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DEBORAH MAILMAN MAXINE BENEBA CLARKE and OASIS
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Contents
EDITION
650 16 LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF
Kindness, Compassion and Laughter Actor Deborah Mailman shares her words to live by, from the Mount Isa Mines Rodeo to the Logies to her quiet family life as a happy homebody.
18 THE BIG PICTURE
Beyond Borders PASQUALE SELLS THE BIG ISSUE CALENDAR AT THE STRAND ARCADE IN SYDNEY
11.
Here Comes Christmas! Be it the sweet smell of biscuits baking in the oven or the sight of a balding plastic tree, the gift of an old sock stuffed with hotel shampoo, the picnic sending shockwaves across the beach or summers spent under a different sun, we’ve got your Christmas reads wrapped this year. cover illustration by Daniel Gray-Barnett @dgraybarnett
THE REGULARS
04 Ed’s Letter, Your Say 05 Meet Your Vendor 06 Streetsheet 08 Hearsay & 20 Questions 25 Fiona
27 Ricky 34 Film Reviews 35 Small Screen Reviews 36 Music Reviews 37 Book Reviews
39 Public Service Announcement 40 Tastes Like Home 43 Puzzles 45 Crossword 46 Click
CONTENT WARNING
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that this magazine contains references to people who have died (p16-17).
Betelhem, Rafique and Hamed share their stories of seeking asylum in Australia – stories of love, pain, injustice, triumph and belonging.
28 BOOKS
The People’s Poet So how should decent folk behave? Maxine Beneba Clarke’s new poetry collection unpacks the past two years – and asks what we need to do next.
Ed’s Letter
by Amy Hetherington Editor @amyhetherington
O Birthday Tree
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LETTER OF THE FORTNIGHT
orget cake and candles, when I was three years old, I believed everyone was given a big, beautiful Christmas tree for their birthday. My mum retells the story of how I went to another little girl’s party and was aghast to discover there was “no tree with pretty lights”. It was April. You see, my birthday falls on a very special Australian “holiday”. No, not Christmas Day – Gravy Day. Previously known as 21 December, it was renamed after Paul Kelly’s 1996 hit ‘How to Make Gravy’. And as any Christmas baby knows, there’s always a tinselled tree at your soiree. And if you’re looking for presents to put under your tree, let me introduce you to the 2022 Big Issue Calendar (the QR code below will deliver all the details). It’s the gift that gives twice –
it’s not only a great pressie, but it’s also supporting your vendor with a much‑needed income boost as we head into the holidays. In this edition, we get a jump on the silly season, and share stories of Christmases past and of those family holiday traditions held dear: the festive magic of a spindly plastic tree and a stretched old sock stuffed full of surprises; the intoxicating aromas of an aunt’s biscuits baking and the memories of summers gone; the shock of a red-hot beach picnic as well as the lazy allure of Christmas dinner in a can. It’s also a reminder that as the country starts to open up, there are still many of us who won’t be able to reunite with loved ones again this year. A shout-out to my sister Krissy over in Broome, and to all those we long to see.
HAPPY DAYS AHEAD!
Can’t find a vendor? You can buy a Big Issue Calendar via this QR code.
04
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
Hi Mark! I’ve missed seeing your big smile and getting my trusty copy of The Big Issue while I’ve been working from home. I’ll be back in the office soon and look forward to seeing you! I hope you’ve been well. See you soon! LEE ALISON MELBOURNE | VIC
While strolling through the city last week I was delighted to see a familiar sight, a Big Issue vendor back selling the magazine on the streets of Melbourne. It was great to stop and have a chat – I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name. Your James Bond 007 edition (Ed#649) was great reading, too. Keep up the good work. HELEN RAMSEY GLEN IRIS | VIC
Hi and thank you to everyone at the Women’s Subscription Enterprise, including Sharma and Laima. Since I retired and stopped going to the city for work at Royal Perth Hospital, it has been great to get The Big Issue by mail. I think of you every time I pick it up. MARY PERTH | WA
• 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
Lee wins a copy of Seeking Asylum: Our Stories, a book by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. You can read Betelhem, Rafique and Hamed’s stories on p18. 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 grew up on the Central Coast of NSW, a whole bunch of places. Growing up, we moved around a lot. Mum didn’t get along with all her different landlords. I went to all sorts of different new schools. I had to fit in a lot. It’s just what happens, you know – the kids don’t know you so they wanna test the waters. I got sick of it by about Year 11, so I dropped out. I wasn’t super interested in my classes. I was alright at maths, but I just scraped through in all the other subjects. I fell off the wagon for a bit after school, had to move out of home and ended up in a refuge and stuff. It was a hard time. I’ve got a few brothers and a sister. I don’t see them much anymore really – I just kinda do my own thing. I moved to Canberra because my mum was living here and I wanted to reconcile with her, but it didn’t really work out that way. I first heard about The Big Issue when I was hanging out in the city. That was a couple of years ago now. I sell the mag most days. Before that, I was begging for my money – just trying to get by really. The Big Issue has given me more pride about what I’m doing. At the moment I’m living up at Ainslie Village, getting along with a few people up here. I’m just trying to get by, not treading on any toes and all that sorta stuff. It’s working out alright. Living in lockdown was very boring, but at least I’ve had company up here in the village, so it’s not too bad. I’ve been put on medication recently and it helps me concentrate and get along with people easier. I’m not as all over the place. It’s helping. I’ve got a few hobbies. I play games on my phone. I’m into strategy war games, sorta thing, the Total War series – you’ve gotta command your different units in different provinces, and you go around trying to command other provinces, but not go to war with everybody, use a bit of diplomacy and stuff like that. I like music. As a kid, I played trombone for a while, but I gave that up. I haven’t played an instrument in a very long time, but I still listen to a lot of music. I listen to everything from country through to hip-hop. I like movies. I really liked Avatar; that was cool. I like the flexibility of selling The Big Issue. I was just going to do this to build up a bit of a rapport for my résumé, so I could get a different job – I’d like to work in a shop or something, packing shelves at Woolies – but I don’t know, I just keep doing this. I’ve met a few good people selling the mag. People are more inclined to talk to you that way. When people see me selling, they like it I think. I’ve made friends with a few other vendors too.
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SELLS THE BIG ISSUE AT O’CONNOR, AINSLIE AND THE JAMISON CENTRE, CANBERRA
PROUD UNIFORM PARTNER OF THE BIG ISSUE VENDORS.
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26 NOV 2021
interview by Melissa Fulton photo by Rohan Thomson
Kim
Streetsheet
BOB C
Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends
STEPHEN L
ADRIAN
Farewell Friends
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T
hese last several months have been difficult and challenging for many, not least of all our vendors. During the recent lockdowns in New South Wales, we lost three long-serving and beloved vendors, who passed away. Just prior to the lockdown we lost Bob C. If you were ever at the Kings Cross markets on the weekend, you would likely have seen Bob wearing his tutu and selling The Big Issue. In addition to selling the magazine, Bob also gave tours around the inner city, sharing some of the lesser‑known history of the area. He even wrote a tour guide to his favourite places in Sydney for The Big Issue in 2019. During the lockdown we also lost Stephen L. Stephen had been a vendor for more than 15 years and most recently could be found selling in Parramatta, near the bridge. Under a booming voice and gruff exterior was a kind and gentle soul. Stephen showed great concern and thoughtfulness for all those he worked with. And finally, Adrian. Known for his quite remarkable sideburns, we referred to him affectionately as Elvis. Adrian was a man of many ideas and slightly inappropriate jokes. He was always coming up with ways to add to the fun of vendor gatherings and magazine launches. Adrian sold in many places around the inner west, most recently at the Eveleigh Markets on the weekend. Vale to each of these vendors. We were lucky to have known them, and their absence will be felt for a very long time. CHRIS CAMPBELL OPERATIONS MANAGER | NSW & QLD
Blooming Lovely I love my garden. It looks a bit like a desert (hard and flat earth), but I am getting creative. I have a wheelbarrow full of daffodils, and I have a plant in a pot, a statue of a lion and a money plant (they also call them Chinese jade plants). I have irises and a creeper with purple leaves and pink flowers. It is beautiful. I have someone come to mow the lawns for me, but I do most of the other work. I also have a peach tree, but it is new so no fruit yet. ELIZABETH R KINTORE AVE & HUNGRY JACK’S | ADELAIDE
One of a Kindness They keep bringing face masks, hand sanitisers and food. They shower me with concern. A Sikh lady offers to deliver vegetarian meals to my home. The frantically busy Central Station is practically
deserted, but the few who pass by shower me with affection. Thank you with all my heart! MARIANN ALBERT PARK | MELBOURNE
C’mon Get Happy! Hello, my name is Jeffrey. I started selling The Big Issue in 2007. It made me very happy – I was very happy to meet people and talk to them. I enjoy it because I’m a loving guy, a nice guy, and customers like me because I work hard. I like working at The Big Issue because all the staff are lovely and good to me. And I would like to say hello to all my customers! Thank you for supporting me, I hope you are all healthy. I hope that, like me, you are making lots of TikTok videos! I would encourage all my customers to do something that makes them happy: exercise, something
creative, read books or play music. Whatever makes them happy! Me? I like to watch funny movies because it takes my mind off things – it makes me happy. I love the Police Academy movies, and Rush Hour. JEFFREY PRAHRAN MISSION, WINDSOR & ACLAND ST, ST KILDA | MELBOURNE
Well Done Hello everyone! First off, I just want to say hi. Second, it’s good to see that everyone is staying safe and healthy during these times. I know things haven’t been easy lately, but I just want everyone to know that they are doing a great job at helping the country recover from the madness of COVID-19. I look forward to seeing people on pitch as I work. Thank you for reading this and I hope you have a wonderful day. TASH RAINE SQUARE | PERTH
I’ve been fascinated by Tasmanian devils ever since I was a little boy growing up in northwest Tasmania. Ever since the devil population began being decimated by a horrific facial tumour disease, they’ve become an obsession of mine. Recently, I took up a sponsorship to support Tasmanian devils through Aussie Ark, and I entered a competition to name two joeys. I picked the names Franklin and Stanley. Franklin is a beautiful village on the Huon River, south of Hobart, and Stanley is on the northwest coast of Tasmania not far from my home town of Wynyard. I was surprised to get a phone call saying that I’d won. My prize: I get to meet the joeys when things reopen. So, please meet Franklin and Stanley! 26 NOV 2021
MARCUS CONCORD & FIVE DOCK | SYDNEY
THE K O F ’S S P E AV IL S , IT N D D E K L IN A ! N F R A TA N L E Y S
ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.
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PHOTOS BY PETER HOLCROFT AND AUSSIE ARK
A Devil of a Time
Hearsay
Andrew Weldon Cartoonist
I’m just grateful, honestly, for each day, just having the keys to my car and being able to be independent.
Saho Takagi, from Kyoto University, on new research that suggests your cat is always feline your presence, using sounds to track your whereabouts even when you’re out of sight. SMITHSONIAN MAG I US
“Every day before I went to school, I took a shower with this glass door, and it would steam up and I’d write, ‘Please God, let me be an actor.’ And then before I left, I would wipe it off.” Actor Jeff Goldblum on being “wildly obsessed” with being, well, an actor as a young boy. His steamy prayers were answered in the affirmative. VULTURE I US
Singer Britney Spears on being released from the conservatorship that has restricted her freedom for almost 14 years. TWITTER
“I think we’re in a very dangerous political climate at the moment where the working class have felt abandoned by what they call the elite. It has left them vulnerable to demagogues, to right-wing nonsense, fakes, snake oil salesmen.” Singer Sting, who’s baffled by vaccine sceptics, would like people attending his concerts to get the jab – and, perhaps, don’t stand so close to him.
08
THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU
JAPAN TODAY I JP
“At about 11pm on Sunday night, the occupant of a Blacks Road, Northeast Valley address phoned Police in distress, stating a possum was holding her hostage.” Senior Sergeant Craig Dinnissen from Dunedin, NZ, on a possum that was charging at a woman every time she tried to leave her house. The plot thickens – the possum’s real name is Mr Scoby Lunchbox, care of the woman who rescued it when
its mother was killed. She wants her possum back – but police have released Mr Lunchbox into a nature reserve, uncharged. VICE I US
“Temporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defence, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.” US President Joe Biden doesn’t want to rush into releasing secret documents relating to the assassination of JFK... 58 years ago. THE WASHINGTON POST I US
“I saw a cat with only one of its ears tilted back, listening to the sound behind it, and felt that cats must be thinking about many things from the sound.”
“What really frustrates me is that when I die, I’m polluting the Earth. I’m waste.” Dutch inventor Bob Hendrikx on creating an eco-friendly “living coffin” made of mycelium – a type of fungi – and woodchip, which will decompose in six weeks rather than 20 years. And the fungi help despatch the occupant quicker, too. CNN I US
“We don’t have crude oil in this country. Camels are our crude oil.” Abdi Rashid, a Somali camel trader, on the economic and social importance of camels in his country, where the animals provide transport, milk, meat and medicine. AFRICA NEWS I CD
“This points to the truth that law enforcement over history has often failed to live up to its responsibilities. These men did not get the justice that they deserved.” Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jnr announces that two of the three men found guilty of the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X would be exonerated, because evidence that could have acquitted them was withheld from the jury. The men served more than two decades in
20 Questions by Rachael Wallace
01 What spirit is traditionally poured
over a Christmas pudding? 02 Which two actors played Darrin
Stephens in the sitcom Bewitched? 03 In the game of Trivial Pursuit,
what category have you answered correctly if you win a yellow wedge? 04 Who are Lady Louise Mountbatten-
Windsor’s parents? 05 What was the name of Westpac bank
before it was changed in 1982? 06 In what city was Martin Luther King
Jnr assassinated in 1968? 07 Which island is home to the world’s
largest annual crab migration? 08 In 2011, who was the first Australian
to win the Tour de France? 09 Which city was home to the tallest
Overheard by Jade on the streets of Melbourne CBD.
THE NEW YORK TIMES I US
“I still don’t have all the answers for the challenges facing women – but I believe that I can enjoy friendship, love and equality in marriage.” Nobel Peace Prize-winner Malala Yousafzai on how she grappled with the notion of marriage, before wedding her new husband and “best friend” Asser Malik in November. VOGUE I UK
“It is crucial that conservatives play an active, forceful role…but that will not happen if President Trump stays focused on the past. The past is the past, and the country is now in a contest to define the future.”
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, basically telling Trump to move on from the 2020 US elections. THE GUARDIAN I UK
“The analogy I often use is an electric bike. When someone’s pedalling but having difficulty, the bike senses it and augments it. We’ve made the equivalent of that for human mental function.” Dr Alik Widge, from the University of Michigan Medical School, on research into electrical stimulation of the brain’s internal capsule, which improves cognitive functioning and could be beneficial to those with mental illness. SCIENCE DAILY I US
“My body has been objectified my entire career. I’m either too big or too small, I’m either hot or I’m not. But it’s not my job to validate how people feel about their bodies.” Singer Adele on dealing with the public scrutiny over the way she looks, rather than sounds.
10 What is the only bone in the human
body not attached to another? 11 The original 1988 Die Hard film
takes place on which day? 12 Which former Australian cricket
captain was known as Captain Grumpy? 13 When accepting their Academy
Award in 1985, who achieved infamy for uttering the words, “I can’t deny the fact that you like me! Right now, you like me!”? 14 Which Irving Berlin-penned song is
the highest-selling single of all time? 15 What year was the referendum
held on whether Australia should become a republic? 16 Long before the invention of
mouthwash, the ancient Romans used what to clean their teeth? 17 Which city’s main airport has the
code CDG? 18 What is the collective noun for
cockatoos? 19 Which psychiatrist pioneered the
theory of the five stages of grief? 20 True or false? Female reindeer grow
antlers.
NME I UK
FREQUENTLY OVERHEAR TANTALISING TIDBITS? DON’T WASTE THEM ON YOUR FRIENDS SHARE THEM WITH THE WORLD AT SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU
ANSWERS ON PAGE 43
26 NOV 2021
“I’ve got an idea for a new website called Shitadvisor, where you can review all the toilets of the world.”
prison and one has since died. Ironically, one of Malcom X’s complaints was corruption of the legal system.
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EAR2GROUND
cut Christmas tree ever displayed at 67.4 metres: a) Seattle, USA b) Shanghai, China c) Strasbourg, France or d) Hamburg, Germany?
illustrations by Lauren Rebbeck
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Christmas tree, O Christmas tree How lovely are thy branches! For 30 years my family spent Christmas in Lakes Entrance, Victoria, where my grandparents had a holiday house. We drove down from Canberra each year, seven of us in a station wagon with two weeks’ worth of clothes, beach gear and the Christmas presents. Even with the bulk of it strapped to the roof rack with octopus ties, there was no room for any sort of Christmas tree. That lived in the cupboard at the beach house, and one of the first duties on arrival was pulling out the crumpled cardboard box and assembling the plastic and wire installation that we generously referred to as “a tree”. It basically consisted of a wooden stem, like a broomstick, with holes into which you inserted wire branches that sprouted green tinsel strips for leaves. Its tripod base was wonky, so it leant at about a 30-degree angle, putting the little angel who sat on top in a precarious-looking launch position for the entire holidays. Prior to draping it with tinsel, it basically resembled a fairytale giant’s upturned dishwashing brush. The original German folk song ‘O Tannenbaum’, on which ‘O Christmas Tree’ is based, celebrates the constancy of its eponymous fir tree, standing strong and faithfully through summer heat and winter snow. Any connection between that tree and the tangled mess that stood on the hearth in our living room was a stretch to say the least, and hardly an inspiration to break out into song. We were not great at refreshing the stock of Christmas decorations either, so every year there seemed to be a little less tinsel and fewer and fewer baubles, either through breakage or the same mystical process that makes Scrabble letters disappear. It wasn’t too many years before only the front of the tree could be strategically adorned to give an illusion of fullness – a green strand of tinsel diagonally up, a red strand diagonally down, and a spatial algorithm for the placement of perhaps five baubles. What was even more mysterious was that every year there were fewer and fewer branches. Where they went,
no-one knew. Perhaps someone was using them as a toilet brush during the night, or Rudolph needed an emergency replacement antler, but – and I swear by the Christmas star above – by our last Christmas at Lakes Entrance there was one branch in the Christmas tree box. We stuck it in and dangled a bit of tinsel from it. I can’t find a suitable metaphor for what this looked like. Maybe this arboreal thinning was symbolic of the dwindling tradition of those family Christmases, as elder children branched off and out to new celebrations of their own. Maybe it was symbolic of a more general decline in the Christian meaning of Christmas, although the tree is a relatively recent addition to tradition, thanks in large part to Charles Dickens. As a secular spectacle, however, the Christmas tree is bigger and brighter than ever, multi-storey varieties adorned in lights rising up in shopping malls around the country, along with the showy house lights and plastic installations that bedeck the roofs, porches and front yards of so many homes. They put our little, overly deciduous plastic tree to shame. But, as Dr Seuss’ story of the Grinch reminds us, Christmas isn’t about the material stuff, and our spindly little tree, with its minimalist decorative attachments, stole nothing from our seasonal joy, as we sat around it on Christmas Eve watching Carols by Candlelight or opening the presents on Christmas morning – which incidentally played a key role in stopping it from falling over. Whatever creed to which you do or don’t subscribe, however you celebrate the holidays, let the Tannenbaum stand as a symbol of faithfulness to the spirit of peace and goodwill to all. We weren’t really the home-carolling type, but I have no doubt that at that last Christmas at Lakes Entrance, somewhere in each of our hearts we were singing as joyously as ever... O Christmas stick, O Christmas stick How lovely is thy branch!
Richard Castles is a Melbourne writer and frequent XXX contributor to The Big Issue. He believes the secret to life is regular engagement with ducks.
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Richard Castles gets wistful and remembers the deciduous plastic Christmas tree of his youth.
26 NOV 2021
Family Tree
Under a Different Sun Shivani Prabhu shares her Christmas wish: to eat and drink and visit with her family in India again, soon.
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rowing up in Ernakulam, summer was always in April and May. On the last day of March, my best friend Divya and I would jump up at the gong of the last bell, leaving behind sweaty thighimprints on our chairs, running to the back of the class to grab our bags. Summer in Kerala was heavy and wet, and the air felt thick. I read away those two months, splayed out on the sofa in our lounge room or with my cheek pressed against the cool mosaic tiles, the fan on the highest speed. Sometimes I’d spin round and round until I got dizzy and would lie down just to watch everything swirl around me. As I read, snacks would appear on round steel plates. Sliced mangoes from the tree in our backyard that made my hands sticky and transferred yellow stains onto the pages, cubed pieces of sugarcane to chew the sweetness out of, and orange chakuli spirals. Amma and I would walk up the street to a small private library to borrow books for 10 rupees each. We’d stop to get roasted peanuts from the cart outside our lane. I’d take in the smoky smell as the vendor swished them around in an iron wok, marvelling at how nimbly he scooped them into a cone fashioned out of a rectangular piece of newspaper. When we moved to Melbourne, I felt like we were living under an entirely different sun. This sun scorched and burned in summer, which came in December instead of April. The air was arid, and the pavement burned my feet. There was no mango tree, and in its place was a tall eucalypt. In the spring, when the grass was softer, and the sun more forgiving, I’d lie under the tree and snap the fallen leaves under my nose for the sharp, minty smell. For most of the summer though, we’d be back in Kerala, where
December was cool and silky. In early December, we’d pack suitcases full of Tim Tams, Freddo Frogs, and Cadbury Favourites to distribute to cousins. We’d come back at the end of January just before school started and have one month of summer left. We’d spend two months visiting relatives’ houses, being fed juices and coffees, banana chips and platters of spiced cashews, attending weddings and ceremonies, and going on a week-long pilgrimage to temples in Southern India in our old Toyota Innova – my parents in the front seats, me in the middle, my brother in the back using blankets as curtains looped across the windows, the boot full of snacks. I’d lie down and watch as we passed by rows of coconut trees, rice fields, hills and bustling town centres. In between, we’d stop to have meals or snacks at one of the Ananda Bhavan franchises, excited every time by crispy dosas and creamy pongal with cracked peppercorns. By the end of the trip we’d be replenished, our suitcases stuffed with pickles and chips, and our hearts bolstered by spending time with family. Last summer was only the second time we spent all summer in Melbourne, though it had been a decade since we’d moved. I spoke to my grandparents and aunties over WhatsApp video calls, a silent panic growing in our hearts when there was no mention of the borders ever opening – when would we be able to sit around the same table and eat together again? When would we be able to drink chai, laughing and arguing, while India’s Best Dancer plays in the background? On Christmas Eve in my partner’s family house, I began to cry out of nowhere, my chest twisting into a knot I couldn’t untie. I pretended to have hayfever and fed minced beef to fat kookaburras. I spread out a cheese platter with fig jam, set out the silverware with his mum, and felt the knot loosen when their dog ate a whole wheel of brie and spent the rest of the night farting. My family bought our first Christmas tree, a rose‑gold tinsel tree on top of which we clipped a chubby bird, a silver angel sparrow. On the night of Christmas Eve when I got back home, I sent out a silent prayer to the sparrow angel to let us travel under our other sun again soon.
Shivani Prabhu is a Melbourne-based writer and editor, who edits non-fiction for Voiceworks. You can find her on instagram @shivanisprabhu.
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was born to a Greek mother, but you would be wrong to think she taught me the traditional art of Christmas baking. She was simply not interested, preferring to eat a quick salad and get on with reading a book. It was my theia, Efmorfia, my mother’s unmarried youngest sister living in the flat across the hall, who taught me how to bake. She would begin early in December with the ritual of making kourabiedes (crescent-shaped almond shortbreads), which my Aussie friends called “exploding cakes” for their habit of releasing a puff of icing sugar when you bit into them, making you sneeze. My absolute favourite biscuits, though, were the fragrant, syrupy melomakarona (spiced honey macaroons). The ancient Greek word makaria means “blessed”, and that’s how I felt, perched on the Formica kitchen counter in the blissful silence and coolness of my aunt’s home (no other kids! no blaring TV! no bickering parents!) watching her slowly take off her gold rings and place them in exactly the same place she always did, on the windowsill near her pots of basil. Then she would put on an ironed white apron and begin kneading and shaping orange-blossom scented dough. She would bake the oval biscuits, then pour over warmed honey, dusting them with cinnamon, cloves and ground walnuts. Memory is a slippery thing. If I close my eyes, I’m still there, a scrawny seven-year-old, wearing the pale pink organza dress my aunt bought me the previous Christmas. We called this dress to petalouthiko, due to its butterfly-like sleeves. I refused to take it off, ever. My mum had to prise it out of my hands to wash it. I can feel the soft pleated fabric on my skinned knees, smell the sweet spices wafting through my aunt’s kitchen. She offers me a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice in a special glass, tall and thin and bright green. Time folds in upon itself, loops, elongates, like the pliant dough in her rough, sunburnt hands. For the next few weeks, I would gaze longingly at the pyramid of biscuits on her dining table, waiting for Christmas Day. Alongside them were the exploding shortbreads in airtight containers,
vanilla‑flavoured biscuits called koulouria and large trays of galaktoboureko, a filo pastry custard slice dripping with sugar syrup. We were at the tailend of our 40-day Greek Orthodox fast, where we abstained from any animal products, instead eating mounds of tahini, flabby soy cheese and dry bread. Each day my aunt’s delicacies looked more and more seductive. But it was the melomakarona I coveted. Some days she would spy me hanging around her kitchen, staring at the biscuits. Being childless, she had brought me up when my mother was at work. I knew I was her favourite, and she could never refuse me anything. “Take one,” she’d say, gesturing at the melomakarona. “They have no butter or eggs, just olive oil. It’s okay.” But I would shake my head. They were too special to eat on an ordinary day. On Christmas Day itself, I would devour one, two, three melomakarona, savouring them, inhaling the aroma that encapsulated the holiday season for me in a deeper way than any carols, fir trees or Santa’s presents ever could. These days, Theia Efmorfia hardly ever makes melomakarona at Christmas. Her nieces and nephews have all grown up and some have moved away to entirely different states, like me. My sister died in 2010, leaving a huge well of loss in my aunt’s heart. But when I do come to visit with my daughter and husband, with my sister’s children and grandchildren, she brings out the blue and white boxes from Marrickville’s Hellenic Bakery. Now, she expresses her love for us by rising at dawn, getting on a train and bringing home Greek sweets, enough to fill two shopping bags. The bakery’s melomakarona are moist and aromatic. But nothing can compare to the biscuits of my childhood, when my theia was strong and full of life. These biscuits are still the epitome of Christmas to me. Today I make melomakarona with almond meal, buckwheat or tapioca instead of wheat flour, to cater to mine and my family’s gluten intolerances. Of course, they don’t taste the same, but they’re a close approximation – and they still manage to transport me back to my childhood.
Katerina Cosgrove (@katcosgrove) is the author of XXX two novels, two novellas and has written for Al‑Jazeera, Sunday Life and The Independent, among others.
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Katerina Cosgrove can still smell the cinnamon and cloves from her aunt’s syrupy melomakarona.
26 NOV 2021
Christmas Bake
Jingle Bell Sock Straddled between religions and countries, Eleanor Limprecht has always had to negotiate Christmas.
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rowing up, I dreaded Christmas. I grew up with a Jewish mother and a Christian father, both from Omaha, Nebraska, the heartland of the United States. My mother (the daughter of a Jewish lawyer) and my father (the son of a Methodist journalist) met in college, where they bonded over their desire to get as far away from Nebraska as possible. My parents agreed that my mother would raise my sister and I as Jewish, which my father’s job in the US State Department complicated. We moved to a new country every three years. There are Friday night Sabbath services in Germany, but there was no synagogue in Pakistan, where I lived aged 11 to 13. So my Jewishness defined me more in how it made me different rather than how it made me part of something. Christian holidays were always minefields to navigate: I did not know what to do with the Christmas songs we sang at school, so I would mouth the word Jesus without actually saying it out loud, fearful that speaking it would mean God would strike me dead, or that I had to believe in a virgin birth. When everyone else was celebrating Christmas, we celebrated Chanukah, the eight‑day festival of lights where we lit the menorah (with birthday candles) every night and opened gifts of socks, underpants, turtlenecks, tights and books. Sometimes we got a Christmas tree as well (always with a homemade, aluminium-foil-and-cardboard Star of David at the top), and there were presents on Christmas Day from my father’s parents. These were often matching dresses my grandmother had sewed herself that my sister and I dreaded, but still, it was exciting to unwrap something on Christmas Day. We did not go to church ever, though my father went to midnight mass on Christmas Eve sometimes. There was never an invitation to join him, though he always came on our Christmas Day excursions to Chinese restaurants and the local movie theatre. But we did have one Christmas tradition: our version of stockings. Christmas Eve my sister and I would take our longest socks and hang them up on the mantelpiece in our house. These were not special stockings, just
regular, stained at the heel and toe, worn-out socks. After we went to bed my mother would put an orange or mandarin in the toe, then she would add some hotel soaps and miniature shampoos she had collected from whatever business trips she might have taken in the previous year. (My mother was an opportunist in hotel rooms – no miniature shampoo bottle left behind.) She would also pilfer some free pens from her office, and things that were ours already that we had left out in the living room. Like – here are your sparkly hairclips, next time don’t forget to put them away. There was never even the slightest pretence that these things came from Santa; we knew that they were from Mom. I realise now she was doing the same thing I did when I refused to say Jesus. By refusing to spend money on what went in our stockings, she was refusing to give credence to the whole concept of Christmas, staying staunchly Jewish. You want stockings, you got stockings. Feh! Who would want to be Christian? Not me! Fast forward 20 years and my sister married a nice Jewish boy, and I married a nice Australian, who was agnostic and lived thousands of kilometres away. One of the first gifts my mother sent me in Sydney was a menorah. My children have rarely been to synagogue, but they have their own special mishmash of Christmas and Chanukah. We light the menorah a few nights, eat latkes if I can be bothered to grate a thousand potatoes and several of my knuckles, and open presents from their grandmother and aunt in America. Christmas is ham and pavlova in the heat, more boogie boards than anyone could possibly use, and a beer for Santa. Now on Christmas Eve we hang dollar-store stockings, the cheap acrylic kind you can fit dozens of small presents in. My children unwrap pencils and chocolate bars and there is always a mango in the toe – the summer version of an orange. They take it all for granted, but the absence of religion in their lives means they’re less fearful of a vengeful God striking them down for practising the wrong one. I’ve yet to embrace the old sock tradition, but perhaps this will be the year. I’d better go see what they’ve forgotten to put away.
Eleanor Limprecht is a Sydney-based novelist and writing teacher. Her fourth novel, The Coast, is coming out with Allen & Unwin in 2022.
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e woke on Christmas morning to a hot blue sky. Blowflies buzzed in the window frames and the cicadas had already sung their tunes. The chocolate in our stockings, which hung on the fireplace, had melted before breakfast. The house was littered with wrapping paper we were too sweaty to pick up. The day was totally unsuited to the traditional hot lunch my mother longed to cook, so we decided to go to the beach. We all helped pack the picnic basket with anything that felt vaguely like a festive lunch: Christmas crackers, spiced nuts, ham and mustard sandwiches, mince pies and candy canes. Mum filled a thermos with iced pink cordial for us kids and wrapped a bottle of riesling for her and Dad in a plastic bag filled with ice blocks. Piling into our station wagon in my new bathers with my fringed beach towel and coconut sun lotion, it felt like an adventure, a Christmas like no other. There was plenty of room on Mornington beach; most families were sweating it out in their houses, greeting weary relatives who’d woken up far too early. I’m sure they wished they were at the beach like us. Mum wasn’t really a beach person, even though this picnic suggestion had been hers. She found us a place to sit, up out of the sun on a grassy patch at the back of the burning sand. While she spread out the picnic rug and set out our lunch, my brother and I ran straight into the water. The bay was flat and calm, like a mirror. The haze from the water on the horizon curved up into the blue of the sky, making it impossible to see the arc of the earth and tell where the sea finished. We dived under the water, looking at each other with open eyes as we swam. It was crystal clear. The sand below us ran off into the distance in perfect ripples scattered with tiny shells and rocks. We could hear the distant rumble of a motorboat heading out from the pier and the soft buzzing of insects above us on the surface. Dad was calling, “Come and eat lunch before it all dries out in the heat.” The sand burned our feet as we sprinted up the beach. We jumped onto our towels, sending a spray of sand over the lunch. “Watch out you two, for heaven’s sake you’ll ruin it all,” said Mum as she handed us each
a plastic tumbler of cordial. Dad chose to sit on a small rise of sand next to the rug and Mum sat in her new Christmas-striped canvas deck chair. Lunch had never tasted better; the soft white bread with fresh ham and mustard melted in my mouth. Then for dessert we sat with cherries dangling over our ears pretending to be posh ladies, eating melted chocolate, telling stupid jokes from our Christmas crackers. As I sucked the dripping chocolate from my fingers, the drama began. Dad let out a huge shout: “Arghhhhh!” We watched in disbelief as he dropped first his shorts to the sand, then his underpants. My mother gasped, “Tom what on earth are you doing? Don’t look, children!” But of course we did. “There are ants!” he said. “Ants in my pants!” And yes, there they were, lots of them, red hoppers, all over his thighs and bum, crawling and nipping. Red welts had already started to rise on his white veiny skin. I’d never seen my father naked before and there he was, for all of Mornington beach to see. He ran dancing and hopping across the sand and fell into the water. I laughed, and then my brother laughed. The family next to us were laughing too, and the man pushing his dinghy out chuckled as well. Mum didn’t think it was funny though; she was hurriedly piling everything away into the picnic basket. She spoke in a low voice. “Come on you two, we’re going home.” Dad started to walk out of the water as naked as when he went in. “Stop right there, Tom.” Mum called. She handed me a towel. “Take that to your father, he’s lost his mind it seems, with his trousers.” We held in the giggles as we left the beach. In the car the seatbelts burned, and our legs stuck to the vinyl seats. Back at the house, Mum went into the kitchen and closed the door. Dad plastered himself with Savlon and lay down on his bed. My brother and I turned on the telly and watched a Christmas movie in our bathers. We ate homemade icy poles in front of the whirr of the pedestal fan. Life was pretty good.
Fleur Glenn lives and writes in Melbourne, finding stories in the streets and lanes.
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On a Christmas Day picnic at the beach, Fleur Glenn’s family made waves.
26 NOV 2021
A Red-Hot Christmas
big loves, big breaks and big hair. by Amy Hetherington Editor
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t 16, I was walking around with a really bad hairdo. I was in Grade 10 at Kalkadoon State High School in Mount Isa, and bandanas were quite big in those days. So I used to wear it pulled up in a ponytail that sat right on the top of my head, wrapped in a big thick bandana, and then I’d tease the bejesus out of it – and I’d tease my friend’s fringe as well. I was going to the movies with my mates every Friday night, the double feature. It didn’t matter if it was the same film playing – and it often was the same film playing for weeks and weeks and weeks – but on Friday night, we’d go to Kentucky Fried Chicken, that was our hangout, then go to the movies. At half-time, we’d go back to KFC, just walk the streets around Mount Isa, and go back for the second feature. It was so much fun. I was doing Speech and Drama in high school, and that’s where I started falling in love with the idea of performing. But I certainly wasn’t thinking about being an actor, I wanted to become a teacher. I was quite serious about going to uni and doing a teacher’s degree. But over time, I just fell in love with Drama. That was one of my favourite subjects. I had a really great teacher, Miss Murphy. And when I found out that I could actually train as an actor that sort of sealed everything for me, that was my decision made. It was just so exciting to be on stage, and it gave me a confidence that I didn’t really have in my own life. I remember doing my first big monologue ‘You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown’ as part of an eisteddfod. We used to perform at the Mount Isa Civic Centre. There was a sense of power that came with being on stage, whereas I was quite the opposite to that – I was quite awkward and shy for a very long time growing up. My first professional paid gig was while I was studying. I was in my graduating year at QUT Kelvin Grove, and Denise – I still want to call her Miss Murphy – wrote a play for me. It was called Gwenda, and it’s about a young Aboriginal girl who is trying to straddle two worlds, being a blackfella, but also living in the white world. It was a theatre and education show that we got
PHOTOS BY NEWSPIX, GETTY AND ABC
Letter to My Younger Self THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU
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Kindness, Compassion and Laughter Actor Deborah Mailman on her
and we were all just finding our feet. I have such fond memories around that time. And Kelly was a fun character to play, too. Playing Bonita Mabo in Mabo was pretty extraordinary, one of the highlights for me. To have that opportunity, and to have her and her family be part of that story. She was there by our side the whole time, and being welcomed into her home, that was pretty gorgeous. And then getting the Logie that year, and having Bonita come up on stage with me was just icing on the cake. It was a real honour actually to play her. Kindness, compassion and laughter: I always think it comes back to doing good and being a good person, you know. I always try to see it from other people’s perspectives. I try to view the world, not just from your own place, but to understand it from other people’s points of view as well. Laughter is a big part of everything to me. If I bumped into my 16-year-old self now I’d take her to the hairdresser! I’d tell her to stop wearing the bloody bubble skirts, the fluoro socks… But, you know what, if it doesn’t sound like I’m big noting myself, I’m actually really proud of my younger self. I think I did really well back then: I was a good person, I had great friends, I looked after my friends, I was a good student, I wasn’t mucking around… I sort of look at her and go, yeah, you’re actually doing okay. DEBORAH MAILMAN STARS IN TOTAL CONTROL . SEASON 2 IS NOW SCREENING ON ABC TV AND ABC IVIEW.
26 NOV 2021
TOP: WITH HER SECRET LIFE OF US CASTMATES IN 2002 MIDDLE: IN TOTAL CONTROL WITH RACHEL GRIFFITHS BOTTOM: WINNING HER SECOND OF FIVE SILVER LOGIES
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to tour around high schools, regionally, so I went back home to Mount Isa and up to Cairns and communities all around North Queensland. My mum and dad had a really strong work ethic. My dad was a stockman and rodeo rider. Dad was doing an exhibition over in New Zealand, and met Mum at a dance or something like that. He was always up before the sun and working really hard. He was big on education and learning. Mum and Dad were great at supporting whatever choices we made in terms of work, but I think the main thing was just work really hard at what you’re doing and actually enjoy it too. Because that’s the one thing I remember: Dad loved what he did. And I’ve responded to that, as well, through the choices that I’ve made. We grew up with horses, because we grew up at the rodeo grounds. I’ve always had furry friends. There’s a real love of animals that Dad has passed on, and the responsibility of looking after animals. The rodeo is the biggest event in Mount Isa, and there’s such an excitement and anticipation around it. And, because we lived at the rodeo grounds, the whole place would come alive just for the weekend, the whole town would come out, people from neighbouring city towns would come out – it was just a massive event. We had the sideshow alley, which was a big part of that as well. It was such a great experience as a kid, growing up with that. I’m a homebody. I’m not very social – work gives me that balance. When I’m home, I’m home, and I like to close the front door and shut the world away. And that’s very much like what my mum is like, she’s a really quiet energy. No fuss. She likes to keep things simple, and that’s how I am at home. Radiance really opened the doors for me [in 1998]. I was actually playing the role on stage for Queensland Theatre Company in Brisbane. And I heard that they were casting for the film. And I don’t know how I did it, but I somehow phoned up [director] Rachel Perkins, directly, and I had never met her before. I mentioned that I was playing Nona, and I’d love her to come see it. So she flew out the next night, and saw the play. And then I was flown down to Sydney for auditions, and I eventually got the role. I got the AFI that year for that performance, and it just sort of catapulted me a little bit in the industry, and certainly allowed me to find more opportunity. [That relationship with Rachel] is incredibly important. It’s not only with Rachel, but it’s Darren Dale, Wayne Blair, Wesley Enoch…these are people that I’ve grown up with professionally. Secret Life of Us was the best job. I mean, the storylines reflected where I was in my life, being twentysomething, just really starting out in front of the camera. And it was the best training ground I could possibly want, filming six months of the year, and working with the likes of Claudia [Karvan] and Joel [Edgerton] and directors like Cate Shortland and Ana Kokkinos. We were all sort of babies back then
series from Seeking XXXX Asylum: Our Stories by the ASRC
The Big Picture The Big Picture THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU
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XXX XXX
by XXX XXX
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Betelhem BETELHEM SPENT OVER FOUR YEARS IN DETENTION. SHE NOW SPEAKS ABOUT HER EXPERIENCE AT RALLIES
Beyond Borders A new book by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre gives a voice to people who have risked everything to find freedom. Here, Betelhem, Rafique and Hamed share their stories of seeking asylum in Australia, stories of love, pain, injustice, triumph and belonging.
mother told me my grandma had passed away. I had never felt so alone. That’s when I gave up. I went on a hunger strike and lost five kilograms in two weeks. After this, security guards watched me 24 hours a day. Even when I showered, I couldn’t close the door. Every 30 minutes the guards wrote a report about what I was doing. I was in and out of hospital for a year. After four years in detention I was told, “You are free to go today.” I was shocked. Where would I go? I had no family. I was given a place to stay for five months, but I wasn’t used to being a free person anymore. I had forgotten how to use the phone, the TV, the oven. Everything. It was like being born again. I was traumatised by what I had seen in detention, but I was strong. I studied for certificates in aged care, disability services and childcare, even though I wasn’t allowed to study on my visa. In total, I completed more than 10 certificates. After five months they told me I had 21 days to find a place to live and a job. Until then I had not been allowed to work. I didn’t know how to write a résumé and I didn’t have a driver’s licence. Luckily there was a demonstration outside the immigration office on the day I signed my release papers. One of the protestors smiled at me and offered me a room. “Don’t worry,” she said, “you can stay with me.” I was so surprised by this kindness from a total stranger. I stayed with her for a month while I found a place of my own. Most of my friends are still in detention. I never want what happened to my friend in Brisbane to happen to anyone else. The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre provided me with four months of advocacy training. It wasn’t easy. At first, every time they spoke about our experience in detention, I would cry, but the training made me strong and confident. Now I speak at rallies. When I do this, my mind becomes more peaceful. I have the microphone now and I am helping others. I moved to Melbourne in 2019. It feels like home here. When I got a job with Metro as a ticket inspector, I was so happy. In detention they used to call me by my boat ID, “TAS 16”, but now my nametag says “Betelhem”. I have my identity back. Although I’m still not allowed to study on my bridging visa, I’m trying to study nursing this year. I don’t believe you can lock up someone’s brain.
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PHOTO BY SAM BIDDLE/ASRC
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was on the boat for six days. I was the only Ethiopian, so I couldn’t communicate with anyone. It was very scary and I was young – I turned 21 on the boat. We ran out of food and, on the fifth day, petrol. I didn’t think we would survive. There was a big storm and the boat started to leak. On the sixth day, Australian Border Force found us and took us to Darwin. After five days, guards came in the middle of the night and asked, “Do you want to go to Nauru?” I didn’t know what they meant. They told me there were education facilities there, good medical treatment and fair processes. I trusted them so I agreed to go. Ten of us, all women, were taken to Nauru. When we arrived, we saw tents and lots of children and families crying. I was confused. I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. For 10 months we didn’t have phones, television or radio, so there was no way to find out where I was. We were the first people transferred to Nauru and the detention centre was still being built. When we did get a phone, we were only allowed to use it once a month for 15 minutes. If your family didn’t answer, that was your chance gone. Nauru was so hot. I’d never experienced heat like that before. For the first month, I vomited every time I ate. We were allowed one two-minute shower a day and we had to line up in the sun for it. I didn’t have any spare clothes, so I sewed new ones out of a sheet. I can’t describe how bad the situation was. It was punishment, torture. The Australian government used our bodies as a human fence to stop the boats. Some of us died. We lost our friends, our time, our minds. I lived on Nauru for 15 months. I tried to survive by reading the Bible (I’m Ethiopian Orthodox) and studying English. I asked the guards to teach me two English words a day. If I had spoken English when they told me about Nauru, I would have refused to go. My mental health suffered, and I was transferred to Brisbane for medical treatment. I thought this would help me feel better, but they locked me up again. Brisbane detention was the hardest experience of my life. Everyone there was from Nauru and they were always crying. When people shouted, self-harmed or were seized by guards, it made me even more stressed. In 2016, a friend of mine was taken from our room in the middle of the night and transferred to Nauru. She set herself on fire. I saw what had happened to her on the news. I was devastated. I called my family. My
26 NOV 2021
I Don’t Believe You Can Lock Up Someone’s Brain
Rafique
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COACH OF THE ROHINGYA UNITED BRISBANE SOCCER TEAM, RAFIQUE BELIEVES IN THE HEALING POWER OF SPORT
On the Soccer Field I Could Escape the Hurt Feelings
26 NOV 2021
a sport with relevant community groups. Sport is one of the few areas in refugees’ lives where they can feel free. It helps people make friends and feel like they belong. For the past seven years, I’ve been coaching and managing the Rohingya United Brisbane soccer team. We have grown to a community league of 24 registered clubs. We never thought we would end up in a professional league. Playing with fellow Rohingyas feels like being part of a brotherhood and helps ensure we don’t lose our cultural identity. Everyone speaks Rohingya and we eat traditional food. When we first started the team, some of my friends wanted to be like Aussies because of the racism they had experienced. They thought if they adopted Australian culture – had a barbecue and learned how to eat pizza – they wouldn’t be treated like garbage anymore. But I said no, we need to continue our culture. We share our water if someone forgets to bring it and we share food, because back in the camp we shared everything. It doesn’t matter if we don’t know each other; if someone is hungry, we invite them to join us. Even when we lose a game, we still feel like we won. Who knows? Maybe one day we will play with other refugees from around the world. If we’re given the chance, we can do great things.
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PHOTOS BY SAM BIDDLE/ASRC
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y football career began in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. My brothers made a ball out of plastic bags. When I saw them playing with it, I wanted to play too. Our “field” was a barren, rocky area of the camp. It was muddy and rubbish-strewn but it was there I fell in love with the game. I was born in Cox’s Bazar, one of the largest refugee camps in the world. My mum always told my siblings and me that we didn’t belong here because we were kicked out of our own land because we are Rohingya. In the camp we didn’t have the opportunity to get an education. When I was young and it was raining in Bangladesh, I thought it must be raining all over the world. Many children in the camp still believe that today. It is the worst place you could ever imagine living. The houses are all open, and when it rained the government would just give us a plastic tarp to live under. Everything got wet and we couldn’t sleep. In winter it was very cold and there were no blankets to cover ourselves with. We had seven family members living in a shelter just a few metres squared. It smelled awful because there was rubbish everywhere. There was no waste removal service and there was an open toilet next to where we slept. There was no clean water. Life was miserable. The only time I felt free was when I played football with my brothers and friends. Then I forgot about everything else. We played every morning and afternoon. Focusing on the game saved us. In 2009 the UNHCR resettled 10,000 people from the camp. We were lucky to be picked from among 800,000 refugees – we were the last family accepted. I moved to Australia with my family in 2010. From that moment on, our lives changed. On my second day in Australia my cousins, who arrived here before us, took my family to a soccer field and showed us a real football. I held the ball for what felt like an hour. I started crying because I had never imagined I would be able to play with a real ball on a grass field. I was 12 when we arrived in Australia. Starting high school was tough. I didn’t know anyone, and I couldn’t speak English. A few Aussie kids bullied and teased me in the classroom. But on the soccer field I could escape the hurt feelings. I focused on playing football and other people would come and join me. Once I could speak more English, I started sharing my story – where I came from and how hard my family’s life had been – with the Aussie kids. They empathised with me and we started building friendships. Soccer has completely changed my life, and I’m determined to give other refugees the same opportunity to grow through sport. I help connect refugees who want to play
It Was Like Dancing With Death
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am a boat person. I like to say that to people. It is crazy to risk your life on a fishing boat, but I thought, if I’m going to die it’s better to die in the ocean from a shark than at the hands of the Iranian government. My mother taught me to cook when I was 14. I have many happy memories of watching her prepare meals for our family. Once I was old enough, I asked Mum to let me cook too. It made me happy to see my family eating my food. When I was 18, I moved into a share house with friends. I quit my job as a plumber and made a deal with my housemates: if I cooked for them, they would cover my rent. I didn’t know how to cook many dishes to start with – only simple things like omelettes, spaghetti and rice. So I would call Mum and ask for advice. She was never in a rush and would patiently guide me through the dishes over the phone. Soon my friends were saying, “Wow, your food is better than our mothers’.” After training and working as a chef in Tehran, I opened my own restaurant with two of my friends; it was a shisha shop, and a very successful business. Unfortunately, I had to leave all this behind because of my religious beliefs. I was an atheist, and it wasn’t safe for me to stay; my life was in danger. In Iran, if your parents are Muslim then you are a Muslim, it’s even on your National ID certificate and you can’t change that. If you do, then by law the government can execute you. I only had one week to leave the country or I would be arrested. Everything happened so quickly. I found someone in the Tehran Grand Bazaar who could help me escape. I was trying to go somewhere nearby, like Turkey, Azerbaijan or Armenia. I never thought of coming to Australia, but that was the only option. I left everything behind. I didn’t even say goodbye to my family or friends. If I communicated with them, they could also be arrested. The fishing boat was small, there were 113 people on board but it only had capacity for 60. We spent 38 hours crammed tightly together – it was like dancing with death. When I arrived in Melbourne, I handed out my résumé to over 50 restaurants and cafes all over the city, but nobody wanted me. They asked for Australian qualifications and references. Some said my English was not good enough. Only one person offered me a job, washing dishes for $8 dollars per hour. It would have been easy to give up, but I didn’t. I was lucky to find the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. I joined the English classes and volunteered in the kitchen. I cooked Iranian dishes and discovered that many Australians hadn’t tried Persian food. The feedback was always positive, and people kept asking if I had a restaurant. It was my dream to open my own cafe, and in 2019 I launched
HAMED’S AT HOME IN HIS KITCHEN
SalamaTea in Sunshine, a social enterprise that employs refugees and asylum seekers facing the same difficulties I faced when I first came to Australia. One of our most popular dishes is dadami, which means “from my father”. It is a very special recipe to me. When we were kids, whenever my father visited his sister in northern Iran, he would bring back a big tub of labne. We loved eating it, but we would get sick of it after a while. So Dad created this dip as a way of using up the leftovers. I remember Mum used to make a bread roll with dadami in it for my school lunches. Now when I eat dadami it brings back a lot of memories. It’s more than just food. It’s my culture. THE ASYLUM SEEKER RESOURCE CENTRE, WITH BLACK INC, HAS PUBLISHED SEEKING ASYLUM: OUR STORIES ( $39.99), FEATURING THE STORIES OF REFUGEES IN THEIR OWN WORDS. 100% OF PROFITS GO TO THE ASRC TO SUPPORT AND EMPOWER PEOPLE SEEKING ASYLUM. IT’S AVAILABLE VIA ALL GOOD BOOKSHOPS AND SHOP.ASRC.ORG.AU.
Hamed
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PHOTOS BY SAM BIDDLE/ASRC
OUTSIDE SALAMATEA, HAMED’S SOCIAL ENTERPRISE CAFE THAT EMPLOYS REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS
by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman
PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND
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ou may not have had the bandwidth to keep up with significant world events right now, but lucky for you, I am ON it. Drum roll: Heinz UK have announced – and already sold out of, sorry, only 500 cans manufactured – a new product, Christmas dinner in a can. It’s a festive Christmas dinner soup, containing chunks of turkey, pigs in blankets, Brussels sprouts and balls of stuffing, and tbh even though it’s manifestly clickbait designed to attract attention to their “Merry Heinzmas” range of gifts including, kill me now, a personalised “Baked Beans and Baubles” pack for your Christmas tree, I am here for it. It helps that I like sprouts, of course. Although I suppose given it’s English in origin, tradition dictates they will be soggy as a wet afternoon. And it won’t be organic, not at £1.50 per tin, so those turkeys and pigs aren’t the free-range frolicking happy animals for which I pay top dollar when I deign to eat meat in my Portlandia-adjacent lifestyle. But I tell you what, there’s something deeply alluring right now about the idea of just…opening a can for Christmas. Because, mates, who can be bothered? I’m side-eyeing December 25th like it’s getting my tax done. Quick tangent, before I start talking about supply chain collapse and the unlikelihood you’ll be able to buy Christmas presents anyway, but I suspect Heinz were inspired by the 2013 viral triumph Christmas Tinner from the UK tech retailer GAME. The problem to be solved was that hardcore gamers don’t want to “exit the game” just because Christmas, so they put a festive feast in a can. It features nine quivering gelatinous layers including mince pies, egg and bacon, turkey, bread sauce, vegies and pudding. Tragically it’s not an IRL product, but that didn’t stop GAME introducing vegetarian and vegan versions in 2019. So, the global supply chain. It’s fragile. You may or may not have noticed, but the
pandemic has played merry hell with the availability of…stuff. “Dinner in a can” is being heralded in the UK as a solution to the lack of available produce – UK supermarkets have so many empty shelves they’re “stocking” them with cardboard cut-outs of food. And there’s likely not enough turkeys for Christmas due to a Brexit-induced labour shortage. In Australia there was a national pallet shortage in October, due to the wood shortage. Bit of an issue because you know what’s delivered on pallets? Spoiler: everything. The wood shortage is due to the building boom, and the US siphoning off wood that would usually come here. New cars are hen’s teeth due to a global shortage of semi-conductor chips. New bikes are scarce, because they’re built with components from Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, Germany, China and South Korea, and container ships are banked up at ports around the world, waiting to be unloaded. Remember Ever Given getting wedged in the Suez Canal? Oh how we laughed. Did not help. COVID’s essentially disrupted all workplaces, all manufacturing, all production and all delivery in the world, and we’ve pivoted back to ordering stuff because we couldn’t buy services during a pandemic. Alas, stuff is no longer available or takes months to arrive. So, this is permission to stop trying this Christmas. You can’t do it big; you’ve already missed the due date for posting things. Buy local. There are a kazillion artisans and small businesses in your area who would LOVE your custom. Repurpose, regift and recycle. Go carol singing! Buy your best mate a massage, the kids a bookshop spree, and tickets for everyone to a show! Have friends over, play records, drink sparkling, have a sandwich. Hug your chicken. You don’t need a can.
Fiona is a writer, comedian and rebel without a Claus.
26 NOV 2021
Christmas Is Canned
I tell you what, there’s something deeply alluring right now about the idea of just… opening a can for Christmas.
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Fiona
by Ricky French @frenchricky
Call of the Badlands change we always wanted, to forgo a holiday and flee the badlands to live happily among the rolling hills and leafy suburbs, where birds sing and neighbours chat happily over the back fence. But inevitably, now that I’m about to get what I wanted, I wonder if I want it anymore. Since the pandemic hit I’ve developed something of a guilty affection for the badlands, which are finally revealing their softer side. We’ve discovered a long, winding trail by the creek – blighted by burnt-out cars and illegal trail bike riders – but still lovely. We go there most days and look across to the new suburbs rising on the other side of the water, new families moving here to make a home in the grasslands of the west. The Maribyrnong River is just a short drive away, with its swathe of parklands and rabbits for our dog to chase. A new swimming pool is being built, the train line has had a major upgrade, hell, the bottle shop now stocks craft beer. For 12 years we knew no-one, not even the names of our neighbours. Now, most days after school my son rides his bike down to the oval to play football with a group of local kids and dads. That’s only just started. For a kid who hadn’t made a single neighbourhood friend and wasn’t even interested in football, it brings tears to my eyes. It might have taken a decade, but perhaps this suburb is finally becoming a community? And that’s the irony. After spending years dreaming of leaving, I suddenly feel attached to the place, just when I’ve found an escape route. A case of suburban Stockholm syndrome, perhaps? The thing about holidays is that you always come home, whereas a change is a holiday into the unknown. As good? That remains to be seen.
Ricky is a writer and musician keeping it real... estate.
26 NOV 2021
PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND
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’ve been thinking lately about that cliché, “a change is as good as a holiday”. I’ve never been quite sure what the phrase actually means. It’s always sounded too vague to make much sense. What kind of change? A change of scenery? A change of curtains in the lounge room? A change of mind? Also, it assumes that all changes are good. What if your change is simply going from happy to sad, or losing a finger while chopping carrots, or finding your TV forever stuck on breakfast news channels, none of which I’m sure would be quite as good as a holiday in the Maldives, or trekking the Annapurna Circuit, or whatever a dream holiday is to you. We normally go on holiday to New Zealand to see family in January. Having missed out last year due to the pandemic, we were rather looking forward to reviving the tradition this January. But with Christmas approaching we’re once again reminded that this pandemic is the gift that just keeps on giving. I suppose domestic holidays are a possibility, but finding anywhere to stay that’s not already booked or that won’t require taking out a second mortgage is nigh impossible. So, if we can’t have a holiday, maybe we should take heed of that phrase and have a change? Luckily, the stars are aligning. Recently my partner got a new job on the other side of town, an exciting development that means we could be moving for the first time in 12 years. Wow, big change! And really, I should be happy. Keen readers will recall I’ve devoted more than a couple of columns over the years to whingeing about my boring suburb, devoid of culture, of trees, of like‑minded people, of community. It was cheap when we bought here, back when I was young enough to think travelling home from the city on the NightRider bus at 3am was a sensible way to spend my Saturday nights. But now we have the chance to achieve the
Hell, the bottle shop now stocks craft beer.
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Books
Maxine Beneba Clarke
The People’s Poet In her latest poetry collection, Maxine Beneba Clarke takes a look around and asks what it means to be a good human in the world today. by Sista Zai Zanda @sistazai
Sista Zai Zanda is a self-described “Afrofuturistic storyteller” and a PhD (Ed) scholarship student at University of Melbourne, researching anti-racism in early childhood education.
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t’s always hard – difficult – choosing a title. And you feel like you don’t know until you’ve got it,” says award-winning writer, poet and illustrator Maxine Beneba Clarke over a cuppa on Zoom. It’s the publication day of her latest poetry collection How Decent Folk Behave, and we’re chatting about how it got its name. It’s taken from one of her poems, ‘something sure’, a conversation between a mother and a son about the murder of Hannah Clarke and her three children, and what this act of domestic violence means for both the little boy and his mother’s social responsibility to raise him well. “You know, the mother in the poem says, ‘I taught you well how decent folk behave’ – and I thought to myself Well this is what this collection is about: it is about what is it to be a good human, what does it really mean?” The author of over nine books for adults and children, including the short fiction collection Foreign Soil (2014), her memoir The Hate Race (2016) and the Victorian Premier’s Award-winning poetry collection Carrying the World (2016), Beneba Clarke identifies her poetic lineage as beginning with the oral storytelling of the West African griots and unfolding into the Caribbean and Black British dub and
George Floyd, and more interest in talking about Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia and,” she pauses to reflect, “because it’s a situation where if you go out on the street, you’re not only exposing yourself to police violence, you are exposing yourself to a deadly pandemic and a virus, and with all of these intersecting issues, it’s suddenly the stakes become that much higher. “It’s like this is so important that we are going to go out there even though it means that we are exposed to this risk. I think that was really powerful to me and I’m not – I don’t think of myself as – an activist, I am a writer. So, I don’t think it’s up to me to set the agenda…but I try to ask those questions and to highlight some of the powerful things that did come out of the last few years.” Beneba Clarke first earned her status as a popular slam poet in venues around Naarm/Melbourne. This contemporary street poetry scene owes its own Blak grounding to creatives like Shelton Lea, Lisa Bellear and Bruce McGuinness, and Beneba Clarke alludes to the power of observational grassroots poetry in the prologue to the collection: “i said/get the fuck back/i am warning you:/i’ve got poetry/their hands were trembling/their eyes were wild/and I could smell/their fear”.
Beneba Clarke and I have known each other for a little over a decade now, back to a time before Australian literature embraced diversity in the canon. She remarks how much the landscape has shifted since then, but also how much more work still needs to be done. “There are a lot of uncomfortable conversations to come; and that is part of our job if we want to continue to engage with the fact that this is stolen Blak land and what is our responsibility on this land – as people who have been severely affected by colonisation ourselves, but are now essentially the beneficiaries of the colonisation of another country,” she says. “I think part of our task is to amplify the work of Indigenous writers and engage in those conversations which might be hard and which might require us to do some learning and unlearning, but that is where we are. That is what art is for: art creates this space to have these conversations.” Full of poems that speak to the times we collectively inhabit, in How Decent Folk Behave Beneba Clarke writes with nuance and emotion. Each poem leaves the reader keen to dig a little deeper and learn more about the real-life events that inspired them. In this sense, Beneba Clarke is a people’s poet, an archivist for posterity, like the griots who inspire her. HOW DECENT FOLK BEHAVE IS OUT NOW.
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reggae grassroots poetry traditions, popularised by Benjamin Zephaniah, Jean “Binta” Breeze and Linton Kwesi Johnson. She also names the soulful protest folk songs of Tracy Chapman as another major influence on her writing and performance style that, as a child of Black British settlers in Australia, she now brings to bear on her poetic observations about the world today. “[How Decent Folk Behave] was written in the last two years, during which Melbourne was locked down, on and off, for so long,” says Beneba Clarke. “It really made me think more about what is it we miss. And, when we get back out there, what is it that we need to do to look at things like violence against women, climate change, racial justice and things like that… Instead of having those conversations with friends – because I wasn’t able to sit around and have those musings – it happened on the page.” There’s an emerging trend, particularly among Black women and non-binary writers, to publish work that encourages readers to imagine what the future could possibly hold. Because we already know the world’s problems, the questions now have to be where are we going? What are we creating? And how are we getting there? Would Beneba Clarke situate How Decent Folk Behave within this genre of Black futurist writing? She laughs and nods, “Yeah, I think that. And during the coronavirus, Black Lives Matter galvanising after the death of
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Instead of having those conversations with friends – because I wasn’t able to sit around and have those musings – it happened on the page.
Oasis
Music
Oasis in the Countryside
by Doug Wallen @wallendoug
Doug Wallen is a freelance writer and editor based in Victoria, and a former music editor of The Big Issue.
LIAM GALLAGHER IN 1996, WITH OASIS AT THE TOP OF THEIR GAME
PHOTO BY GETTY
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That moment when Oasis were the biggest band in the world, guitars reigned, and all of England’s cool kids wanted to see them at Knebworth can now be re-lived, forever.
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W
hen Oasis announced back-to-back shows at For Scott, all of that background energy was equally the English country estate Knebworth House as important as the band on stage. Thankfully he in 1996, it wasn’t just another outdoor summer handles the latter with the same aplomb, cranking concert. Such was the Manchester quintet’s popularity up the sound mix to make the film well worth seeing that tickets sold out within a day, despite being available in its limited cinema release. Endless rehearsals only in person or by phone. An estimated two per cent meant the band were “tight as fuck” at the time, as of the country’s entire population tried to attend. The guitarist‑songwriter Noel Gallagher says in the movie, nationwide rush resembled that for Willy Wonka’s while his brother Liam calls Knebworth “the Woodstock fabled golden ticket, rewarding a quarter of a million of the 90s”. The brothers serve as executive producers fans with the gig of a lifetime. on the documentary. That’s the vital context for Jake Scott’s kinetic As for choosing which songs to highlight, Scott documentary, Oasis Knebworth 1996, timed for release says he originally didn’t want to include the band’s to coincide with the concert’s 25th anniversary. biggest hit, ‘Wonderwall’, because “it’s the one track Rather than a typical concert film, it’s the story of the that everybody already knows”. It did eventually make impassioned young people who converged on that the cut though, as part of a strings-buoyed acoustic era‑defining weekend, bolstered by real accounts segment, foreshadowing Oasis’ MTV Unplugged concert sourced from members of the Oasis fan club. just a couple of weeks later. “It’s really about being there,” says Scott, chatting via The weekend’s recordings have been distilled to a Zoom from Los Angeles. “Being a kid with a ticket. As a soundtrack that’s available as a double CD, triple vinyl viewer, you feel like you’ve got a ticket and you have the LP or deluxe box set. Oasis are in peak form throughout, best weekend of your life.” from Liam’s snidely endearing vocals to Noel’s The son of veteran English filmmaker Ridley Scott effortless-seeming guitar runs. Anthems are a constant, (Alien), Scott made his name in the 1990s by directing with fans reliably singing along to every word. And for a videos for such classic songs as R.E.M.’s ‘Everybody euphoric finale, Stone Roses guitarist John Squire joins Hurts’, Radiohead’s ‘Fake in on ‘Champagne Supernova’ As a viewer, you feel Plastic Trees’ and Oasis’s and The Beatles’ ‘I Am the own ‘Morning Glory’. But he Walrus’, complete with rain and like you’ve got a ticket had never made a concert fireworks overhead. and you have the best film, and didn’t attend “You knew you wanted to Knebworth. Still, the live move toward a big crescendo,” weekend of your life. footage helmed by fellow says Scott of the footage. While DIRECTOR JAKE SCOTT music-video director Dick this year has already yielded two Carruthers at the time top-shelf music documentaries cemented the documentary’s inevitable thrust. in Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground and Ahmir “It was this immense amount of material that you “Questlove” Thompson’s The Summer of Soul, Scott’s could turn into something more experiential,” Scott primary touchstone for Oasis Knebworth was Bert Stern says. “It spurred me to tell the story through the eyes and Aram Avakian’s 1959 film Jazz on a Summer’s Day, of the fans…as if it had just happened,” he explains. an engaging portrait of the Newport Jazz Festival that While the film captures Oasis at the height of their features Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Mahalia powers – with only two albums behind them, and Jackson and a then-novel rock’n’roll element in Chuck frontman Liam Gallagher just a month shy of his Berry. Scott first saw it as an art student, and it’s stayed 24th birthday – it also drops us into a sea of upraised with him ever since. hands with not a mobile phone in sight. With 7000 “The fans are so present in the film,” he says. “You people on the celebrity-filled guest list alone, and keep going back to individuals in the crowd and support acts like The Prodigy and The Chemical recognise them. You feel like you have a relationship Brothers across the two days, this gig granted fans with them.” lifelong bragging rights for the humble price of Scott has achieved the same effect with his movie, £22.50 ($40) – provided they could secure tickets. celebrating the individual fans just as much as the That hunt comes to life via earnest re-enactments, world-beating rock stars hitting full stride. If it seems as does the gig’s giddy lead-up and surreal aftermath. somewhat quaint now to witness such a massive crowd Knebworth House may have previously hosted bands worshipping a guitar-driven rock band, Scott observes such as Led Zeppelin, Queen and The Who, but many that his 16-year-old daughter (who has a band of her young Oasis fiends had no idea where it was. And even own) is fixated on mid-90s guitar bands at the moment. once they got there and witnessed the gig, there was still With a laugh, he muses: “These things have their cycles, the matter of getting home. That could mean stumbling don’t they?” to an unfamiliar train station in the wee hours or, in one case, winding up in a car with supermodel Kate Moss, OASIS KNEBWORTH 1996 IS IN CINEMAS AND AVAILABLE ON DVD AND BLU-RAY NOW. giving her driver directions.
The Card Counter
Film 32
On the Cards Hollywood veteran Paul Schrader adds another existential male loner to his body of work, this time Oscar Isaac as a war-vet card-counter who drifts from casino to hotel room to casino.
by Kai Perrignon @memoryendowment
Kai Perrignon is a writer, programmer and filmmaker based in Melbourne.
PHOTO COURTESY FOCUS FEATURES
THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU
WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN: OSCAR ISAAC IN THE CARD COUNTER
DIRECTOR PAUL SCHRADER
happen to be what first attracted Schrader to the idea of a gambling movie. He was interested “in the concept of a professional cardplayer, someone who sits there 10 to 12 hours a day, six to seven days a week, running numbers. Because that’s all you’re doing, it’d be boring.” So no, this is not a traditional gambling film. Despite the title, there is far more Texas hold ’em than blackjack, and the card games are secondary to Tell’s burgeoning relationships with Cirk (Tye Sheridan, Ready Player One), the revenge-obsessed son of a former military colleague, and the vibrant La Linda (Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip), who runs a team of card sharks. For almost half a century now, Schrader has been using genre tropes to introduce audiences to the ideas that he really cares about: “What’s beautiful about using genre is that viewers are so hooked that it’s in their viewing DNA. I’m using it to lull you. And then all of a sudden, boom! You jumped from worrying about gambling debts to existential weight.” Existential worry has been a fixture of Schrader’s career since he wrote Taxi Driver (1976), the Martin Scorsese-directed, neo-noir masterpiece about Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), an insomniac cabby suffering from PTSD. “People thought they knew what a cab
THE CARD COUNTER IS IN CINEMAS 2 DECEMBER.
26 NOV 2021
Part of the escape from prison is that you only escape to somebody else’s prison.
driver was… He was a talky guy; he was the funny guy in movies,” Schrader says. “I looked at him and said, ‘No, this is the black heart of existentialism. This is a young man trapped in a yellow box’… You saw the concept of a cab driver in a new way.” Taxi Driver was the first of what Schrader calls his “man in a room” films, where the antihero – played by Richard Gere in American Gigolo (1980) and Willem Dafoe in Light Sleeper (1992) – is “the obsessive, unreliable narrator, who keeps telling you the story”. These men are never well-adjusted, and they are always alone. Schrader’s inspiration for this kind of character comes from 19th- and 20th-century literature – “Dostoyevsky in motion,” he calls it – but the variation that Isaac plays in The Card Counter feels modern. Tell’s guilt draws on recent horrible history, and there’s also something modern in how he moulds himself to cope. Schrader describes Tell as a “a computer: ‘I don’t play cards, I count them.’ [As if] somehow, by counting cards, he can control the fact that he’s at the mercy of fate and whim.” Tell tries to act like a “man-machine”, but Isaac has a way of conveying the feelings he’s trying to suppress. There is warm blood beneath his cold exterior, just as The Card Counter is a genuinely romantic film despite its purposeful lack of glamour, its sheet-lined rooms and talk of war crimes. The soundtrack of original ballads performed by Robert Levon Been (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club) helps set the mood: “Running blind in and out of sight/ you were on my lips/you were paradise,” goes the song playing as the usually monk-like Tell holds La Linda’s hand in a lit-up garden. The lyrics express the longing he cannot. Thirty years ago, Schrader commissioned Levon Been’s father, Michael Been, to compose the soundtrack for Light Sleeper using the same approach. “I had the idea that [the music] would begin as inarticulate…like some kind of monster in the carpet; you hear groaning, you can’t see him, but you know he’s going to rise. Gradually, those start to become words and, finally, songs,” he says. In Taxi Driver, Travis famously refers to himself as “God’s lonely man”, a description that could apply to many of Schrader’s characters – most recently, the grieving reverend played by Ethan Hawke in First Reformed (2017). But these men are lovers as much as they are loners, and they each long for better lives. The phrase that rings out from The Card Counter is very different to the one Schrader wrote for Taxi Driver. It comes late in the film. Isaac puts his soulful eyes to work as he implores his companion to choose forgiveness over revenge. “Go see your mother,” he says.
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aul Schrader has not been to jail, but he understands what it’s like to feel trapped. In the veteran writer-director’s new drama The Card Counter, Hollywood leading man Oscar Isaac plays William Tell, a former US soldier who now spends his days touring the casino circuit in self-imposed solitude. He allows no friends, no hobbies, no long-term plans. Schrader, who grew up in the Calvinist church in Michigan, can empathise: “John Calvin described the body as the prison house of the soul, and I felt imprisoned as a young man in my church background. “I [eventually] got out, but…part of the escape from prison is that you only escape to somebody else’s prison. You never ever get out, really.” In the film, we learn that Tell served time for crimes committed while he was stationed at the infamous Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib. He still oozes guilt. At every dingy motel, he wraps the furniture in white sheets. This ritual reduces all the rooms to one room, one cell. Meanwhile, travelling between bland casino halls and blank motels, Tell is stuck “in a purgatory of lights and stimuli”. The numbing aesthetics also
Film Reviews
Annabel Brady-Brown Film Editor @annnabelbb
A
t 91, Clint Eastwood’s still got the cowboy growl – and the Romeo moves. Both are on full display in Cry Macho, the latest charmed entry in the actor’s mile-long career. At a pinch, there’s his ponchowearing gunslinger in the film that shot him to fame, the balletic spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars (1964), his turn as a hard-as-nails detective in Dirty Harry (1971), or his uncontainable inmate in Escape from Alcatraz (1979). Alongside the iconic portrayals of outlaws and bounty hunters, Eastwood has also spent a half-century directing consistently entertaining dramas, starting with Play Misty for Me (1971), a blistering thriller about a cheesy radio DJ and his obsessed fan. The films that really get me, though, are those of recent times – most movingly, The Mule (2018) – that see Eastwood wearily step back into the spotlight, returning as an actor to reckon with his legacy and gently plumb his senescence. In Cry Macho, he plays a former rodeo rider named Mike who shuffles around Texas and Mexico, filled with regret. A legally dubious quest – to find a young boy (Eduardo Minett) and bring him over the border to his father – blossoms into an intergenerational buddy movie, and, when he meets widow Marta (Natalia Traven), even a twlight romance. I love the film for its sentimentality, its hard-won nostalgia and its patient, kindly pace. It might not be the slickest offering right now, but it’s got a damn lot of heart. ABB
XXX THE GOOD, THE BAD XXX THE EASTWOOD AND
TITANE
French auteur Julia Ducournau’s latest has, perhaps unfairly, been dubbed “the car sex film” since its explosive, Palme d’Or-winning premiere at Cannes. The label is factual – there is indeed human-vehicle consummation in this body horror extravaganza. But it fails to encompass just how little Titane is interested in the actual mechanics (sorry) of the act itself, opting instead for an intriguing father-son arc where limits of love and gender are tested at their most molecular. The “son” is showgirl/serial killer Alexia (Agathe Rouselle), who shaves her head and breaks her nose to avoid capture by posing as a boy who’s been missing for a decade. As Alexia bonds with the boy’s real father (Vincent Lindon), she assumes an androgynous identity that begins to run deeper than just facade. As brutal and bloody as Ducournau’s cannibalistic horror debut Raw (2016), Titane (in)famously had 13 punters faint at a Sydney Film Festival screening. Beyond its shock value, though, it’s surprisingly tender. MICHAEL SUN BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN
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In the opening minutes of this Berlinale Golden Bear winner, Emi (Katia Pascariu) – a history teacher at a prestigious Romanian secondary school – records an amateur sex tape with her husband Eugen (Stefan Steel). When the video is mysteriously uploaded online, she finds that her job is suddenly at risk. At the centre of the scandal looms a question: in a world of grinding exploitation and state-sanctioned slaughter, why do we so instinctively recoil from sex? It is no coincidence that the school is coded as bourgeois par excellence, a training ground for the next generation of Romania’s ruling class, whose status is predicated on the impoverishment of those less fortunate. Though director Radu Jude’s provocations are not for everyone (the film’s essayistic, non-narrative second act may leave some viewers cold), this is a satire that sticks the landing. Biting, formally adventurous and filled with inspired contradiction. LUKE MCCARTHY
DUNE
Arrival (2016) director Denis Villeneuve’s latest sci-fi epic is astonishingly self-assured, committed to rendering the source material’s expansive world and many idiosyncrasies – gargantuan worms, baroque costuming, funky desert walking – at full cinematic scale. Playing to its ‘Part One’ subtitle, the film recounts the first half of Frank Herbert’s famous 1965 novel. In the distant future, a noble space family-cum-empire gain control of a dangerous desert planet and are thrust into conflict over the universe’s most precious commodity: spice! The movie’s narrative and visual ambitions are matched by its first-grade cast, fronted with a career-high performance by Timothée Chalamet, who leans into his pale plasticine physique and brings incredible pathos to teenage hero and heir, Paul Atreides. Some viewers may be disappointed by Dune’s obfuscated politicking and irresolute story, but its emotional through-lines feel cohesive, and hey, we all know that sequels are the real spice of life. SAMUEL HARRIS
Small Screen Reviews
Aimee Knight Small Screens Editor @siraimeeknight
BURNING | PRIME VIDEO
UNPACKING
THE POWER OF THE DOG
| PC, SWITCH, XBOX ONE
| 1 DEC ON NETFLIX
Our possessions say a lot about us. What we choose to keep, what we leave behind, what gets pride of place on the shelf. From Brisbane’s indie game studio Witch Beam, Unpacking tells a narrative with only possessions and space as its tools. It’s a masterclass in “show, don’t tell” storytelling, boxed together with gameplay that is part decorating sim, part casual puzzle game, and fully satisfying organisational escape. Told across a series of moving days, the game rewards a thoughtful, observant player, as even small possessions speak volumes. Whether it’s a series of photos on a pinboard, or a framed certificate hung proudly on a wall, everything has a place and a purpose to discover. Even the occasional moments of frustration, when the underlying design doesn’t quite match the player’s autonomy, don’t subtract from the overall introspective and tidy experience. Short but sweet, Unpacking is a joyful story that takes the seemingly everyday and turns it into something charming, intimate and surprising.
The hills of Montana are as bewildering as those who reside in them: a truth learned by Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst) when she marries the mild-mannered rancher George Burbank (Jesse Plemons), then moves to live with him and his bullying brother Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), who antagonises Rose and her son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). In her masterful return, Kiwi Jane Campion weaves a tale wrapped in layers of secrecy and profound emotional depth. As the relationship between Phil and Rose complicates – with their loved ones caught in the middle – Cumberbatch and Dunst display intense sensitivity, in turns unnerving and awe-inspiring, rivalled only by the breathtaking scenery enclosing them. Through Phil, Campion digs deep into the skin of toxic masculinity, deconstructing the myth of stoicism, gruffness, and alpha-male glorification. This is Campion in top form, a mysteriously compelling western that twists and turns like a road through a mountain range.
CAITLIN CRONIN
BRUCE KOUSSABA
S
mells like teen spirit over on Stan, with the return of two unusual sitcoms about the adolescent experience. At Bayside High, school is back in session as the surprisingly erudite Saved by the Bell reboot rings in its sophomore year. If you didn’t catch season one, you’d be forgiven for dismissing this as another vapid, 90s nostalgia cash-in (see: Fuller House, Punky Brewster, 90210 et al), but the smart, self-aware reimagining has the quick wit and sharp timing of 30 Rock and The Mindy Project, care of showrunner Tracey Wigfield. The writer-producer cut her comedic teeth on both of those adult-oriented shows, and she’s done a totally tubular job of hauling Bell’s outmoded, candy floss source material into the 21st century, for grown-ups and minors alike. (Wigfield’s first sitcom, Great News, about a go-getting producer whose irritating intern is none other than her mother, is streaming on Netflix and well worth a look.) Speaking of nostalgia, PEN15 is set for a homecoming on 4 December. Set in 2000, this perfectly awkward comedy about 13-year‑old BFFs Maya and Anna – played by adult actors Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, both in their early thirties – launched the first half of its second season last year, and ended on a sombre note. In August, an animated special dropped the girls off with Anna’s deadbeat dad for summer vaycay in Florida, but it’ll be rad to properly catch up with Trailview Middle School’s dorkiest, most endearing (and relatable) weirdos when seven new episodes land just in time for summer. AK
26 NOV 2021
KENTA MCGRATH
NOT THE PEACH PIT
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It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that until the pandemic reduced all else to a footnote, the world had watched in horror as Australia suffered through one of the worst bushfire seasons in its history. In her new documentary Burning, director Eva Orner (Taxi to the Dark Side, Chasing Asylum) offers a timely reminder of the Black Summer of 2019-20, and of a government that was gifted a distraction from its response to the tragedy and to the climate change that fuelled it. Orner adopts a conventional journalistic approach, cutting between talking heads, archival materials and footage of the devastation taken from the ground and from above. There’s little here that’s new, but what the film lacks in complexity, it makes up for in its directness and sincerity of purpose. Just as we need to be confronted by the apocalyptic imagery – of inflamed skies, scorched wildlife and blackened landscapes – conservationist Tim Flannery’s parting assurance that the climate situation can still be saved are words we sorely need to hear, and believe.
Music Reviews
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his year, Heavy Machinery Records have been responsible for some of the most exciting and excellent music releases in the country. Over the past year, the City of Melbourne-run label has put out an array of bold and experimental records for the city’s Flash Forward program. The initiative linked 40 music artists with 40 visual artists, who were to bring their work to 40 laneways in Melbourne. While the pandemic put a pause on the live aspects of the program, the albums continue to be released, allowing the city’s most singular and inventive artists to make new work in a time of grave precarity, when creating and recording music was near-impossible. Funded by the City of Melbourne and the Victorian government, each project was granted $20,000 to create new work that will be pressed to vinyl. The output has been surprising and thrilling, ranging from HTRK’s spectral, acoustic record Rhinestones to Mindy Meng Wang’s daring Phoenix Rising, which experiments with the traditional guzheng instrument. Heavy Machinery Records’ latest release is the dreamy Gap Tooth by Melbourne icons Jaala. Led by the emphatic Cosima Jaala, the album sees her bluesy pipes (once described by Pitchfork as “a punkier Amy Winehouse or Jeff Buckley”) paired with languid, sprawling guitars and spare instrumentation, worlds away from the more angular and caustic energy of previous releases. IT
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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU
JAALA: GAP TOOTH YEAR
Isabella Trimboli Music Editor @itrimboli
BLOODMOON: I CONVERGE & CHELSEA WOLFE
Legends of metalcore for more than 20 years, Converge are now teaming up here with Chelsea Wolfe, known for her genre-bending work between doom metal and folk, to forge an epic new collaborative album Bloodmoon: I. Instead of retreading familiar areas, Bloodmoon: I finds surprising new terrain – it is startlingly symphonic and even groovy for artists that traditionally trade in straight-down-the-line gloom. Converge have been slowly approaching this sound, but Bloodmoon: I is a huge leap further, reminiscent of Neurosis (whose guitar player Steve Von Till also plays on the album) or twisted tech-metal versions of King Crimson. Weaving Wolfe’s ethereal melodies into Converge’s heaviness, the album maps a terrain that relishes in theatricality. Over the album’s long runtime, the shredding riffs occasionally become a bit cheesy – more classic heavy metal than pummelling sludge or hardcore – but it proudly embraces it. Passionately performed, Bloodmoon: I is a perfect release for adventurous fans of both artists. ANGUS MCGRATH
VOYAGE ABBA
KICK II ARCA
“I believe it would be fair to say, ‘You look bewildered’/And you wonder why I’m here today,” goes a line in ABBA’s single ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’. It’s a fair question that just about summarises the experience of listening to the Swedish supergroup’s first album in 40 years. It’s not that the music is cheesy – it’s ABBA, for goodness sake – the problem is that there’s not much that feels fresh or necessary in these new songs. Some of the tracks are downright awful – the Christmas song ‘Little Things’, complete with children’s choir, is better not discussed – but even the ones that could stand next to the classics seem a little trite, or at least predictable, with sound and production that feels dated. It’s lovely to see Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid back together, and you can hear the joy in the songs – it’s just a shame they’re largely stale. This record could have been halved for a more succinct and consistent result. GISELLE
One breathtaking image of the many that fill the CGI video for Arca’s ‘Prada/ Rakata’ is the artist depicted as a pink mermaid monument under construction on a mountaintop. Here, mythology is cast as an ever-changing process of creation, an apt celebration of transgender excess. The Venezuelan artist, who cultivated a reputation for contorting audio into hitherto unimaginable forms, has centred her voice and body in building grand, futuristic worlds that revel in liberation from human limitations. KiCk ii is the second of four projected albums that orient the Arca universe toward pop. A demented form of reggaeton’s Dembow rhythm powerfully anchors Arca’s elastic production in the album’s front half. From opener ‘Doña’, her voice is intimate. Towards the album’s end, however, both the Dembow and Arca’s singing exit for the climax of the Sia-featuring club workout ‘Born Yesterday’ and emotionally rich closer ‘Andro’, a reminder of her auteurship’s frightening breadth. MARCUS WHALE
AU-NHIEN NGUYEN
Book Reviews
Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor @melissajfulton
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DANGED BLACK THING EUGEN BACON
The third volume of Helen Garner’s diaries is also her most novel-like, with a propulsive narrative structure and an ending that feels definitive. It’s more inward-looking too; its stage narrower, sometimes claustrophobically so – but that’s the point. “I think I am in the classic position of a woman artist who in order to maintain a marriage is obliged to trim herself so as not to make her husband feel – what?” she reflects. This book charts the collapse of her third marriage over three anxiety-riddled years. Her husband, “V”, an acclaimed Australian novelist, requires that she leave their flat every day so he can work, disapproves of her daughter staying with them, and bristles with professional jealousy over the success of Garner’s (controversial) The First Stone. Worst, perhaps: he ferociously gaslights her over his “friendship” with a neighbour, which Garner knows, bone-deep, is more. An excoriating, intimately true portrait of a dying marriage, it also celebrates the hard-won first flowering of a return to self. JO CASE
Time and place are distinctly fluid in Eugen Bacon’s collection of stories. The African Australian author’s creative inspirations are just as free flowing, from myth and folklore to speculative fiction and Afrofuturism. Norse gods influence real-life events in ‘A Pod of Mermaids’, while ‘A Visit in Whitechapel’ riffs on Jack the Ripper, and ‘De Turtle O’ Hades’ imagines exiled Ugandan dictator Idi Amin facing divine retribution. Other tales hew more closely to home: ‘Simbiyu and the Nameless’ skips across the young life of an African child turned Australian footy star, and ‘The Water Runner’ foresees a grim economy wrought by climate change. Examinations of race, gender, class and personal identity percolate through these stories – including four written with collaborators – although the fable-like title tale is actually named for a bewitching new gadget that prompts adultery. It’s not always easy to follow Bacon’s fragmentary approach and linguistic flourishes, but this is an impressive feat of scrambling and reconfiguring reality.
THE SEX ED YOU NEVER HAD CHANTELLE OTTEN
Chantelle Otten, award-winning psychosexologist and sexual wellness expert, wants us to talk more about sex. The Sex Ed You Never Had is an ambitious and comprehensive rewrite of “outdated, patriarchal, fear-based, traditional sex education”. Otten’s pedagogy is free of shame and taboo, centring pleasure and consent culture for all. This refreshingly affirming and inclusive book makes a decisive departure from the binary to reflect the rich and nuanced human sexual spectrum. From the “basics” of assigned sex and biology, Otten tackles topics ranging from porn to body image, masturbation, dating and more. It is Otten’s voice that carries the book, and her personal reflections, interwoven throughout, lend encouragement and guidance. At times, this dips into the jarring – “Babe! How harmful! Yahoo!” – but ultimately this is an empowering read that will liberate and uplift many, from those in established relationships to those at the start of their sexual journey. It really is the sex ed we never had, but which we all need. DASHA MAIOROVA
DOUG WALLEN
26 NOV 2021
HOW TO END A STORY: DIARIES 1995-1998 HELEN GARNER
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EGGERS: THE EVERY MAN
ecause The Every is about an all-powerful monopoly that seeks to eliminate competition, it seemed like a good time to remind book buyers that they still have a choice,” bestselling author Dave Eggers told The Guardian. In the US, he’s made the hardcover special edition of his latest novel, the sequel to his 2013 mega-hit The Circle, available from independent booksellers only – no Amazon – in a stand against the monolith. Leaving Amazon out of the supply chain, even just a little bit (the paperback edition of The Every is still available everywhere) was difficult, with distribution deals for almost all publishers – even Eggers’ own indie McSweeney’s, which he launched back in 1998 – including rigid contracts with Amazon. But Eggers was determined: “I don’t like bullies,” he told The New York Times. “Amazon has been kicking sand in the face of independent bookstores for decades now.” So why the stand? Bargain books sure are tempting, especially when there are presents to buy, but Eggers wants us to consider what going with the big guy will cost us, once their loss-leading tactics have pushed out the competition. Will we still be able to while away the hours in a bricks-and-mortar bookshop? Who will recommend new titles to us? What about launches and book signings and events – all that comes with a robust local book scene? And what will happen to our local authors? This Christmas, I’m gonna make like Dave and stand against the goliath. MF
Public Service Announcement
by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus
than letting his potentially catastrophic entrance into our lives define him by being embarrassed by it, confidently used it to his advantage and became the coolest dork in town. Be like the people whose house I turned up to a day early for a playdate between our children. They didn’t know me very well and they were doing the vacuuming when I barged into their house, presuming they were expecting me. Instead of making me feel like a total idiot though, they were generous and welcoming and kind and funny, and it felt like nothing much at all. They were Bassoon Guy, finding themselves on the floor in the silent church thanks to my doing, but treating it as a victory, not a failure. Be your inner dork. Sing along. Who cares who sees? Be the one who leaves the party early because it’s better for you. Be the one who talks too much. Be the one who doesn’t talk at all, but maybe thinks about it all later, and drops by someone’s house with something you’ve made for them, tied in a bow. Be a little bit grumpy. Be too keen, or too obsessed about the things you’re obsessed with, or the one with the laugh people recognise from the other side of the street. Be the double-checker, or the nervous nelly. Be into musicals. Or cosplay. Or books everyone else “grew out of”. When you love someone, it’s often the dorkiest bits you love the most. Public Service Announcement: I saw the bassoonist in the street a few years back. I recounted the story of the music concert. “Huh?” he said happily. “I don’t remember that at all.” A kid wandered over to him, then, and did a slight eye-roll at the fact that we were chatting. “Ah,” said the bassoonist’s kid. “Another one of Dad’s friends.” So yeah, be the bassoonist. He doesn’t even remember his embarrassing teenage moment and he is positively knocking the friends back with a stick.
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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hen I was a teenager, I was in the school orchestra. Playing in an orchestra is considered pretty dorky so people don’t tend to use orchestra metaphors, but let me give it a burl. Much like sport (no wait, stay with me!), playing in an orchestra requires teamwork, a sense of timing and an ability to endure the mind-numbing boredom of practising the same thing over and over until you hate it (see, we got there in the end). One evening, we played a concert in the local hall, which was one of those old churches where the acoustics are amazing and the stained glass makes you feel like you should behave yourself. Anyway, this new kid was joining our orchestra. He’d been invited to come along and see us play before he joined us for practice the next day. We had all been told to welcome him. But he didn’t show. Not at first. Only later, after we had tuned our instruments and the audience had quietened down, did we see him. He was sneaking in the side door and surreptitiously heading for the only pew left empty. There was a reason the pew was empty. Up the other end of it, out of his line of sight, was a sign that said BROKEN. DO NOT SIT. A nice lady had been ushering people away from it as we filed in earlier. So right as the old church fell silent, the new kid kerplunked himself down on a broken church pew, in front of an orchestra full of team-players bonded through years of boring practice, and with the most dramatic crack of splitting wood and collapsing pew, magnified by incredible acoustics, he landed spectacularly on his bottom. What a moment. What a crushing moment of humiliation and horror. What a disaster! We all looked at him sprawled on the wooden rubble. Silence. Then he stood tall, dusted off his bottom, said “I just live for moments like that”, and bowed theatrically in all directions to a full applause and a scattering of ovations. That boy was the most popular bassoonist I’ve ever met. We adored him immediately. He was basically king of the orchestra. Kind of like the captain of the footba... ah, never mind. Public Service Announcement: embrace your inner dork. Be the greatest bassoonist of all time. You don’t have to be a literal bassoonist, but summon the strength of character possessed by that teenager, who, rather
26 NOV 2021
Dork Out!
THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU
Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas
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PHOTOS BY NIKKI TO/HARDIE GRANT
Tastes Like Home Shannon Martinez
Radicchio, Peach and Asparagus Salad Ingredients
Shannon says…
Serves 4-6
hristmas in Australia can be hot. Real hot. And my family’s home in Glenluce, Victoria, is definitely no exception. As much as we’ve all grown up watching Christmas movie classics with snow-covered towns, the fact is that cooking indoors all day with ovens raging and every burner bubbling away is just not practical. In my family, Christmas time is spent outside. While Christmas Day is generally a very traditional spread, Boxing Day is where we get more creative. We light the barbecue and woodfire oven, and freshen up the menu. This salad has become a family staple. There’s just no better combination than spending a lazy day outside with all the family, and cooking at a slower pace. While festive cooking traditions are important, the way my family eats has quickly changed, with almost half of them going plant-based in recent years. So, it’s good to keep things interesting by introducing a cheeky new dish here and there. A simple way to freshen up your Christmas menu is to add some interesting sides to go along with the main event. And you never know, that new dish may just become family tradition for future generations. My recipes are written for everyone. I want people of all skill levels and on any budget to be able to create beautiful and delish food. Big bold flavours and dishes that most plant-based eaters might think can no longer be on the menu. Showing people that with a few simple ingredient swaps, both family classics and modern flavours are easily achieved. There’s no need to go without the things you love just because you don’t eat meat. So for something different this Christmas, throw another peach on the barbie. Grandma might think you’ve lost the plot, but I bet she’ll be going in for seconds.
125ml (½ cup) extra-virgin olive oil Juice of 1 large lemon ½ shallot, finely diced 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Method
SHARE
Heat a chargrill pan or barbecue grill plate until smoking hot. Drizzle the asparagus with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill until char lines develop, then transfer to a bowl. Repeat with the radicchio, then add to the bowl along with the asparagus. Place the peach halves on the grill and turn often until char marks appear on all sides. Peel off the skins if you like, then tear the peaches into bite-sized chunks or cut into quarters and add to the bowl. To make the dressing, place all the ingredients in a jar, season with salt and pepper and shake well to combine. Add the mint and basil leaves to the bowl and dress the salad with as much or as little dressing as you like. I prefer my salads heavily dressed. Any leftover dressing will keep in the fridge for up to a week.
PLAN TO RECREATE THIS DISH AT HOME? TAG US WITH YOUR FESTIVE CREATIONS! @BIGISSUEAUSTRALIA #TASTESLIKEHOME
VEGAN WITH BITE IS THE LATEST COOKBOOK BY SHANNON MARTINEZ.
26 NOV 2021
Dressing
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2 bunches asparagus (about 12 large spears), woody ends trimmed, halved Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling ½ radicchio, core removed, cut into 3 wedges 4 yellow or white peaches, halved, stones removed 1 handful mint leaves 1 handful basil leaves
Puzzles
ANSWERS PAGE 45.
By Lingo! by Lee Murray leemurray.id.au SWAP
Sudoku
by websudoku.com
Each column, row and 3 x 3 box must contain all numbers 1 to 9.
CLUES 5 letters Bar of gold Pelvic area Rupert___, Harry Potter actor Tiny bell sounds Uniting 6 letters Gloria___, ‘I Will Survive’ singer Hale, robust Mental health Opening bars of music Very thin rope 7 letters Dark and hellish Grading Holding forth Keeping safe Looking fixedly 8 letters Extremely hot Twisting Wandering off
Solutions CROSSWORD PAGE 45 ACROSS 9 Russian roulette 10 Mustang 12 Mascara
13 Ascertain 14 Angry 15 Étagère 18 Lumiere 21 Irate 23 Literally 25 Escapes 26 Bycatch 29 Cross references
DOWN 1 Prim 2 Asks 3 Disagree 4 Enigma 5 Communal 6 Alaska 7 Strangle 8 Terabyte 11 Upset 15 Evidence 16 At anchor 17 Enlisted 19 Miracles 20 Relic 22 Expose 24 Tablet 27 Tact 28 Hose
20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9 1 Brandy 2 Dick York and Dick Sargent 3 History 4 Prince Edward and Sophie, Earl and Countess of Wessex 5 Bank of New South Wales 6 Memphis, Tennessee 7 Christmas Island 8 Cadel Evans 9 A) Seattle, USA 10 Hyoid bone 11 Christmas Eve 12 Allan Border 13 Sally Field winning Best Actress for Places in the Heart 14 ‘White Christmas’ 15 1999 16 Urine 17 Paris (Charles de Gaulle Airport) 18 A crackle 19 Elisabeth Kübler-Ross 20 True
26 NOV 2021
Using all nine letters provided, can you answer these clues? Every answer must include the central letter. Plus, which word uses all 9 letters?
by puzzler.com
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Word Builder
Lots of us have been making use of our local community swap groups during lockdown, but a group based on swapping in the 1200s would have been…different. In the 13th century, to swap something was to hit it hard. The word itself probably comes from the sound of one object striking another. If someone threatened to swap you back then, they’d be threatening to beat you up. (There’s a small possibility they’d be offering to kiss you, but I don’t think I’d stick around to find out.) Over time, swap became less intense. By the 1500s, it would be used to refer to the kind of contact made in a handshake – the kind of handshake we might use to mark an agreement to trade with someone. A couple of centuries later, swap was no longer the handshake, but the deal itself.
Crossword
by Chris Black
THE ANSWERS FOR THE CRYPTIC AND QUICK CLUES ARE THE SAME. ANSWERS PAGE 43.
Quick Clues ACROSS
9 Game featured in The Deer Hunter (7,8) 10 W ild horse (7) 12 Type of make-up (7) 13 W ork out (9) 14 M ad (5) 15 D isplay unit (7) 18 E arly filmmaker (7) 21 A bout to explode (5) 23 E xactly (9) 25 F lees (7) 26 A ccidental fishing haul (7) 29 P ointers to other information (5,10)
DOWN
1 F irst part (4) 2 Queries (4) 3 Contradict (8) 4 Riddle (6) 5 Shared (8) 6 US state (6) 7 Gag (8) 8 Digital unit (8) 11 D iscomfit (5) 15 S how (8) 16 M oored (2,6) 17 Volunteered (8) 19 W onders (8) 20 A rchaeological find (5) 22 U ncover (6) 24 P ill (6) 27 D iplomacy (4) 28 W atering device (4)
Cryptic Clues
Solutions
9 True US relations display dangerous game (7,8) 10 M agnus takes time to break horse (7) 12 A MA upset about blemish from make-up (7) 13 S ettle sectarian violence (9) 14 A ustralia’s next generation requires young
1 Stuffy chief cut short (4) 2 Requests jobs with no introduction (4) 3 No time for tragedies, violently cross swords (8) 4 Played in-game puzzle (6) 5 Edited a column about head of music collective (8) 6 Sadly starts King Arthur’s state (6) 7 Alien going around close to full throttle (8) 8 Energy after fixing battery unit (8) 11 S hipping company has alien trouble (5) 15 V ice need new proof (8) 16 S ecured roach & ant treatment (2,6) 17 E ldest in trouble for having joined the army (8) 19 S igns car struggling during long distances (8) 20 A rtefact in software licence (5) 22 R eveal former stance (6) 24 i Pad finally left on bench (6) 27 T ime Canberra gets diplomacy (4) 28 S hoe damaged stockings (4)
leaders to be furious (5)
15 F inally renovate apartment, agree to move
furniture (7)
18 W icked Disney character? (7) 21 C urrent price is mad (5) 23 B roadcast brilliant meeting verbatim (9) 25 S ees movement around top bolts (7) 26 U nknown captain divides batch of
unwanted fish? (7)
29 1 4-across, 21-across, 11-down (5,10)
SUDOKU PAGE 43
WORD BUILDER PAGE 43 5 Ingot Groin Grint Tings Tying 6 Gaynor Strong Sanity Intros String 7 Stygian Sorting Orating Storing Staring 8 Roasting Gyration Straying 9 Signatory
26 NOV 2021
DOWN
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ACROSS
Click words by Michael Epis photo by Linda McCartney
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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU
1969
Linda, Paul and Mary McCartney
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he funny thing is, Paul wasn’t Linda McCartney’s favourite Beatle. John Lennon was – “but when I met him the fascination faded fast”. In 1966 she was 25, an assistant at Town & Country magazine, when she took up an unused invitation
to a Rolling Stones PR event on the Hudson River, New York. She took photos; her career had begun. (Plus she went on a date with Mick Jagger a day or so later.) Working in the field of rock’n’roll, within a year Linda was named Female Photographer of the
Year, and took herself briefly to London, where the action was. She wanted to photograph the Beatles, and dropped off her portfolio with manager Brian Epstein, who was impressed and invited her to the album launch several days later of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In the meantime, she went to a Soho nightclub, the Bag O’ Nails. It just so happened that at the same nightclub was one Paul McCartney. He spotted her. She spotted him. She walked his way. “I stood up just as she was passing, blocking her exit. And so I said, ‘Oh, sorry. Hi. How are you? How’re you doing?’ I introduced myself, and said, ‘We’re going on to another club after this, would you like to join us?’” They went and saw a new band, Procol Harum, who performed a new song, ‘A Lighter Shade of Pale’, then went back to Paul’s place, where she was taken by the Magritte paintings on the walls. After the Sgt Pepper’s launch four days later, Linda flew back to New York. A year after that she met Paul again, at a New York event announcing the Beatles’ new record company, Apple Corps. A few months later Paul rang and invited her to England. And so a lifetime together started. Within six months they were married; within 12 months they were the parents of Mary. They were best friends, co‑songwriters, bandmates in Wings. They had two more children, Stella and James, and Paul adopted Linda’s daughter, Heather, from a previous marriage. It all ended three decades later when Linda died from breast cancer, in 1998. And little Mary? She grew up to be a photographer – just like her mum. Oh, and the English Sheepdog in the background? Paul wrote a song about her. You might know it: ‘Martha My Dear’.
THE LINDA MCCARTNEY RETROSPECTIVE IS AT THE ART GALLERY OF BALLARAT UNTIL 9 JANUARY 2022.
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