The Big Issue Australia #592 - No Place Like Home

B R UCE PASCOE | HOM E LE SS WOR LD CU P | KEVI N R U DD ON CATS

$9 No 592 26 Jul–8 Aug 2019 HELPING PEOPLE HELP THEMSELVES $4.50 of the cover price goes to your vendor

FINDING SOLUTIONS TO AUSTRALIA'S HOUSING CRISIS

NATIONAL OFFICE Chief Executive Officer Steven Persson Chief Operating Officer Sally Hines Editor Amy Hetherington Chief Financial Officer Jon Whitehead National Marketing and Partnerships Manager Emma O’Halloran National Operations Manager Jeremy Urquhart

The Big Issue is Australia’s leading social enterprise. We are an independent, not-for-profit organisation that develops solutions to help homeless, disadvantaged and marginalised people positively change their lives.

The Big Issue magazine is published fortnightly and sold on the streets by vendors who purchase copies for $4.50 and sell them for $9, keeping the difference. Subscriptions are also available and provide employment for disadvantaged women as dispatch assistants.

For details on all our enterprises visit thebigissue.org.au.

Principal Partners

CONTACT US Tel (03) 9663 4533 Fax (03) 9639 4076 GPO Box 4911 Melbourne VIC 3001 hello@bigissue.org.au thebigissue.org.au WANT TO BECOME A VENDOR? If you’d like to become a vendor contact the vendor support team in your state.

ACT – (02) 6181 2801 Supported by Woden Community Service NSW – (02) 8332 7200 Chris Campbell NSW + ACT Operations Manager Qld – (07) 3221 3513 Susie Longman Qld Operations Manager SA – (08) 8359 3450 Matthew Stedman SA + NT Operations Manager Vic – (03) 9602 7600 Gemma Pidutti Vic + Tas Operations Manager WA – (08) 9225 7792 Andrew Joske WA Operations Manager

Major Partners Allens Linklaters, Corrs Chambers Westgarth, Clayton Utz, Fluor Australia, Herbert Smith Freehills, Macquarie Group, MinterEllison, Mutual Trust Pty Ltd, NAB, PwC, Qantas, Realestate.com.au, The Ian Potter Foundation, William Buck Marketing/Media Partners Adstream, C2, Carat & Aegis Media, Chocolate Studios, Getty Images, Realview Digital, Res Publica, Roy Morgan Research, Town Square, Yarra Trams Distribution and Community Partners The Big Issue is grateful for all assistance received from our distribution and community partners. A full list of these partners can be found at thebigissue.org.au.

The Big Issue is a proud member of the INSP, which incorporates 122 street publications like The Big Issue in 41 countries.

CONTENTS

592

#

Cover Stories 14 HOUSING ENDS HOMELESSNESS

Sounds simple doesn’t it? And yet, Australia is in an affordable housing crisis.

Features 10 POLITICAL ANIMALS

MY WORD Former PM Kevin Rudd on his cats and dogs.

18 HOMELESS WORLD CUP

Meet the Street Socceroos heading to Wales to represent Australia.

21 VENDOR TOUR GUIDE

Maurice from the UK shows us around the Welsh capital, Cardiff.

22 BELOW THE BREAD LINE

THE BIG PICTURE Hunger is a common reality, especially for those experiencing homelessness – so what do people eat day to day?

26 LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF

Bruce Pascoe talks about discovering his ancestry, and the motivation behind his bestseller Dark Emu.

30 METHOD TO OPHELIA’S MADNESS A female-focused remake of Hamlet puts Ophelia at the centre.

32 SALT OF THE EARTH

Angie McMahon’s new album is one more step on her rise to stardom.

35 WHY WORDS MATTER

Author Amanda Montell wants to take back the power of language – and wield it for good.

40 TASTES LIKE HOME

Matthew Evans gives us some hazelnut and chocolate kisses. (They’re biscuits.)

Regulars 04 ED’S LETTER, YOUR SAY 05 MEET YOUR VENDOR 07 STREETSHEET 08 HEARSAY 12 RICKY 13 FIONA 36 FILM

37 SMALL SCREENS 38 MUSIC 39 BOOKS 43 PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT 44 PUZZLES 46 CLICK

JEMA AND ROMEL WITH LITTLE ISL A, AT THEIR NEW HOME (P14).

PHOTO BY MARK AVELLINO

ED’S LETTER

YOUR SAY

SCORING GOALS

WARM AND WISE

A FEW YEARS ago, Joel was sleeping

rough on the streets of Brisbane. Now he’s heading to Wales to represent Australia in one of the world’s most inspirational sport events: the Homeless World Cup. Joel will be proudly donning the green and gold alongside Nik, Tina, Stevie, Sayed, Peter, Ferass and goalie Corey in a week-long football festival that sees 500 players with lived experience of homelessness and social exclusion, representing 50 nations.

“They are a special group of people for sure, the type of people you want representing your country,” says National Street Soccer Coach George Halkias.

“Many have had some tough cards dealt to them, but they have never given up.

Most importantly, they are great team players on and off the pitch.”

They are our Street Socceroos, and you’ll meet them in this edition. These teammates were shortlisted from hundreds of players in in The Big Issue’s Street Soccer Program. “They have already shown outstanding commitment,” says George. The tournament also places a spotlight on the issues of homelessness and social inequality, with Habitat for Humanity estimating 1.6 billion people around the world lack adequate housing.

We know that there is a simple solution: more housing. Yet there is a chronic shortage of 200,000 social and affordable homes in Australia. A shortage projected to grow to more than 600,000 by 2030. In this edition, coinciding with national Homelessness Week, we address some of the issues related to housing – which many consider a fundamental human right.

For Joel, having a home has changed his life. “Through staying clean [of drugs], I saved up enough to put down a bond on a unit for myself, and I recently graduated as a qualified holistic counsellor. Now I’m looking to help others.”

Amy Hetherington, Editor

It was so exciting to read about my vendor, Donna, in Ed#590.

She sells in the Murray St Mall in Perth. I often buy a mag from her. How could I not? Even when some people walk past without acknowledging her she tells them to have a good day.

I love her cheerfulness and optimism and the way she never seems to get down. She told me she was going to be in an upcoming edition and she finally made it. Her story is inspirational, and the beautiful photo exactly captures her warm and wise smile. Good on you fabulous Donna, and good on The Big Issue for the great work you do.

Sally-Ann Jones, Cottesloe, WA All Your Say writers published in this edition win a double pass to the Moon-landing doco Apollo 11.

Have you ever given money to someone on the street and then wondered what will the person do with the money? I have heard people say they would rather buy the person a cup of coffee or something to eat than give them money to buy items like cigarettes, alcohol or whatever else.

The reality is when we choose to give money or buy The Big Issue we have made a decision to help that person. We would be offended if someone challenged us for going into a hotel and buying a drink; we choose how to spend our own money.

The people who sell The Big Issue do so in all sorts of weather. The money they get may be spent on a drink on the way home, they may buy a lotto ticket hoping to win the big one or they might head straight to the post office to pay their electricity bill.

Next time, instead of thinking what will the money be used for, make a promise to yourself to buy next fortnight’s issue.

Mark Green, Northfield, SA

One of the most poignant photos that I have seen is in your Ed#589, the image of all those lovely lost children in the Kigali genocide memorial in Rwanda; a terrible indictment of people’s inhumanity to people.

But, more cheeringly, welcome back, Fiona! Who knew that there is so much information about chickens? A copy will be going to my chicken-raising daughter.

Finally, there is Ricky’s arguable statement about the “rotten inevitability of ageing”. In fact, ageing is neither inevitable (just look at those tragic portraits mentioned above), nor rotten.

It’s simply another of life’s stages, with its pluses and minuses. What is just a bit rotten is the casual stigmatisation of old age, “humour” notwithstanding.

Anne Ring, Coogee, NSW

All Your Say letters published in the next edition will win a double pass to see Danger Close: Battle of Long Tan. Our review is on p36. Simply send your thoughts, feedback and stories to submissions@bigissue.org.au

COVER #592 ILLUSTRATION BY MICHEL STREICH

THE BIG ISSUE USES MACQUARIE DICTIONARY AS OUR REFERENCE. MACQUARIEDICTIONARY.COM.AU

» ‘Your Say’ submissions must be 100 words or less, contain the writer’s full name and home address, and may be edited for clarity or space.

MEET YOUR VENDOR DAVID SELLS THE BIG ISSUE AT KING WILLIAM AND GRENFELL STS IN ADELAIDE, SA. I WAS BORN in Ipoh, Malaysia in 1983. I was the first blind person

“I CAN CHOOSE MY OWN HOURS AND I LIKE MEETING PEOPLE.” – DAVID

in the family, so my parents didn’t really know how to handle a blind person or understand what blindness was all about. And the structures in that part of Malaysia were not so friendly for people with a disability, and I was kept at home until I was about 15.

That’s when I was eventually sent to a boarding school that catered for blind students. I totally skipped primary school, but that was fine.

I did three months of braille, and five years of secondary. I can speak and read Cantonese, English and Malay. I also spent a lot of time playing and listening to music.

I lived in a hostel right next to the school, leaving when I was 19.

It was hard at this time; I did not feel safe. This is one of the main reasons I came to Australia – Australia has better infrastructure for people with disability. In Malaysia, my independence was limited.

Plus, Malaysia is hot and humid, which I don’t really like.

I have a sister who lives in Germany, and a lot of my friends were heading overseas to study, which I was interested to do. In 2007, I was accepted into a classical music degree at the University of Adelaide. I play piano and violin a bit. It was costly; my parents worked hard to send me the money to live and pay the expensive tuition fees. I was – and still am – entirely self-funded. All my income goes on my living expenses.

I graduated in 2010, and played in a band for a bit, as well as a choir and on TV. I started doing charity collecting, but I wanted to do something different.

Someone mentioned The Big Issue, so I wandered in to the office in February. I have really enjoyed it; I go out with no money and come back with money from sales. I enjoy that I can choose my hours, and I like meeting new people.

I live by myself in Norwood, I learned independence while studying my degree.

I have a carer once a week, which is good. I can do most things myself, but NDIS provides a cleaning person once a fortnight, which is the thing I need most.

I like to stay happy and positive, and rarely let things get me down no matter how bad they get. I was over the moon when I was granted permanent residency in 2017, and grateful to the thousands of Australians who signed a petition supporting me to stay.

And I have applied to become an Australian citizen. interview by Erica Rees photo by Craig Arnold

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STREETSHEET Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends

None of this could have happened without The Big Issue. My life has been happier since doing my schooling. Even though the education isn’t going to help me get a job, it is so good to be able to help my grandkids with spelling and reading. My school days have changed, I now only go on Mondays from 9 to 5, not every day, because of funding cuts to the Adult Literacy Program. Thanks to all my customers and local shop (local to my pitch) Plus 82 Lite on Gawler Place (great coffee, nice people!).

PLASTIC FANTASTIC

Remember many of us vendors throughout Australia accept card payments now. So, if it’s your first copy or even your 10th copy don’t hesitate to ask us to pay by card.

There are some new vendors who might not accept card payments, but there are plenty more vendors who do. We understand people nowadays don’t carry cash. Vendors should, as I do, give you the option to pay by card or cash when purchasing a magazine, where possible. Something else quickly to mention: if you see us vendors on the street selling the magazine and you’ve been away on holiday and you desperately need a particular edition, please ask us and we’ll do our best for you.

David L sells The Big Issue at Subiaco Farmers Market, Perth.

FUN IN RUN

As a veteran City2Surf runner, I have loved every step to complete the run along with 80,000 other people between Sydney and Bondi Beach. Not even the cops could slow me down en route to accepting the finishers’ medal. I wish I could do it again with The Big Issue team this year, but I am having surgery next week, so I’ll start training for 2020 after that. But you can still sponsor the team this year via thebigissue.org.au.

Bradley sells The Big Issue at Palm Beach, Sydney.

DOES IT MAKE SENSE?

In Back to the Future Part III Doc’s tombstone says he was shot in the back by Buford Tannen, but does this make sense? At the 1885 Hill Valley Festival, Tannen held the gun to Doc’s

Ron K sells The Big Issue on Pirie Street, Adelaide.

BIRTHDAY BLESSINGS

Lionel on pitch with a very friendly cockatoo!

Lionel sells The Big Issue outside Young & Jackson, Melbourne CBD. back, but Clara stopped him by agreeing to dance with him. Later he shot Doc in the forehead, and that was disrupted by Marty throwing a frisbee. Remember Clara’s name was mentioned on Doc’s tombstone? So when Marty wasn’t there, Clara was still there and stopped Tannen from shooting Doc in the back, Doc was shot in the forehead. So the movie makers got this wrong.

Peter D sells The Big Issue at Kings Cross, Sydney.

SCHOOL’S COOL

My progress at school is successful – I have progressed from Year 2 to 6!

My birthday celebration was very special this year. First of all, when I attended the morning mass at St Peter’s Church, to my surprise, the Father asked everyone to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me before we greeted one another in peace to partake in the Eucharist.

Immediately after mass, one kind and generous member invited all of us to enjoy breakfast together at the nearby cafe and I was given a signed birthday card with some lovely gifts inside the envelope. After breakfast, upon reaching The Big Issue vendor support office to book my pitch for the day, the office staff greeted me with ‘Happy Birthday’!

Then when I arrived at the pitch to sell the magazine, amazingly, the boss of the cafe next to my pitch came to me with a cup of coffee! In addition, I had some unexpected sales from my customers on this special day. I really thank God and appreciate everyone who has blessed me with love and care in the midst of a tough life.

Sue sells The Big Issue in Melbourne CBD.

» All vendor contributors to Streetsheet are paid for their work.

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HEARSAY WRITER RICHARD CASTLES

» CARTOONIST ANDREW WELDON

I KNOW PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER FARTED IN FRONT OF THE PERSON THEY’RE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH. THEY WOULD RATHER BE ILL THAN DO THAT. THAT’S INSANE. YOU CAN’T LET A LITTLE OUT? Actor Whoopi Goldberg (The Color Purple; Ghost) not cushioning the importance of feeling comfortable in your relationships.

– The New York Times Magazine (US)

EAR2GROUND “I’m kind of praying for conjunctivitis.”

A primary school teacher hoping for a sick day.

Overheard on the train by Simon of Eltham, Vic.

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“I want to put a positive spin on it as well and not just say Australia is in a housing crisis when it affects a very, very small percentage of the population. I am stating the facts and I think that it is important…that parts of homelessness have reduced over that 15-year period.”

Luke Howarth, the new Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community spinning, despite the Australian Bureau of Statistics finding that homelessness had increased by 14 per cent over a five-year period, with 116,427 Australians currently without a permanent home. The rate of homelessness increased from 47.6 people per 10,000 people in 2011, to 49.8 people in 2016, according to the bureau.

– ABC News (Aus) “We see elevated rates of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in people with depression, anxiety, schizophrenia… Basically, all types of …mental disorders are associated with a double or even three-fold risk of these diseases.”

Joseph Firth, a senior research fellow at Western Sydney University, on studies that found people with mental illness suffer significantly higher rates of physical disease, dying up to 20 years earlier than average, a gap that also seems to be growing.

– ABC News (Aus) “Regular underwater foraging would lead to the evolution of longer fingers and toes which would then likely develop ‘webbed’ interconnecting skin to enable easier swimming. We may evolve a tapetum lucidum, an additional layer in the retina, like cat’s eyes, that would improve our vision in low light conditions such as underwater.”

Dr Matthew Skinner, a paleoanthropologist from the University of Kent, on how rising sea levels from climate change could see humans evolve webbed hands and feet and less body hair so they could move more quickly through water. Don’t say Dr Skinner is a quack.

– The Telegraph (UK) “We were amazed. There are moves in there, like the Madonna

PHOTO BY GETTY

“What happens in a country like Australia, or the UK or the US will be looked at by every other leader in the world and potentially used as an excuse to clamp down even further on journalists. I think journalists all over the world are less safe if the rhetoric or even policies or laws in states that are supposed to be free are actually a threat to journalism in that country.”

Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, on the recent police raids on journalists and newsrooms in Australia.

– The Sydney Morning Herald

Vogue move, that I just can’t believe. It seems that dancing to music isn’t purely a product of human culture. The fact that we see this in another animal suggests that if you have a brain with certain cognitive and neural capacities, you are predisposed to dance.”

Aniruddh Patel, a psychology professor at Tufts University, Massachusetts, on Snowball the sulphur-crested cockatoo and internet star, who researchers believe appears to choreograph his own dance moves and isn’t just parroting others.

– The Guardian (UK) “Pretty much every subject in the study said that straight-arm running was the most challenging condition. That’s why it was very surprising when we couldn’t find

any difference in the energetics.”

Andrew Yegian, of Harvard University, on his study that found that running with straight arms doesn’t require more energy than running with bent arms.

You will, however, look funny.

– New Scientist (UK) “I love to name as many of my animals as possible after my friends. It doesn’t always end well.

Meryl Streep was killed by a ferret recently. I found her as a pile of feathers one day.”

Actor Sam Neill on the animals on his farm in New Zealand. Meryl Streep was a chicken.

– Vulture (US) “Hello US government, this is a joke, and I do not actually intend to go ahead with this plan. I just thought it would be funny and

get me some thumbsy uppies on the internet.”

Facebook user Jackson Barnes, on a page he created called ‘Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us’. The page features “joke” plans to raid the Nevada air force facility where conspiracy theories have it that extra-terrestrial life is being housed. Over 1.5 million people have already signed up to the joke raid, scheduled for 20 September. The US Air Force is taking no chances, however, warning folks not to let the joke get out of hand. Stay tuned.

– The Guardian (UK) “The kidney has a very special place in the heart.”

US President Donald Trump, who else, announcing a government plan to tackle kidney disease. Knowing where it is located would be a good place to start.

– The Guardian (UK)

» Frequently overhear tantalising tidbits? Don’t waste them on your friends – share them with the world at submissions@bigissue.org.au

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

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POLITICAL ANIMALS From a childhood on a Queensland farm to being PM in Canberra, pets have always been at the heart of a home for Kevin Rudd and his wife, Thérèse.

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THERE ARE VERY few times in our

long, long family life together when we haven’t had animals as part of our number. Usually cats and dogs.

Sometimes just cats. Occasionally just dogs. And as a kid growing up on a farm, horses of course. They were part of family life, at the very centre of all things. And always for the good.

On the farm, just outside Eumundi in Queensland, I remember Ricky the blue heeler, lean and quick, always earning his keep by bringing troublesome cattle home. Then there was this enormous black-and-white cat who, if he stood on his hind legs, was taller than me. Big Puss, as he was unimaginatively yet

accurately named, ostensibly controlled the rats down in the barn. In reality, that was left to our pet carpet snake who inhabited the rafters high in the barn. Big Puss preferred the scraps from Mum’s kitchen. Later, after my sister entered the convent as a novice nun, we rechristened him Sister Big Puss, given his markings made him resemble a nun’s habit of the time.

When Thérèse and I married and went on our first diplomatic posting to Sweden, we found a picture-postcard red-and-white house in the Stockholm countryside. It was buried in snow in the winter, and replete with a wellproportioned tabby named Bonita who

ILLUSTRATION BY JOSEPH CARRINGTON. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF KEVIN RUDD

MY WORD

the owners asked us to care for. It’s fair to say we took the house largely because of Bon Bon, as we called her. Or more formally, Den Heliga Bonita, or The Blessed Bonita, named in deference to one of Sweden’s medieval saints, The Blessed Birgitta. When Thérèse was pregnant with our first baby Jessica, on a cold winter’s night Bon Bon would curl up on Thérèse’s lap to keep the baby warm.

After we moved back to Brisbane to begin tentative forays into political life, there came Ophelia, a very loving Siamese blue point. Thérèse had grown up with Siamese cats, Nicholas and Wisteria, siblings, living almost to the age of 30. Ophelia, however, was to become “my cat” as she knew intuitively the highs and lows of political life, jumping onto my lap whenever she judged it necessary to soothe a troubled soul, staring into my face with her everadoring, slightly cross-eyed gaze.

Filly, as she was known, was joined by our first golden retriever. I had promised the kids a dog if I won or lost the 1996 election, my first tilt at federal office. I lost. And our littlest guy, Marcus, then three-and-a-bit, greeted the little ball of white fur with “what a dovely little dog”. So, to the bemusement of all outside the family, she was named Dovely.

Dovely loved cake. Her major claim to family fame came many years later amid Nick’s 18th birthday party on the wrap-around verandah of our 100-yearold Queenslander. We had carefully hidden a two-foot-tall chocolate cake in his bedroom. But not well enough.

Dovely prised open the door and decapitated the cake, leaving just a hint of dog drool lying in what remained.

Nick helpfully suggested that we just cut it off and ice it over, as the guests wouldn’t be the wiser. Thérèse and I declined this helpful advice.

Dovely’s other great culinary passion was, wait for it, passports.

Indeed, she had a particular nose for the glue used in Chinese visas. There then unfolded the great mystery of the disappearing Rudd family passports – first Jessica’s, then Nick’s, then mine (twice). All, inconveniently, on the

eve of travel to Beijing. The passports had all been stored for safe-keeping, at my insistence, high on a bookcase in my study. Their escape was indeed a deep mystery. By the time I lost my second passport, I became furious and forensic, searching the entire house from top to bottom, and then...the garden. There, not far from Dovely’s favourite spot for burying bones, were the shredded remains of an official Australian passport. It was a bit tricky fronting at the Brisbane Passports Office to apply for a new one, carefully explaining how “the dog ate my passport”. By this stage, I was shadow foreign minister. The lady at the desk, I’m sure, had heard it all before.

By the time I was elected Prime

tow, meowing loudly. Finally, I spotted the little bugger, disappearing into a neighbour’s front porch. So down I went onto all fours, venturing onto the porch, gently coaxing the fugitive into my arms with a more soothing rendition of “roooaaaww”. As Jasper quietly pottered towards me, only then I discovered the looming shadow of a senior member of our corporate community towering over me, as he ever-so-politely enquired: “Is everything quite alright, Prime Minister?”

Abby, our golden retriever after Dovely, at 14, is still with us, and is an intimate part of our grandkids’ lives back in Brissie while we are in New York. Jasper has been succeeded by two jet-black cats, twins, who

So down I went onto all fours, venturing onto the porch, gently coaxing the fugitive into my arms with a more soothing ‘roooaaaww’.

Minister, both Filly and Dovely had gone on to their eternal reward.

Jasper, a male Oriental, now ruled the roost. At the Lodge, his favourite trick was to saunter in during a policy meeting, spot the most cat-phobic of the public servants assembled, and then jump up on their laps. He was wicked.

Once I was called into the study to take a call, and when I returned there was Jasper, bold as brass, sitting on the tea tray, carefully using his paw to lick milk from the silver cream jug while our cat-phobic officials all reached for their collective smelling salts.

When Jasper came to Kirribilli House, he would begin his various Houdini routines to escape into the neighbouring grounds of Admiralty House, home of the Governor-General, or else out onto the road. Whenever he went missing, the Federal Police, at their own volition, would go into search mode. But Jasper would only respond to my voice; it required a uniquely deep, guttural, feline “roooaaaww”. No-one else could come close. So off I went into the streets of Kirribilli, coppers in

we received from the New York Cat Rescue Society after they were found abandoned in a cardboard box in Chinatown. Given their pedigree, we have named them Qing Qing and Mei Mei after the Soong sisters, who were major figures in 20th century Chinese history. They too will eventually migrate to Australia when we come home for good. In the meantime, they have comfortably occupied, respectively, my socks drawer and jocks drawer in our place in Manhattan. And woe unto the other if they ever cross the line.

Having animals has always been a central part of our family life. Always fun. But more importantly, they have also helped make all our kids, and now our grandkids, into gentle human beings, learning from an early age the need to care for creatures less powerful than them. And I hope the same for you all.

» Kevin Rudd (@MrKRudd) is a former Prime Minister of Australia. He will be appearing at Byron Writers Festival, 2-4 August: byronwritersfestival.com.

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RICKY FIVE YEARS AGO I spent three weeks in Western Australia’s Kimberley region and the only story I brought back was about my hire car. I wrote the column entirely in the vernacular of the guy at the hire counter. My editor described the column as “challenging”. I preferred the word “genius”. It was clearly crying out for a sequel.

This time round I was more organised.

I booked the car a year – rather than a day – in advance. What I failed to do was consult my 12-year-old son about the appropriate car to get.

“Dad, an X-Trail isn’t really an offroad four-wheel drive. It’s more designed to handle unpaved driveways of country holiday homes.”

The guy at the hire counter (a different one, alas) was more to the point. “Whatever you do, do not take this car on the Gibb River Road.” The Gibb River Road is a 660km track through the most remote region of the country, constructed mainly of dirt, large, sharp rocks and spinecracking corrugations. The broken bodies of beaten cars litter its length.

I put on my most sincere voice. “Sir, I can assure you I will not under any circumstances take this car on the Gibb River Road.”

The first flat tyre came 60km into the Gibb. The midday sun blazed down on the offending tyre like a spotlight. But not to worry: Dad was on the job. I sent the girls off to wander in the desert a bit while the boys extracted the jack and whipped off the tyre. I was clearly doing well because my hands were caked in manly-looking red dust. Our exertions must have attracted attention because a guy pulled up beside us and said, “You’re doing the Gibb in that?”

I thought about the other four-wheel drives we had seen on the road. They looked like monster trucks with clearance so high they could drive over a dead, bloated bovine and not leave a mark, all the while adorned with so many spare tyres they could cushion a docking cruise ship.

The guy offered to fix my tyre. I didn’t

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“My editor described the column as ‘challenging’.

I preferred the word ‘genius’.”

know you could fix a tyre on the side of the road, but was happy to glean this new piece of information. He rammed some kind of sticky rubber-like substance that he called a plug into the puncture with a sharp tool and inflated the tyre with something he called an air compressor. The hole was so big it took two plugs, which for some reason gave me a sense of achievement.

I figured our bad luck was used up now.

Turning back was not an option: I would be immersing my family in cold water if it killed me (or the car).

The next day we bounced along the corrugations happily as the interior fittings shook loose and fell upon us. My son asked me why other cars were flashing their lights at us and making urgent “turn-around” gestures with their hands, but I pretended not to hear. I discussed our prognosis with other manly men when we stopped to swim at Bell Gorge.

“What sort of PSI you running?” one asked.

“Oh, the latest version,” I replied, wondering why someone would be inquiring about my personal service income out here on the Gibb.

By day three the tyre was flat again.

We were holed up at Charnley River, regarding the deflated tyre with the sort of disdain reserved for a child who’s just taken to the walls with a permanent marker. This time round I knew what to do. I cupped my hands round my mouth and called loudly to the campground, “Does anyone have one of those rubber plug things you jam into your tyres to make them good again? And an air-condenser?”

We limped back to civilisation with a world-record number of gooey, rubber plugs in one tyre. The guy at the hire counter asked me how the trip was and I considered a moment before answering.

“Challenging.”

» Ricky French (@frenchricky) is a writer and musician who’s over-tyred.

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND

Four-Wheel Dive

FIONA

End-Of-World Sale TOURISM USED TO be so simple. It consisted almost entirely of plucking a destination from the modest intersection of “Where can I afford?”, “Where’s warm and more interesting than my boring life?”, and “Where will I not be killed?” Then you’d purchase your Thomas Cook traveller’s cheques, stock up on rolls of film and flash cubes for your Kodak Instamatic, and wait weeks while your plane ticket was issued, judging by the time and expense, from Mars. You’d land at wherever’s airport, and be relieved of your cash by the taxi driver who materialised like magic, grabbed your suitcase, and shoved it into his boot before taking the long way to your accommodation and sadly noting that the meter is “broken” and “that will be US$100”. Good times.

We’ve moved on. Now it’s bog simple to get on a plane. And everywhere is affordable and accessible. Are we happy? Of course not.

This is partly because restless dissatisfaction is an evolutionary requirement in humans, but mostly that to travel with a light heart now requires a PhD in existential philosophy and catastrophe physics. Tourism is a destructive and unsolvable paradox, not least because many countries, Australia included, are reliant on it for dosh. We have nothing left to sell but coal and hospitality.

The Gordian knot is this: tourism is destroying the joint. We are loving the planet to death. Airbnbs are hollowing out iconic destinations like Barcelona and New Orleans, displacing locals and diluting the cities’ identities. Cuba is worse; an entire country has transformed into a communistthemed amusement park. Beautiful, isolated locations are no longer either thanks to Instagram; Kelingking beach on Bali’s Nusa Penida island, known as “Hidden Beach”, haha, is now so awash with tourists that it’s an hour-long queue to snap a photo of the “serenity” from the clifftop. Galapagos is being trampled underfoot. The worse it gets, the more people go, wanting to experience

“We have nothing left to sell but coal and hospitality.”

a place before it’s “too late”. It’s already too late. Look at Venice. Look at Everest.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

The latest trends in travel are “Instagrammable”, “Last chance to see” and “dark” tourism. A social media influencer recently posed in her G-string and a déshabillé hazmat suit at Chernobyl in a collision of “dark” and “Insta tourism”; aka visiting a site with a dark history and behaving like a douche for a photo op. “Last chance” tourism is delivering a visitor boom to the Great Barrier Reef, all hoping to see it before it dies. The irony of climate-changedriven tourism, of course, is that every plane trip pumps a large load of carbon into the atmosphere, hastening the demise of your destination. It’s such fun having a box seat to the final act as late-stage capitalism plays out.

Sometimes it’s obvious where not to go. I was in the Northern Territory recently and managed to avoid climbing Uluru, even though the climb closes on 26 October.

I know! Turns out it’s not compulsory to heave yourself up someone else’s sacred rock. This is not a universally held view. The climb – a classic last-chancer – is peaking on a lot of bucket lists, and Uluru is crawling with tourists determined to not let the opportunity slip.

I’m unsure what the bragging rights are here. Climbers have to ignore the quietly insistent “Please don’t climb” sign from the Anangu people, and once at the summit they’re likely to take a selfie and leave behind their rubbish. How do you spin Last Chance to Be Racist as a win on Instagram? “Super pumped I got this in before trad owners stopped me from despoiling their sacred site”?

Hey. When you find somewhere that’s unproblematic to visit, let me know.

» Fiona Scott-Norman (@FScottNorman) is a comedian and writer who’s got the holiday blues.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

13

COVER STORY

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

14

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

HOUSING ENDS HOMELESSNESS Seems pretty simple doesn’t it? But more than 116,000 Australians don’t have a place to live. The impacts are monumental.

Anastasia Safioleas finds out how things have gone so wrong, and what is being done to fix it.

ILLUSTRATION BY MICHEL STREICH, PHOTO BY NICOLE REED.

P

HIL RECENTLY RECEIVED excellent

news: a letter telling him he finally had his own place to live. It’s been a long time since he’s had somewhere permanent to call home. When he’s not speaking to school groups about his lived experience of homelessness through The Big Issue Classroom, he’s out selling the magazine – often wearing his favourite terry-towelling robe.

Phil (pictured) has had a tough life. The eldest of nine, he grew up in a violent household, with rarely enough to eat. By 12 he was in foster care. At 18, he literally had nowhere to go.

Limited job prospects and no means to rent or purchase a home of his own saw him cycle through any accommodation he could find – emergency shelters, boarding houses, friends’ couches, dumpy caravans, shoddy sharehouses. There were several stints of rough sleeping, too.

“I slept in a toilet block once. It was uncomfortable and cold,” he says.

Six years ago, Phil was finally placed on the government’s waiting list for social housing. And now, he’s got a place in Melbourne.

“When I got the letter, I had to read it again!” he says. “My apartment is absolutely fantastic. It’s perfect. I can go in and lock the door and sit down

in my favourite seat. Each time I walk in I think, I’m home! There’s a built-in heater and plenty of power points. I have my own letterbox with a key.

It’s my forever home.”

But a staggering number of people are without a home. More than 116,000 Australians are homeless, an increase of 14 per cent in five years.

Another 1.5 million are at risk, living in housing stress – spending more than 30 per cent of their household income on their mortgage or rent.

And a recent Australian Institute of Health and Welfare study found there were 800,000 people in social housing in 2017-18 – with another 140,600 applications pending. The average wait is 10 years. Due to a severe lack of funding, it is expected that there will be a shortage of more than 600,000 social houses by 2030.

Simply put, housing affordability is in crisis.

A

COMMON MISCONCEPTION is that people end up homeless due to a mental or physical illness, or addiction. But the Council to Homeless Persons reports that this actually accounts for only three per cent of homelessness. For 45 per cent of people, it’s due to a lack of affordable housing.

More affordable housing could

end homelessness, yet in the past two decades house prices have increased four-fold – in Sydney median house prices have risen by 460 per cent and in Melbourne by a whopping 539 per cent. While that has made some property owners wealthy, it’s seen homeownership fall to a low of 65 per cent in 2016, according to the ABS. It’s even worse for young people: for those in the 25 to 34 age range, home ownership dropped by 28 per cent between 2002 and 2015, to around 45 per cent. This has exacerbated housing inequality.

“Australia is experiencing generational change when it comes to home ownership,” reported a 2018 study from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Once upon a time, you bought your house to live in. Today, it’s common to hear people talk about houses as being a “good investment” with “excellent return”.

Twenty years ago, about onequarter of Australian households rented – now it’s nearly a third. It has put a squeeze on low-income earners who are being pushed out of the competitive private rental market.

Anglicare Australia’s most recent rental affordability snapshot found that, out of 69,000 rental listings across the country over one sample weekend, no properties in any capital city were affordable for a single person on Youth Allowance ($455.20 per fortnight) or Newstart ($555.70 per fortnight). A single person on THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

15

minimum wage had only two per cent of properties to choose from. The ABS cites the average weekly cost for rental households was $366 in 2017–18.

As acting executive director of Anglicare Australia, Roland Manderson sees it: “Those [rental] properties that are arguably affordable are mostly pretty terrible. There’s no incentive for someone who is a landlord to invest in that property if it’s going to someone on a low income because the demand is huge and the supply is low. So unless you actually have a supply of social housing you’ll never have private rental houses that are both affordable and adequate.”

According to the government’s own Housing Assistance in Australia 2018 report, our population growth is outstripping the amount of available social housing.

“The government has been cutting back on their investment in public housing since the 1990s,” says Manderson. “The problems that’s created is that all the social housing is for people with the most desperate need. It makes anywhere where there is social housing an intense environment that needs a lot of extra resources. So that makes it hard to get community support to grow the supply of social housing. It’s a problem of our own making really.”

Kate Colvin from the Council to Homeless Persons says two things generally happen when there isn’t enough affordable housing to go around.

“Firstly, some people will miss out on housing and be homeless. That creates other problems, like interrupting people’s participation in work or study. Being homeless also directly creates both physical and mental health problems, and means people can be more vulnerable to being on the receiving end of violence.”

The second thing, she says, is that people are forced to pay more than they can afford for a safe place to live.

“That means there is very little money left over for essentials like decent food, or medical bills or school books,” she points out. “If you’ve hardly any money left after paying for housing you will also struggle to manage if you have a crisis financially, like your car breaking down or an unexpected medical bill, and that

can in turn result in homelessness.”

As the national spokesperson for Everybody’s Home – a campaign aiming to halve homelessness in five years – she urges people to demand governments deliver affordable housing solutions and a fairer go for low-income earners. “For many people experiencing homelessness, all they need is a home,” she says. “The solution is to deliver more housing people can afford, particularly in the rental market. The federal government must partner with state and local government to encourage them to also contribute to growing the amount of social housing that is available to those on our lowest incomes.”

August marks national Homelessness Week, with its theme “Housing Ends Homelessness”. It sounds simple, but we know that having a safe place to live can literally save lives. While the boarding house Phil most recently called home was sufficient, he says it just doesn’t compare to having safe and secure housing he can call his own. “Having a place to stay allows me to concentrate on my other problems. I feel safe and valued. It has allowed me to settle, changed my outlook and improved my hygiene. It has improved my life.”

In Finland, for example, the government follows a robust principle of Housing First – which posits that if you give people a home, it becomes considerably easier to take care of any other issues that person might be facing.

And it’s been an enormous success.

Finland is the only country in Europe where the rate of homelessness has declined in recent years.

And while it costs money to meet this demand for housing, the savings that can be made in healthcare, social services and the justice system are colossal.

Australian Council of Social Service best sums up how excessive inequality is not only harmful to individuals, but also bad for our economy. “When resources and power are concentrated in fewer hands, or people are too impoverished to participate effectively in the paid workforce, or acquire the skills to do so, economic growth is diminished.”

As Anglicare’s Roland Manderson says, everyone should have access

to housing that is “safe, secure and affordable. That is what a home is. It’s the starting point for most people to be able to get on with having an enriching life that is meaningful with the people around them.”

T

HE PRETTY WHITE house sits in a

crowded cul-de-sac. A trampoline peeks over someone’s backyard fence.

An idle basketball ring sits on the street’s turning circle, the perfect place for a quick game that pauses for the inevitable call of “caaaaaaar”. Just a short stroll away is the town centre with a church and local primary school. It’s quiet and idyllic.

The pretty white house is Jema’s new home. Soon she’ll move in with her partner Romel and their 18-monthold daughter, Isla. Standing in her new backyard, still muddy from construction, there’s a distinct sense of optimism mingled with disbelief. Growing up in and out of foster homes and residential care, she’s just been given the keys to the first home she can truly call her own.

“When I was young, my mum became a bit mentally unwell, so I had gone to stay with my grandparents in Marysville to give my mum a break,” she explains.

“There was an opportunity I could live with them, but then Black Saturday came through and they passed.” She pauses.

“I was 10. I had no family that could take me in. It was a hard time…”

She eventually found herself in residential care and at 17 was given a housing commission apartment in inner-city Melbourne. Jema has been there for four years but, while grateful for the apartment, social housing has come with its own particular set of issues. The lease means Romel cannot reside with Jema and their daughter; he currently lives with his mother in the outer Melbourne suburbs. So they tried to look for a family home.

“It’s so hard to get into housing,” says Romel, who works part-time as a cleaner.

“We tried saving but it was going to take forever. I’d probably be dead by then.

And renting is so expensive – the average was $350 per week.”

Their three-bedroom house in Yea was built by Habitat for Humanity. It comes with an interest-free mortgage,

PHOTOS BY MARK AVELLINO

JEMA AND ROMEL AT THEIR NEW HOME, WITH DAUGHTER ISL A.

It’s so hard to get into housing.

We tried saving but it was going to take forever.

I’d probably be dead by then.

based on 95 per cent of the market value of the completed home; and it’s capped at 30 per cent of the couple’s income, meaning they won’t fall into housing stress. The Big Issue’s Homes for Homes granted $40,000 towards the build.

Their new home is an innovative example of a community-funded solution to the crisis of housing affordability in Australia, and part of a trend that sees an increasing number of not-for-profits trying to meet the shortfall.

Homes for Homes raises funds to increase the supply of social and affordable housing for a wide range of disadvantaged Australians. Property owners agree to make a tax-deductible donation – 0.1 per cent of the property sale price – when they sell their property.The funds are granted to housing providers who are building affordable homes. In 2018, Homes for Homes granted $500,000 to fund a range of social and affordable housing projects – Jema and Romel are the first recipients to move in.

At the official handover to Jema

and her family, Habitat for Humanity’s Philip Curtis bluntly described the scenario confronting low-income earners: “For many, paying the rent means they cannot afford to eat, see a doctor, have a prescription filled, pay an energy bill, or pay for transport. Hard choices need to be made almost weekly in order to survive. We’re facing a crisis.”

Jema is all too aware of the significance of this pathway out of poverty, and into home ownership.

“It’s going to be life-changing for my family,” she says. “[It’s a] massive change to be able to live in our own home.”

» Anastasia Safioleas (@Anast) is a Contributing Editor of The Big Issue. » To participate in Homes for Homes visit homesforhomes.org.au. » For more about Everybody’s Home, go to everybodyshome.org.au.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

17

MORE THAN A GAME

HOMELESS WORLD CUP

NIK

COREY SAYED

24

CITY

HOBART

“I was volunteering first, and I liked it too much so I became a player,” laughs Corey, the Street Socceroos goalie. “I find that playing has improved me heaps.

I’ve got ADHD and since I’ve been playing soccer I don’t have any anger inside me any more… I’ve been talking it out on the ball.”

He still helps Hobart coach Matt get everything ready before training, and enjoys meeting new people on the pitch. “I enjoy coming to Street Soccer because it’s so friendly and supportive, no-one has a bad thing to say.” He’s looking forward to meeting new people in Wales, and seeing a different country: “This is my first time out of Australia, and I’m looking forward to that.”

18

AGE

AGE

29

CITY

MELBOURNE

“Australia has given me a lot of things, you know.

I’m really proud to be representing my country at the Cup. The feeling is great, I’m very excited,” says Sayed, who joined Street Soccer in 2012 soon after arriving in Australia.

“I was eight when I left Afghanistan, and I was in Iran as a refugee.”

Now he works in construction, trains twice a week and plays every Sunday. “Soccer has helped me a lot, to learn new skills, keep me active and busy all the time. And I meet new people every week.”

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

AGE

22

CITY

TOWNSVILLE

“I went to the Nationals in Sydney – it was pretty good.

I kicked a goal, and had fun,” says Stevie. He was referred to Street Soccer in 2014 by one of his carers who knew his love of sport. “We train every Tuesday afternoon.

It has helped me along; improved my life in a good way. I feel good.”

He’s made some close friends through soccer, and can’t wait to play with his new teammates in the World Cup tournament: “I am excited, this is my first time overseas. I will miss Townsville a lot.”

27

CITY

CANBERRA

“When I arrived in Australia, I didn’t know many people,” says Nik, who was born in Canberra but has lived in Chile most of his life. That was seven years ago. Now, thanks to Street Soccer, he has found a community.

“Because I grew up in South America, soccer has always been a big thing. Joining the program helped me meet people, have exercise and have a laugh. It’s been really good physically and mentally. It’s great to be given this opportunity to represent the country I was born in.”

Nik is “excited nervous” about travelling to Wales, and is looking forward to talking to players from all around the world. “You just communicate through the ball and your feet,” he says.

WORDS BY AMY HETHERINGTON. PHOTOS BY TATE NEEDHAM, PETER HOLCROFT, BARRY STREET AND ROSS SWANBOROUGH.

AGE

STEVIE

Meet the new Street Socceroos! Eight of our fittest and finest Big Issue Street Soccer stars are representing Australia in the 17th annual Homeless World Cup. They’re heading to Cardiff, Wales, where they’ll compete against 50 other nations. For some, it’s their first time overseas.

For all, it will be a life-changing experience.

JOEL

TINA

PETER

FERASS

AGE

AGE

33

CITY

PERTH

“This is my first time overseas. I’m a bit nervous, excited for sure,” says Peter.

“It’s probably a trip of a lifetime.” Peter is no stranger to big-stage competition, having competed in National Championships six years ago – and it had a positive impact. He’s taken on a leadership role, welcoming new members to the squad.

“My life’s changed a bit, I’ve become more independent and my fitness has improved,” he says. “I get to meet new friends, get out of the house and enjoy sport.”

28

CITY

BRISBANE

“Street Soccer has given me a sense of responsibility and accountability, and it’s given me a sense of connectedness that was missing in my life,” says Joel, who was sleeping rough and struggling with addiction when he first started playing. “When it comes to Street Soccer, it’s a moment we can all share.”

Since he got the call-up to Wales, Joel says he’s found a whole new level of fitness.

“I feel a lot happier. I’ve never been to Europe and I’m excited about meeting people from all diverse cultural backgrounds. The more people I meet, the more I learn about myself,” adds Joel, who recently graduated as a holistic counsellor, and is looking forward to helping others turn their lives around, just like he did.

AGE

55

CITY

MELBOURNE

“I can’t wait to play in the Cup! I don’t know what I would’ve done if there wasn’t any Street Soccer.

I was homeless, but Susie from Street Soccer came over and encouraged me to play, made me feel welcome.” While Tina admits she was too upset to enjoy herself at first, she kept going…and has done for nine years. “My mental health is much better and I feel happier thanks to Street Soccer. Now I’m not homeless, I’m working, and I’ve got lots of mates; outside of soccer we go to the movies or have a coffee.” And she reckons she may even be a better soccer player than her three boys!

AGE

30

CITY

SYDNEY

“I was walking past a training session in Parramatta and I thought I would join up. It helped me get fit and make new friends, and it’s given me a new perspective,” says Ferass. Eight years later, he plays competition soccer on the weekend, too, and prides himself on fair play. “I’m always encouraging other people and cheering them on as much a possible.” In terms of the World Cup, he thinks the Street Socceroos have “a good chance of winning a few games...we’ll just have to see how the other teams are when we get there.”

Homeless World Cup will run from 27 July to 3 August. If you’d like to wish our players well, you can send us your letters of support, or follow all the action on our socials via #Cardiff2019HWC.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

19

VENDOR TOUR GUIDE

CARDIFF, WALES Street secrets revealed by the people who know them best.

COURTESY OF INSP/ THE BIG ISSUE UK. ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL GRAY-BARNETT.

AS THE HOMELESS World Cup kicks off

in Cardiff on 27 July, The Big Issue UK vendor Maurice, 59, shows us around the Welsh capital, where he’s lived all his life. “Welsh people are very nice,” he says. “I’ve got regular customers and I love them.”

01 / WHAT’S TO LIKE

We’ve got Cardiff Castle as well and the Millennium [since 2016 officially called Principality] Stadium. You can go up to Bute Park, what a lovely park that is. The River Taff runs all the way through it.

We’ve got the three white houses – better than America – the City Hall, the Crown Court and the National Museum, all in granite and built in the early 1900s.

02 / MUST-SEE

The first migrants came into Cardiff on ships at Tiger Bay, one of the first places in the country, and there’s always

been racial harmony. There’s over 50 different nationalities down the Bay. I know a man, he’s dead now, who came in as a cabin boy in 1942 and he stayed.

He came from Malta during the war and he never went back.

03 / MUST DO

In April we’ve got the Cardiff Flower Show. It’s £15 to get in, but it doesn’t matter. I love going, it’s unbelievable.

It’s the best show in the world. By the market there’s a place called the alleyways – all graveyards around there.

And there’s like an orchid tree that flowers twice a year. The May blossoms came out early this year. It will flower again in September.

04 / TOP EATS

There are loads of restaurants in the city. I love Pillars, I like Wetherspoons.

There’s a cafe in the Central Market that has the best bacon and eggs in the world. If you eat the Ultimate then you don’t have to pay for it: three sausages,

four bits of bacon, six eggs...eat that and they give you a free meal. I’ve never managed it.

05 / BEST TIME

You can’t move in the city when there’s a big game on, believe me. So many people come into town for the rugby.

All the pubs are full. The atmosphere is incredible at the Millennium Stadium.

We’ll always call it the Millennium Stadium whether they change the name or not. Wales have done so well, they beat all the other teams in the Six Nations. What an awesome team.

06 / DAY TRIPPING

You can go to Barry Island, which is a seaside resort. There’s a lovely big fairground. Sully Island has the old Triassic park. Some of the rocks fell down the other day and they found a dinosaur there. Porthcawl is the place to be seen, especially down the bay.

If you’ve got bad weather you can see the waves go over the lighthouse.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

21

THE BIG PICTURE

WHAT VENDORS EAT

BRIAN 46 BREAKFAST Biscuits

and gravy, eggs and coffee from the OKC Day Shelter.

LUNCH nothing.

DINNER Bowl of chili and

water from Salvation Army.

BELOW THE

BREAD LINE

When living hand to mouth, nutrition is a luxury you can’t always afford.

22

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 6–19 JUL–8 APRAUG 20182019

THERE ARE MORE than three million Australians living below the poverty line.

Almost 740,000 of them are children. In dollar figures, the poverty line amounts to $433 a week for single adults; $909 for a family of four. For many, this means hunger is a common reality, especially for those experiencing homelessness.

Afterall, how do you eat when you don’t have a home? When you have nowhere to cook, nowhere to store your food? Research from the University of Melbourne found those who are homeless eat an average of 14 meals per week, or just twice a day. Often relying on cheap and readily-available food

options that lack vital nutrients, such as fast food and two-minute noodles. This lack of nutrition is linked with chronic illness and obesity.

Our fellow street paper The Curbside Chronicle, in Oklahoma City, set out to illustrate how poverty affects the way people eat. They asked their vendors to document a week’s worth of meals in a food diary, and then photographed a single day of meals from several participants. The results were mixed – everything from multiple visits to soup kitchens to eating nothing at all. But one thing was clear, most vendors experience significant food insecurity.

COURTESY OF THE CURBSIDE CHRONICLE / INSP.NGO

Brian sleeps rough and relies on walking to nearby shelters to feed himself most days. He’s looking forward to securing housing because he knows having a place to stay will allow him to store food in a pantry and fridge. “On the streets, I can only eat what I can carry,” he explains.

TERRI 29 BREAKFAST nothing.

LUNCH Cereal and 1-litre soft drink.

DINNER Cereal and 1-litre soft drink.

Terri and her two young children moved out of a shelter and into permanent housing late last year. Despite her limited income, Terri’s kids never go to bed hungry.

Most of her money is spent on groceries – including fruit and veggies – for her kids. But between caring for them and selling Curbside, she often runs out of time to cook for herself. Terri relies on breakfast cereal because it’s quick and easy to stretch.

Over the course of the week’s food diary, Terri ate a bowl of cereal for lunch and dinner almost every day.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 APR 2018

23

MICHAEL 61 BREAKFAST 5 strips of

bacon, 2 slices of bread, scrambled eggs and grits.

LUNCH 2 fried chicken

breast tenderloins with ketchup and fried okra with hot sauce.

DINNER 7 prawns, garlic

toast, tossed salad with a boiled egg.

SNACKS 2 ice cream sandwiches and 2 fruit cups. Water and fruit juice with most meals.

“I love cooking,” says Michael.

“There’s a sense of pride in making a quality meal.” But when he was homeless and living in his car, it was difficult.

He was forced to skip meals and relied mainly on fast food.

When he was given a key to his new home last November, the first thing he did was go grocery shopping. Now that he’s back in housing, Michael rarely misses a meal and enjoys cooking for others — just his mum did.

24 like THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 APR 2018

RENITA 52 BREAKFAST nothing.

LUNCH nothing.

DINNER Hot dog and

a soda from 7-Eleven.

Eating on a budget is difficult.

Renita usually keeps her cost per meal to a couple of dollars and relies heavily on 99-cent options from convenience stores when she’s hungry. Some days, she’ll skip meals entirely.

“I’m so used to having just one meal a day, it’s impacted my appetite,” she says. Since moving into housing and ending her homelessness, Renita has been able to shop more frequently and says she’s looking forward to having more money to spend on food.

APRIL 51 FREDERICK 44 BREAKFAST Two-minute

noodles with sausage slices, a handful of Cheetos.

LUNCH Two-minute noodles

with sausage slices, Cheetos and some gummy bears.

DINNER A garden salad,

plus 1.35-litre soft drink and coffee with most meals.

This is one day of Frederick’s meals, shared with his partner, April. Without a home, accessing meals is a constant challenge for them, especially as April’s knees make it hard for her to walk long distances.

It means they mainly rely on a nearby convenience store for food. When they can, Frederick and April get a motel room where they can cook in the microwave. If that’s not possible, they spend the night outside and eat twominute noodles dry.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 APR 2018

25

LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF

BRUCE PASCOE

“I WANT CHANGE” 26

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

With his 2014 best-seller Dark Emu, Bunurong/Yuin author Bruce Pascoe helped rewrite Australian history. Celebrating thousands of years of Indigenous agriculture and ingenuity, the book challenged colonial myths about Aboriginal Australia. Now a children’s version, Young Dark Emu, has also been released. He talks to us about hating school, loving books and exploring his culture later in life.

PHOTO BY NICK CUBBIN

AT THE AGE of 16 I was quite fascinated by

sport. Typically fascinated by girls. But my life was dominated by books. I was in love with books. I thought the whole idea of creating a story in print was just the greatest trick on Earth.

I wasn’t really a Melbourne kid. I lived for a very short time in Fawkner, but I grew up on King Island and later in Mornington, on the peninsula. My father had a number of jobs and we travelled with him. He was a builder, and a very good builder, but not a terrific businessman. There were a lot of downs economically in our life. But we were lucky to have the love of both parents. We were a close family. I’ve got a sister. My dad was always working of course, but in his later life I was able to get a lot closer to him. I was very close to my mother.

My mother was blind and deaf and epileptic, and all of those things affected her work opportunities. But she did work. She did secretarial work and helped Dad in one of the failed attempts to run a hardware shop. She also did social work, at which she was very good because she knew a lot about disadvantage.

I hated school. I don’t like saying that, but when the kids ask me I answer honestly: I hated school.

I enjoyed the bits where we could read or write or play football, that was quite encouraging, but in general terms I didn’t like school. I didn’t like the regimentation. But also I think I’d begun rebelling against the history we were being taught. It just didn’t sound right. The more I found out about our heritage, the less trust I had in the education I was receiving.

I went straight to uni. I got a scholarship, thanks to Bob Menzies. Because my father had told both my sister and I that even though it looked like we were both going to go to university, he couldn’t pay for it. So he said the only way you can do it is on a scholarship. We both got them. I couldn’t afford to take a gap year or anything like that. I wanted to have a car, and I wanted to travel around, so I had to earn my own money.

Uni life was horrible. I was working every day, bar work mostly. I did a few other strange looking jobs, too. I loved the social side of uni but, once again, I wanted to study Australian history and Melbourne University said I couldn’t because nothing had ever

happened in Australia so therefore there was nothing to learn. So, I spent a lot of time in the library just reading, doing my own reading. It was a random search across the world’s literature.

I was a bit lost. I was immersed in the world of books and ideas and I was a bit disturbed at the world, that it was so money conscious, with so little romance and so much concentration on money. I was in the Vietnam War age as well. But I suppose I would like to tell my younger self to stop worrying and enjoy myself a bit more.

When I was 30 I already had a daughter who was asking questions about the people in the family photo album. And I couldn’t answer some of her questions. It kind of shocked me that I had so little curiosity myself, so I set out on a search for those stories and those families, which led me to get involved in Aboriginal community. After that it was just an ongoing search; you couldn’t meet an Aboriginal person without getting another bit of information really, that’s how it is. Every conversation led to another fact and that fact would lead to another fact, and it hasn’t stopped.

My family knew very little. Both my mother and father could only tell me one or two stories about the family. I thought they would find it really difficult, but because we were close we had respect for each other.

There were only a few years where we could talk about it. And I really wish, like a lot of people I suppose, I could have one more conversation with my mother and father. But if I had that conversation I’d want another one. Because there’s so much now that we could talk about. Only a few years ago my aunty gave me a piece of information that was absolute gold in connecting us to our Yuin culture on the [Victoria and NSW border] coast, where I now live. I don’t know why, but she’d been sitting on that my whole life.

I loved being a teacher. I always thought that many of my teachers were so boring and so callous in some regards that if I ever became a teacher, then I’d never bore children. And I stayed true to that. I had the advantage of teaching good kids, of course. I ended up teaching at Mallacoota, where I live now. It was so remote, and those kids were really up against it.

So, we got a bunch of young teachers together and we were able to take kids right through to Year 12, which THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

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PHOTOS COURTESY BRUCE PASCOE

resistance from the academic in that town had never been possible community [about Dark Emu], that before. When we started to provide that only provoked me in a way. It also education, a lot of those parents were did make me realise that Australians had terribly grateful. They were on the lower a lot to learn about their country. The economic scale, and now some of their resistance from academic Australia made children are on the higher economic scale. me search for a way, and that was to use My grandmother told me, we’re the “acceptable” historical records, which sick of being poor, there’s only were the explorers’ journeys and diaries, one way up, and it’s through and that was a really important moment. education. And it proves itself to be true I have two kids. Jack was born all the time. You have to get an education, down at Cape Otway. We had 20 terrific because you want to be in control of your years on that beautiful coastline. He is life. You want to be independent. As a actually working next door to where we young person that’s what I’d set out to do. lived, at the Cape Otway environment We’d lost houses and we’d lost income. centre. My daughter Marnie is a nurse, We lived a poor life in many ways. So, she’s got three kids. We’ve been working I knew what it was like to be without a closely together trying to improve the dollar. And you know, it set me up pretty education at my grandkids’ schools. We well. I bore the hell out of Aboriginal had a successful launch of Young Dark kids all the time, talking about financial Emu at their school, which was a great management. I play a bit of cricket with day for both of us. To have the grandkids Aboriginal kids and they cross the road there, to have something successful when they see me coming because they happening in the school, know they’re going to get to have the Aboriginal flag good advice! raised, was a really, really I’d always been a big moment for the family. writer, ever since I We’ll never forget it. was a teenager. Even Teaching children, when I was teaching, I that’s the only way to was still going home and change anything. You moonlighting on writing. have to have the majority While I was teaching I of Australians with a really was having my first stories good knowledge of their published, and not long after history. Not a history that my first collection of stories they just accept was published by Penguin. like they do their I was always at it. morning porridge, I’d written a book but a history they called Convincing challenge and Ground about the contact examine and search wars in Australia. That for more meaning. also went pretty well. But as a Once we do that result of that I was contacted then we’ll really own by a lot of Aboriginal people our history. And be about these other stories: the able to talk about farming stories; the housing it together. Not stories; the clothing stories. without debate, not I realised that I wasn’t going without challenge, to be able to avoid actually but at least we’ll be writing Dark Emu. There talking about it. was a lot of travel, a lot of I’m very busy, reading, a lot of searching thank god. I’m and a lot of enquiry, but terrible at being bored I always knew that it was STUDENT BRUCE, AGED 17, – you don’t want to see going to be a book.

AND AT TEACHERS’ COLLEGE, me when I’m bored.

When I was getting AGED 21.

I suppose I would like to tell my younger self to stop worrying and enjoy myself a bit more.

I have a farm in Mallacoota now, where I’m growing Aboriginal foods. The idea is that we put our money where our mouth is, and show Australia that these foods are not only good news, but you can grow them commercially. It’s hard yakka, like any farming. And our steps are successful, but they’re slow. They’re hardy plants, they don’t need artificial fertiliser, they don’t need extra water. They’re a win-win for the country. I tell you who’s employing young Aboriginal people on the farm, and that’s Dark Emu – sales of Dark Emu are employing them to work on the farm and get knowledge of these plants and help us establish these crops. I’m excited by it, and a lot of Australians are.

I think there’s been a moment.

I think a lot of things contributed to it.

Obviously a lot of our great leaders, like Stan Grant and Marcia Langton and Tom Calma and Linda Burney, people like that, they all contributed to it. You could just go on and on and on talking about people who made a huge impact on the Australian conversation. But there just seemed to become a tipping point.

There’s a hell of a long way to go, I think. I am a bit concerned that all this enthusiasm for Dark Emu, for instance. it has to be held in some kind of perspective.

Have a look at what happened to the Uluru Statement. Look what happened when we start talking about some constitutional change and we set up the minister for Aboriginal affairs to approach the Australian people, and as soon as he does, his own fellows come out and kick him. That indicates to me that there’s still a long way to go. So, I’m a bit suspicious of the warmth and backslapping – I want change. I want to see Australia change.

by Katherine Smyrk (@KSmyrk), Deputy Editor » Salt, a new collection of Bruce Pascoe’s stories and essays, is out 6 August.

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METHOD TO

OPHELIA’S MADNESS

DAISY RIDLEY AS OPHELIA IN A NEW TAKE ON SHAKESPEARE’S ILL-FATED HEROINE.

To see, or not to see: there ain’t no question.

Australian director Claire McCarthy reimagines Hamlet with Ophelia front and centre.

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IF YOU’RE GOING to tackle a teen-

focused reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that is told from the perspective of his tragic lost love Ophelia – and imbues her with more agency – then casting Star Wars hero Daisy Ridley in the lead is a bold move.

“It was a real challenge to reinterpret this iconic figure, so finding the right casting choice was vital,” Australian director Claire McCarthy says of Ophelia, her alternative take on the Bard’s longest and arguably most celebrated play.

“Daisy has such strength and resilience,” she adds. “She’s extraordinary. The Star Wars franchise could have really nosedived, but she nailed it. Casting her as Ophelia brings something contemporary to the story that’s able to say something different about these characters.”

Bringing the pluck of “the last Jedi” Rey, Ridley is magnetic at the movie’s heart. McCarthy draws on her visual arts background for the film’s rich imagery, with a striking opening shot clearly referencing Ophelia’s watery fate as rendered in the haunting portrait by Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir John Everett Millais.

But Ridley’s opening narration throws tradition out the window, as this feminist adaptation of Lisa Klein’s YA novel by Mad Men scribe Semi Chellas paints a new picture. “You may think you know my story,” Ophelia intones.

“Many have told it…but it is high time I should tell you my story myself.”

We first glimpse Ophelia as a young girl (Mia Quiney) running amok round Elsinore castle, where the rule-breaking upstart catches the eye of both a young

It’s got a bit of a twinkle in its eye, this Denmark.

Prince Hamlet (Jack CunninghamNuttall) and his mother, Queen Gertrude (Naomi Watts). The latter takes a shine to Ophelia and recruits her as her most trusted handmaiden.

By the time Ridley steps in, the pair have bonded, so much so that Ophelia is tasked with reading the Queen racy bedtime stories.

Fleshing out the gossamer-thin character of the Queen as well as Ophelia’s oddly vanishing role in the otherwise psychologically complex play (which McCarthy adores and has staged twice) appealed to the director.

As did the mischievous way Chellas’ adaptation skirts around some of the play’s major scenes.

“A lot of thought went into how you retain key elements and stay faithful to the underlying text – but also to

this new ambition, which is to give currency to Ophelia, who is such an iconic character but under-served in the original,” she says. “There was a lot of discussion about how we would update the language too. The producers were very clear that they didn’t want this to feel like classic Shakespeare in a BBC sense, a dusty period piece.”

Dusting off what we think we know, the real thrill for McCarthy was the expansion of Queen Gertrude. Watts also plays a dark mirror version of the Queen in newly invented character Mechtild; a witch brewing potions in the woods that recalls Macbeth’s Weird Sisters. “Naomi is a consummate professional and an amazing artist, so watching her tackle two roles was quite extraordinary,” McCarthy says. “I’m a bit of a David Lynch geek, too, so seeing

her reprise, in some sense, her dual role from Mullholland Drive was one of the joys of this shoot.”

Clive Owen is also pleasingly wicked as Claudius, the king’s lascivious, manipulative brother, and Pride (2014) star George MacKay is brilliant as the troubled prince himself. The script deepens his relationship with Ophelia in a way Game of Thrones fans will relish, helping make greater sense of her undoing.

“We didn’t want him to feel like he’s just a [superfluous] Disney prince,” McCarthy says of MacKay’s performance. “When he returns to Elsinore, everything turns on its head and you see him move from a sort of young jock to trying to figure out what it means to be a man.”

Shot in the Czech Republic, the location work is lavish, lending a fairytale feel to the tragedy which is further bedazzled by the costumes from Italian Massimo Cantini Parrini, and the glam rock make-up of Oscarwinner Alessandro Bertolazzi. “He won an Academy Award for Suicide Squad and has the most incredible process,” McCarthy says. “He gives the film a bit of swagger.”

Then there’s the sparkly score by another Oscar-winner, Gravity (2013) composer Steven Price. “It’s got a bit of a twinkle in its eye, this Denmark,” McCarthy chuckles.

Tapped to helm Ophelia off the back of her contribution to Tim Winton anthology film The Turning (2013), in which she directed Rose Byrne and Miranda Otto in the titular chapter, McCarthy’s just wrapped shooting a sixpart miniseries of Eleanor Catton’s hefty Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Luminaries in New Zealand. “Although it’s written by Eleanor, she’s almost inverted her own narrative.”

Seems like McCarthy is the go-to director for flipped literary trips these days. “I’m the mash-up queen,” she laughs. “As long as there’s a bit of disco involved, I’m in.”

by Stephen A Russell (@SARussellwords) » Ophelia is out 1 August.

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SALT OF IN THE MIDDLE of a complicated thought, Angie McMahon pauses and says, “I really feel like the songs are just me learning to be a songwriter. I’m not like ‘these are the best songs I’m ever going to write’.”

When she says “the songs”, she’s talking about the 12 tracks that make up Salt, her debut album. A collection of sprawling and building folk-rock songs, Salt is a chronicle of McMahon’s late teens and early twenties. And as much as the Melbourne musician might see some of her record’s imperfections, it’s an undeniably accomplished debut.

McMahon’s life has changed fundamentally since her first single ‘Slow Mover’ was released in 2017.

That song reached number 33 in Triple J’s Hottest 100, she headlined Melbourne’s Forum Theatre, and was awarded the 2019 Grulke Prize for developing artists at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas – the previous Australian to win the coveted prize was Courtney Barnett.

Despite that early success, Salt remains tightly focused on the perilous world of interpersonal connection and existential anxiety of one’s early adulthood. The album doesn’t simply mourn lost love or pine for someone unattainable; it’s interested in the mess of thoughts that exist in the thick of feelings. On album opener ‘Play the Game’, 25-year-old McMahon sings, “I’m helpless, helpless when it comes to you/I’ll say nothing, hope it gets through/I don’t know how to play the game you say that we’re not playing.”

Even on ‘Slow Mover’, she is wryly describing a somewhat unsatisfactory present: “It’s 4am/What are we doing in the street?/I don’t want to buy fried

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chicken/I wish I was going to sleep.”

This approach to writing about love, one that doesn’t necessarily venerate it, is important across the album. “They’re the easiest songs to write, a heartbreak song,” McMahon acknowledges. She felt like they were the only songs she was writing, not realising that by writing about heartbreak she was also reflecting on herself. “The ones that were written earlier [are about] those first experiences of the brutal casual dating scene, and feeling like a total victim, and like, ‘this is the worst feeling ever’. And now I look back on it like: I’m really glad I went through feeling those things and processing them, and I’m really glad I was able to make songs out of them, but I don’t see love in that way anymore. I don’t feel angry about loving people.”

Salt does allow for a kind of anger in some moments – second single ‘Missing Me’ is the most obvious example, as McMahon delivers the song’s opening line, “Loving you is lonely”, with a growl – but there’s often more nuance to the frustration that the album deals in. There is a compelling push and pull between confidence and self-doubt throughout the record. “You have to have both, and they have to eat at each other,” she agrees.

This balance is essential to live performance, which is where McMahon thrives. She reverently describes the electricity that her audiences bring to every show. “Otherwise it would just be me and the band doing the exact same thing, and there’s two elements of light in the live show, one is us trying to be malleable on stage, and the other is a new person or a new audience reacting and feeling the song.”

When asked if she finds it difficult

to reconcile a burgeoning public image with her own image of herself, McMahon says she tries not to think about it too much. Her online presence is low-key, her Instagram mostly gig posters and tour snapshots. She does, however, feel placed in a double bind about what it is she should be sharing.

“Sometimes I want to share family things, and the stuff that you just post on social media if you feel like nobody’s looking at it,” she explains. “And then I go through this mind-circle where I’m like, Well why do I need to share this on social media anyway? This doesn’t mean I don’t have a happy family just because I don’t post it on the internet, and it doesn’t mean I don’t love my boyfriend just because I don’t post about him.”

One of the lyrics on Salt that stands out comes as ‘Pasta’, a slow-burn ode to lethargy and carbs, builds to its climax. McMahon sings: “How am I simultaneously on top of someone’s pedestal/And also underneath someone else’s shoe?”

It’s a question about the value we ascribe to ourselves when there’s input coming in from all sides. In this instance, the song came before she fully understood the feeling, and she is okay with working backwards.

“The idea of writing a good song and communicating something wholly and empathetically and properly, motivates me to be better in relationships,” says McMahon. “I can be more aware of what’s going on around me, because that’s what the good songs call for.”

by Greer Clemens (@greerclemens) » Angie McMahon’s Salt is out now.

She tours Australia 2-19 October.

PHOTO BY PAIGE CLARK

Her debut single may be titled ‘Slow Mover’, but things have been moving pretty quickly for Angie McMahon.

“

I don’t see love in that way anymore. I don’t feel angry about loving people.

THE EARTH ANGIE McMAHON

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33

R E T T S A D M R O WHY W Language is power. Linguist Amanda Montell’s new book urges us all to take it back.

IT’S PROBABLY SAFE to say that Amanda Montell is a straight talker. Her book, Wordslut with its subtitle ‘A feminist guide to taking back the English language’, opens with the word “bitch”; a word that pre-dates modern English. Despite it’s various (and mostly derogatory) meanings today, 800 years ago it was a unisex word for genitalia. For Montell, it’s a classic example of how the “process of a totally neutral or even positive word [devolves] into some insult for women”.

This linguistic process is just one of the topics explored in her book that has a cover filled with all manner of adjectives commonly used to describe women: “bombshell, sassy, sweet, catty, loose, airhead, irrational.”

The chapter on genitalia slang throughout history and what it says about our approach to sex, she adds, was also “a hoot” to research. But let’s start with the book’s title, though. The LA-based linguist says despite going through various alternatives, the final choice was actually her publisher’s idea.

“What do you call a book that covers such a mammoth expanse of topics? I originally pitched it with a much more esoteric title: We Should All Be Linguists, inspired by We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, but that was nixed for seeming alienating,” she says.

Other ideas included Literally Linguistics, Oh My Word and Womenclature, but none of them seemed edgy enough for a book containing chapter titles like ‘Slutty Skanks and Nasty Dykes: A Comprehensive List of Gendered Insults I Hate (But Also Kind of Love?)’ and ‘How to Embarrass the Shit Out of People Who Try to Correct Your Grammar’.

So, Wordslut it was. And it’s a fascinating, punchy and comprehensive

sociolinguistic survey looking at the correlation between gendered language and societal values, and how, without speakers even realising, English is so often innately, historically sexist.

Though American in context, its arguments are relevant to all Western societies as its author urges the subject of gender and words to move beyond academic study and into everyday life. In the chapter ‘Women Didn’t Ruin the English Language – They, Like, Invented It’, Montell delves into vocal markers like “uptalk” (having an upward intonation at the end of a sentence), hedging (using “like” and “you know” as discourse markers) and vocal fry (a raspy low-pitched noise that happens when people trail off at the ends of sentences), speech qualities that are mainly exhibited by female speakers.

There is a wealth of fascinating revelations, and Montell does have some favourites. “I was researching how different languages approach gendered grammar and exploring the relationship between gendered nouns, like they have in Spanish and French, and people’s perception of human gender in real life, which, as it turns out, is not always so separate.”

She cites as an example, Dyirbal, an Aboriginal Australian language spoken in northeast Queensland that has four noun classes, and is well-known in the world of linguistics for having a special noun classification for “women, fire and dangerous things”. The noun classification for fish, for example, is masculine (bayi) in Dyirbal. But if it’s a dangerous fish, like stonefish or garfish, it is feminine (balam).

“These might just be

noun classification systems, but they say a lot about how the relationship between grammatical gender and speakers’ perceptions of men and women is sometimes all conflated and can get really problematic,” she argues.

There are some great suggestions in Wordslut about how to be mindful of how we use language, and to reclaim some of the more sexist terms – like thinking of neutral swear words and being considerate around minors.

But even some of the expert linguists Montell quotes say it’s difficult, and there’s already backlash from conservatives who are reluctant to accept feminist values in the English language.

“Progressive language change cannot come before progressive cultural change.

It has to happen the other way around,” she says. “You can’t force someone to use more inclusive language – say, to use gender-neutral pronouns and avoid using “slut” and “pussy” as terms of abuse – and hope their ideology will follow. That’s not how it works.”

She says progressive values must be supported by progressive language. That way, the next generation will grow up thinking inclusive language is the norm.

“In doing that, hopefully, society will incrementally become more equal overall.

I hope that in my lifetime the world becomes so accepting and supportive of people across the gender spectrum that things like verbal street harassment, or critiquing a powerful woman’s voice for sounding ‘unauthoritative’ and thus unfit to lead will no longer happen. Reaching that more hopeful linguistic future starts with those of us who already believe in gender equality reflecting those beliefs with our language choices.”

by Thuy On (@thuy_on)

» Wordslut is out now.

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FILM DANGER CLOSE: THE BATTLE OF LONG TAN 

JOURNEYING INTO NIGHT.

ANNABEL BRADY-BROWN > Film Editor A TRULY ECLECTIC filmmaker, Penelope

Spheeris is known as either the director of doofus comedy gold like Wayne’s World (1992) and The Little Rascals (1994) – or as a punk documentary-maker, filming the Decline of Western Civilisation trilogy. Between 1980 and 1988, Spheeris got in the pit with the Californian scene, charting its evolution: “What’s it like being a living legend?” she asks Ozzy Osbourne, as he scrambles his morning eggs in Part Two: The Metal Years (1988). The Melbourne International Film Festival (1-18 August) is dedicating a mini-retro to Spheeris, screening three of her Reagan-era teen flicks: Suburbia (1983), The Boys Next Door (1985) and Dudes (1987). These films are moody and monstrous, yet heartfelt. (Also, their soundtracks rule.)

The musical note carries through the program: Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore is in town, performing original scores accompanying four of Maya Deren’s wondrous avant-garde shorts.

The MIFF line-up also includes a slew of phenomenal new features – some unlikely to get a theatrical release, such as Chinese director Bi Gan’s 3D odyssey Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Hungarian László Nemes’ heart-racing historical drama Sunset, and Italian Roberto Minervini’s What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?, a moving portrait of black communities in the American South. Look out for debut features from rising Australian talents, such as Imogen Thomas’ Emu Runner and Rodd Rathjen’s Buoyancy. See you there.

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Battles are rarely won by individuals, which is a problem for film directors.

Director Kriv Stenders’ take on the 1966 Battle of Long Tan focuses on the bigger picture before and during the day-long battle in a Vietnamese rubber plantation, keeping the personal stories to a minimum. It’s the right choice. While Travis Fimmel’s disgruntled Major Smith is the nominal lead – and the friction between him and Private Large (Daniel Webber) provides the closest thing here to an emotional arc – the film roves between the four platoons in the battle, the commanding officers back at base, and the NZ artillery whose barrages kept the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces at bay. The shifting viewpoint means anyone can (and does) die at any moment, while the combat is desperate without becoming too confusing.

The Australians are in a lot of trouble but this film never is; it’s impressive filmmaking that doesn’t lose sight of the human cost. ANTHONY MORRIS

PALM BEACH 

Rachel Ward’s follow-up to the sensitive and original Beautiful Kate (2009) misses just about every mark on the relatability index. The film pleads with its audience to connect to several privileged, white retirees living in picturesque Palm Beach, but the stakes are absurdly low.

Dan (Charlie Vickers), the teenage son who doesn’t quite fit in, is the source of a paternity crisis that sees friends Frank (Bryan Brown) and Leo (Sam Neill) incessantly arguing and making up; Billy (Richard E Grant) agonises over being not quite as wealthy as his buddies, while his wife Eva (Heather Mitchell) – the film’s redeeming character – attempts to reconcile her age with her storied acting career. Co-written with playwright Joanna Murray-Smith, Ward’s intersecting storylines have the potential to be rich narratives of introspection, but the decision to situate them in a world of sunlight and franking credits makes them feel disingenuous. Even the who’s-who of Australian (and Kiwi) talent can’t salvage this plodding indulgence.

ZACH KARPINELLISON

BE NATURAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ 

If history is written by the loudest people in the room, then it makes unfortunate sense that women are often overlooked. Pamela B Green’s Be Natural attempts to correct a notable film history omission: Alice Guy-Blaché, the first female film director and one of the first directors, period. Green’s documentary is a detective story, attempting to uncover the reasons behind this grand exclusion – an investigation that includes a crash course in early film history, as well as the expected dive into industry sexism.

Narrated by Jodie Foster, Be Natural is breathlessly paced and full of hyperactive celebrity interviews – but that same, eager desire to please ultimately makes Be Natural less than worthy of its subject. Green’s film feels unfocused, spending so much time in the thrall of its own presentation that it sometimes loses track of Guy-Blaché herself. Still, for those unfamiliar with the early days of cinema, this could be an inspiring introduction. KAI PERRIGNON

SMALL SCREENS LAMBS OF GOD

THE BOYS





The key to great farce is to hide in plain sight. Lambs of God presents itself as prestige TV: the scenery is stunning thanks to cinematographer Don McAlpine (Moulin Rouge) and the cast is sublime. But a much wackier affair awaits, with tonal shifts severe enough to cause whiplash.

Based on Marele Day’s novel, three nuns (Essie Davis, The Babadook; Ann Dowd, The Handmaid’s Tale; and Jessica Barden, The End of the F***ing World), each a generation apart, live on a remote island in a dilapidated convent. The trio live in harmony and take a holistic approach to worship. But when a smug priest (Sam Reid, Bloom) arrives on behalf of the church, their self-sufficient ways, which include animal sacrifice, are brought into question. In the time it takes to say a Hail Mary, Lambs of God bounces between serious drama, religious satire and wickedly comic moments. Your mileage may vary depending on how much you’re willing to go with it. Have faith. Streaming and screening on Fox Showcase.

CAMERON WILLIAMS

YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION 

An investigation of today’s precious (and profitable) attention economy, this is the first podcast from non-profit organisation, the Center for Humane Technology. It’s co-hosted by the centre’s cofounders, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, who speak with a range of experts – from anthropologists to former CIA officers – to reveal how the world is designed to hijack our attention spans. Each episode is a one-on-one interview that’s periodically interrupted by a casual brainstorm between Harris and Raskin. This “click here to learn more” mechanism unpacks especially complex ideas in real-time. For a podcast that considers what it means for big tech companies to optimise mindlessness, things could easily get grim. But Harris and Raskin’s vision restores a sense of agency and reflection to our hyper-optimised lives. For fans of Reply All and ABC Radio National’s Future Tense: those who ask big questions about the ethics of everyday tech. NATHANIA GILSON

Pop culture is so saturated with superheroes that even satirical jabs at caped crusaders are starting to feel overdone. Enter into this crowded race: The Boys, a gleefully cruel superhero pastiche that distinguishes itself from the rabble by jettisoning all semblance of taste. Based on the comic by the legendarily filthy Garth Ennis, the series announces its vicious intentions from the get-go. Opening on a romantic chat about pooping that ends with “Wee” Hughie (Jack Quaid) losing the love of his life and swearing vengeance on all superheroes, the show juggles crude jokes about bodily functions with a near non-stop parade of murder. As such, your tolerance for what follows will depend entirely on how much you enjoy seeing a human being pulverised into a pile of red goo. But those with steely stomachs will discover The Boys has more to it than toilet humour. Come for an invisible man getting an electric shock to the groin; stay for superheroes cast as bigbusiness fascists.

Now on Prime Video.

JOSEPH EARP

AIMEE KNIGHT > Small Screens Editor CALIFORNIA’S FINEST TEEN detective, Veronica Mars, is back in her long-awaited fourth season. It sees the titular PI (played by effervescent Kristen Bell) hunting a killer who’s bumping off college students in her troubled hometown of Neptune. So far, so standard for the scrappy, semiprofessional sleuth turned lawyer, turned detective again.

But this time round, she ain’t no little girl…kind of.

Back in the noughties, Veronica’s stance as a nonthreatening high schooler was central to her schemes. Fifteen years on, can the plucky gumshoe still work that wisebeyond-her-years shtick now that she’s in her (gasp) thirties?

Bank-rolled by US streaming service Hulu – and fasttracked to Australia by Stan – season four comes five years after Veronica’s crowdfunded eponymous 2014 feature film.

Holding down the fort at Mars Investigations, Veronica is back on her LA noir beat, and die-hard fans will delight in her idiosyncratic brand of snooping. Familiar faces return as she deals with the usual crime syndicates and corporate corruption, but the maturing detective also reveals a few

STREAMING

PAY TV

PODCAST

TEEN DETECTIVE IN A JAM.

demons of her own, via amplified anxieties around wealth and family.

If you’re familiar with Bell’s exploits as The Good Place’s Eleanor Shellstrop, you’ll know the diminutive actor packs emotional punch. While there’s not much scope here to grow anymore, the older, wiser, thirstier Veronica remains a valuable contact and, dare I say, friend.

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MUSIC LATE NIGHT FEELINGS MARK RONSON 

With Late Night Feelings, Mark Ronson once again demonstrates his talent as a producer, and as a creative who knows when to let the perfect formula of voices take full control. Here we have 13 songs, largely about heartbreak, delivered by a brilliant cast of guest vocalists.

Yet, in the beautifully articulated string arrangements, deft switches between pop melodies and sultry late-night club vibes, Ronson’s voice still rings out clearly.

From Lykke Li to Miley Cyrus and Camila Cabello, the vocal range and stylings on the record are indeed individual, but never alienating. In a pop climate marked by house-tinged club bangers and R’n’B-rooted chart mainstays, an album like Late Night Feelings proves that beauty can still be found in the intricacies of pop music. A diverse and wholly enjoyable listen, Ronson is at his best when he’s letting the unique musical strengths of others further bolster and inform his music – very, very clever. SOSE FUAMOLI BELIEVE IN CHER.

SARAH SMITH > Music Editor JUST RECENTLY I was involved in a very public surprise wedding proposal. I was neither the proposer nor the proposed to, rather a panicky conduit enlisted to help make the moment happen. Other than being exhausted from trying not to accidently blurt out the secret plan, it all went off without a hitch.

Part of my role, which happened live on the Triple R radio show I co-host, was to play the couple’s “song” – a remix of Omi’s house banger ‘Cheerleader’. Not a classic love song by any means, the lyrics include the line: “Mama loves you too, she thinks I made the right selection.”

There is a silly story behind why this is the couple’s special song, of course. But that doesn’t even really matter, because everyone knows we don’t choose “our songs”, they choose us – and sometimes for the least romantic of reasons.

Sure, my partner and I have a few lovey-dovey tunes, but I also have songs with friends because they remind us of the hours we spent playing pool and emoting heaps at age 14. I have songs with friends because of one night out dancing underage at a terrible club. And I have songs with friends for reasons I can’t even remember now. These include: Cher’s resplendent AutoTune resurrection banger ‘Believe’; Coolio’s Dangerous Minds hit ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’; and rap-pop single ‘Steal My Sunshine’ by Canadian one-hit wonders Len. Quite the selection, right? But I wouldn’t change any of them for the world.

38

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

BASIC LOVE JADE IMAGINE 

Modernity is fraught with challenges. Basic Love, the haze-clearing debut album from Melbourne’s four-piece Jade Imagine, echoes 80s new wave in its examination of contemporary unease. The diagnosis? A mutation in the strain; paranoia has given way to malaise. Opening tracks ‘Gonna Do Nothing’ and ‘The News’ (an infectious pop masterwork) are cautious not to champion that sense of resignation. The same level of care is applied to melodic construction throughout the record – these earworms could be weapons-grade in the wrong hands, their potency offset by frontwoman Jade McInally’s cool precision. Control is sought on ‘Big Old House’ and ‘Remote Control’, while ‘Cut Me Off’ is groggy melodrama without answers.

‘Don’t Say It’s Over’ whispers assurances between gorgeous saxophone solos, and ‘Get Out of Your Head’ is a meta ode to art as therapy. Minute determination is prescribed on ‘Past Life’: “Just got to wash my clothes and get on with my things.” Like a good melody, simplicity is key. LACHLAN KANONIUK

WHEN THE TREE BEARS FRUIT PARSNIP 

Opening with funky guitar effects, sloshing organ and bassist Paris Richens’ chirpy singing, Parsnip’s debut album could pass for some recovered artefact of psychedelic children’s music. (There’s even a song called ‘Lullaby’.)

Though the Melbourne quartet strike off into more volatile terrain at times, their candycoloured jangle-pop remains winsome and whimsical. When the Tree Bears Fruit evokes The Mamas and the Papas’ love-ins and The Beach Boys’ Smile-era playfulness. The harmonies on ‘Lift Off’ and ‘Soft Spot’ are delightful, while low-key horn and xylophone parts freshen things up elsewhere. These songs are consistently catchy and well-crafted, but what resonates most is the feeling of friendship among the band. When ‘Trip the Light Fantastic’ closes out the album with simple handclaps and then a giddy flurry of cheering, it’s an off-thecuff celebratory touch that feels not just infectious but inevitable. DOUG WALLEN VINYL

CD

DOWNLOAD

BOOKS THUY ON > Books Editor IN CASE YOU missed it, there was a bit of kerfuffle about this year’s Australian/Vogel Literary Awards, given annually to an unpublished manuscript by a writer under 35, the judges deemed no submissions were worthy of being awarded.

Among the resulting brouhaha, author Jane Rawson argued in a piece for Overland journal: “While you’re at it, prize-giving-organisations, how about setting up a prize for emerging writers over 40? How about one for an emerging writer whose career has been delayed by raising children, caring for parents, making a living, getting an education, being sick?”

Now that’s an excellent idea. Like in every other industry, youth is fetishised and championed in literature. It can sometimes feel that if you haven’t been published by the time you turn 21, then you might as well give up.

But those of us who don’t fit into the youthful age bracket should take heart by remembering that there have been plenty of late-blooming authors. Just recently, Vicki Laveau-Harvie won the Stella Prize for her debut book. She is in her seventies. Other late starters? Raymond Chandler published his first book, The Big Sleep, when he was 51. Bram Stoker wrote Dracula at age 50.

Elizabeth Jolley’s first book? She was 53.

KNIFE JO NESBØ 

The master of Nordic Noir returns in company with his most brokenyet-endearing creation, Harry Hole. It picks up where The Thirst left off: Harry’s hands covered in blood, and a raging hangover clouding his judgement at the worst possible moment. Notorious rapist and murderer Svein Finne has been released from jail, and is not only keen to resume his life of crime, he’s also determined to make Harry pay for putting him behind bars. Navigating a case that swiftly develops more twists and turns than the Oslo subway – while coping with the break-up of his marriage, his ongoing alcoholism and his near-fatal disorganisation – this is, without a doubt, the most brutal tale Jo Nesbø has produced, and as fine an example of the genre as a reader could hope to find. Harry isn’t going to let go, but this time, neither is the shadowy killer stalking him. The 12th instalment in the bestselling crime series, Knife is everything you could want in a cold, dark and relentless thriller. Nesbø is on top of his game, and fans will be delighted with the result. CRAIG BUCHANAN

NAILED IT! MEL CAMPBELL AND ANTHONY MORRIS 

A romantic romp through the absurdities of reality television, Nailed It! is the second novel from Mel Campbell and Anthony Morris. We follow Rose, a talented carpenter in her early twenties who lands a job on a reality renovation show, where she quickly falls for Dave, a hopeless but well-meaning contestant. Campbell and Morris are keyed in to our current pop-culture obsessions – everything from podcasts to Instagram influencers work their way into the plot. It’s a shame that their characterisation isn’t stronger. Dave is good looking and kind, but the reader is left wondering what exactly it is about him that’s so captivating. Rose’s snobbish artcritic parents are equally muddled, with their bizarre penchant for millennial colloquialisms. Still, there’s some enjoyment to be had in following Rose and Dave’s efforts to keep their romance away from the cameras and the scores of ravenous fans watching from home. It will no doubt appeal to reality television fanatics looking for a comic peek behind the scenes. JACK ROWLAND

VICKI LAVEAU-HARVIE

CHARLES FIRTH’S FRACTURED FAIRY TALES EDITED BY CAM SMITH 

For those who don’t know, or have forgotten, the Chaser crew are a satirical bunch – so it’s not surprising that when one of their members produces a fairytale collection, the stories will be twisted and off-colour. These parables for a modern world are presented as a picture book, but the contents are really more for cynical adults. There’s a story about a boy who programs everyone in the world to be his friend, another about how greed for gem stones ends up destroying everything (including humans themselves), and one that points out that despite mummy bear and daddy bear doing the same job, daddy bear is given more gold coins for his effort. These fractured fairytales skewer social, gender and environmental politics and there is no happy ending. The book itself is a slight affair, and could probably do with several more stories and a more layered and detailed narrative. The tales are one-note jokey and too slight to make a serious impact. THUY ON THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

39

“

“

A good biscuit reminds me of learning to cook at my mother’s apron strings. I adore the smell of them baking.

TASTES LIKE HOME

MATTHEW EVANS’

Hazelnut and Chocolate Kiss Biscuits Ingredients

Biscuits

Chocolate Butter Icing

Makes 10

180g butter, softened

50g butter, softened

50g (about ⅓ cup) brown sugar

65g (roughly ½ cup) icing sugar, sifted

1 tablespoon very strong coffee, cooled

35g (3 tablespoons) cocoa powder, sifted

Imagine roasted nuts in a shortbreadstyle biscuit, sandwiched with bittersweet chocolate icing. Now stop imagining and get baking. It’ll take you 25 minutes.

MAIN PHOTO BY ALAN BENSON

Method Preheat the oven to 180C. Beat the butter with the brown sugar and coffee until light and pale. Add the flours and hazelnuts and stir with a wooden spoon until just combined. The mixture can be quite soft, and if you’re doing it in a warm room, you may need to refrigerate it for a bit prior to rolling. Roll large teaspoons of the mixture to make about 20 even-sized balls.

Place on non-stick paper on a flat baking tray, far enough apart that they won’t touch when cooked (they’ll swell a little as they bake). Use a fork or two fingers to press them down so they flatten out to a little less than 1cm in height. Bake in the centre of the oven for 12–15 minutes or until they start to brown on the bottom and perhaps just start to colour on top. Turn the tray around at half time, if you think of it. Cool on the tray until firm, then on a wire rack.

For the chocolate butter icing: Beat the butter with the icing sugar and cocoa until smooth. Spread onto half the cooled biscuits and sandwich with the remaining halves while the icing is still soft.

If you and the family don’t eat them all as soon as they’re made, they are better a few hours later when the icing has firmed somewhat. In that case, store the biscuits in an airtight container.

200g (1½ cups) plain flour 50g (½ cup) cornflour 100g hazelnuts, roasted lightly and crushed but not too finely ground

Matthew says…

I grew up with tea. Since before I can remember, a nice cup of tea would start my parents’ day.

Dad would get up early, put the kettle on, and make a pot for Mum and take it to her in bed. There was tea at mid-morning, with something sweet. Later came a good cuppa in the afternoon, which also involved the biscuit tin. And of course, being British, while my parents drank a dark Italian coffee after dinner, the rest of us drank tea as a warming, relaxing brew before bed. Tea was a time to stop. A time to talk. A time to revive.

Nowadays, I’m more of a coffee drinker, but tea still tastes like home.

And, as the saying goes, a cup of tea without a biscuit is a wasted opportunity.

Whenever the tea was served, the wish was for biscuits, and the best were always homemade.

I still love a biscuit, even as my sweet tooth has waned. A good one reminds me of learning to cook at my mother’s apron strings. I adore the making – usually these days it’s a pleasure I share with our 10-year-old son. I adore the smell of them baking. And of course, there’s the eating. Every mouthful of biscuit encapsulates the joy of my childhood. The carefree days of youth, spent climbing trees, fishing for yabbies and riding bikes through the bush. Days when the worst thing I could imagine was an empty biscuit tin; a problem at once confronting and easy to fix. From Anzacs to shortbread, there’s a lot of emotion bound up in every little bite. These chocolate kiss biscuits, like a hazelnut melting moment with chocolate icing, are a bit fancier than those I made as a kid. But the memories, oh the memories remain.

» See Matthew Evans in Gourmet Farmer on SBS. His book, On Eating Meat, is out now.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

41

LORIN PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

WALK THE WALK YOU KNOW SOMETIMES you do that thing when you’re typing

something into a search engine and it autocompletes the phrase for you and you think, “Huh? People search for that?”

Well here’s a thing that people have typed enough times that my search engine thought it might be what I was wanting to say: is walking worth it? Now, when I read that, I felt the breath in my lungs become sentient and leave my body in a disgusted sigh. I felt my hope for humanity seeping from the pores of my skin. I felt the kinship between myself and my fellow humans fizzle away to a crust. Is walking worth it?

IMAGINE INVENTING A living thing. Imagine the design phase.

“Okay guys, so we need to get it moving – any thoughts?”

Wheels? Bit limited. Can’t really climb stairs or relax with wheels. Hovering? Could be fun? Flight? Bit messy. “Hey, here’s an idea: what if we gave it two stick things and – get this – every time it uses them, it’s making itself healthier and happier?”

I mean, it’s almost too good to be true.

Even a walk through an open-plan office takes you out of yourself a little bit. Oh look, there’s Simon having a pretendy-fun but actually deadly serious argument with Deirdre in the office kitchen about how to stock the dishwasher. Oh there’s that dude in finance who looks like my Uncle Pete. Oooh got to remember to call Mum. Oh yay someone left cake in the kitchen! Once you’ve got yourself a cup of tea or a stapler or a slice of something, you’ve had a bit of a mental stretch and you’ve not even noticed. Walking: good for your body and your Uncle Pete.

Ever noticed how, if you have a problem to think through, or a speech you need to practise, and you try and think it through on a walk, you can’t? That’s because a walk is like that magical friend who distracts you from obsessing about something and focuses all your attention on something else until the problem doesn’t seem important. If a walk can’t divert you from your troubles, the minimum result is that you probably brought your blood pressure down.

When you go on walks you get to meet a lot of dogs.

Just saying. Try and have a bad time when a dog is pleased to see you.

You’ve probably read all those stats about how many megatons of pollution would be saved if everybody walked small distances instead of driving a car. Walking is a positively heroic mode of transport.

There’s a lot written about the demise of the quiet walk, and the fact that walks used to be our downtime. Time to feel our noisy thoughts fall away. Yes! True, so true. So wise and so true. Also though: podcasts! Music! We listen and we learn, and we imprint our ideas and thoughts on the world we’re walking through, and by the time we get home we know about nanoparticles, the history of goat herding and Mozart.

Plus we went to the shops!

Going for walks, you get to see things, and hear things in such a serendipitous way that sometimes you can’t believe your luck. Personally, on walks, I often find myself turning to see if anyone else is bearing witness to whatever is going on, but the beauty of it is: it’s in the wild. You’re capturing the moment in its natural habitat. You’re its only audience. I once overheard two women talking in a park while walking briskly together in fitness gear. One was explaining to the other that her husband was “making a conceited effort to do the dishes”. I thought she misspoke, but then I overheard a few more things and when I imagined her husband at home I suddenly wasn’t so sure.

Recently, I passed a priest in the car park of a local church. He was wearing a huge cross around his neck and was dressed for Sunday with the exception of his footwear – worn, grey sneakers. He was pointing a loud leaf blower into the corner of an autumn-leafed car park. Doing God’s work, presumably. I looked at him and went to smile but he gave me a tiny eye-roll, and so I laughed. Never would have happened if walks weren’t worth it.

This is a Public Service Announcement: for heaven’s sake, go for a walk. Walks are always worth it.

» Lorin Clarke is a Melbourne-based writer. Her radio serial, The Fitzroy Diaries, is on the ABC’s Radio National. You can also find it on the ABC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6 JUL–8 AUG 2019

43

PUZZLES

BY LINGO! HAND The word hand, as far as records show, has always been a part of the English language. We can see the evolution of English through the different ways it has been pluralised over the years. The original Old English plural was handa; nouns had different plurals depending on their grammatical gender and case, a system that has been all but lost in English (with only a few fossils, like pronouns). This system was superseded by more regular plurals, with the only options being -s or -en and the plural became handen in Middle English.

There are still a handful of plurals made with the -en form, including children and oxen, but eventually the -s plural suffix dominated.

» by Lauren Gawne (lingthusiasm.com) SOLUTIONS

1 9 5 8 7 3 2 6 4

4 3 6 5 2 7 9 1 8

5 8 2 9 4 1 6 3 7

9 7 1 3 6 8 5 4 2

1 Orange 2 New Zealand and England 3 Kylie Minogue 4 120m 5 4 6 Japan 7 Ken Wyatt 8 1 per cent 9 The Golden Girls 10 None 11 Queen Elizabeth II 12 Kampala 13 Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood (2019) and Django Unchained (2012) 14 A shiver 15 Ecuador 16 Ronald Ryan, 1967 17 The Moon 18 U2 19 Indian Ocean 20 Sean Penn

44

20 QUESTIONS

7 4 8 2 9 6 3 5 1

Puzzle by websudoku.com

CONTRIBUTORS Film Editor Annabel Brady-Brown Small Screens Editor Aimee Knight Music Editor Sarah Smith Books Editor Thuy On Cartoonist Andrew Weldon

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

ENQUIRIES Advertising Simone Busija on (03) 9663 4533 sbusija@bigissue.org.au Subscriptions (03) 9663 4533 subscribe@bigissue.org.au Editorial (03) 9663 4522 editorial@bigissue.org.au The Big Issue, GPO Box 4911, Melbourne, VIC 3001 thebigissue.org.au © 2019 Big Issue In Australia Ltd

All rights reserved.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.

PUBLISHED BY Big Issue In Australia Ltd (ABN 61 071 598 439) 227 Collins St Melbourne VIC 3000

PRINTER Printgraphics Pty Ltd 14 Hardner Road Mount Waverley VIC 3149

CARTOON BY ANDREW WELDON

EDITORIAL Editor Amy Hetherington Deputy Editor Katherine Smyrk Contributing Editor Michael Epis Contributing Editor Anastasia Safioleas Editorial Coordinator Lorraine Pink Art Direction & Design Gozer (gozer.com.au)

1 8 6 4

2 6 3 1 5 4 7 8 9

3 5 6

9

1

3 5 4 7 1 9 8 2 6

1

2

5 3 1 2 9 6 3 2 7

8 1 7 6 3 2 4 9 5

7 4 6

SUDOKU

6 2 9 4 8 5 1 7 3

2

ACROSS 1 Pleasure 5 Knaves 10 Mocha 11 Carnation 12 Coup d’état 13 Smear 14 Dispel 15 Regions 18 Onerous 20 Cutlet 22 Apple 24 Board game 25 Condiment 26 Edict 27 Yearns 28 Prisoner DOWN 1 Pumice 2 Exclusive 3 Stand-up comedian 4 Recital 6 Nearsightedness 7 Voice 8 Sundress 9 Crater 16 Operation 17 Monarchy 19 Subset 20 Charter 21 Mentor 23 Panda

4 5 9

CROSSWORD

Puzzle by websudoku.com

SUDOKU » by websudoku.com

CROSSWORD » by Chris Black 1

2

3

20 QUESTIONS

4

5

6

7

8

9 10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17 18

19

20 21

22

23

24

25

26

27

CRYPTIC CLUES ACROSS

28

The answers for the cryptic and quick clues are the same.

1. Request unwavering happiness (8) 5. Rock snake swallowed five rats (6) 10. Initially making oolong tea and coffee order (5) 11. Flower in revhead country? (9) 12. Scrapped pact due to rebellion (4,5) 13. Sully Sullenberger: miraculous emergency airplane rescue starts (5) 14. Banish princess with brief incantation (6) 15. Ignores broken parts (7) 18. Monet and Proust taking sides is difficult (7) 20. Cult prepared alien dish (6) 22. Fruit beer contains peas, reportedly (5) 24. Directors organised mega monopoly? (5,4) 25. Cooking mince – don’t salt? (9) 26. Valedictorian entertained law (5) 27. Twenty-four years without aches? (6) 28. Confused: sniper or hostage?

(8)

DOWN

1. Turned up Little Creatures (light rock) (6) 2. Palmer embraces US after former partner’s scoop (9) 3. Brand’s one demand is “act upon change” (5-2,8) 4. Article about gig (7) 6. This sense ranged poorly!? (15) 7. Frozen water under empty volcano vent (5) 8. Small strip garment (8) 9. Boxer’s impact-related depression? (6) 16. Carmen, say, runs into surgery (9) 17. March around on unknown kingdom (8) 19. I left busiest shift to be part of a large group (6) 20. Cher covers talent in book (7) 21. Guide blokes over peak (6) 23. Q&A changed intro for Chinese icon? (5)

QUICK CLUES ACROSS

1. Enjoyment (8) 5. Dishonest men (6) 10. Sweet coffee variant (5) 11. Flower (9) 12. Regime change (4,5) 13. Slander (5) 14. Make disappear (6) 15. Areas (7) 18. Burdensome (7) 20. Portion of meat (6) 22. Fuji, for example (5) 24. Risk, for example (5,4) 25. Mustard, for example (9) 26. Decree (5) 27. Longs (6) 28. Captive (8)

DOWN

1. Volcanic rock (6) 2. Scoop; elite (9) 3. Comic (5-2,8) 4. Performance (7) 6. Myopia (15) 7. Express (5) 8. Warm weather garment (8) 9. Caldera (6) 16. Game of “medical” skill (9) 17. Kingdom (8) 19. Smaller group of a larger (6) 20. Hire (a boat) (7) 21. Guide (6) 23. Bear (5)

1. What colour is an aircraft’s black box?

2. Which two nations competed in the final of the ICC Cricket World Cup? 3. Who is the highest-selling Australian artist of all time, according to ARIA? 4. How high can you legally fly a drone in Australia? 60m, 120m or 160m?

5. How many grams of sugar are in a teaspoon?

6. Which country held the 2019 G20 summit in June?

7. Who is the Federal Minister for Indigenous Australians?

8. The Reserve Bank cut the cash rate to what historically low percentage?

9. Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia lived together in which US sitcom?

10. Other than humans, how many other animal species cry tears?

11. Who is the world’s longest-serving monarch currently reigning?

12. What is the capital of Uganda?

13. Quentin Tarantino has directed Leonardo DiCaprio in which two films?

14. What’s the collective noun for sharks?

15. From which country do Panama hats originate?

16. Who was the last person legally executed in Australia?

17. What does a selenologist study?

18. Which band are bringing their Joshua Tree Tour to Australia in November?

19. Which ocean surrounds the Maldives?

20. Who was Madonna’s first husband?

» by Big Red

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 26 JUL–8 AUG 2019

45

CLICK WORDS BY MICHAEL EPIS » PHOTO BY GETTY

Norman Mailer, 21 November, 1960 NORMAN MAILER IS in the custody of the New York police, having called them from the hospital where his wife, Adele, was in a critical condition.

The night before the famous author and his wife had given a party at their apartment, part of his campaign to be elected mayor. The plan was to invite

the rich, famous and powerful, as well as vagrants, drug addicts and pimps.

Few of the former attended; a surfeit of the latter did.

Twice that week violent outbursts overtook Mailer. Uncharacteristically, he punched his beloved sister. Not so uncharacteristically, he also punched

Adele, his partner of 10 years, the mother of two of his children. Mailer spent most of the day of the party cruising Greenwich Village, inviting strangers, smoking joints and guzzling bourbon. He turned up to the party wearing a bullfighter’s shirt, and soon was out on the street, picking fights.

The party was a disaster. “The sickly sweet smell of pot mingled with the odour of unwashed bodies,” Adele Mailer writes in her memoir The Last Party, a ripping read.

“Canapés and cigarette butts were ground into the carpet. Nobody cared, everyone was drunk. It was a party that was like a 20-headed, scaled monster sluggishly moving through those rooms, tracking filth, stinking of destruction.”

The two bickered; she proclaimed he was not as good a writer as Dostoevsky.

About 4am virtually everyone had left. Mailer reappeared.

“I became the matador waving my red cape, hating him, taunting him. Aja toro, aja,” Adele recounts. “Come on you little f****t, where’s your cojones, did your ugly whore of a mistress cut them off, you son of a bitch.”

With that, Mailer plunged a pen knife into her side. It pierced her cardiac sac.

The only other man there, an AfricanAmerican, fought Mailer to the ground before he could do any more harm. “Noone knew who my dark angel was, and I never saw him again to thank him for saving my life.”

Mailer spent 17 days in psychiatric care. Adele spent three weeks in intensive care. She perjured herself, so he did not spend 15 years in jail.

Her father, a typesetter at the Daily News, had told her when she left home, “Adele, whatever you do, don’t make the headlines.” Her father was the one who set the headline ‘Writer Stabs Wife in Party Brawl’.

BUMPER BIG ISSUE FICTION EDITION OUT… 46

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