, ragged, nonsense. It’s all here, beautifully and painfully articulated on the Dublin band’s second record, arriving only 12 months since their extraordinary debut. Post-punk has always held the right temperament for searing social distillations. And here, the five-piece lean knowingly into the menacing force of oblique guitar lines and gut-trembling rhythms as singer Grian Chatten bellows out eviscerations of grand‑scale capitalist failings and social media’s pervasive rot. All your laughter pissed away/All your sadness pissed away/Now you don’t care what they say/Nor do I, he chatters at the pulpit as we all doom-scroll through Twitter, sliding into existential dread. Chatten’s poetic cadence is never at risk of being lost amid the squall, its beats and dents dragging lyrics around inside your head like Yeats or Boland. This is a more nuanced Fontaines. Despite all the terror there is hope: sweet, melodic respite amid the chaos. A Hero’s Death is perhaps most of all a lesson in empathy and hopefulness disguised as otherwise. It’s a personal affair full of self-reflection. ‘You Said’ and ‘Oh Such a Spring’ are gentle, sad, strangely uplifting meditations on the human condition. ‘No’ is the emotional heart of it all. A song for the year, a rune to fill the cavity: There’s no living to a life/Where all your fears are running rife/And you’re mugged by your belief/That you owe it all to grief. SS

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

ES FO N TA IN H O F YO U T

@sarah_smithie

ALL THE TIME JESSY LANZA 

Jessy Lanza has an innate understanding of an emotional narrative arc. The dizzying sensation of desire is a recurring presence in her music. Heart pounding and charged with anticipation, Lanza provides the soundtrack to night-time bike riding through city streets, portable speakers blaring, on the way to the party. But just as euphoria is brief, she always involves the counterbalance: melancholic dispatches from the next day express a yearning of a different kind, a chance for calm amid the contemporary noise. All the Time completes a trilogy of brilliant records, Lanza having perfected her take on retro-futurist electro pop. Lethargic bass kicks on ‘Anyone Around’, and ‘Badly’ bounces with confident swag style, driving the delightful chords that follow. In their cheeky trickery, synth-stabs distort, mirror and fuse with Lanza’s signature high-register vocal hooks. ‘Face’ and ‘Ice Creamy’ are a digital ode to voice manipulation, proof that no matter how frequently her pitch deviates, Lanza’s songs never fail to burst with motivating human warmth and feeling. CHARLIE MILLER

DON’T SLEEP ALICE IVY

BANKSIA POP FILTER



In lieu of live events Annika Schmarsel, aka Alice Ivy, brings the festival spirit to Don’t Sleep – the Melbourne producer’s second record, which features collaborations with a stacked repertoire of household names. Schmarsel’s inventive production remains her greatest asset, with an array of samples and infectious beats borrowing elements of soul, hip-hop and electronica. ‘Sunrise’ is a rush of joy, driven by layered sounds that complement Canadian emcee Cadence Weapon’s impeccable flow, while similarly the title track boasts a rousing chorus delivered by rapper Imbi. ‘In My Mind’ and ‘Ticket to Heaven’ cast captivating spells, with Ecca Vandal and Thelma Plum, respectively. Previous Alice Ivy musical collaborator Bertie Blackman features twice: duetting with Montaigne on ‘Sweetest Love’ and closing the album with dance number ‘Gold’. With the energy across the record never plateauing, each track feels single-ready, stamped with the hallmarks of a young producer with an impeccable ear. HOLLY PEREIRA

“You’re not listening to the same thing,” state Pop Filter at the opening of their debut album Banksia – part eulogy for their past as the beloved Melbourne band The Ocean Party (all remaining members return here), and part vision to their collective future. Regardless of how much its fingerprints are all over this record, The Ocean Party this ain’t. While you’ll recognise the lighthearted jangle, the warm swaying guitars that echo into the night on ‘Romance at the Petrol Station’ and the immediate poppy bounce of ‘Laughing Falling’, it’s a shift in perspective that makes Banksia unique. The record can be taken as both prologue and epilogue – more open-ended and reflective than anything we’ve heard from these songwriters before. As with their former band, songwriting duties are shared across the board, and Banksia skips from the taut, pulsating groove of ‘Tried It Out’ to the bedroom lo-fi folk of ‘Open House’ with ease, giving a view into the now-disparate lives of musicians whose last 10 years are so woven together. NICHOLAS KENNEDY

Book Reviews

Thuy On Books Editor @thuy_on

THE FOGGING LUKE HORTON





Accomplished classical violinist and former child prodigy Jena Lin is the protagonist of Jessie Tu’s debut novel. In her early twenties and struggling to make her own way in the world, Jena succumbs to the intoxication of casual sex to stave off loneliness and as a way to reclaim power and validate her desirability when all else seems awry. The title refers to the emotional and physical danger she inflicts on herself even as she believes she’s courting love and intimacy. Set in Sydney and New York, it’s a book that also canvasses race, creativity, motherhood, friendship and competition. Tu writes in a frank, matter-of-fact way about the chasm between public and private life: about Jena trying (and failing) to fend for herself in between endless practice, rehearsals and performance…and sex. Lots of sex. This millennial character is relatable in her fluctuations between being vulnerable and being fierce in her desires. She’s a lost soul trying to find an anchor point. THUY ON

The mundane becomes monumental in Luke Horton’s debut novel, which explores the anxiety‑stricken interior life of a foundering Melbourne academic named Tom. While he’s on holiday in Bali with his longtime partner Clara, Tom’s mind takes him back to past flashpoints of panic and paranoia as he begins to feel a similar threat encroaching once again. Light reading it isn’t, but The Fogging is a masterfully subtle character study that recalls the slow-burn psychological payoffs of Patricia Highsmith novels. In this case, however, it’s not violence or betrayal that looms largest over the protagonist, but the smallest of social uncertainties. Yet even when Tom is at his most brooding and petty, there’s something all too relatable about the disparity between what’s happening in his head versus the actual outside world. Especially poignant is the gladiatorial grappling for position that hides within everyday conversation, which Horton examines with forensic precision. As the internal mechanics of an unsatisfied couple give way to one person’s mounting isolation, we’re drawn ever further into the book’s bleak intensity. DOUG WALLEN

SUMMER ALI SMITH 

Ali Smith’s latest novel completes her seasonal quartet, a sequence of deeply humane novels that began with 2016’s Autumn. Summer is a story about family, about the transformative power of connection in politically turbulent times, about art as resistance, and about action in the face of overwhelming indifference. Smith brings back characters from all of the preceding novels, and the connections between them are deepened and complicated in satisfying and often moving ways. When viewed in the context of the quartet as a whole (and to be clear, these novels are deeply interconnected and are hugely enriched by being read in sequence), Summer very much acts as the coda, reiterating Smith’s central themes and leaving us with a quietly optimistic ending. Towards the book’s close a character describes Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale as saying to its audience, “don’t worry, another world is possible”. Smith’s quartet reminds us of the ways in which we can better our world and hold on to hope. JACK ROWLAND

A LONELY GIRL IS A DANGEROUS THING JESSIE TU

21 AUG 2020

’m writing from Melbourne, in the middle of lockdown. Not being a baker or handy with crafts, I don’t have a project to occupy me during this second round of isolation. What I do have though, is books. Lots and lots of them. It’s a good time to sort them out. I’ll be moving to an apartment later this year, with less storage space, so the hoarder in me has to be given a firm talking-to in order to get rid of some old favourites. It will be heartbreaking, but necessary: sometimes you have to move on. On the donate pile will be a number of textbooks from my old uni days when I studied English literature. Do I really need two versions of the same Shakespeare plays? Out too, will go novels I once admired, but which I know I will never read again. But there are some classics that I will never consign to the donate pile. Books that I read as a teenager that inspired and provoked me into thinking about literature as a force for change: works by the likes of Wilde, Austen, Steinbeck and Orwell. These authors revealed to me that it wasn’t enough to tell a story, you had to tell a story well. On a line-by-line basis, they were meticulous in their craft. Their novels will travel with me wherever I go. Sometimes, to paraphrase the Regurgitator song, I like the old stuff better than the new stuff. TO

OK , BY H O BOOK O R BY L G E T W E ’L O U G H T H R IS ! TH

Public Service Announcement

by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus

You can’t control the series of events conspiring in the world right now that are going to lead to your next new friend. What events, you ask? Who knows? Someone who knows someone meeting someone who knows you? Someone moving house? A train arriving late? You don’t know. That’s the point. You haven’t met your next friend yet. Might be a close friend. Might be a friendly banter‑type acquaintance who grows into something else. Might be a neighbour who tells you interesting stories about their life while standing in the street and leaves lemons and sprigs of homegrown parsley on the doorstep. Who’s to say? Totally out of your control. You might find out soon though. Lucky duck. You can’t control the waves. Crashing. Crashing. Crashing again. Always with the crashing, those waves. You could go down there and discourage them all day and they wouldn’t be deterred. You can’t control the next thing that will take you by surprise and make you laugh like you’ve forgotten who you are. You can’t control when a noisy explosion of butterflies is going to dip and dive and flutter and sink and then lift again over a daisy bush next door

towards the street like it’s one single creature reaching its butterfly fingers across the world. You can’t help that it happens when you’re on the phone to the power company. You can’t help that a man, right that minute, is walking his dog outside and is so engrossed in his phone conversation that he doesn’t notice the butterflies – but his dog does. It is therefore a moment in your day that you absolutely had not accounted for that finds you listening to the woman at the power company (“Sorry, it sometimes takes the system a little moment to boot up… Here we are… What did you say your last name was?”) while you watch a dog take a surprised man skiing down the street, going absolutely bonkers for a butterfly creature that only you and the dog have noticed. You can’t control who’s thinking fondly of you. You can’t control what it is that’s about to make you smarter, or kinder, or better at making yourself feel better. You don’t know what it is that you’re going to look back on and think, I used to think X but then I learned Y and now my life is so much better! We go through life thinking all of those revelations are behind us. We rarely predict (at least not accurately) the things we’re yet to learn, or the mistakes we’re about to make. The thing about mistakes though, is they usually teach you something. We have no idea what we’re going to know in a year that we don’t know today. The future is a leap of faith. Every morning we step off the edge of the world into tomorrow and we have no idea what might happen. Maybe tomorrow will be terrible. But maybe in three years’ time, you’ll look back and patronisingly say, “I had no idea”. Or “I’m so glad I’m here now.” Maybe, in three years’ time, you’ll look back at a moment that happens next week, or next month, or next year, and think That was the best thing to ever happen to me and I never saw it coming. Public Service Announcement: the future hasn’t happened yet. The possibilities are endless.

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

was thinking the other day about how the passing of time makes us a bit smug. We look back sometimes at our previous selves and make reductive conclusions that aren’t really fair. We tell young people patronising things. We look back at history and think Those poor people who dropped like flies because they hadn’t invented penicillin yet! or How did they not know balloon pants were ridiculous? That’s the great dramatic tension of life, though, isn’t it: we never know what’s coming next. There are some things that are about to happen that you can control. Whether to have a cup of tea or not, for instance. Whether to turn left or right. What book to read next. Our ability to make these decisions gives us a false sense of security – a feeling of control over the narrative. Do not be fooled. Some things? We are just never going to see them coming. This is a Public Service Announcement: you can’t control everything, and that’s okay.

21 AUG 2020

The Edge of Tomorrow

Clare Scrine

Tastes Like Home

The Ultimate Vegetable Lasagne Ingredients

Method

Serves 10

To make the ragu, dice the mushrooms and set aside. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan, add the onion and carrot and cook over low heat, stirring often, for 15 minutes. Turn the heat up to medium and add the mushrooms, garlic, thyme and basil, cooking for another 5 minutes. Add the passata, tomatoes and seasoning, along with about 125-250ml (½-1 cup) water, from rinsing out the passata jar and tomato tin. Bring the sauce to a simmer, then reduce the heat and allow it to bubble for at least 30 minutes, and up to 2 hours. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200°C. Place the pumpkin pieces for the bechamel on a baking tray, drizzle with the olive oil and roast until soft and brown. Mash the pumpkin until smooth, or process in a blender, then set aside. While the pumpkin is roasting, spread some of the eggplant and zucchini slices on a separate tray. Drizzle with a little olive oil, season each piece and bake for 20 minutes, or until soft and turning golden. Repeat with all the eggplant and zucchini. (You can also cook them on a grill if you prefer.) To make the bechamel, melt the butter in a small saucepan until bubbling. Add the flour and whisk to combine for 1 minute. Slowly pour in half the milk, whisking to combine into a smooth sauce, then slowly whisk in the remaining milk. Continue whisking until the sauce thickens. Add the nutmeg and blended pumpkin. Stir well, then taste and adjust the seasoning. To assemble the lasagne, spread a few spoonfuls of ragu in the base of a large, deep baking dish. Cover with a single layer of lasagne sheets. Top with another 1cm layer of ragu, a few handfuls of spinach leaves, a layer of roasted eggplant and zucchini, followed by the bechamel sauce. Layer more lasagne sheets on top. Repeat once or twice to make another layer of all the fillings; the number of layers will depend on the size of your dish. Finish the lasagne with pasta sheets and top with a final layer of bechamel sauce. Sprinkle the cheddar and parmesan (or equivalent) on top and bake for 40 minutes, or until golden. Serve garnished with fresh herbs if desired.

3 eggplants, cut into 1cm slices 4 zucchinis, cut lengthways into 5mm slices Olive oil, for drizzling 500g lasagne sheets 200g baby spinach leaves 125g (1 cup) grated cheddar (or nutritional yeast if making it vegan) 50g (½ cup) grated parmesan (or extra nutritional yeast)

Mushroom Ragu 300g button mushrooms 200g Swiss brown mushrooms 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 brown onion, diced 1 carrot, finely diced 5 garlic cloves, chopped 2 teaspoons dried thyme 1 teaspoon dried basil 700g jar tomato passata (pureed tomatoes) 400g tin chopped tomatoes

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Pumpkin Bechamel 500g pumpkin, cut into 3cm cubes 2 tablespoons olive oil 3 tablespoons butter (or vegan margarine) 3 tablespoons plain flour 750ml (3 cups) milk (or nut milk) ½ teaspoon grated nutmeg

Clare says…

THE SHARED TABLE BY CLARE SCRINE IS OUT NOW.

21 AUG 2020

Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas

PHOTOS BY SAVANNAH VAN DER NIET

n my loud, busy family we always valued shared meals. When we all lived under one roof, the dinner table was often one of the only spaces we’d actually manage to spend time together. Even as a kid I was passionate about creating food that celebrated this shared space, and it’s a philosophy I’ve carried into my adult life. There’s something special about bringing your people together to celebrate, commiserate or just share each other’s lives for a small moment. Home for me is the feeling of happy quiet amid chaos. Of sitting around a rambunctious table of cousins, siblings, aunts and uncles – or with my housemates, their lovers and friends. Various conversations buzzing in the space, arms reaching for a little bit more of that, a taste of this. It’s a feeling I’m sure many are missing this year. This enormous slab of lasagne, carefully prepared over a couple hours, then divided and devoured by a crowd, is the perfect meal to sit at the centre of a bustling table. Whether it be for a post-lockdown gathering, a special occasion, or simply a family or housemate dinner – this one won’t disappoint. For those of us living alone, this is a meal that can keep for a while; in fact it gets better by day two or three. This is a “the works” vegetarian lasagne, in that it features just about every element you might hope to find in a meat-free variant of the Italian classic. Layers of roasted vegetables, mushroom ragu and a rich sauce. The pumpkin bechamel is the truly special addition that will change your life. The added sweetness from the pumpkin creates a rich sauciness that complements the other flavours. My sister and I still argue about whose idea the pumpkin was – we’re both desperate to be responsible for this stroke of genius. Okay, I’ll admit the original idea may have been hers – but hey, who’s writing this article? So whether you’re able to enjoy this lasagne in its intended shared form, or it’s a more solitary affair within your iso bubble, I’d encourage you to slow down, pour a glass of wine, and enjoy the process.

Puzzles

ANSWERS PAGE 45

By Lingo! by Lauren Gawne lingthusiasm.com DOOZY

CLUES 5 letters Garden pest Grinding tooth Hairdresser’s shop Happy expression Unaccompanied

O R

Sudoku

by websudoku.com

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

N M A 1 3 9

9 1 2 4 3 7 6 4 2

6 letters Extraterrestrials Fish often smoked Mariner Small amount Story in parts 7 letters Aquatic mammal (2 words) Facing of facts 8 letters Course wheat flour

6 9 5

1 4 5 7

9 8 4

Puzzle by websudoku.com

Solutions CROSSWORD PAGE 45 ACROSS 1 Cockroaches 7 Orb 9 Risky 10 Remainder

11 Bumper car 12 Scale 13 Airlift 15 Shop 18 Spam 20 Solomon 23 Amaze 24 Reimburse 26 Slapstick 27 Nylon 28 Nod 29 Deteriorate

DOWN 1 Cerebral 2 Cashmere 3 Rhyme 4 Apricot 5 Humerus 6 Swiss roll 7 Old man 8 Borneo 14 Impressed 16 Umbrella 17 Antennae 19 Marxist 20 Sticker 21 Raisin 22 Hazard 25 Bongo

20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9 1 Sydney (in Yagoona) 2 Tara June Winch 3 Different foods touching other foods on the plate 4 A green cedar tree 5 Maude Flanders 6 Washington Football Team 7 Japan 8 Jovians 9 Baker Boy 10 Postage stamps 11 The Netherlands (1999) 12 The Hajj 13 Echidna 14 The Falkland Islands 15 They survived the 1945 atomic bombings 16 24 (Margaret Court) 17 A nonagon 18 Raymond Carver 19 60 20 Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington

21 AUG 2020

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

by puzzler.com

Word Builder

What, exactly, is a doozy? We can all agree that it’s something pretty great, but we aren’t entirely sure what the original doozy was. One theory is that it’s a playful variant of daisy, which in the US had a slang sense of excellence in the 1700s and 1800s. Another theory is that it refers to Eleonora Duse, an Italian actress who performed on stage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Duse was one of the greatest actresses of her age, and was the first woman to feature on the cover of Time magazine in 1923. Doozy as a paragon was possibly reinforced by the Duesenberg, a luxury car brand in America in the first decades of the 20th century.

Crossword

by Siobhan Linde

THE ANSWERS FOR THE CRYPTIC AND QUICK CLUES ARE THE SAME. ANSWERS PAGE 43. 1

Quick Clues ACROSS

17 16

DOWN

Cryptic Clues

Solutions

ACROSS

DOWN

1 Insects rock out in buses (11) 7 Little brother returned ball (3) 9 Romeo is extremely kinky and dangerous (5) 10 D reamer in fitful rest (9) 11 Crab went off without hesitation for each

1 Breakfast food containing bran repulsed

fairground attraction (6,3)

12 B alance plate (5) 13 Transport by plane when chain is removed

from passenger ropeway (7) 15 A wfully posh store (4) 18 S urveys about tinned meat (4) 20 Wise king is alone, about to welcome maiden (7) 23 S urprise acorn, reportedly? (5) 24 R epay with note after back massage in French city (9) 26 P at’s about to get into smooth style of comedy (9) 27 Fabric only worn by head nurse (5) 28 D on turned into Bob (3) 29 E ngineer reiterated issues about old decay (11)

1 Intellectual (8) 2 Type of wool (8) 3 Children’s poem (5) 4 Fruit (7) 5 Bone (7) 6 Cake (5,4) 7 Dad, affectionately (3,3) 8 South-East Asian island (6) 14 Moved (9) 16 Protection from rain or sun (8) 17 I nsect’s feelers (8) 19 S ocialist (7) 20 A dhesive label (7) 21 D ried fruit (6) 22 D anger (6) 25 Type of drum (5)

an intellectual (8)

2 A schemer tangled wool (8) 3 Frost read out short poem (5) 4 Fruit from a crop? It is rotten (7) 5 Funny-sounding bone (7) 6 Son will eat seconds with room, oddly

enough, for cake (5,4)

7 Almond flakes for dad (3,3) 8 Carried over island (6) 14 Excited demon threw up unfinished dessert (9) 16 Bull and mare fighting for protection from rain (8) 17 I nsect quietly removed feathers and feelers (8) 19 Voice makes impression on first socialist (7) 20 A dhesive label from small watch (7) 21 D ried fruit is found in shower (6) 22 D ifficult to accept: extreme characters in

danger (6) 25 D rum beginning to break on journey (5)

SUDOKU PAGE 43

2 8 5 7 1 3 9 6 4

7 9 4 6 2 8 3 1 5

1 6 3 9 5 4 8 2 7

9 3 2 4 7 5 1 8 6

4 1 8 2 3 6 7 5 9

6 5 7 1 8 9 2 4 3

3 2 1 5 6 7 4 9 8

8 4 6 3 9 1 5 7 2

5 7 9 8 4 2 6 3 1

Puzzle by websudoku.com

WORD BUILDER PAGE 43 5 Snail Molar Salon Smile Alone 6 Aliens Salmon Sailor Morsel Serial 7 Sea lion Realism 8 Semolina 9 Normalise

21 AUG 2020

1 Resilient insects (11) 7 Sphere (3) 9 Dangerous (5) 10 Leftover (9) 11 Fairground attraction (6,3) 12 W hite deposit in kettle (5) 13 Transport by plane (7) 15 B uy things (4) 18 T inned meat (4) 20 W ise king (7) 23 S tun (5) 24 P ay back (9) 26 S tyle of comedy (9) 27 S ynthetic fabric (5) 28 B ob (3) 29 D ecay (11)

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

words by Michael Epis photos by Don Paulsen

Click

1965

Cher, Sonny Bono, Bob Dylan

n a galaxy far, far away – the 1960s – Cher rode her first wave of fame, accompanied by partner Sonny Bono, on the back of Bob Dylan songs, in the brief moment when folk-rock was a thing. Cher was a young woman looking for a future when she met Sonny, 11 years her senior, and soon became his housekeeper. He was working with record producer (and later murderer) Phil Spector; soon enough Cher was singing backup on Spector records, including the Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’. Sonny and Cher partnered up, and began singing together. Her debut single, a cover of Dylan’s ‘All I Really Want to Do’ was a hit, and more followed, including a brave version of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and a take on ‘Masters of War’ with what sounds suspiciously like a sitar, which is pretty weird, but strangely effective. During the 60s Cher sold 40 million (!) records, many of them ‘I Got You Babe’, which Cher thought was Sonny’s songwriting riposte to Dylan’s ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’. Cher and Dylan crossed paths again in 1974 when they both sang at the birthday party of record mogul David Geffen. It’s hard not to see these photos as a classic “who farted?” scenario: Cher’s body language is all accusation; Sonny looks mortified, but then Dylan turns the tables – and doesn’t Sonny look relieved. Cher is none best pleased. Years later in a TV interview, photographer Don Paulsen remembered it differently: “Bob had the hots for Cher.”

17 APR 2020