The Big Issue Australia #660 – How Much to Save the Planet?

Ed.

660 29 APR 2022

CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS LEAH PURCELL and CHICKEN AND RICE

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Contents

EDITION

660 24 LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF

Writing Was a Place to Take a Breath Author Christos Tsiolkas reflects on growing up in Melbourne suburbia in the 70s, the girlfriends who helped him come out – and the great achievement of his parents.

30 FILM

The Legend of Molly Johnson

12.

Show Us the Money

by Eve Livingston

The price of saving the world from climate change has been estimated at US$50trillion. Sure, it’s a lot – but not as much as you might think, compared to, say, what we collectively spent on COVID measures. Of course, the cost of not investing in our planet is much, much higher… contents photo by Getty cover illustration by Luke John Matthew Arnold @lukejohnmatthewarnold

Luke is a visual artist and illustrator who creates text-based work about the communities and issues around him.

THE REGULARS

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

26 27 34 35 36 37

Ricky Fiona Film Reviews Small Screen Reviews Music Reviews Book Reviews

39 43 45 46

Public Service Announcement Puzzles Crossword Click

Since its publication in 1892, ‘The Drover’s Wife’ has been an Australian touchstone. Director Leah Purcell takes the tale in a whole new direction with her new film.

40 TASTES LIKE HOME

Kotopoulo Me Rizi When Daniel and Luke Mancuso lost their mother, they gained a Yiayia Next Door – whose Chicken with Rice they adore.

Ed’s Letter

by Amy Hetherington Editor @amyhetherington

Power Trip

O

LETTER OF THE FORTNIGHT

ver the Easter break, I drove up and down the Hume Highway, stopping each way at my favourite pie-stop: Holbrook. The small New South Wales town (population 1715) feels like it almost doubles in size outside the bakery, where there’s always a queue for coffee, quiche, slices and sangas. And there were just as many folk stopping off to explore the famous submarine, HMAS Otway – an interesting quirk for an inland town sitting some 260km or so from the ocean.

As we chomped on our pastry-encased delights in the shadow of the war vessel, which was covered by clamouring children, a smaller vessel reversed into the carpark next to me: a gleaming white Tesla. Distracted, I hadn’t noticed the EV charging station, one of more than 3000 around the country.

My first sighting of an EV powering up in the wild, I sidled up to the owner, who explained charging his car was

like charging a mobile phone. Today, he reckoned, he’d need around 20 minutes: “Just as long as the queues up the road waiting to pump their cars full of dinosaur juice.” And he wasn’t wrong.

Not only that, but this particular roadside charger was free. FREE! My pastie was more expensive than his whole trip from Sydney to Melbourne. The cost-benefit of doing the right thing for the planet was clearly in this guy’s favour.

But how much will it really cost us to tackle climate change and save the planet?

That’s the US$50 trillion-dollar question writer Eve Livingston unpacks in this edition. And while that enormous figure may sound incredible – especially when you consider Elon Musk’s Tesla-driven fortune sits at US$265 billion – it’s not impossible. As we find out, the global COVID-19 response has been estimated at $12 trillion, and the business of doing war collectively costs us $14 trillion per year.

While the cost of doing nothing? That’s not something we should even consider.

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

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

Your Say

We’ve relished The Big Issue for yonks!

Originally customers of Wayne in Fairfield, we’re now in Warrandyte, subscribing via the wonderful WSE team, and delighted with the occasional calls asking how we’re enjoying our Big Issue. Answer every time: we adore all the features, devour every page: Click, Ear2Ground, Hearsay, Streetsheet, cover story, the reviews, even the Ed’s Letter!

Lovin’ Lorin Clarke’s Public Service Announcements, and the face-off with rockin’ Ricky French and the wry, winsome Fiona Scott‑Norman.

Cheers to years and years of The Big Issue!

JOY & MALCOLM SMITH WARRANDYTE I VIC

Michael, it was lovely meeting you on Collins Street today. You helped me pick out a fantastic issue Stories from the Street, which has given me lots to reflect on. Keep up the amazing work.

I Imagine it mustn’t be easy at times with all the pandemic curve balls. The work you are doing is meaningful and sure to bring a smile to people’s faces.

TASH MELBOURNE I VIC

• Our Women’s Subscription Enterprise provides employment and training for women through the sale of magazine subscriptions as well as social procurement work.

• The Community Street Soccer Program promotes social inclusion and good health at weekly soccer games at 23 locations around the country.

• The Vendor Support Fund will offset the cost price of products for vendors, allowing them to earn a larger margin on their own street sales.

• The Big Issue Education workshops provide school, tertiary and corporate groups with insights into homelessness and disadvantage, and provide work opportunities for people experiencing marginalisation.

CHECK OUT ALL THE DETAILS AT THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Joy and Malcolm win a copy of the new Yiayia Next Door cookbook. You can check out her chicken and rice recipe on 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 I was born in Melbourne. I’ve got my mum. I’ve got my twin sister – I’m classed as older, by a couple of seconds, I think – and then I’ve got my little sister and my brother. My parents separated when I was young, around four or five.

I was living at my grandparents’, on and off since I was little because my mum was working, or she couldn’t afford the rent, so we stayed there. We were all close to them. My grandpa taught me to ride bikes and fish and all that. And my grandma was good, she bought me ice creams, and she taught me knitting. Mum taught me how to live. My dad died at 60, when I was 15 or 16. He had asbestos exposure from James Hardie.

I went to Concord School, a specialist school. I just was slow at learning. The people there were good. Then I went to Lalor North. I finished Year 10, then left. I just didn’t like school that much. When I went from Concord to Lalor North, people were just teasing too much. I didn’t feel good, and decided to leave.

I did a brick labouring apprenticeship for a year. That was alright. And odd jobs here and there: painting, bricklaying, working in a fruit shop.

I moved out when I was 18 or 19. I had nowhere to go – and they chuck you in a rooming house, which is no good.

Now I live in a caravan at my mum’s. I prefer my own space.

When I was moving around everywhere, I decided to leave my cat with this guy Martin in a rooming house.

I got Jacky when I was 14 or 15, from my mate across the road, when his cat had babies. She was my cat. My mum said, why don’t you leave her with Martin? And then one night, I was catching a tram back home and I just got talking to this guy. He said he was staying in a rooming house in Brunswick, and I asked, like where?

And he said my one. I go, “How is Martin? He’s taking care of my cat.” He goes, he died. This is not even three or four weeks after I moved out. I jumped off the tram to race to the house, and my cat is almost doing circles in the backyard. I called her, I grabbed her, and I took her home. I shouldn’t have left her there. But if I had never spoken to this guy, I would not know. That’s some kinda divine intervention.

I like playing RuneScape. I’ve been playing RuneScape for 15 years. It’s a role-playing game.

I like talking to other players and doing my own thing, and making a lot of gold in the game.

I’ve been selling The Big Issue for seven or eight years. It has helped me with money, because before that, I had no money. My Centrelink went straight to rent. I’ll sell The Big Issue until I can get a house and get a girlfriend, and that’s about it, I guess.

SELLS THE BIG ISSUE ON BOURKE STREET MALL, MELBOURNE

PROUD UNIFORM PARTNER OF THE BIG ISSUE VENDORS.

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29 APR 2022

interview by Amy Hetherington photo by James Braund

JAMES

Streetsheet

Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends

Save the Market

Vale Adnan

Fisherman’s Wharf Market in Port Adelaide is open every Sunday (and public holiday Mondays) from 9am-4pm, but now the lease has come up and the owner has been asked to close it down in September, after more than 20 years. You’ve got everything there, including kitchenware, car parts, toys, clothes, shoes, books, playing cards, bike parts and leather goods.

Outside of the building you have food stalls: hot dogs, hot chips, hamburgers, hot coffees. Then you’ve got one called Danny’s Mini Donuts, which makes great little donuts and toasted sandwiches: cheese, ham and cheese, ham and cheese and tomatoes. Upstairs you have a stall called Mystical, run

by Heather. She sells all different types of wolves, dragons, insects, dresses, shirts, toys, books, cups, lucky dips for children, parents and adults. The owner of the markets is looking for another site for them all to move. But they have to wait to see what happens. I would like to see all the Adelaide people visit down there – as well as interstate and overseas people, too.

KERRY-ANNE THE BODY SHOP, RUNDLE MALL , ELIZABETH & ADELAIDE ARCADE I ADELAIDE

06

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

I

t is with great sadness that we announce the passing of vendor Adnan, who was very recently diagnosed with cancer. You may know him from the cover of the Vendor Week edition in March.

Adnan has been a regular with The Big Issue since mid-2020, working in Paddington and Coorparoo, Brisbane. He enjoyed selling the magazine because he loved meeting and learning about people from all over the world. He was highly political and believed “everyone in the world must struggle for the end of wars, for children not to die, for the end of hunger, for peace to come”. It was an honour to know Adnan and he will be sorely missed.

PETER SIMMONS VENDOR SUPPORT I QUEENSLAND

On my third day selling The Big Issue a lady rocked up and asked me to mind her dog for five minutes while she did her shopping. But she didn’t say that it was really scared and shivering. Everyone thought it was my dog and people kept telling me to feed it. Some people bought me dog food. I ended up holding the dog, to try to comfort it, and I sold more magazines than ever before. She came back about three hours later – she didn’t even say sorry or thanks.

TALLIS GPO QUEEN STREET I BRISBANE

PHOTO BY BARRY STREET

Ruff Spot

Hard Yakka I recently got the opportunity to work as a guest speaker in The Big Issue Classroom. It is a great opportunity to talk to students about homelessness and surviving on limited finances. One thing did cross my mind: I would have to dress a good deal more formally than I usually do to sell The Big Issue. The dress code for selling Big Issue is informal, casual. I was homeless when I began, and my irreverent wearing of Nike, Adidas and ex-military clothes reflected the limited choices of this Big Issue vendor – clothes built tough to last, as money is limited. Yes, I was homeless when I started with Big Issue in 2009 and yes, homeless again in 2015 when I again started

from scratch. And yes, on both occasions the Sallies sent me down to their op shop and I went to Aussie Disposals to get the right long-lasting clothes. But now, as a long-time vendor lecturing students about homelessness, I need to reflect my better results, like a teacher – formal casual at least. A Country Road wardrobe easily tops $100-$200 from a Country Road franchise. But from Savers at Footscray and Brunswick, or op shops, a full Country Road kit easily comes in under $100. So now I am shopping for fashion items, which although are not cheap, are also not that dear. And I’m honestly enjoying talking to young people about hard-wearing formals!

KELLY CNR ELIZABETH & LONSDALE STS I MELBOURNE

Mother Nature She feels nothing she does is good enough Transparent dangling carrots shine the way forward Her glass castle in ruins Her heart, soul and mind argue For no-one is sinless The world is a place of insanity Lights trickle down poles as she tries to clutch at straws In her loveless world A world of insanity Where those who destroy Mother Nature are in charge And those who try to save it are jailed or punished LYNN (AKA NOVA CHRISTEEN) NEWCASTLE

ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.

Hats Off, Liz The best thing about selling The Big Issue is my customers. I was really chuffed this week when my customer Liz got back from her holiday in Brisbane and gave me this hat (and bought a mag).

It was a lovely thought. I have also recently started accepting sales via PayID. I have done my first three sales and I’m slowly getting the hang of it.

STEVE W ELIZABETH QUAY I PERTH

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

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29 APR 2022

STEVE SAVOURS HIS SOUVENIR

Hearsay

Andrew Weldon Cartoonist

US, which some scientists claim shows dinosaurs were killed and entombed on the day a giant asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago.

BBC I UK

It does leave one very tired and exhausted, doesn’t it?

“Post the lockdown, I’m seeing people become bolder about freely expressing themselves. I think that a lot of people have always had thoughts of wanting it, but have not gone out there to explore it, maybe because of the fear or the taboo attached to it.”

J’son D’souza, aka Mr Piercer, on the boom in intimate piercings: he used to get eight to 10 requests in a month, now he’s getting almost that many requests every week.

VICE I US

The Queen on contracting COVID in February at the age of 96.

THE AUSTRALIAN I AU

“Ain’t nobody in it – this is crazy.”

San Francisco police apprehend a self-driving vehicle cruising the streets without headlights – only to find there was no-one inside.

food trucks, wellness days and private gigs from Lizzo (hello Google) can’t ameliorate the average one-hour daily commute.

8

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

VOGUE I UK

“Employees aren’t going to come in regularly just for the frills. What are you going to do next? Get Justin Bieber and then Katy Perry?”

Nick Bloom, economic professor at Stanford University, on tech companies’ efforts to entice employees back to the office. But even perks like

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD I AU

THE NEW YORK TIMES I US

THE GUARDIAN I UK

“I get so, so sad about it. Like, what happens if she doesn’t walk down the aisle and I’m standing there? [That’s] like, my biggest fear.”

Brooklyn Beckham, son of millionaires, on his unfounded fears ahead of his extravagant wedding to Nicola Peltz, daughter of billionaires.

“I mean, if there’s kitchen rage in an organisation, I think it tells us something, which is not just about the kitchen.”

Professor Katherine Reynolds, from Australian National University, on breaches in work etiquette – along with the return of the passive‑aggressive sign in the office kitchen.

“It has to be with salt and only with salt, because in Barbados we take our fruits to the ocean and soak them. Trust me, it really is a thing.”

Rihanna on her pregnancy cravings for tangerines sprinkled with salt.

VOGUE I US

“This looks like an animal whose leg has simply been ripped off really quickly. There’s no evidence on the leg of disease, there are no obvious pathologies, there’s no trace of the leg being scavenged, such as bite marks or bits of it that are missing.”

Professor Paul Barrett, from London’s Natural History Museum, on a preserved prehistoric leg, found in the

“The Saints were Australia’s greatest band, and Chris Bailey was my favourite singer.”

Nick Cave, paying tribute to the man who inspired him, Chris Bailey, who has died, aged 65.

THE RED HAND FILES I UK

“It took two to three hours to get ready every day. I would shave my head myself to make the prosthetics for my hacked-off ears easier to glue down.”

Actor Eric Bana looking back on the making of the film Chopper.

Notorious criminal Mark “Chopper” Read, who Bana portrayed 22 years ago, had a fellow cellmate cut off part of his ears, supposedly to win a bet.

THE GUARDIAN I AU

20 Questions

by Rachael Wallace

01 Which has a wider diameter:

Australia or the moon?

02 Garry Gary Beers played bass

in which Australian band?

03 What is the traditional route

of Qantas flight QF1?

04 Who won the 2022 Australian

Grand Prix?

05 What is chrometophobia a fear of?

06 At how many Olympic Games

has swimmer Emily Seebohm competed?

07 What year was the UK’s Brexit

referendum?

08 Who wrote the 1964 novel Chitty-

Chitty-Bang-Bang?

09 Who is the narrator of the Netflix

series Bridgerton?

10 Queen guitarist Brian May gained

“You can totally transform the way you react to pandemics, treat patients and do things like home health-care delivery.”

Keller Rinaudo, chief executive of Zipline, an American firm that has begun delivering medical supplies to people in remote parts of Japan by drone.

JAPAN TODAY I JP

THE AGE I AU

“HD1 would represent a giant baby in the delivery room of the early universe.”

Avi Loeb, astronomer at Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics, on the discovery of the most distant astrological body, HD1, a galaxy 13.5 billion light years away.

SCIENCE DAILY I US

“We know what the problems are and we know how to solve them.

All we lack is unified action.”

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, naturist Sir David Attenborough on saving it.

BBC I UK

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

his doctorate in what subject in 2007?

11 How many first-grade rugby league

premierships did the North Sydney Bears win?

12 Which fruit is banned from

being eaten in many hotels in South-East Asia?

13 Who recently became the highest

scorer in any cricket World Cup final?

14 Do more people speak Danish,

Swedish or Norwegian?

15 If someone is an EGOT winner, what

have they won?

16 Egyptian man Omar Hegazy holds

the Guinness World Record for the longest distance swimming underwater with one breath. How far did he swim: a) 56.48 metres b) 63.59 metres c) 47.55 metres or d) 70.77 metres?

17 How many herbs and spices were

in Colonel Sanders’ Original Recipe chicken?

18 Who played Dr Frank-N-Furter

in the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

19 What colour is the centre square

on a Scrabble board?

20 What is the South African food

bunny chow?

ANSWERS ON PAGE 43

29 APR 2022

THE GUARDIAN I AU

“It never made No#1 though, I’ll never get to wear the T-shirt that says ‘I’m a New York Times bestseller.’”

Author Graeme Simsion on his first book The Rosie Project, which was published in 40 countries, is about to be made into a movie, and spent 65 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list – but still no sweet tee.

9

“Some cats like going out for a Very Official Person: walk on the lead.

“What is your They’re just like preferred name?” people” Six-year-old boy: Dr Jacqui Ley, “I really like when a Melbourne my dad calls me specialist in buster.” veterinary behavioural Overheard by Karin of medicine, on why Melbourne. your beloved moggy might not mind a meander through the local park. The RSPCA on the other hand “does not recommend it”. But do people really like being on a leash?

EAR2GROUND

My Word

by Vin Maskell

M

um died 29 years ago. November 1993. I don’t remember – or perhaps I refuse to remember – the exact date. I remember Dad ringing me.

That was odd in itself – Mum was the talker of the two.

Dad was never one for lengthy phone calls and this call was no different. What more could he say than what had to be said? He had five children to ring, and Mum’s several siblings, and friends and colleagues, and the funeral director, and the church and…

I remember sitting on the couch in the lounge room after the phone call. Not necessarily shocked – Mum had undergone heart surgery two months earlier. Not crying. But shaken, of course. Adrift.

I told my wife Julie, whose father had died only weeks before. We told our children, three-year-old Hannah and 13-month-old Jesse. What would they make of it? What would I make of it?

The funeral was on a hot December day, but it was cooler inside the suburban church. Symbolic, perhaps?

There were three priests at the altar (three!). At Dad’s request – more a signal than a spoken directive – I took communion, even though I’d abandoned religion more than 10 years before: now was not the time to worry about my own beliefs. Some of my siblings joined me in the communion queue.

A seeming stranger read the eulogy, turning over the stapled pages of Mum’s life story. Born in the Depression. Seven siblings. One of four daughters of a cranky self-employed engineer. Married to the only child of a horse-trainer. Six children. Another two stillborn. President of the primary school mothers’ club for a year or two. Moved the family with her husband’s work: Melbourne, then Geelong, then back to Melbourne, then Geelong again. An overseas holiday with a sister, cut short by tragedy. A beach house near the Great Ocean Road.

The stranger reading the basic facts of Mum’s 65 years was a long-time friend of my parents, but

I couldn’t place him. Neither his face nor his voice were familiar. You can never know your parents as well as they know you. They have lives and friends and history, separate from parenting.

Outside the church, after the service, the heat was sapping and the glare was blinding. The concrete of the church’s forecourt left us exposed. Julie’s eldest sister had taken Jesse for a long walk during the funeral mass.

Our blond son was now asleep, and a little sunburned, in his stroller.

There was shade at the cemetery, a graveyard bordered by a local footy ground and my childhood primary school. I remember the large pile of soil – probably heavy clay – near the gravesite, and wishing there were shovels, wishing I could do something physical, something active, something practical rather than standing calmly. Funerals are so restrained, dignified. The passivity is stifling.

Was there afternoon tea at the church hall after the burial? Probably. Of course there would have been. That’s when people start to relax, to tell stories, to laugh a little.

But I can’t picture it. Still, I remember not quite wanting to go home. Home was only an hour up the highway, but I wasn’t ready for the drive. I knew we couldn’t return to the lives we led before the day Dad rang.

So we visited our friends Bill and Carol. In the shade of their garden they offered cool drinks, snacks and conversation. The children stretched their little legs and sat on our laps. They no longer had to contend with a forest of adults, and neither did I. Bill and Carol, always quiet and gentle, provided solace at the end of a day, the end of a week of not just loss and grief but of newness: of the new experience of being motherless.

But, of course, we had to leave. We had to go home.

We had to go back. The hot sun was setting but it would rise again. The highway traffic was thinning but life would be busy again. Nappies to change, washing to hang, meals to cook, people to love.

And a father to call from time to time.

Mum died 29 years ago. I don’t remember the exact date.

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

11

Things will never be the same after losing his mother, but the rhythms of life carry Vin Maskell forward through the days, months, years since.

29 APR 2022

The Days After

$how Us the Money A stack of 50 trillion dollar bills would reach into space.

It’s an almost inconceivable sum. But in terms of saving the planet, it’s a small price to pay.

by Eve Livingston Eve Livingston is a freelance journalist based in Scotland. She writes and speaks about politics, social affairs and inequalities for a number of publications and broadcasters. @eve_rebecca

A source of debate While various organisations and groups have worked to stamp a price on tackling climate change, they have largely failed to reach consensus for a number of reasons. Not all agree on what is meant in the first place by saving the planet: is it a case of avoiding the worst effects of climate change or of turning around our fortunes completely? And even fewer agree on the specific actions required and how they should be prioritised.

$50 trillion in the global economy Clearly, these are enormous sums of money – particularly if you happen to be stacking dollar bills on top of each other or laying them out like tiles. But in the context of global government spending, they are a little easier to quantify.

Globally, governments are estimated to have spent $12 trillion supporting people through COVID-19, while a recent study suggested that

29 APR 2022

illustrations by Col McElwaine

size of France.

Considered in the abstract like this, US$50 trillion is an incomprehensible sum of money.

But what if you were told it was also the total price of tackling climate change globally – and saving the planet?

Estimates as to this figure vary, depending on various factors, and the true picture of climate economics is more complex than a single headline figure, because different interventions can lead to positive and negative economic impacts in the medium and longer term. But attempts to put a price on saving the planet can prove useful for climate activists and economists alike – not least because they overwhelmingly demonstrate that the costs of inaction would be far greater.

Morgan Stanley, most commonly associated with the $50 trillion figure which came from its 2019 report Decarbonization: The Race to Zero Emissions, identifies specific areas of investment and attaches price tags to each: renewables; electric vehicles; carbon capture; hydrogen production and biofuels.

But others include in their analyses the protection of biodiversity, improved infrastructure to protect against extreme weather, the introduction of carbon taxes on business, and any number of other actions. Estimates therefore vary between around $300 billion and $100 trillion, and tend to refer to investment needed over the next two decades rather than a single static figure.

Where scientists agree broadly is on the three pillars of action needed to halt global warming and reach net zero globally: mitigation, referring to actions that will slow the rate of global warming; adaptation, or how to live with the effects of global warming that are irreversible or already baked in to the future; and resilience – the transition to a new, sustainable way of life.

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C

an you picture 50 trillion dollars?

Fifty trillion dollar bills stacked one on top of each other would easily reach into space. Laid out, they would cover nearly 520,000 square kilometres, almost the

Failure to maintain the 2 degree Celsius limit could subtract $10-20 trillion from global GDP by 2100 – with the costs to humanity even higher.

MORGAN STANLEY’S DECARBONIZATION: THE RACE TO ZERO EMISSIONS

Central to any discussion of climate spending is the fact that these actions and investments don’t exist as standalone items of expenditure. Rather, they pay for things which can go on to have their own economic benefits by creating jobs or income.

“The findings of [our] research suggest that the traditional assumption that action on climate change is net-costly is false,” says Dr Fergus Green, author of an influential 2015 paper on the economic benefits of tackling climate change.

In it, he argues that “the majority of the global emissions reductions needed to decarbonise the global economy can be achieved in ways that are nationally net-beneficial to countries, even leaving aside the ‘climate benefits’.”

At a global level, the UN estimates that doubling renewable energy capacity by 2030 could in fact save the world between $1.2 trillion and $4.2 trillion each year, by reducing pollution. Moreover, the UK National Audit Office has found that every dollar spent on preparing for flooding saves nine in damage avoided.

Analysis by the Global Commission on Economy and Climate has even found that the transition to

The cost of inaction And while huge, estimates such as the $50 trillion figure still pale in comparison when compared to the costs of not acting to tackle climate change.

In August last year, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted the brutal and often irreversible effects of human activity and warned of increasingly extreme temperatures, flooding, wildfires and drought in a report described by UN Secretary-General António Guterres as “a code red for humanity”.

Alongside these catastrophic impacts on humanity itself, the costs associated with the status quo are also difficult to conceive of. Morgan Stanley estimates that in just three years, from 2016 to 2018, the type of climate-related natural disasters that are expected to worsen in the coming years cost the world $650 billion. Analysis by the Swiss Re Institute suggests unfettered climate change could wipe up to 18 per cent of GDP from the global economy by 2050.

Time is running out. Only this month the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change warned that “it’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C”. It did so in the face of accelerating climate disasters – such as the loss of an Antarctic ice shelf as large as New York City in March.

While world leaders continue to argue their countries’ responsibilities, targets, actions and contributions, what is not up for debate is the urgency with which climate change needs to be tackled and invested in seriously. Fifty trillion dollars might be a huge sum, but to protect the future of humanity it seems a small price to pay.

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FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE BIG ISSUE UK , ED#1485, BIGISSUE.COM @BIGISSUE

Paying dividends

low carbon and sustainable development could result in a $26 trillion boost to the economy and 65 million new jobs by 2030, more than paying for the initial costs of putting such actions in place.

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the US had spent $8 trillion on wars abroad since 9/11. Globally, conflict and violence cost the world around $14 trillion each year when military spending, security and losses are accounted for.

Crucially, world leaders committed to spending to tackle climate change in 2015, when the Paris Agreement was signed. “We need to make good now on the handshake that we had in Paris of $100 billion,” UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J Mohammed said last year at the global TED Countdown Summit in Edinburgh. “And that was promised annually. Rich countries, let me say here and now: we’re looking at you for the unfinished business.”

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illustration by XXX

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Shelter from the Storm From fires to floods to the pandemic, climate change is compounding Australia’s housing crisis. And it is those living on the margins who are bearing the brunt.

by Sophie Quick

are mouldy. In terms of the interior, it looks like a demolition job.”

Over the course of the 2017 and 2022 floods, Gary believes he’s lost tens of thousands of dollars of rare timber in his workshop. He’s also lost valuable workshop tools and equipment that took him years to save for. His house is uninhabitable. He’s now couch surfing.

The stress of housing insecurity is something Gary feels acutely. He’s a community worker and peer consultant, advising and volunteering with local mental health services. He has lived with mental health issues himself, on and off, for long periods of his life. Prior to moving to Lismore for the long haul in 2007, he spent several years homeless: couch surfing and sleeping rough.

“I’ve gone from homeless, sleeping rough, to home owner hardly sleeping,” he says.

“I am now in a position where I’m homeless with a mortgage.”

Extreme weather events are increasing in severity and intensity, not just in the Northern Rivers region and not just in Australia. Though it’s not always possible to link specific disasters to global warming, there are clear and conclusive climate trends.

In April, climatologist Neil Plummer from the Monash Climate Change Communication

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PHOTO BY GETTY

G

ary Shallala-Hudson’s home is a classic Queenslander in the heart of Lismore. It’s just a short walk to his office in the CBD, and a stroll through the gardens to the city library. His dining room window has a superb view of the fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Beneath his home he has a workshop. Gary makes rare-wood electric guitars.

He bought the place in 2013 and it suffered severe damage in the Lismore floods of 2017, which breached the town’s levee and flooded the CBD. Gary was “10 times more prepared” for the 2022 floods, he says. But nobody in Lismore was really prepared for the catastrophic deluge on 28 February which, at 14.4 metres, was two full metres higher than the previous record high, in 1954. It destroyed 2000 homes. And it was impossible in the aftermath for anyone to prepare for the rains that followed in March, which reached 11.4 metres and breached the town’s levee for the second time in a month.

The 2022 floods have seen Gary rescued twice from rising water by neighbours and emergency services. They’ve seen him swimming to safety. And they’ve seen Gary’s home all but destroyed.

“There’s internal walls missing,” he says.

“The front stairs washed away. The ceilings

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Sophie Quick is a Melbourne-based writer.

Research Hub told The Guardian, “Climate snowballing effects on people’s health and their change is increasing the risks of heatwaves, ability to work. bushfires and high-intensity rainfall.” A report In many bushfire-affected communities, from the World Meteorological Organisation in people are still feeling the impact on their health 2021 found that the number of weather-related and livelihoods, even as the nation’s attention has disasters across the world has increased five-fold switched from the fires to the pandemic and then over the past 50 years. to this year’s floods.

Gary says many locals have been long In the case of the recent Lismore floods, convinced that extreme weather events are practically everyone in town has been directly increasing in severity and that the phenomenon is affected. But in the long term, it’s vulnerable linked to climate change. He mentions the famous people, people on low incomes and people who Knitting Nanas activist group, founded in Lismore are homeless, who tend to bear the brunt of 10 years ago, who staged protests against coal weather catastrophes. mines outside their local MP’s office.

The floods in the Northern Rivers have “The Knitting Nanas led the march,” he says. compounded a long-term pre-existing housing “But there are even fourth-generation farmers crisis in the region. around here – people who vote conservative – “Long-term locals have been priced out of a who have been protesting about climate change lot of accommodation and priced out of being since before the 2017 floods.” insured,” Gary says.

Insurance companies are clearly convinced of House prices in Lismore have almost doubled the risks of more extreme weather in five years reports Domain, events too. In 2020, Gary rang his from a median price of $340,000 insurance company to ask about in December 2016 to $612,500 in cyclone as well as flood coverage.

December last year. And while He discovered that monthly Northern Rivers only represents premiums had more than tripled four per cent of the New South since 2017. Plus, he’d have to serve Wales population, the region a waiting period. recorded almost 20 per cent of the “I rang them in September, state’s rough sleepers in the 2016 before the season of strong winds Census. Housing stress among starts, and they said I’d have to wait private renters is much higher than four months before they’d pay out average, too, and there’s a chronic on any damage.” shortage of social housing supply.

Extreme weather events of Tony Davies, the CEO of Social course present direct threats to Futures, a major homelessness people’s lives and homes. But once service in the region, says the crisis the imminent danger is over, and has worsened during the pandemic.

LISMORE RESIDENT GARY SHALLALA-HUDSON the severity of the crisis has been “Economic issues are driving measured and reported in terms of homelessness. As a homelessness lives and properties lost, the media service we are seeing more and moves on and people are left to pick up the pieces. more people who just cannot afford the rent,” It can take years to recover, especially if you lose he says. “And there’s mass migration out of your home. the cities with the pandemic and the rise of The 2019-2020 Australian bushfire season telecommuting – it’s driven up house prices and – unprecedented in scale, burning more than rents dramatically.”

17 million hectares of land and affecting Davies says people living in improvised or communities in almost every state in Australia marginal housing are especially vulnerable to – caused the displacement of almost 65,000 extreme weather events. “People who are sleeping people. A report from the Internal Displacement rough have traditionally camped along the rivers Monitoring Centre found the bushfires destroyed or in the low-lying caravan parks… Homeless more than 3100 homes, potentially leading people tend to look for places where they won’t to longer-term displacement for around 8100 be seen and moved on. Many of these places people. The same report predicted a one-to-four were inundated.” year timeframe for people who lost their homes in Many have had no choice but to return to their the fires to rebuild. Some people were still living homes after the floods, even though their homes in temporary or emergency accommodation six may be dangerous, Davies says. months after they fled their homes. The impact “You get mould and health issues. People’s of displacement and potential relocation has quality of life can decline quite dramatically.”

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I’ve gone from homeless, sleeping rough, to home owner hardly sleeping. I am now in a position where I’m homeless with a mortgage.

Lismore local Ruth Morgan is helping to rebuild her community, one book at a time.

Fronting Magellan Street in Lismore’s CBD stands an unremarkable three-level brick building, the home of the library since 2003.

Appearances are deceptive, for inside beats a community heart: battered, bruised, but not beaten.

This was my second – then third – big flood. Seeing images of boats travelling familiar streets, rooftops peering above the muddy torrent, and water lapping halfway up the second floor of the library, my heart cracked.

Library books were washed from shelves into puddles of muck.

A dirty line halfway up the second level marked the flood height.

We put on wellies, old clothes, gloves and masks, and joined the “mud army” to clean up. We were tired, frustrated and dirty. The stench of the flood rose from my pores, following me in a cloud.

The solution to cleaning up the library: open the windows and throw out 30,000 gunk-soaked books.

I’m a lifelong book lover, reader and writer. To see the ever‑growing pile broke my heart. What could one person do?

I had an idea. I contacted my favourite Facebook writing group to gauge the reaction to a book drive. The response was overwhelming.

I phoned Lucy Kinsley, the library manager. She contacted the council and requested a bank account specifically for the library.

She also supplied details about which parts of the collection had been lost.

Rebuilding the library also helps the local bookshop – The Book Warehouse – which lost its entire stock. People can purchase book vouchers or buy new books for the library from them. There are a number of ways you can help.

A small pebble thrown into a pond – well, flood – has resulted in boxes and boxes of new books, cash deposits, some wonderful used books, and unfortunately some books in poor condition. Some donations are already on library shelves. A Mount Everest remains to be unpacked, catalogued and shelved.

We’re a community with lives, homes and businesses in tatters.

We’re heart weary at the prospect of the work that lies ahead.

Our CBD looks like a war zone. People have lost their homes.

Our Lismore library is so many things to so many that its absence is another hole in our battling community. But we are hopeful. A walk through town shows shops and homes, even St Carthage’s Cathedral, flying banners emblazoned with a big red heart.

When the library reopens, it will offer an escape into the world of books, the imagination, movies and music. A momentary escape perhaps, but precious nonetheless.

It will return to its place in the centre.

We will pick up the pieces of our lives.

We will mend our broken heart.

THE FLOOD REACHED THE SECOND STOREY

29 APR 2022

30,000 BOOKS DESTROYED

Right the Book

TO FIND OUT HOW TO HELP, VISIT BIT.LY/HELP-LISMORE-LIBRARY.

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PHOTOS BY PETER WALLACE, MICHAEL LEWIS

Davies believes the events of this year are an opportunity to respond in a considered way to the housing crisis, keeping climate change and the likelihood of more extreme weather events in mind.

“We need to invest seriously in social housing,” he says. “That’s the bedrock of the housing system.

We obviously need to look at how buildings can be made more resilient to floods. We need to look at where houses are located and we need systems to respond really rapidly so that people can be rehoused quickly… If we are going to prepare properly for climate changes and natural disasters, we need to have those [crisis] housing supply arrangements in place in advance.”

In the meantime, the costs to individuals and communities are impossible to quantify. Gary came to Lismore to reconnect with friends. He has built a life for himself there, with meaningful work and a strong sense of community. In the weeks since the floods, he’s been working at a community crisis hub, assisting locals to access tools for repairs, and distributing anti-mould supplies. “Lismore is a lovely place,” he says.

“I think this kind of event is going to bring a lot of things undone. You can’t count it with money.”

series by Ciril Jazbec

The Big Picture 20

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(N)Ice One Diminishing snow falls and shrinking glaciers mean the Indian region of Ladakh in the Great Himalayas is running out of water.

Ciril Jazbec documents their ingenious solution to this pressing problem.

by Michael Epis Contributing Editor

FOR MORE, GO TO CIRILJAZBEC.COM.

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This 33.5m high ice stupa near the village of Shara Phuktsey won first prize for the largest ice stupa in a 2019 competition. Its nearly two million gallons of stored water helped irrigate fields in four villages.

The stupa also drew tourists: ice climbers came to scale its steep flanks.

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W

e think that the first big victims of global warming are the low-lying island nations of the Pacific, which are going under as the sea level rises. But the first big victims of global warming are precisely the opposite: people who live at high altitudes, whose problem is a lack of water. And who at the same time risk being swept away by too much water, as happened to 6000 people who died in India in 2013 when torrential rain caused part of a glacier to suddenly melt.

Ladakh is India’s northernmost region, in the Himalayas. In winter the mercury dips to -40°C; in summer it climbs to 40°C. While there might be snow on the mountains above, Ladakh is a desert, receiving virtually no snow and experiencing sudden downpours that wreak devastation. People rely entirely on run-off from glaciers, much of it melted snow from recent falls.

That water sustains life by feeding crops, livestock and people. And here’s the problem: snowfall has dropped by half in 30 years. Temperatures have risen, by 1°C in winter, and 0.5°C in summer, in the past 40 years, making the glaciers recede. The water that is needed to irrigate fields in March before sowing crops in April and May is simply not there anymore. There is not enough snow water to supply the villages; not enough glacier to get it to the villages. And many mountains that were perennially covered in snow have lost their snow caps. Villages in the mountainous northern tip of India have already been abandoned because the weather patterns have changed, denying them water.

There is a solution (for the moment): the ice stupa, which Slovenian photographer Ciril Jazbec has spent the past few years documenting.

Developed by Sonam Wangchuk, a Ladakhi engineer reinventing old techniques, the ice stupa captures water, turns it into ice, then later back into water.

Flowing water at the start of winter is diverted into irrigation channels, slowing the water down and capturing it, so it can become frozen as temperatures drop. The channels are dug in the shadow of the mountain, hiding the water from the sun.

Ice stupas come in other forms too: they can be trees planted near the village, on which falls snow, later harvested as water. Walls of earth can do the same job. So can vertical pipes, embedded into streams – the water comes out at the top, turning into ice. “Stupa” is an old word repurposed – it refers to a Buddhist place for holy relics, which can be as humble as a mound of earth or as grand as a huge monument.

Wangchuk knows the ice stupas are not a permanent solution, and that greenhouse gas emissions simply have to be stopped: “We have a negligible carbon footprint,” he told National Geographic,“but we are bearing the brunt of a changing climate.”

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Phuntsok Paldan, a carpenter, built this stupa with his neighbour in the village of Tak-machik, on the banks of the Indus River. The stupa enables local farmers to irrigate their wheat, barley and apricots.

Farida Batool attends middle school in the village of Karith, high in the mountains on the Pakistan border.

She and her fellow students have helped build several ice stupas.

Shara team in front of the Giant Shara Ice Stupa, which is 33.5m tall – the tallest one built so far.

This stupa, in the upper valley of Leh in Ladakh, measures 24m in height and will provide much-needed water in spring to the village of Gangles. India Post are putting ice stupas on stamps, to raise awareness about the effects of disappearing glaciers.

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Ice stupas are built in winter by channelling water from a mountain stream into a vertical pipe. Water comes out of a nozzle at the top, and as cold air freezes the falling spray, a cone of ice rises around the pipe.

Letter to My Younger Self

Writing Was a Place to Take a Breath

by Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor @melissajfulton

Author Christos Tsiolkas was saved by his girlfriends, his English teacher and his family’s unconditional love.

PHOTOS BY GETTY, ANDREW CAMPBELL/SMH, CRAIG ABRAHAM/THE AGE

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think 16-year-old Christos was on the cusp of coming to terms with my sexuality.

When I go back to 16, probably the most pressing memory is realising that I was gay. And coming to terms with it. I mean, that process is a long one – it doesn’t happen overnight – but I think at 16, the running away from it had finished. And so there was a combination in the young boy that was 50 per cent terror and 50 per cent excitement about what the future was going to hold.

I’ve talked a lot about how fortunate I was with the family I’ve got – that sense of even when things were difficult, always knowing that love was unconditional.

The other thing that is really prominent when I go back to 16 are my girlfriends. And when I say girlfriends, friends who happen to be women. They were lifesavers. My friend Catherine, my friend Natasha, my cousin Vicki, a whole heap of women who protected me, who looked after me, who – I don’t think this is too big of a word – saved me.

My parents lied to the primary school in Richmond when I started there, and said I was five when I was actually four, because they were both

7½ IS OUT NOW.

29 APR 2022

sacrifice; to not only think of yourself, and to consider the consequences of your actions on other people. I feel like my generation can’t claim that, that loyalty to other human beings.

If XXIXcould go back to that young man, my advice to him would be to listen more. I had to struggle and create my own world, and fight to be the man I needed to be. But I was so impatient, and I didn’t realise what my parents were offering me.

My father was a beautiful gardener, and one of my great shames was when I was in the garden with my father at about 16. He was saying, what do you want to do with your life? Because he knew I had this creative bent and he was worried about it. And I said, I want to get out of the suburbs; I want to get away from this kind of life – it’s really boring and uninteresting. And he looked around at his plot of land and his garden, and he said, look, this is all I wanted in my life – a place to call my own, where I could raise my children in safety. And I said a really horrible thing to it him: that’s such a petty dream.

It was only after going to Greece as an adult – my dad was one of 12 siblings – and when I went back to the house where he grew up, in the mountains in central Greece, I realised the journey he had taken. And how impressive – much more impressive than anything I’ve done – it was that he had been able to create TOP: THE YOUNG AUTHOR that dream for himself. Thankfully, I was IN HIS STUDY IN CANBERRA able to apologise to my father years later.

BOTTOM: WITH HIS CAT STANLEY, IN MELBOURNE The paths that have led me here, I’m IN THE 90S really grateful for them. So I don’t want to change anything about my life. But I would say to 16-year-old Christos to try better at languages. We’re not very good at languages in Australia, and I’m really glad I’ve got Greek. I think being able to speak in another language, and to listen in another language, makes you more aware of nuance, and respectful of that. I’m grateful for my limited French; I just wish I knew more.

With The Slap, it was really important for me to try to understand every side. But for what it’s worth, I’m on the side of Richie’s mother. If I had to choose one person in that book who I think is a genuinely good person, it’s that character.

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working. And so when I was 16 I was doing my final year at high school – I went to Blackburn High [in Melbourne].

And those girlfriends were the first people I started to tell I was gay, during the HSC year. We had a great art class, and there was only 10 of us. That was one of those spaces where we would sit and talk about everything to do with life, sex, drugs, music, film, and that was the slow beginning of coming out to the world, to those women.

I don’t think that was an accident. I had that trust there.

It was hard, not only being queer, but being in Box Hill… it was a very different time. It was quite Anglo – there wasn’t a lot of us wogs at school. So there was a lot of loneliness as well. But what I had was an absolute love of reading and absolute love of cinema. I’d go into town at least once a week to go and catch a film.

I had the most amazing English teacher, Mr Havir. He was a Czech migrant who absolutely loved literature. And he introduced me to European literature, to the French and to the Russians, and I devoured those books. You know when you’re at that age, and a book or a film, if it captures something about your yearning or your life, it becomes like a Bible. I’m sure if you asked some of the students I was with they would say I was a pretentious prick, but I had really romantic notions of seeing the world, and it came from that love that Mr Havir inspired through reading. Stendhal and Dostoevsky really stand out, and probably James Baldwin as well. Firstly Giovanni’s Room, that was one of the first gay novels I ever read.

One of my best friends Natasha, she and I became obsessed with Woody Allen’s film Manhattan. I saw Manhattan about eight times in two months – she and I just kept going back to it and fantasising: she would become a singer and live on the Lower East Side, and I would be a writer. Again, that film was a bit of a beacon of possible life.

I didn’t grow up in a world where being a writer seemed possible. Mum’s still got notebooks from primary school where I would write books seven pages long, so yes, that yearning, that wanting to be a writer, was there. But I just didn’t know how to make it possible. It seemed like being a writer, being an artist, was all about class, if I can use a big word. It didn’t feel like it belonged to me. And then I got into university and maybe that was the first stirring that it could be something I could do. But that looking over your shoulder? That doesn’t quite go away when it’s not an assumed part of your world.

It was such a relief to know that I could write, and it kind of saved me, because it means that you don’t feel lost. You’ve got those words on the page – you’ve written them, they’re a record. Writing was a place to stand and a place to take a breath for me.

My partner Wayne, we met when I was 19, his peace is in the garden. We all find different ways – it doesn’t have to be the big-A Art. It’s just about finding the path.

I don’t think I realised this at the time, but what my parents passed on to me was a notion of

Ricky For instant cheer, wear yellow.

Take a Number

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by Ricky French @frenchricky

he Guardian recently published an article headlined, ‘100 Ways to Slightly Improve Your Life Without Really Trying’. I’m always up for a slightly improved life without really trying, so of course I accepted the clickbait. Some of the suggestions I was totally down with: “22. Laugh shamelessly at your own jokes;” “17. Don’t be weird about how to stack the dishwasher.” Take that, you know who…

Some were bizarre, though: “85. Don’t get a pet/do get a pet.” “100. For instant cheer, wear yellow.” “28. Always be willing to miss the next train.” (Yes, because nothing slightly improves your life more than missing the train.) Some were self-evident: “89. Politely decline invitations if you don’t want to go.”

Some hinted the authors may have psychotic tendencies. “12. Sharpen your knives.”

I did quite like number 15: “Keep your children’s drawings and paintings. Put the best ones in frames.” I liked it mostly because it allowed me to concoct hypothetical household questions such as, “Daddy, why isn’t my painting of the horse in a frame?”

Some I didn’t understand: “38. Sleep with your phone in a different room.” Look, sleeping with your phone is just plain weird, and what benefit you’d get from doing it in a different room I can’t guess. Some offered strangely specific tax advice: “5. Consider going down to four days a week. It’s likely a disproportionate amount of your fifth day’s work is taxed anyway, so you’ll lose way less than a fifth of your take-home pay.” Excuse me, how much less, oh eminently qualified chartered accountant? “WAY” less! Alright then!

And what about number 10? “Always bring ice to house parties (there’s never enough).”

I especially like the “always” part. Never mind if the party is a two-hour train ride away and you don’t have an Esky. Never mind if you’re already carrying a fruit salad, a sixpack of beer, a present and a tired toddler. Never

mind if the host has specifically requested, “Please don’t bring ice, we have plenty!” You must always bring ice to house parties.

Sometimes the tips raised more questions than they answered. Consider number 14: “Buy a cheap blender and use it to finely chop onions.” Why cheap? If finely chopped onions are such a great way to slightly improve your life, why be such a tight arse? Or number 3: “Tip: the quickest supermarket queue is always behind the fullest trolley (greeting, paying and packing take longer than you think).” I’d be interested to know how long the authors think saying hello and swiping a credit card takes. And that still doesn’t explain their third justification. Surely the person with the fullest trolley would have the most packing to do?

Am I missing something?

The article got me thinking about what my own tips would be to slightly improve your life without really trying. I would go with, “Don’t hang up on scam callers. Keep them talking for as long as it takes to get them to swear at you in at least two languages.” And “Looking for ways to avoid doing work? Go to the kitchen and try to replicate the McDonald’s Big Mac sauce. Keep trying until you get it exactly right.” And, “Buy a plant. Think you’ll kill it? Buy a fake one.” Confession time: that last one actually came from The Guardian article (number 41). Where does the truth end and satire start? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

The point of all this is not to mock someone else’s ideas about how to slightly improve your life without really trying. Maybe the whole thing was satirical? I hope so. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to learn the name of 10 trees, call an old friend out of the blue, sing, skinny‑dip with friends, thank a teacher who changed my life…the list goes on. And on.

Ricky is a writer, musician and self-help guru.

by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND

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t’s been four-and-a-half human years since same-sex marriage became legal in Australia, and contrary to the grim “slippery slope” predictions made by Team No cheerleaders, there’s been – checks notes and News Corp outlets – zero reports of emboldened nutbags eager to exchange wedding vows with their dog/a pack of dogs/underage dogs. Cake shops operated by those who don’t hold with the gay have conspicuously not been “cancelled”, nor forced to apply sumptuous buttercream icing to a triple-layer red velvet cake for Santhia and Thuy’s nuptials. There has been…no furore.

Just a few thousand more peeps getting hitched and contributing to the economy.

Colour me shocked that same-sex marriage became a complete non-issue the second it became legal, when certain politicians had to momentarily pause dog-whistling their base by using the queer community as a punching bag.

I say “momentarily”, of course, lest we forget the Religious Discrimination Bill.

As a writer *flicks hair* I’m no stranger to recurring themes, and the political game of transphobic whack-a-mole continues. The Liberal candidate for Warringah, Katherine Deves, has chosen the anti-trans hill to die on, ditto Tasmanian Liberal Senator Claire Chandler, whose private bill to “Save Women’s Sport” seeks to exclude trans players.

So much energy being pumped into shoring up division and exclusion, when really, if you leave people alone and stop prodding minorities with a stick, folk don’t give a rats about the “assigned gender at birth” of the wing defence in the local netball team at the recreation centre. People know each other on a community level. They’re, you know, friends, and far more invested in common interests, such as Bridgerton and that recipe for the delicious self-saucing lemon sponge. Michelle Obama reflects in her memoir Becoming that she and Barack traversed America for 12 years,

meeting Americans of all stripes and beliefs and finding them, in person, to be gracious and welcoming. “It’s hard to hate up close,” she says. “It’s much easier through a filter.”

Up close, what swims into focus is our commonality. If you cut me, do I not bleed? If I live in Melbourne, do I not drink organic single origin coffee made with ethically sourced milk? Welcome to common ground central, where bickering over whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher is a ritual open to all. Ditto the modern couple’s hot potato topic du jour: “Whose surname do you take when you get married? And give to your kids? Why? SHOW YOUR REASONING.” Nothing like a values-led, presumptionrich conversation to bring everyone together!

All couples now take to the matt and wrestle with “challenging the dominant paradigm/ alienating your in-laws/our names look terrible hyphenated/how many hyphens is too many?/ your surname erases my culture/I grew them in my body/how do I prove the children are mine?/but in our family we name the children after soft drinks/I’m the last of my line/what happens if we divorce?” These conversations open up like a field of daisies to the sun now that women are no longer automatically signed over to their husbands like a used car.

Phew. I spent my teenage years doodling my first name with the surname of any boy I fancied, whispering it into my pillow, and TRYING OUT THE SIGNATURE I’d use when we were married. Dog have mercy.

Every surname holds a complex and delicate story, hammered out of compromise, honouring shared values and culture, bucking expectations, and (frequently) sticking it to the patriarchy. What a fabulous conversation to have over tea and a slice of red velvet cake.

Fiona is an author, comedian and smasher of the patriarchy.

29 APR 2022

Hot Potato Du Jour

Folk don’t give a rats about the ‘assigned gender at birth’ of the wing defence in the local netball team at the recreation centre.

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Fiona

Denzel Curry

Music

Martial Artist Rapper Denzel Curry opens up in unexpected ways on his philosophical new album.

By Cyclone Wehner @therealcyclone

Cyclone Wehner is a Melbourne journalist focusing on R&B, hip-hop, dance music, synth‑pop and pop culture. Her enduring fixations are vampire movies and TV shows.

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f you were not a Denzel Curry fan before, you’ll be a Denzel Curry fan now,” Denzel Curry proclaims over the phone, referencing his surprise new album. “And, if you were a Denzel Curry fan and you left for whatever reason, this is the time to come back and just listen.”

Weeks out from Coachella, an animated Curry is in Seattle, enjoying a day off from touring. The keen martial artist does have some extracurricular activity in mind, however. “I might revisit Bruce Lee’s grave,” he says.

An energetic and acclaimed performer, Curry has established an especially loyal following in Australia. In 2019 he toured twice, initially with Laneway Festival – a then‑emerging Kid LAROI opened his shows. “That was the first time I met that kid,” Curry enthuses. “He was nice. I fuck with Kid LAROI – I like him.”

While he was in Australia, Curry covered Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Bulls on Parade’ for Triple J’s Like a Version, which quickly went viral and was later voted #5 in the Hottest 100. Australian legends The Avalanches asked him to contribute a verse to ‘Take Care in Your Dreaming’, alongside now-friend Sampa the Great and UK trip‑hop legend Tricky. “It just all happened organically,” Curry says. “They really loved the verse.” Curiously, that psychedelic Avalanches collaboration seems to have anticipated the philosophical bent of his fifth album, Melt My Eyez See Your Future (MMESYF), a searingly confessional work.

Curry first made a name for himself pioneering dark cloud rap as a high school student in Carol City, Florida. He achieved global renown for his dynamic flow over hard‑hitting punk-trap beats. But, in MMESYF,

Then quarantine happened, and I was like, ‘I got time for myself.’ First thing I did was start sleeping. I was like, ‘Oh, man, thank God.’ “Just being in a pandemic and then going to therapy and stuff like that, it was able to help me sleep at night and figure out who I am as a person when you don’t have thousands of people telling you like, ‘Yo, you’re the best, you’re this, you’re that.’ You don’t have all these people telling me that shit; now I have to define that for myself.”

Curry assumed greater control of his life by identifying behavioural patterns, learning how to be present and immersing himself in martial arts. As the live circuit regenerated, Curry requested his management curtail touring commitments. “I’m like, ‘Look, man, we can’t be running ragged on these tours anymore. We’re exhausted. I know you gotta make this money and shit like that, but fuck

that, bro. My health is more important than any of this shit.’” They listened.

Curry’s resolve informs MMESYF – the MC abandoning old “alter egos” that he believes restricted both his expression and personal growth. “If I needed an alter ego to be myself, that means I’m not man enough to be who I am.”

While Curry is certainly helping to normalise discussions about male mental health, particularly in Black communities, he’s reluctant to embrace the “role model” descriptor.

Denzel Curry, he says, is a work in progress.

“I just talk about the human experience and how people relate. I don’t see myself as a role model. I know other people probably see me like that, but I don’t see myself as a role model because I can’t lead somebody to water when I’m not even drinking the damn water. So, in order for me to lead people to that, I gotta drink the water.”

MELT MY EYEZ SEE YOUR FUTURE IS OUT NOW.

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Curry has delivered an unusually pensive album, spanning jazz, neo-soul and boom-bap.

The curation, too, is ambitious, with Curry bringing in guests such as T-Pain, Rico Nasty and Buzzy Lee, Steven Spielberg’s daughter.

Brit maverick slowthai also materialises on the drum’n’bass banger ‘Zatoichi’.

It may be his most emotionally vulnerable album yet. On the stark, moving opener, ‘Melt Session #1’, produced by Grammy-winning pianist Robert Glasper, he raps about his experience of sexual abuse, depression and addiction. But Curry has never really shied away from expressing pain and trauma in his work. He has been a vocal supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, especially as his own brother Treon Johnson was fatally tasered by police in 2014.

When the pandemic hit, temporarily halting tour and career plans, Curry was finally able to take a step back and process some of the hurt and sadness that had been dogging him for years. “Around that time, I was going through depression,” Curry says.

“I was not looking forward to 2020 at all…

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PHOTO BY ADRIAN VILLAGOMEZ

If I needed an alter ego to be myself, that means I’m not man enough to be who I am.

The Drover’s Wife

Film

The Legend of G Molly Johnson Leah Purcell’s reimagining of Henry Lawson’s classic tale foregrounds First Nations people and women’s rights.

by Carissa Lee Godwin

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@rissless

Carissa Lee Godwin is a Noongar actor and writer born on Wemba Wemba Country.

oa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri actor, writer and director Leah Purcell remembers her mother reading ‘The Drover’s Wife’, Henry Lawson’s short story, to her when she was five years old.

A 1892 tale in which the titular character doesn’t even have a name, in Lawson’s story, the drover’s wife, her children and their dog have to outsmart a snake that has come to live under the house.

“I sort of saw us in that story. My mum was the drover’s wife in the sense that we didn’t have any men around the house; my father wasn’t in my childhood, so she was the drover’s wife,” Purcell told The Sydney Morning Herald.

Purcell’s interpretation of this story, which she has reimagined first as a play, then a novel and now a feature film, further develops the drover’s wife as a full character, Molly Johnson. Molly is a woman raising her children alone while her husband is away, the threat of his return the only thing protecting her from prying men. She is encountered by a First Nations man, Yadaka (Cleverman’s Rob Collins), who awakens a cultural connection in her she has long been denying: she’s a First Nations woman passing as white. Though the story unfolds on a frontier homestead, Molly encounters

This is a story about a mother’s love.

THE DROVER’S WIFE, THE LEGEND OF MOLLY JOHNSON IS IN CINEMAS FROM 5 MAY.

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trouble with police, predatory men and people coming for her children while she fights to protect them – issues First Nations women still face today.

“If I can be another step to making change, my job is done,” says Purcell, who has transformed the colonial source material into an opportunity to remind audiences about how First Nations people have been – and continue to be – treated.

Purcell wrote the screenplay for The Drover’s Wife, in which she stars, after performing in an acclaimed season of the play at Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre in 2016. The film touches on themes such as domestic violence and the need to elevate women’s voices – especially those of Blak women.

The importance of intersectional feminism is particularly evident in the character of Louisa Klintoff (Jessica De Gouw, Operation Buffalo), a white woman fighting for women’s rights, who at first is unable to see the different political needs of white and Blak women.

Indigeneity is diversely represented within the film, through the characters of Yadaka – based on Purcell’s great-grandfather – along with Molly and her children. It was important to Purcell that Molly’s children reflected the diversity of First Nations people: “All of those kids are blakfullas in their own fair ways. Beautiful to see the

diversity. Aboriginality isn’t about being branded with colour, it’s about your soul.” This is another thing The Drover’s Wife illustrates: that no matter our displacement or disconnection from Country, there’s a culture and Mob we belong to. This is especially evident in the way Yadaka is drawn to Molly and urges her to stop turning her back on what, deep down, she knows to be true of her identity.

Purcell hopes local audiences will claim this story as an Australian fable. But, she notes, there are always two stories being told in the film: one for the wider community and one for Mob. Although Molly is a First Nations hero for us, this is also a call to action for the non-Indigenous community to not wait until it’s too late – as the white allies in the film do – to stop turning a blind eye, and to demand change to the way First Nations people are treated.

“We have been affected by authority since the First Fleet arrived,” says Purcell of her film, which portrays the ongoing power imbalance between white police and First Nations peoples, hopefully reminding the audience of the more than 500 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have died in custody in Australia since the 1991 royal commission.

The film also depicts the sexual assault of a First Nations woman. Although this is difficult to watch, violence against – including the murders of – First Nations women in Australia remains underreported, and need to be talked about. Just as the horrific removal of Molly’s children calls attention to the fact that First Nations children continue to be overrepresented in out-of-home care. Purcell also speaks of Molly’s mother, Black Mary, as representing a “hidden generation” of people who weren’t allowed to speak language.

Molly is a mother struggling with her identity, being a lone woman raising children in a hostile white man’s world.

This remains the experience for a lot of First Nations women.

Though the film ends in tragedy, The Drover’s Wife provides a voice for a woman rendered voiceless by her gender, her proximity to a man, and later, her race. Purcell hopes the story will inspire audiences to walk in someone else’s shoes. Ultimately, she reminds us, “This is a story about a mother’s love.”

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LEAH PURCELL

Jennifer Egan

Books

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Welcome to the Candy House Critically acclaimed Jennifer Egan gets the goon squad back together – in a kaleidoscopic sojourn for the internet generation.

by Bec Kavanagh @beckavanagh

Bec Kavanagh is a writer, literary critic and academic whose research focuses on the representation of female bodies in literature. She is the schools manager at the Wheeler Centre.

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want to confront the mystery,” says Jennifer Egan over Zoom when we sit down to talk about her new book, The Candy House. A decade after the Pulitzer Prize-winning success of A Visit from the Goon Squad, Egan checks back in with many familiar faces from the original novel-slash-short story collection. The children of Goon Squad have come of age, and reckon with their inheritance, the way their parents’ choices impact their lives in a myriad of enormous and intimate ways.

“Tongue-in-cheek nostalgia is merely the portal, the candy house, if you will, through which we hope to lure in a new generation and bewitch them. The thing that changes everything: isn’t that always the goal?” says Bennie Salazar, The Goon Squad’s loveable, occasionally brilliant/occasionally hopeless record executive, now on the verge of a comeback in The Candy House.

to tell a story as she is to use the more conventional form of the historical novel, as is the case for Manhattan Beach, which won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction in 2018. But there are always layers, things working beneath the surface to subvert and delight the reader.

“What I’m always trying to do in fiction,” she says, “is to somehow compress the infinite complexity of the world around us and even more, our perceptions of it, which are variable, wild, crazy, full of secrets and memories and shame, things we’ll never know about each other… And anything that lets me heighten the compression is exciting to me.”

Egan’s willingness to experiment is as clear in The Candy House as it was a decade ago in Goon Squad.

‘Lulu the Spy, 2032’, for example, was published first as a series of tweets, before being published in The New Yorker, and then released as a standalone novella (Black Box) before appearing in the new collection.

But although Egan’s strong sense of playfulness is one of the great delights in reading her work, it isn’t accidental, or a gimmick. “It only ever works if I can find a story, feel my way toward a story that can only be told that way,” she says of these structural experiments. “If you follow that logic, what it means is if you turn it the other way, is that these forms let me tell stories I could

not otherwise tell. So it actually gives me possibilities that wouldn’t exist otherwise.”

There’s that moment after reading Egan’s novels when you come up for air, and reality seems dull in comparison. Not because her narratives are unreal, but because they’re hyperreal, packing every bit of her characters’ interior lives into the corners. The pieces within and across both books speak to each other in a million ways, calling up echoes of phrases from earlier conversations between characters, or their appearances in each other’s lives. It is a treat to discover and rediscover characters at various points, in various iterations of themselves, and it allows us to see them be surprised. “That gets back to the compression – trying to do as many things as I can at one time,” reflects Egan.

“If I’ve already done something, if I’ve already sounded a note, there’s absolutely no point in continuing to do that. If I’m going to revisit that person, what makes me want to revisit them is that something has changed. I feel like that’s very much how life works.

I find people very surprising actually. Things do not always go as we expect.”

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If you’re already a fan, it is a thrill to be invited back into the world of characters like Bennie, Sasha, Dolly and Jules – The Good Squad’s beloved misfits and wannabes. And if this is your first encounter it is nothing short of total immersion into the lives of others. Both books, read alone or together, are playful, experimental, and chock-full of humanity. They mark the way things change: what happens when we live past the heady thrill of our early twenties to see our children head into theirs.

While Goon Squad offers a cross-section of New York, dipping in and out of the lives of a handful of connected characters, The Candy House is a lure, in a way, to a new generation of readers. Where the characters in Goon Squad were drawn together by music, The Candy House speaks to a new generation growing up under the omniscient presence of the internet.

“I feel like these bells and whistles are a homage to the earliest novels, that’s true, but which bells and which whistles have a lot to do with what technology was present in a given moment,” says Egan. The “bells and whistles” she’s talking about here are the experiments in form and structure for which she’s known – a willingness to play with any idea if it will serve the story. She is just as willing to use PowerPoint

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What I’m always trying to do in fiction is to somehow compress the infinite complexity of the world around us and, even more, our perceptions of it…

Film Reviews

Aimee Knight Film Editor @siraimeeknight

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ollowing her smouldering love story Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), French writer-director Céline Sciamma returns with a piece about growing pains, obligation and the mixed blessing of being a daughter.

An old soul of a whole eight years, Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) mourns the death of her grandmother, whose house in the countryside is getting packed up around her. When Nelly’s mother Marion (Nina Meurisse) silently leaves overnight – a choice made, presumably, for emotional preservation – the girl, bored and lonesome, goes wandering in the woods. There she encounters her double (Gabrielle Sanz, Joséphine’s twin). Two peas in a pod, the kids are alike in every way. Even more curious: Nelly’s new friend shares her mum’s name.

Petite Maman may sound like an unnerving fairytale, but it’s grounded in a pleasant naturalism, painted with warm autumnal colour. It is about time travel, in a sense, but where Sciamma’s going, she doesn’t need flux capacitors.

This story of inheritance, in all its forms, is fuelled by grief’s blue flame.

Since first meeting Petite Maman at last year’s Berlinale, I’ve been eagerly awaiting a local release. It’s set to gently envelop cinemas here from 5 May, just in time for Mother’s Day – a ritual that can evoke big feelings across the sentimental spectrum. Whether your mum’s in the picture, or fate has made you your own best caregiver, Petite Maman will comb through even your tightest emotional knots, and hold your hand throughout. AK

PETITE MAMAN: HANKIES READY

AFTER YANG 

Not much is known about the mysterious writer/director Kogonada, but his debut film, Columbus (2017), certainly made him a director to watch. After Yang, his second film, is set in a strangely familiar future of self-driving cars and boutique human-like androids, where quiet and reserved couple Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) adopt an infant from China.

Concerned that their daughter will lose her connection to her heritage, they also purchase a supposedly ethnically Chinese android (Justin H Min as Yang) to assume the role of her older brother. When Yang breaks down, Jake attempts to fix him, but instead he and his family come to understand who Yang really was to them, and who they are to each other. After Yang is too thoughtful to definitively answer the questions it raises about family, identity and what makes us human, instead providing us with an amalgam of possibilities and metaphors. The result is a more interesting and poignant film that stakes a claim as one of the year’s best. KHALID WARSAME THE LOST CITY

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When putting together an A-list odd couple, Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum are dependable options: through star power and genetic good fortune, they’ve both charmed their way through buddy-cop comedies before.

The formula feels half-arsed in this Romancing the Stone rehash, where she’s a “sapiosexual” romance novelist and he’s her beefcake cover model. Loretta’s (Bullock) readers don’t give a crap about her archaeological exposition, only admiring Dash’s (Tatum) buns – basically the same approach taken by the film’s five screenwriters. The first half of this action-adventure rom-com is spent on scenes with Daniel Radcliffe’s effete villain and Brad Pitt’s macho rescuer, leaving little room for romance or comedy to build between our game leads once they’re stranded in a green-screen jungle. Bullock gives her all to physical gags in her fuchsia sequinned jumpsuit – not advisable attire for climbing cliffs – but ideally your big action set pieces shouldn’t be outshone by a single notable costume. Or Tatum’s lack of one. ELIZA JANSSEN

WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY 

Director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car was nominated for four Oscars this year, bagging the Best International Feature Film statue. This is his “other” film, shot (for the most part) shortly before its more visible companion, though no less deserving of a look. Split into three vignettes, the film deals with love triangles, missed connections, accidents and happenstance, as the hand of fate spins the titular wheel in the lives of folks seeking emotional connection. Fashion model Meiko (Kotone Furukawa) is drawn to an old flame; listless wife and mum Nao (Katsuki Mori) tries to honeytrap her ex-professor (Kiyohiko Shibukawa); and Natsuko’s (Fusako Urabe) case of mistaken identity leads to an afternoon of ephemeral tenderness. Bittersweet but unpretentious, Wheel turns in the wistful breeze of what might have been. The design is sparse, the camera often static, as two-hander scenes unroll free of any clear intervention. It leaves plenty of space for the honest performances, sweetened with humility. AIMEE KNIGHT

Small Screen Reviews

Claire Cao Small Screens Editor @clairexinwen

BARONS  | ABC IVIEW + ABC TV

A VERY BRITISH SCANDAL

 | APPLE TV+

 | PRIME VIDEO

Elisabeth Moss returns to her old tricks, playing a strong-willed woman subverting male narratives inside an uncanny revision of reality. In Shining Girls, she plays Kirby Mazrachi, a journalist haunted by a brutal attack. Since the incident, she struggles to grapple with a butterfly-affected reality, driven by a determination to catch her serial perp (Jamie Bell, Billy Elliot). The script presents a lazy take on the memory loss that often accompanies survivors of abuse.

Despite Moss’ success in similar roles (The Handmaid’s Tale, The Invisible Man) her take for this trope struggles to hold. Her past performances leave this thickly laden, fantastical feminist allegory feeling done before, as most of the series drags its feet, before making an unexpected drop into a hollow ending. Tired of seeing symptoms of trauma being used as thrilling, mind-bending narrative devices? It feels as though Moss is too. Despite her award-winning dissociative stare and reserved speech, these traits feel far too methodical and forced here.

The follow-up to 2018’s A Very English Scandal about the Jeremy Thorpe affair, A Very British Scandal follows another sensational case. The 1963 divorce between Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, and Ian Campbell, the 11th Duke of Argyll, became notorious for the revelation of the Duchess’ numerous infidelities. The three-part miniseries attempts to offer commentary on the double standards placed on women, as well as insight into a fractious marriage, to mixed results. Greater focus on the court case and media frenzy that tore Margaret’s reputation apart may have been prudent.

The true highlight is Claire Foy’s acrid and sophisticated performance. Writer Sarah Phelps’ characterisation of her shines, depicting Margaret in all her complexity, selfishness and naivety. Paul Bettany also delivers a nuanced performance for what could have been a stereotypical cad husband role. But for all the lush production values and scene-stealing supporting cast (shout-out to Julia Davis), the series ultimately feels rather safe and standard. NATALIE NG

OLIVIA BENNETT

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urtive hand-holding in a cinema.

Charged glances across a classroom.

A stuttering confession of feelings.

The tropes of the teen rom-com are evergreen, as successive young audiences experience that first headrush of longing, and older viewers remember how it all felt. Alice Oseman’s cult webcomic Heartstopper (with its 500K+ subscribers on WEBTOON) has stood out due to its candid, slice-of-life focus on first love.

Now it’s getting the Netflix treatment – with Oseman penning the scripts.

Following the attraction between nerdy drummer Charlie (Joe Locke) and rugby star Nick (Kit Connor) at an all-boys school, the series veers from the grandiose drama of Euphoria, or the heightened retro setting of Sex Education. Instead, it’s confidently set in rainy England, with an interest in the minutiae of loneliness, coming out and friendship. Its authentic take on the ways Gen Z banter, text and fall in love is reminiscent of Norwegian sensation Skam (there’s even a major scene involving an “am I gay?” quiz). By elevating the uncertainty inherent in everyday interactions, Heartstopper unfurls into a series that is genuinely, achingly romantic.

Those who enjoy darker comedies are also in for a treat with the third season of Barry, the Emmy Award-winning series about a hitman-turned-actor. This season is largely a two-hander between Barry (Bill Hader) and his mentor Gene (Henry Winkler), from whom Barry delusively seeks love and absolution. It’s propulsive, weightier and even more farcical – catch it on Binge. CC

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SHINING GIRLS

HEARTSTOPPER IS AN EYE-OPENER

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When Australia imagines itself, it pictures the beach – sun, sand and skin, projecting a mythic lifestyle of leisure.

Pair this with the libertarian spirit of the 1970s and you get ABC’s Barons, a friends-to-rivals tale about two surfers’ efforts to monetise their lifestyle, led by Sean Keenan and Ben O’Toole. Mirroring the rise of Billabong and Quiksilver, the show stresses the incongruity between entrepreneurialism and “sticking it to the man”, taking care to poke holes in the exclusionary figure of the white male surfer. After some initial clunkiness as the first episode finds its rhythm, the writers do well to maintain a “hangout” feel amid increasingly complicated character dynamics. Though peppered with some middling American accents, the ensemble cast play well together, with highlights in O’Toole, Hunter Page-Lochard and Jillian Nguyen. Keenan remains as watchable as in his Puberty Blues days, and fans of the 2012 show will find similar things to love in Barons: tested relationships, growing pains and navigation of a subculture both liberating and oppressive. TIIA KELLY

Music Reviews

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Isabella Trimboli Music Editor

e valorise albums so much that sometimes we can fail to acknowledge the great singles released by artists. Here are a few recent favourites, released over the past couple of months.

The Melbourne band Good Morning have already followed up their brilliant 2021 record Barnyard with two singles, ‘Out to Pasture’ and ‘Misery’. The A-sides are a testament to what the band does so well: melancholic indie-rock fuelled by acidic honesty and humour.

In 2022, I didn’t expect the return of Frou Frou – the early noughties band of Imogen Heap and record producer Guy Sigsworth. But here they are with a new demo, ‘A New Kind of Love’, which sounds like the last 20 years of electronic pop hasn’t happened. It may feel a little out of step with current music, but it’s still a gem, full of crystalline vocals and twinkly synths.

In other duo news, Swedish rapper Yung Lean has paired up with FKA Twigs for the wonderful single ‘Bliss’, which also opens his latest mixtape Stardust. It’s a strange, unsteady number, with stomping bass, mumbled raps and ethereal vocals.

Lastly, one single I’ve been returning to all year is the dreamy ‘Billions’ by Caroline Polachek, which sees the pop singer go full Enya, exploring angels and closeness with sweeping pop vocals and dramatic, magical instrumentation, which even includes an outro comprised of a child’s choir. What more could you possibility want? IT

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POLACHECK GOES THE FULL ENYA

@itrimboli

TURN IT ON! ROMERO 

Melbourne’s Romero have released their long-anticipated debut record after impressing audiences with their live shows over the past three years, COVID permitting. A high-octane ride that teems with energy from the first guitar note, the band’s sound is reminiscent of classic 70s rock without sounding derivative, giving the genre a much-needed injection of new talent. Opening track ‘Talk About It’ sets a precedent for infectious hooks early, trumped only by the blistering ‘Halfway Out the Door’ for the strongest song on the record. Across the album, guitarists Adam Johnstone and Fergus Sinclair tread the line between melody and grit masterfully, often closing songs with soaring solos that feel as though the pair are pouring everything into their performance. But ultimately lead singer Alanna Oliver is Romero’s greatest asset, her powerful vocals possessing a distinctive soulful quality that is enthralling. Though Turn It On! is a thrilling listen, the similar arrangements across songs do push the album into repetition, suggesting a change in direction on future releases will keep the band sounding fresh. HOLLY PEREIRA

BOY HARVEY SUTHERLAND

CONVERSATIONS BUDJERAH

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Just shy of a decade after first releasing music under the moniker Harvey Sutherland, Melbourne producer Mike Katz arrives at his debut album Boy – a blend of idiosyncratic, playful funk, 00s indie synth-pop and dashes of tongue-in-cheek philosophy. There’s plenty of pondering to be had over the state of the world across the album, and the singles alone, such as ‘Jouissance’, ‘Age of Acceleration’ or ‘Angry Young Man’, can light up the synapses.

But Katz knows that big ideas should give way to the funk of it all – nowhere is that clearer than ‘Feeling of Love’, a standout masterclass with vocals from US legend DāM-FunK about misinformation flaming hatred. Katz jokes that the album is “neurotic funk”: music made from overthinking, but made for succumbing to the desire to dance.

It’s up to you whether you follow along with the former, but movement is inevitable. From the joyous sax solo on ‘Holding Pattern’ to the shimmering disco synths of ‘Slackers’, Boy is a fun, irreverent and danceable debut from start to finish. JARED RICHARDS

On Budjerah’s excellent debut EP Conversations, the Coodjinburra singersongwriter is on his way to becoming this country’s most interesting R&B heartthrob.

While never sounding dated, this is an EP that pledges allegiance to the tenets of the genre: dulcet harmonies, angelic female backing vocals, an overwhelming sense of yearning, and a smattering of funk-driven synths.

Budjerah’s frankly incredible vocals anchor the record. Moving from honey-dipped tones to high-pitched wails with ease and precision, he really has an exceptional range. While the lyrical exploration of romance, relationships and loneliness can feel slightly derivative, there are enough wonderfully odd additions to keep things interesting. This is especially true for ‘This Is the Interlude’, a hazy, interstellar rap that shows Budjerah’s talents go beyond perfectly calibrated soulful pop.

The EP’s seven tracks are stuffed with catchy hooks (‘My Name’, ‘Talk’, ‘What Should I Do’ and ‘Get Down’) that seem destined for radio domination. ISABELLA TRIMBOLI

Book Reviews

Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor @melissajfulton

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FEVER JONATHAN BAZZI

PARADAIS FERNANDA MELCHOR

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Jonathan Bazzi’s debut novel captures an attempt to reckon with the “tiny, unforgettable, omnipresent stain” of HIV. Fever, which is translated from Italian

by Alice Whitmore, opens as its 30-year-old protagonist (who shares the author’s name) is suddenly struck down by a pervasive sickness. Jonathan navigates the labyrinthine medical system and receives a diagnosis of HIV. The novel not only captures Jonathan grappling with the virus’ physical effects, but with its cultural construction as well. Bazzi employs a parallel structure shuttling us back to Jonathan’s working-class upbringing in every second chapter. Here, we learn how as a young queer person coming of age, learning the skills of “avoidance [and] evasion” was a matter of survival.

But despite the importance and intensity of Bazzi’s subject matter, Fever is strangely uninvolving. Its structure feels undisciplined; its short chapters often concluding before they make an impression. And Bazzi’s prose itself is clipped and uninspiring, holding the reader at arms-length. JACK ROWLAND

Paradais is a fierce and fast-paced novel by award-winning Mexican author Fernanda Melchor. Translated by Sophie Hughes, the story follows two teenage boys: Franco is a lonely, angry incel who is addicted to porn, and unhealthily obsessed with one particular woman; and Polo wants nothing in life but to drink and be free of his own particular pain. The two are angry with the world.

Their guttural hatred of women, of their circumstances, and of the people around them is overwhelming. In a revolting and misguided attempt to level the playing fields of their lives, the two hatch a scheme to take what is owed to them. Melchor is a masterful writer. Her sentences are long yet breathless, and she will make your heart race. She skilfully captures class, violence, misogyny and intrusive thoughts with incredible detail, and offers a glimpse into inner worlds you might not otherwise see. Hard to read at times, it’s also a powerful story and one you won’t want to miss.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LOVE CAROLINE PETIT 

An astonishing true story of forbidden love set in a time of scientific and social flux; The Natural History of Love inventively fills the gaps in historic records, and gives voice to figures who might otherwise be forgotten. In 1852, Carolina Fonçeca is 16, on her family’s sugar plantation in Brazil. Her relationship with François, Count de Castelnau, the married explorer, naturalist and diplomat, is the consummation of both passion and intellect. The tale of their illicit love affair unfolds in dual diary entries compiled by a Melbourne lawyer some 50 years later, when he is enlisted in a bitter inheritance trial between the couple’s illegitimate sons. From Brazil to Paris to Melbourne’s early settlement, Petit’s novelistic scope is ambitious, but the philosophies shaking the world are touched on only in snatches, with greater focus on the domestic dramas affecting the family. The richness of Petit’s research is unquestionable, yet the novel’s diary format, bookended by the trial, doesn’t afford depth of focus to the taxonomic explorations that united the lovers. DASHA MAIOROVA

DANIELLE BAGNATO

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TORREY PETERS, BABY

29 APR 2022

hange My Mind is an invitation, a challenge and a promise of intent,” says Sydney Writers’ Festival artistic director Michael Williams of the festival’s theme this year. “Because uncertain times – a world divided and ruptured, at odds and in crisis – require a willingness to be open-minded, and a commitment to generosity and reciprocity.”

Running from 16-22 May and featuring almost 400 writers across hundreds of events, there’s something here to grab even the most casual reader by the heart – and mind. My picks? Art Spiegelman, the singular talent behind Holocaust memoir Maus (1991), will be reflecting on his life, writing and what freedom of speech means in an era of censorship – a topic he is uniquely placed to speak on, since the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel was banned from the Tennessee school curriculum earlier this year.

Go see Torrey Peters talk Detransition, Baby, her exceptional 2021 novel that won the PEN/Hemmingway award for debut fiction. Savvy, sparky and completely original, it tells the story of three people – trans and cis – who forge a family and raise a child together. Her energy and wit suggest she’ll give a real fun talk.

And do not miss the opening night address, featuring Ali Cobby Eckermann, Jackie Huggins and Nardi Simpson. In a hard-hearted world, these storytellers will move you. MF

Public Service Announcement

by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus

Notice the ladybugs.

Notice the best thing about what each person is wearing. A nice brooch or a stripy T-shirt or rainbow shoelaces.

Notice, when you’re in a bad mood and everything is the pits, what helps you feel better. A chat with a mate?

A certain TV show? Chocolate? Turn up the music on your favourite song and see if that doesn’t help.

Notice the people who are helping the other people.

Watch something funny. Call a funny friend. Flick through TikTok and marvel at the glorious idiocy that abides there.

Have a look at the Lost Dogs’ Home’s posts about animals that need homes and see if you don’t fall in love with one of them.

Be kind to someone else. Take a bunch of flowers to someone. Donate something. Call an elderly relative who doesn’t get to chat much. Even if everything else is terrible, you can make it better for someone else.

There’s something that people do in meditation that I never knew I was allowed to do. I thought doing meditation was all about emptying your mind and entering some kind of zen state similar to when TV stations in the olden days turned off late at night and just went to black. No, apparently. No, what happens, you see, is that our brains are taught to go at a thousand miles a minute and be on high alert for danger and in search of new data. All of that is natural, so your brain doing that is no surprise. No, what you do, apparently, is you acknowledge these thoughts interrupting you as you’re trying to do meditation and you go, “huh, there’s a thought, hello thought”, and you just return (sans self-incrimination) to focusing on your breathing or whatever you’re supposed to be doing. I feel like this is a cute metaphor. I feel like too often I pass up the opportunity to just notice something and acknowledge it and move on. Like, I’m in a bad mood, or I’m late, or I hate cleaning this bath and why doesn’t anybody else do it. Each of these is a very legitimate reason to be annoyed (this last one, you may have noticed, is rather specific and very familiar to me since I was doing it this morning).

Allowing these things to take over the narration of your life story would be a shame, though.

Things in your own life feel so big and central that it’s easy to forget that you’re one of billions of people who have lived and died already on this planet, and that there are people all over the world right now with different problems that feel just as huge. If you were told you had a week to live because the entire world was on a collision course with the sun, wouldn’t life feel different? Wouldn’t you want to focus on the right things?

What are the right things? Well that’s up to you, isn’t it.

Acknowledge the other things, say “hello other things” but don’t forget: you might as well put on your lilac suit and do Meals on Wheels, because ya wouldn’t be dead for quids.

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

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I

s the expression “wouldn’t be dead for quids” Australian? Has to be, right? Or from New Zealand? Or working-class England? I love that expression. It’s funny and dark and hopeful all at the same time. It’s the opposite of the woman who used to live in my grandmother’s retirement village, who, when you asked her how she was going, would say “Ooooh I’m getting old, love. Won’t be here next Christmas.” She said it every time I saw her for about six years, from the same chair, in the same corner, and I only stopped hearing her say it because she outlived my grandma. So much of life is about your attitude.

Some of the people I know who have the best attitudes are the ones who’ve been through the most.

Public Service Announcement: you don’t have to be happy. You don’t have to be optimistic or jolly or make people feel better about themselves. It doesn’t hurt though, whenever possible, to notice some nice things as well as the terrible ones. To not sit in a chair in the corner thinking you won’t be here by Christmas, but to be like the other woman at my grandma’s nursing home who got up every morning, dressed in her favourite colours (green or lilac) and went to help out the Meals on Wheels people and then came back and regaled us all with stories about them.

29 APR 2022

Quids Pro Quo

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas

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PHOTOS BY MARK ROPER

Tastes Like Home Yiayia Next Door

Kotopoulo Me Rizi

6 chicken drumsticks 200g (1 cup) medium-grain rice 1 onion, finely chopped 2 tablespoons olive oil Pinch of salt and black pepper

Method

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Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan-forced).

Wash and pat dry the chicken drumsticks, then transfer to a large saucepan and cover with plenty of water. Bring to the boil over high heat, then immediately reduce the heat to a very low simmer, cover and cook for 20 minutes, occasionally skimming off any foam that rises to the surface.

Remove the chicken drumsticks from the pan and strain the stock into a bowl, reserving 500ml (2 cups). Pour the stock into a 25cm x 20cm baking dish, then add the rice, onion and oil – and salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to the oven and cook for 30 minutes.

Place the poached drumsticks on top of the rice, then return to the oven and cook for a further 15 minutes, until the chicken is lightly golden and cooked through and the rice is tender.

Divide among plates and serve.

Luke and Daniel say…

C

hicken and rice sounds pretty simple, hey?

It is. But its worth and meaning to us both isn’t quite so simple. This now iconic meal was the beginning of our Yiayia Next Door community.

It provided both of us with the comfort, support, nourishment and love we desperately needed after we tragically lost our beautiful mother in the very house we now call our own.

Next door lives our very own angel, Yiayia (grandmother in Greek). And this was the first dish she gifted us after our mother passed away. Yiayia had been neighbours with our mother’s family for decades, but this simple and nourishing plate wrapped in foil was the start of a new friendship. Since that day, she’s taken us under her wing and regularly sends food around.

We’ve become a family.

When we are asked which is our favourite meal from Yiayia, our answer is always chicken with rice.

Other than being perfectly seasoned with just the right amount of salt and pepper, this recipe brings us back to our very first over-the-fence interaction.

Yiayia whips this up effortlessly, as she has been making it for quite some time for her family, and now for her newly adopted grandchildren: yours truly. The chicken is almost always falling off the drumstick, and it is only ever purchased from the local chicken shop at the Preston Market. The combination of onion and rice goes hand in hand, and as the chicken is so tender it’s great to pick off the meat and mix it all in so you can enjoy the flavours together.

We hope this recipe provides you with the inspiration to be the angel next door to your own family and friends. Yiayia’s identity remains a secret at her request, but she shows how anyone can help someone in need.

29 APR 2022

Serves 3-4

LUKE AND DANIEL MANCUSO WITH YIAYIA

PLAN TO RECREATE THIS DISH AT HOME? TAG US WITH YOUR CREATION! @BIGISSUEAUSTRALIA #TASTESLIKEHOME

YIAYIA NEXT DOOR BY DANIEL AND LUKE MANCUSO (WITH YIAYIA) IS OUT NOW.

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Ingredients

Puzzles

ANSWERS PAGE 45.

By Lingo!

by Lee Murray leemurray.id.au WEIRD

B N I

L

G U

T O R

Sudoku

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

1 3

4

CLUES 5 letters Enter username and password (2 words) Language, informally Intolerant person Number‑calling game Ostentatious jewellery 6 letters Attracting Dressing formally Evil or naughty elf Humdrum Piping 7 letters Chime like a bell (2 words) Running away Looking threatening 8 letters ___ out, spilling the beans

by websudoku.com

9 7 7

8

1 6

5

9

3 7 7 6

6 1 5 9 4 6 7 2 8 1 9 2 6

Puzzle by websudoku.com

Solutions CROSSWORD PAGE 45 ACROSS 1 Author 4 Splatter 9 Drama 10 Atrocious

11 Tosh 12 Naan 13 Niece 15 Origami 16 Afar 19 Kiln 20 Locally 23 Amend 24 Moan 25 Op-ed 27 Discourse 28 Bravo 29 Easterly 30 Beetle

DOWN 1 Audition 2 Transmit 3 Okay 5 Parental leave 6 Ascendancy 7 Trowel 8 Roster 10 Arabic numeral 14 Palindrome 17 Elephant 18 Syndrome 21 Handle 22 Versus 26 Oboe

20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9 1 Australia 2 INXS 3 Sydney to London 4 Charles Leclerc 5 Spending money 6 Four 7 2016 8 Ian Fleming 9 Julie Andrews 10 Astrophysics 11 Two 12 Durian 13 Alyssa Healy 14 Swedish 15 They have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award 16 a) 56.48 metres 17 11 18 Tim Curry 19 Pink 20 A hollowed-out loaf of white bread filled with curry

29 APR 2022

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

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Word Builder

In the seventh century, wyrd was “a thing that happens”, “destiny” or “a person with the power to control fate”. These three meanings have in common a sense of “becoming” or “coming to pass”. That’s because weird actually comes from a long-since-dead English verb worth “to come to be”. None of the three are anything like the weird we know today, though, and it’s a much bigger shift in meaning than we usually see. The change was most likely driven by one particularly influential person: Shakespeare! His weird sisters in Macbeth are weird because they’re witches who can control fate. However, the audience must have been too focused on how creepy they were, because at some point, we just picked up the “unusual” sense of weird and ran with it.

Crossword

by Chris Black

Quick Clues

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

1

2

3

4

9

5

6

7

8

ACROSS

18

1 Writer (6) 4 Splash (8) 9 Excitement (5) 10 Dreadful (9) 11 Rubbish (4) 12 Indian bread (4) 13 Relative (5) 15 Japanese art form (7) 16 Distant (4) 19 Furnace (4) 20 Nearby (7) 23 Edit (5) 24 Whine (4) 25 Kind of column (2-2) 27 Communication (9) 28 Well done (5) 29 Wind (8) 30 Retro car (6)

10

11

12

13

14 15

16 17 19

21

DOWN

20

22

23

24

25 26

27

28

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1 Interview, particularly in the arts (8) 2 Send (8) 3 Average (4) 5 Type of break (8,5) 6 Supremacy (10) 7 Tool (6) 8 List (6) 10 Type of digit (6,7) 14 Radar, for example (10) 17 Large animal (8) 18 Condition (8) 21 Take care of (6) 22 Against (6) 26 Woodwind instrument (4)

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Cryptic Clues

Solutions

character) (6)

4 Splash small dish (8) 9 Acting District Attorney seizes part of computer (5) 10 Poor actor struggling with debts (9) 11 Photoshop conceals rubbish (4) 12 Grandmother has a type of bread (4) 13 Rude hanger-on interrupts kind relative? (5) 15 Moira excited about Instagram’s Japanese art (7) 16 Nadal returns at a distance (4) 19 Sky Island regularly hosts pottery maker? (4) 20 Starts looking over cafe with friend in the

neighbourhood (7)

23 Change at midday? (5) 24 Disney film cut short gets complaint (4) 25 Hoped leader wouldn’t appear in media feature (2-2) 27 English policemen taped rude conversation (9) 28 Well done! Supporter gets 5-0 (5) 29 Trees lay strewn by wind (8) 30 Perhaps Paul heard car? (6)

and orchestra member? (4)

SUDOKU PAGE 43

5 1 8 4 3 7 9 6 2

7 3 9 2 8 6 4 5 1

4 2 6 9 5 1 3 8 7

3 9 5 1 7 2 6 4 8

6 7 4 8 9 5 2 1 3

2 8 1 3 6 4 7 9 5

8 5 2 7 4 9 1 3 6

1 4 3 6 2 8 5 7 9

9 6 7 5 1 3 8 2 4

Puzzle by websudoku.com

WORD BUILDER PAGE 43 5 Log in Lingo Bigot Bingo Bling 6 Luring Robing Goblin Boring Tubing 7 Ring out Bolting Louring 8 Blurting 9 Troubling

29 APR 2022

DOWN

1 German car converted into demo (8) 2 Broadcast St Martin travels (8) 3 Fine wine unopened (4) 5 Time to raise issue? (8,5) 6 Candy cane’s slippery in the upper hand (10) 7 Tower restored with beginner’s tool (6) 8 Register for fancy resort (6) 10 Remix of Blur – ‘Americana 2’? (6,7) 14 Cooked ripe almond and 12-across say (10) 17 Animal unsettled the panel (8) 18 Sandy treated modern condition (8) 21 Deal with online identity (6) 22 Against ER and SVU’s crossover (6) 26 Love hearing violinist’s assistant

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ACROSS

1 Creator of Janus (occasionally invisible Marvel

Click 2013

Polar Bear

words by Michael Epis photo by Getty

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

T

hese days everyone understands what climate change is, but it was not always so – and the iconic image of the polar bear adrift has played a key role in that process. The image fuses in our minds just what is at stake, distilling a complex process over an extended duration into a single image, with emotional resonance.

First, let’s recap the role of ice in climate change.

Ice covers 10 per cent of the globe. It cools the world, by reflecting – not absorbing – the sun’s heat. But as greenhouse gases get trapped in the atmosphere, the temperature rises, melting the ice. That ice turns to water, enters the ocean, and warms. It is no longer reflecting the sun’s heat, but now, as water, is absorbing that heat, thus adding to the heating up of the planet.

This brings other effects: warmer water adds energy to storms: bigger, more devastating and more frequent storms and cyclones have long been predicted as a consequence, which is already coming to pass. Another effect is rising sea levels: if all of Greenland’s ice melted, the sea would rise seven metres. About 230 million people live on land that is less than one metre above sea level. Up to one billion are on land less than 10 metres above sea level. The notion of hundreds of millions of

people made homeless because of rising sea levels is horrifying. The pain it would cause is incalculable, and the geopolitical disputes would likely be much worse.

All of this complexity is squeezed into that one image of the polar bear adrift. Its habitat is being destroyed; it is denied food; it has lost its home. It is just like us.

It helps that the polar bear is “charismatic megafauna” – an animal to which we can relate, especially as it waves goodbye.

A survey of National Geographic found that in 20 years of articles on climate change, 72 of 102 associated pictures were of polar bears; it is indeed the poster boy of climate change.

Which is why some – such as mining billionaire Gina Rinehart addressing girls at her Perth alma mater last year – will tell you polar bear numbers are increasing.

They might be, no-one knows exactly: polar bear population data is inconclusive and complex. If they are increasing, it might be because the Soviet Union banned their hunting in 1956 and the US in 1972, and Greenland in 1973.

But that misses the point – the image tells a complex story, emotionally. Children get it immediately – which bothers the Gina Rineharts of this world.

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29 APR 2022