Ed.
644 03 SEP 2021
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JOHN PAUL YOUNG LUCY LAWLESS and AMYL & THE SNIFFERS
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NATIONAL OFFICE Chief Executive Officer Steven Persson Chief Financial Officer Jon Whitehead Chief Operating Officer Chris Enright Chief Communications Officer Emma O’Halloran National Operations Manager Jeremy Urquhart EDITORIAL Editor Amy Hetherington Deputy Editor Melissa Fulton Contributing Editor Michael Epis Contributing Editor Anastasia Safioleas Editorial Coordinator Lorraine Pink Art Direction & Design GOZER (gozer.com.au) CONTRIBUTORS
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Contents
EDITION
644 24 LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF
“It Was the Start of a Whole New World for Me” Before love was in the air, it was the smell of gum leaves that held John Paul Young’s imagination. Here he remembers the day that made him a pop star.
28 SMALL SCREENS
Bloody Good Fun
12.
Back home in New Zealand to film the latest season of My Life Is Murder, Lucy Lawless talks true crime, armchair tourism and reuniting with her Xena co‑star on screen.
Protecting Ningaloo by Tim Winton
Author and national treasure Tim Winton is fighting to save Ningaloo, a sanctuary of biodiversity on the West Australian coast. He tells of its wonders, of paddling among dugongs with humpback whales in the distance – and why it’s important to protect it against development. cover and contents photos by Violeta J Brosig bluemediaexmouth cover typography by Casey Schuurman @caseyschuurman
THE REGULARS
04 Ed’s Letter & Your Say 05 Meet Your Vendor 06 Streetsheet 08 Hearsay & 20 Questions 11 My Word 18 The Big Picture
26 Ricky 27 Fiona 34 Film Reviews 35 Small Screen Reviews 36 Music Reviews 37 Book Reviews
39 Public Service Announcement 40 Tastes Like Home 43 Puzzles 45 Crossword 46 Click
30 MUSIC
Scratch & Sniffers From Gucci campaigns to lockdown trackie daks, Amyl and the Sniffers have honed their style and their sound on new album Comfort to Me.
Ed’s Letter
by Amy Hetherington Editor @amyhetherington
Finding Treasure
A
Your Say LETTER OF THE FORTNIGHT
s I belly-laughed at the “Missing Cat” poster taped to the electricity pole in my neighbourhood, I realised lockdown might just be getting to me. You see, the cat in question was a crocheted pet with wonky blue beads for eyes and a sweet sewn-on smile – and she wasn’t missing at all. It was a ruse, an invite from a kind stranger to start a treasure hunt around our local streets. An activity of distraction for kids, and their harried parents. “Hi children, this is crafty Almaville cat here, and I have a lockdown challenge for you,” the laminated sign read, encouraging participants to take photos of a whole list of found objects. Some relatively easy: a seed, five buttons, your favourite toy. Some a little trickier: a spider’s web, a cloud that looks like something else, a ladybug. And some poetic: something that smells nice, someone you love, something that is the colours of Christmas.
All around the country, we’ve heard from a lot of similarly communityminded people like yourselves, asking what you can do to help Big Issue vendors during lockdown. You can take out a subscription – perhaps one for a friend you’re missing too. You can send email messages of support to vendors via submissions@bigissue.org.au. And, when you can, pledge to stop by your vendor, have a chat and buy all the editions you might’ve missed! It will be your own treasure trove of reading – including this special edition: bestselling author Tim Winton pens a piece on the campaign to save Ningaloo, the ecological wonderland in the northwest of Western Australia, a natural haven to humpbacks, dugongs, whale sharks – and Winton himself. “I’ve been visiting, studying and defending Ningaloo for half my life. It’s been a source of intense pleasure and inspiration,” he writes. “…Its future is in jeopardy. And it sickens me to think I could be left writing its epitaph.”
I recently bought my first ever copy of The Big Issue, which was the 25th Birthday Special Edition – and I was blown away. I’ve seen people selling the magazine in the city and rushed by assuming it was some weird thing from “dropouts” – now totally embarrassed and ashamed to admit. That copy totally changed my opinion, gave me a greater understanding of what The Big Issue stands for. I say thank you to the vendor in Hampton for opening my eyes. DS BYRNES HAMPTON | VIC
Wow, The Big Issue’s full-page “Celebrate Big” illustration of the many and varied vendors in numerous poses and locations is just so classy, colourful and attractive. If The Big Issue were to translate the illustration into KeepCups, posters and things I would be at the head of the queue to spend a few dollars, especially if The Big Issue vendors were to benefit. JEN BLOMFIELD GEELONG | VIC
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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU
The Big Issue Story The Big Issue is an independent, not-for-profit magazine sold on the streets around Australia. It was created as a social enterprise 25 years ago to provide both a voice and a work opportunity for people experiencing homelessness and disadvantage. Your purchase of this magazine has directly benefited the person who sold it to you. Big Issue vendors buy each copy for $4.50 and sell it to you for $9, keeping the profits. But The Big Issue is more than a magazine.
• Our Women’s Subscription Enterprise provides employment and training for women through the sale of magazine subscriptions as well as social procurement work. • The Community Street Soccer Program promotes social inclusion and good health at weekly soccer games at 23 locations around the country. • The Vendor Support Fund will offset the cost price of products for vendors, allowing them to earn a larger margin on their own street sales. • The Big Issue Education workshops provide school, tertiary and corporate groups with insights into homelessness and disadvantage, and provide work opportunities for people experiencing marginalisation. CHECK OUT ALL THE DETAILS AT THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU
DS Byrnes wins a copy of Lucy Tweed’s new cookbook Every Night of the Week. You can try out her recipe for My Brother from Another Mother’s Thighs (yes really!) on p40. We’d also love to hear your thoughts, feedback and suggestions: SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU
YOUR SAY SUBMISSIONS MAY BE EDITED FOR CLARITY AND SPACE.
Meet Your Vendor
John
SELLS THE BIG ISSUE OUTSIDE DAVID JONES ON HAY ST, PERTH
interview by Andrew Joske photo by Ross Swanborough
PROUD UNIFORM PARTNER OF THE BIG ISSUE VENDORS.
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03 SEP 2021
I grew up in Nollamara in Perth with my mum, dad and older brother Ron. Life was good until my dad passed away when I was 10 years old. He had epilepsy and had an accident. I remember the police came round at 8:30 at night and from then on it was just the three of us. My mum was a good person and a great mum – she used to help everyone out. I remember knocking about with mates, and I used to get them to come over to our place for Mum’s lamingtons – they were the best we had ever tasted. She also used to make vanilla slices with Sao biscuits, homemade custard and white and pink icing over the top. I can say that my mum was the best dessert cook in the world! Mum couldn’t work because she had a bad back, so was on a pension. She must have worked hard to make everything stretch, because we never wanted for anything and had a good childhood. She passed when I was 26. I have always been close with my brother Ron, kept an eye on him. He went to a special school when we were kids, but I went to regular school. School wasn’t that good for me. I never really mastered reading and writing, so I wagged a lot. I remember hanging out at the shops all day and then heading home and telling Mum that school was good! I’ve had heaps of jobs. When I was young, I was a gyprocker. I was a kitchen hand at Balladonia Hotel Motel on the Nullarbor. I’ve been a FIFO traffic controller in the Pilbara. I worked as a storeman at a bed factory. I’ve also had periods of not working when I was caring for my son Robbie, who is also a Big Issue vendor. But it’s been eight or nine years since I’ve had regular work – I’ve been looking, but because of my health it’s near impossible. I still have trouble reading and writing, so filling out forms is hard also. That’s why I joined The Big Issue, which has been a lifeline. My brother Ron and my son Robbie got me into selling the magazine. It helps pay the bills and put a roof over my head. I am also pretty good mates with other vendors, especially Marcus and Greg. We often catch up after work, sometimes for a cheeky beer! I want to get back into the traditional workforce, but for now The Big Issue is there for me. I have a Homeswest unit now, and I’m proud of that. I’m right in the heart of Fremantle. The bus pulls up on my front door, so it’s easy to get to work at 6am. Family is important to me and I like seeing my son, and my daughter and grandkids. My goal is to go on a holiday – I love camping, fishing and sightseeing.
Streetsheet
Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends
Takes the Cake! What a wonderful 25th birthday edition with a glamorous eye‑catching cover, which I’m sure attracted many buyers like a magnet. A special edition jampacked with stories on The Big Issue over the years and interesting pieces from vendors nationwide. What a wonderful surprise too for vendors who received free bonus copies – it made me think about baking the Glamington cake recipe featured in the magazine! It was such a kind, thoughtful gesture and much appreciated, I’m sure. A big bouquet to The Big Issue! KATHY FIG TREE LANE | BUSSELTON
Jab One, Two
VENDOR SPOTLIGHT
MEGAN
A New Leaf
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y name is Megan and I have been painting for nearly 40 years. I’m super excited to have my artwork in this year’s Creative Connections exhibition in Fremantle. I have an art qualification that I obtained from TAFE. I hope to find an art mentor in the future to work with and further explore my style and skill. Art enables me to express my imagination. Art also relaxes me and takes me to a place where there is no pain or negativity. My art is freestyle and abstract and can get quite messy. I like to use brushes, pencils and canvases. My piece in this exhibition is titled Leaf of Life, which I produced in the recent lockdown when I connected with an online art group to build my still-life inspiration. The green gum leaves represent new beginnings in my ever-changing world. Coral Carter and Deb Micallef, both members of WA Poets Inc, wrote poems inspired by this artwork for the exhibition. MEGAN PERTH UNDERGROUND STATION | PERTH
During Brisbane’s last lockdown I received my second AstraZeneca jab. I wanted to be part of the solution of stopping lockdowns. I recommend everyone getting their COVID jabs. I had no side effects from it. EDDIE SHERWOOD, MILTON MARKETS & INDOOROOPILLY STATION | BRISBANE
Ronnie’s Funnies Q: How does the butcher introduce his wife? A: “Meet Patty.” RONNIE CNR CREEK & EAGLE STS | BRISBANE
Underwater Wow I used to snorkel all the time just off the coast of Coffs Harbour and Newcastle. The water was always freezing, unless it was summer. It didn’t matter the season; it was one of my favourite things to do. I loved the feeling of the water on your face, being able to see through those goggles, and breathing through a tube. Being able to explore the area with flippers, and the feeling of floating in the water, allowed me an awesome way to regulate my crazy emotions at the time. And seeing the
KRYSTAL H WSE | ADELAIDE
in a company and wanted to get in touch with The Big Issue. He asked me to give his business card to my manager Chris because he wanted to contact our CEO. It was nice to meet someone like that. It made me feel good.
In Full Bloom
PASQUALE CNR GEORGE & KING STS | SYDNEY
world underwater...wow! I haven’t been snorkelling since moving to Adelaide but as soon as I get my driver’s licence, I do want to find somewhere where I can show my son how awesome it is too.
Spring is beginning Bees are pollinating And flowers are blooming in a rainbow of colours Time for a walk with nature Listening to the birds TED WEST END, TOOWONG & QUEENS PLAZA | BRISBANE
Standing Tall My favourite memory working on pitch was when I met a CEO from Canberra. It was a cold morning, and I was struggling with the cold weather. This tall man (I think he was from a housing organisation) came over and bought a mag from me. I was very happy to meet this man. And he was very happy too! He has a very high position
Elder Advice I have great respect for the Indigenous people of Crows Nest, the Cammeraygal people. One of the Elders said to me, “Life is the rainbow serpent: it twists and turns and we have to follow the path without thinking.” I feel more connected to the Earth, its people, its plants and animals than ever. It’s amazing that one little sentence did that. ALEX F MILSONS POINT | SYDNEY
Life on Hold Life has changed around the world for everyone. With COVID changing things massively, we can’t do what we used to do.
Lockdown has hit most states around Australia – we can’t go anywhere and we can’t do much. It’s rough for all of us being out of work; it has put thousands and thousands of jobs on hold. Even kids haven’t been able to go to school in some states. As I’m writing this now, I can’t go and visit family or friends. A lot of people have been affected by not seeing their friends and family. I sell magazines with The Big Issue in Sydney; it’s a job I love doing but in the past two years it’s been harder than ever for myself and other vendors I know. Sitting at home watching the walls every day, wondering when I can go back to work is frustrating. But I know The Big Issue staff are looking after us when they say we have to stop work; they are looking after our wellbeing and making sure we’re safe. I worry about other people affected by this, about other vendors, staff and my customers. GLENN F CNR ELIZABETH & FOVEAUX STS, CENTRAL STATION | SYDNEY
Swimming With Sharks
PAT TAKES THE PLUNGE AT NINGALOO
ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.
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PAT HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE | PERTH
03 SEP 2021
I booked a tour and visited Ningaloo Reef in 2016. I booked one night in a hotel there and then a return flight to Perth. Anyhow, I’m not a skilful diver so the tour guide helped me through to see and swim with whale sharks. Inevitably, I also got seasick and was not well on the boat! I learned the technique there to lie down while you’re seasick. Overall I enjoyed that trip, but I am probably not likely to consider participating in any water activity again.
Hearsay
Andrew Weldon Cartoonist
“ “
We arrived at the final value of 36 minutes of healthy life lost per hotdog.
Oliver Joillet, from the University of Michigan, on a new Health Nutritional Index that measures how fast your favourite food might kill you. While fearing the wurst, a soft drink with the hot dog will cost you another 12 minutes. But you can buy back time with healthy food – a banana (there’s 13.5 minutes of extra life) and a handful of peanuts (26 minutes).
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PERTH NOW I AU
“In fact, it’s just a lovesick boy looking for a girlfriend and making a rather foolish mistake.” Rick Shine, a herpetologist at Macquarie University, on what to do if a highly venomous sea snake sidles up to you: stay calm, they’re randy not aggressive. He only wants a love bite, even if he is looking for love in all the wrong places.
“It is a challenge for people in high-density areas to get outside and spread their legs when they are surrounded by other people.” Chris Hipkins, New Zealand’s COVID-19 Response Minister, calls on Kiwis to spread their legs, not the virus, in an X-rated gaffe. We’ll never consider super spreaders in the same way again.
THE NEW YORK TIMES I US
NEW ZEALAND HERALD I NZ
“What is going on is not simply a warm decade or two in a wandering climate pattern. This is unprecedented. We are crossing thresholds not seen in millennia.” Ted Scambos, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre at the University of Colorado, on rain falling on the summit of Greenland’s ice cap for the first time on record. Ice melted across all of Greenland, which is four times the size of the UK.
“Our campaign for the smell to be recognised is about acknowledging that the significance of this place goes beyond the bricks and mortar of the factory building.” In more news for super spreaders: Felicity Watson, from the National Trust of Australia (Victoria), on successfully campaigning to have the smell of Vegemite wafting from the factory at Fisherman’s Bend recognised as a heritage treasure.
THE IRISH TIMES I IE
THE GUARDIAN I AU
“I’ve seen Aquaman. He’s swimming in jeans. No-one can swim in jeans! That was my argument with the kids about Aquaman.” Actor Owen Wilson rebuffs reports he knew zero about the Marvel Universe before taking on a role in series Loki. ESQUIRE | US
“I am a journalist and I am not allowed to work. The next generation will have nothing; everything we have achieved for 20 years will be gone. The Taliban is the Taliban. They have not changed.” Khadija Amin, a prominent TV anchorwoman in Afghanistan, who says the Taliban have suspended her and other female employees. THE NEW YORK TIMES I US
“We’ve had comments back from people that they are keener than ever to let off fireworks than to go to mass gatherings just with COVID floating around.” Luke Caridi, managing director of Fusion Fireworks in the Top End, on his biggest-ever order of fireworks ahead of the rescheduled Territory Day celebrations. Should be a cracker! NT NEWS I AU
“It’s totally surprising and rather horrifying. The tortoise is deliberately pursuing this bird and kills it, and then eats it. So yeah, it’s hunting.” Ecologist Justin Gerlach on footage of a giant tortoise in the Seychelles. Long believed to be herbivorous, the so-called Gentle Giant was captured on camera devouring a tern chick in a single gulp, shocking the scientists involved and rewriting everything we know about these ancient reptiles. Seems they might not be so gentle. THE NEW YORK TIMES I US
“Basically monks were slaves to their bowels. They often had serious health problems because
20 Questions by Rachael Wallace
01 Macaroni, rockhopper and king are
all species of which animal? 02 What is the unique ingredient in the
Sardinian cheese casu martzu? 03 In which two films has Jessica
Mauboy starred? 04 In which Australian city is the
Wellcamp airport located? 05 What are the first four letters of the
Greek alphabet? 06 A dishlicker is Australian slang for
what? 07 In what year was the Boxing Day
tsunami? 08 In which US soap opera has Ita
Buttrose made a cameo? 09 Lote Tuqiri was a dual international
in which sports? 10 Which actor’s autobiography was
“Before they killed us with guns, now they kill us with the stroke of a pen.” João Paté, a former cacique or chief of the Xokleng people of Brazil, who are awaiting a land rights judgement that they hope will restore ancestral lands they lost decades ago. AL JAZEERA I QA
“Let me clarify this…I didn’t mean to peel the thing off at first, I just discovered that there was a small mark on my medal. I thought that it was probably just dirt, so I rubbed it with my finger and found that nothing changed, so then I picked
GLOBAL TIMES | CN
titled The Moon’s a Balloon? 11 What is the most venomous marine
animal in the world? 12 Who was last year’s winner of I’m a
Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!? 13 By what name was the country
Eswatini formerly known? 14 How many gold medals did
“It is pretty exciting, my five‑year‑old self is still not believing her eyes right now.” Taribelang and Djabugay woman Evie Ferris on becoming the new Blue Wiggle on YouTube series Fruit Salad TV, as the Wiggles embrace a diverse, gender-balanced future. ABC I AU
“They just babble away, sunrise to sunset, practising their sounds... They have very sophisticated vocal communication – a repertoire of distinct syllable types.” Ahana Fernandez, from the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, on findings that the babbling of greater sac-winged bat pups resemble those of human babies, and lays the foundations for their communication.
Australia win at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games? 15 What is the only letter of the
alphabet that doesn’t appear in any of the 50 US state names? 16 “These pretzels are making me
thirsty,” is a famous line from which sitcom? 17 Which Australian pop singer sang
the hit song ‘I Hate the Music’? 18 True or false? Most golf balls have
between 300 and 500 dimples. 19 Which famous New Zealand-born
newsreader died in August? 20 Roughly how many times a day does
the human heart beat: a) 50,000, b) 75,000, c) 100,000 or d) 650,000?
03 SEP 2021
THE GUARDIAN I UK
at it and the mark got bigger.” All that’s glistens isn’t gold according to Chinese trampoline athlete Zhu Xueying, whose Tokyo 2020 gold medal has already startled to peel.
BBC | UK
FREQUENTLY OVERHEAR TANTALISING TIDBITS? DON’T WASTE THEM ON YOUR FRIENDS SHARE THEM WITH THE WORLD AT SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU
ANSWERS ON PAGE 43
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of their diet and “Any idiots on the digestion.” English heritage road today Dad?” historian Michael Overheard coming from the Carter on how a back seat on Princes Highway. change in papal law in 1336, allowing twice-weekly consumption of meat, caused havoc at Muchelney Abbey. It was an offal mis-steak! EAR2GROUND
“WE SHOULD BE
OUR OWN ” MOTIVATORS Lara Ferri is from Mt Druitt, in Western Sydney. It’s a suburb with a bad reputation – but one that Lara passionately rejects. Lara wouldn’t swap her happy upbringing for the world.
Her secondary school, Rooty Hill High School, is rejecting those stereotypes too, creating exciting opportunities for their students to succeed. Through initiatives like the Young Entrepreneurs Program, students are encouraged to think like entrepreneurs, be creative and resourceful, and tackle real-world problems. Lara said the program helped her think independently and opened her eyes to new ways of thinking. She enjoyed “being the driver of my own story”. Lara, who was affectionately known as the school’s “geek girl” due to her love of technology, is
passionate about many things, including standing up for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves. Rooty Hill High School instils a strong sense of belief in its students, a culture that Lara says is infectious. “It doesn’t matter where you come from or who you are, you determine your own path,” she adds. Now studying Law, Criminal and Community Justice at Western Sydney University, Lara’s future is full of possibility. Whether she pursues a career in social justice, technology, or even politics, Lara knows the entrepreneurial skills and self-belief she developed at school will stand her in good stead for whatever comes next. “We all like to be our own haters, but we should become our own motivators – see the greatness in ourselves,” Lara says. We think she’s onto something. In the past ten years we’ve been proud to help more than 62,000 young Australians use education to achieve, through partners like Rooty Hill High School. Meet Lara and discover other stories like hers at originfoundation.org.au
Connect with us!
ORI3804_10Yr_BigIssueAd_Lara_FA.indd 1
10/11/20 4:49 pm
My Word
by Ellen Wengert @lnwngrt
M
y first few weeks of maternity leave are spent trying to find space for a baby in a two‑bedroom Queenslander with no storage. We get rid of as much stuff as possible via Lifeline, Gumtree and every single street library in a five‑kilometre radius. We buy grown-up wardrobes from Ikea and turn our former “clothes room” into something that vaguely resembles a nursery. And then on my own, after days of procrastination, I begin to tackle my special stuff. The stuff my mum carefully preserved throughout my childhood and adolescence, with a dedication presumably born from her training as a librarian. Seven display folders full of early drawings and stories. A 72-page scrapbook, pasted into which is every birthday, Christmas and other special occasion card I received until the age of four. A plastic tub full of high school yearbooks, primary school exercise books, and beloved Jeannie Baker picture books. Two archival boxes containing things like my first teddy bear, my Brownies sash and my Year 12 formal dress, all wrapped in tissue paper. Several framed photos of myself as a newborn and then as a toddler in a fairy dress, along with a framed embroidery sampler depicting a line of dancing clowns that says ELLEN’S ROOM. Stuff I have been carting around with me between rentals for nearly a decade now, ever since my parents downsized from our family home to a unit. The burden of all this stuff has at times felt oppressive, though it’s mostly just annoying. My siblings have been given responsibility for their own special stuff too, and every time one of us moves house, we roll our eyes about it, mocking Mum’s sentimentality and cringing at childhood phases we’d have preferred to forget. The sheer volume of it all is impractical, unsustainable. It’s too much to store, too much to occasionally glance through as you might a photo album. Too much to save in the case of a fire – the test I typically apply now when deciding whether to save something for sentimental reasons. An hour or so into sorting through my special stuff, it becomes clear that I was not as discerning as a child. In
one of the plastic tubs, I find my old jewellery box. I still remember picking it out at David Jones – choosing the biggest one they had, taken as I was by the pastel princess and unicorn scene on the lid – and writing my name on it in pencil when I got home. The plastic ballerina inside still twirls to the tune of ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’. In the jewellery box I have stored all my own really special stuff, presumably in imitation of Mum’s archival undertakings. The collection includes three plastic Anzac Day pins, a single 10 cent coin from 2006, assorted baby teeth, a second place Irish dancing medal, a Mickey Mouse key ring, several broken beaded bracelets, a Vanilla Coke bottle cap, and a faded pink New Big Sister ribbon, “presented” to me by my brother in 1998, hours after he exited the womb. I send photos of the contents to my partner, my siblings, and laugh about it all before binning the whole jewellery box. These things – the things I kept myself – are much easier to throw out. But returning to the tubs and boxes curated by Mum, I find myself getting continually stuck. I take things in and out of different piles, questioning the significance not just of the items themselves but of her decision to keep each one of them. Growing up, there were times I wondered whether my mum loved me as much as some of my friends’ mums loved them. With a return to university, a career change and my five younger siblings taking up a lot of her time and energy, she wasn’t always as concerned with the minutiae of my life as other mums seemed to be with their daughters. She didn’t leave post-it notes in my lunchbox wishing me a happy day, and didn’t kiss and hug me goodbye before sleepovers. But as I bounce gently on the fit ball, surrounded by my special stuff – less than a month away from becoming a mum myself – I see the things she kept not as a burden but as incontrovertible proof of her love. As proof of a love that from the hospital bracelet put on my wrist as a newborn, to multiple copies of the first literary journal I was published in as a teenager – and to now – has not faltered. And later, as I put my battered copies of Jeannie Baker’s Home in the Sky and Window on the baby’s bookshelf, in the clothes room cum nursery, I feel overcome by that love and by the love I have ahead of me. I try to imagine what my daughter’s life will be like. And what things I will keep to chronicle it. Ellen Wengert is a writer, teacher and new mum from Brisbane.
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When Ellen Wengert rummaged through her special childhood stuff, she found one incontrovertible thing – her mother’s love.
03 SEP 2021
The Things We Keep
PROTECTING N I N GA LO O
A GREEN TURTLE GLIDES OVER NINGALOO REEF
PHOTO BY ALEX KYDD
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by Tim Winton
In the far northwest of Australia, Exmouth Gulf is a sanctuary for humpback whales, dugongs and turtles, a blue-carbon reservoir in a breathtaking landscape like no other on Earth. But all that could change, as developers push ahead with potentially tragic consequences. Tim Winton is one of those fighting to preserve this wonderland.
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03 SEP 2021
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hustle down the red-dirt track with my board and paddle, winding through the spinifex, and although I can’t even see the water yet, the huff and slam of gigantic bodies feels so close I’m tingling with excitement. I crest the dune, hotfoot it across the rocky beach, and when I hit the water, I disturb a gang of baby blacktip sharks who set off a starburst of sand as they streak away across the shallows. Then I’m paddling for the drop-off, where a colossal creature bursts from the water. It hangs airborne for a moment, black and shining in the sun. Flexing its spine, cranking its pecs. And when it slams back down it sets off such a mighty thump and welter of spray, you’d swear a bomb’s gone off. Up comes another. Then a third. It’s pandemonium out there. Whale season at Ningaloo. Every winter humpbacks stream north, right against our western coral reef, where the oceanic deep suddenly meets the desert. They come from Antarctica in their thousands, in convoys stretching fore and aft over the horizon. But Ningaloo Reef is not their final destination. They’re headed for sheltered bays and estuaries inshore, where it’s safe and quiet enough for them to rest and nurse their calves. Exmouth Gulf is one of those havens. We call it Ningaloo’s nursery. And this is where I am today, in one of the most significant humpback refuges in the world. When I was a kid there were only 300 humpbacks left on this side of the continent. Now, thanks to conservation efforts, there are about 33,000. I’ve been watching this recovering population for decades, and the sight and sound of them still inspires me. But even in the midst of whale-watching at Ningaloo, you can become distracted – by unexpected events, different creatures. Like a posse of partying dolphins. A tiger shark as big as a boat. Or a marlin that surfaces silently beside you to dish out a bit of side-eye. At Ningaloo’s nursery you just never know what you’ll encounter – that’s how rich and wild it is. Today turns out to be a case in point. As I reach deeper water, the whales dive in unison and everything goes quiet. So I stop and wait, watching for where they’ll surface next. And in the long lull, I hear a tiny puff behind me. Not the big-bore blow of a whale. Just a discreet little…poot. I chuck a U-turn immediately. Because I know that sound.
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THE MANGROVE WETLANDS OF EXMOUTH GULF: A NURSERY FOR MANY SPECIES AND A RESERVOIR OF BLUE CARBON
HAVING A WHALE OF A TIME IN NINGALOO, ALSO KNOWN AS HUMPBACK HIGHWAY
PHOTOS BY VIOLETA J BROSIG/INSTAGRAM @BLUEMEDIAEXMOUTH
DUGONGS (OR MERMAIDS?) IN THE SHALLOW LAGOONS OF NINGALOO
I paddle back gently into the shallows. And there they are. Dugongs. Four of them. Mothers with calves. The adults are nearly three metres long and probably weigh over 300kg. Tawny and narrow-shouldered, with broad tails like dolphins, dugongs don’t have a single spiracle or blowhole like dolphins or whales – they have paired nostrils, like us. Which must be the only reason sailors could have once mistaken them for mermaids. Because although they are lovely, slim-hipped creatures, with tiny, curious eyes and a placid disposition, they’ve got a face that only a mother could love. And they have truly awful breath. Just saying! I pull up at a discreet distance and sit on my board to watch them graze. Despite all my diligent back-paddling, the tide carries me closer until I’m certain they’ll startle and swim off. But they pay no attention. Which is unusual because they’re notoriously shy. They carry on munching contentedly, their blunt snouts in the seagrass. I’m happy to sit and watch for as long as they’ll allow me. These animals belong to one of the last large and stable populations of dugongs left in the world. Ningaloo is a haven for the species. And while watching them forage is a treat at any time, this year it feels particularly special, because 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of Ningaloo being added to the World Heritage list. For those who’ve spent decades fighting for the place, this is more than a historic milestone. It’s a personal reminder of how, against all odds, citizens can unite to create change for the better. And this is something I’m proud to have been a part of. But it’s a bittersweet anniversary. Especially as I gaze down at these dugongs today. Because although Exmouth Gulf is one of the last global refuges for these creatures, this crucial bit of Ningaloo is not part of the World Heritage Area. It was supposed to be. In 2011, when the World Heritage boundaries were being determined, the IUCN, which advises UNESCO, was clear about the Gulf’s values. And because the scientific case was compelling, it was included in the original “optimal” boundary. But the local shire opposed all World Heritage listing at Ningaloo. The Chamber of Commerce was so hostile it sent a representative to Paris to try to speak against it. In the end, the Ningaloo listing was successful, but despite the science, Exmouth Gulf was excised. As a result, Ningaloo’s nursery remains wide open to industrialisation. Which is a perverse anomaly, but that seems to be what opponents of World Heritage had in mind. So every year developers arrive with new proposals to try to kick off the carve‑up, and year upon year, Ningaloo’s defenders have to fight to keep the nursery safe. Like any siege, it’s exhausting, and costly. It’s heartbreaking as well. Because it shouldn’t be necessary.
03 SEP 2021
For a billion urgent reasons, for the sake of our children’s children, this madness has to stop.
and ancient stygofauna. The Reef, of course, has its famous whale sharks, corals and manta rays. It also supports 500 species of fish. Exmouth Gulf is a nursery for prawns and crabs and critically endangered sawfish. It’s a global hotspot for sea snakes, and along with its massive mangrove forests, its sponges, seagrasses and corals, it’s a refuge for marine mammals. Just to the north of Ningaloo lies the Pilbara where it seems almost every major coastal landscape and waterway has been industrialised already. That’s where all the gas hubs and industrial ports are, where lands and waters are dominated by infrastructure – oil rigs, tankers, ore trains, bulk carriers and terminals. So, regionally, the Ningaloo coast is unusual, an exception to the rule. The Reef has been deliberately spared. By governments responding to scientific advice and public concern. This is despite relentless pressure from developers, diggers and dealers. The natural values of the Ningaloo region are remarkable and irreplaceable. And in a world where such places are vanishingly rare, its social value is exceptional. Locals understand this. So do the tourists and scientists who travel so far to visit. The local economy is underpinned by eco-tourism, which is well managed. Like the ecosystems that make it possible, the Ningaloo “brand” is top shelf. But Ningaloo is at a critical turning point. Because although two of its ecosystems are largely protected, the third is now in imminent danger of being industrialised. And that puts the whole place – its environmental integrity and its sustainable economy – at risk. A start-up called Gascoyne Gateway Limited wants to build an industrial deep-water shipping facility at the northern end of Pebble Beach, which is about 30km into Exmouth Gulf. GGL’s proposal includes a large fuel depot to refuel ships of up to 250m, and a 900m wharf jutting into the estuary. This is a big, hard chunk of kit to impose on a whale refuge and dugong habitat. It means dredging over a million cubic metres of seabed – and that’s just in the construction phase. Given it’s a 100-year piece of infrastructure, a century of maintenance dredging can be expected. In a blue‑carbon reservoir. With 2050’s global climate target less than 29 years away. Because this privately run port is designed to attract heavy shipping and must draw in more and larger ships to pay its way, it’ll serve as an industrial intensifier. It promises to be, as the name suggests, a gateway to industrialisation. And a beginning of the end for the Gulf. For already, other proposals are targeting the tidal flats of its wetlands – a saltworks by K+S Salt, and a sulphate of potash operation from Wyloo Metals. Decisions made this year are likely to determine the Gulf’s fate.
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Thus far, thanks to community pressure, the Gulf has been spared. Petroleum tenements came to nothing. A saltworks was seen off. A supply base for the fossil fuel industry was rejected. Last year, after an overwhelming public outcry, the Gulf was saved from a subsea pipeline facility. But this year it faces something even worse – a deep-water port for heavy shipping. And once again, Ningaloo’s battle-weary champions must find time and resources enough to defend it. As ever, it’s an unequal contest. I’ve been visiting, studying and defending Ningaloo for half my life. It’s been a source of intense pleasure and inspiration. So when I was commissioned in 2020 to write and present a three‑part TV documentary for the ABC about the place, I saw it as a once-in-a-generation opportunity. But also as a personal obligation. And while our work-in-progress is meant to be a celebration of one of the world’s last great sanctuaries of biodiversity, I’m aware that I could be left presenting a eulogy instead. Because this year Ningaloo is on a knife-edge. It’s touted as one of Australia’s finest conservation successes, and rightly so. But a decade after World Heritage listing, its future is in jeopardy. And it sickens me to think I could be left writing its epitaph. Ningaloo consists of three interconnected ecosystems – the Reef, the Range and the Gulf. They’re treasured by scientists and adored by tourists because together all three places offer natural experiences and events you can’t get anywhere else. Here, within a single day, you can swim with a whale shark, a humpback whale, a manta ray, a turtle and God’s own acid-trip of brightly coloured reef fish. And if you’ve got any vim left afterwards, you can hike the gorges, go birdwatching in the mangroves, do some caving in the canyons and then surf until sunset. If you haven’t been there, picture this. It’s isolated – a remote peninsula 300km long. Arid. Red dirt, spinifex, very few trees. And no agriculture – so no coral-smothering run-off. Along the spine of this great cape is a rugged series of ranges. Canyons and creeks carve meandering paths across the coastal plain. On the western edge, the world’s longest nearshore coral reef. So close that in places you can wade to it. And on the eastern shore, Exmouth Gulf, one of the largest intact arid-zone estuaries left in the world. All three Ningaloo ecosystems are outstanding. The Cape Range contains a breathtaking cave system with subterranean waterways full of rare
operate just offshore. And instead of winding back for a transition to safer, cleaner forms of energy, they’re doubling down, with government support, to get what they can while they can. That’s why there’s still an incentive for speculators, why, even in 2021, developers are still trying to build allied industrial infrastructure onshore – here in Ningaloo’s nursery – to prop up some of the very industries most likely to destroy Ningaloo Reef. For a billion urgent reasons, for the sake of our children’s children, this madness has to stop. I’ve been lucky enough to see dugongs gather in their hundreds here in Exmouth Gulf. But even the little band I’ve come upon today is something to savour and marvel at. Because these animals are a signal of health and a source of hope. But like the grand and fragile ecosystem that supports them, they need to be defended against industrialisation. Their habitat needs protection. We must end this perpetual siege, and secure one of the world’s exceptional places once and for all. I don’t want to end up being Ningaloo’s public mourner. I’m determined to celebrate its glory and rejoice in its survival. Because there’s nowhere else like it. Getting Ningaloo added to the World Heritage list took the work and the voices of thousands. Securing Ningaloo’s nursery will require many more, but I believe that after all these years, sense will prevail: we’ll finish the job and see Exmouth Gulf included. I want to paddle out one day to mark that anniversary.
TIM WINTON IS THE AUTHOR OF 29 BOOKS. NAMED A NATIONAL LIVING TREASURE IN 1997, HE IS THE PATRON OF THE AUSTRALIAN MARINE CONSERVATION SOCIETY.
protectningaloo.org.au
@saveexmouthgulf
@protectningaloo
03 SEP 2021
Sustainable tourism at Ningaloo depends on pristine ecosystems and on creatures that are safe and contented. Which is why tourism operators, residents and visitors are alarmed by industrialisation in general and this deep-water port proposal in particular. And why so many marine scientists and conservationists share their concerns. Because an industrial port here would be a game‑changer. Marine mammals require space. They need quiet. Heavy shipping colonises and dominates waterways and generates huge noise. So in a whale and dugong refuge, the prospect of more industrial traffic, more light, higher risk of boatstrikes and spills and marine pests, is really ugly. When you consider the dredging, the pile-driving and the smothering rubble required to build a 900m wharf, it’s uglier still. The idea is so incompatible it’s hard to believe anyone would even suggest it. Ningaloo’s corals are yet to experience the widespread catastrophic bleaching events seen at the Great Barrier Reef. Compared to ecosystems elsewhere, the Reef, the Range and the Gulf are in enviable shape. But all three are fragile and vulnerable. The direct threats posed by GGL’s port are obvious and unacceptable. But there’s a broader existential threat to consider. Exmouth Gulf is a massive natural carbon sink. If spared industrialisation and properly protected, it can help mitigate global heating. But it’s besieged by industries seeking to exploit it, including those that threaten the very existence of Ningaloo Reef and all the world’s corals. Some of our nation’s biggest carbon polluters continue to
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PHOTO BY VIOLETA J BROSIG/INSTAGRAM @BLUEMEDIAEXMOUTH
SPOTTED: ONE OF NINGALOO’S FAMOUS WHALE SHARKS
series by Lorenzo Mittiga
The Big Picture 18
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Underwater Gardening Off the shore of a tiny Caribbean island, Lorenzo Mittiga documents the volunteers who are trying a new way to save coral, which is dying in the warmer waters. by Greg Foyster @gregfoyster
Greg Foyster is an environment journalist and the author of Changing Gears.
FOR MORE IMAGES BY LORENZO MITTIGA, VISIT LORENZOMITTIGA.COM.
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Scientific divers collecting coral capsules during a coral-spawning event off the island of Bonaire
03 SEP 2021
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orenzo Mittiga is about to join a coral-cleaning party. It’s World Ocean Day, and the Italian photographer is in full scuba gear, documenting a “reef fiesta” off the coast of Bonaire, a tiny Caribbean island north of Venezuela. About 100 divers have volunteered to spend an hour tenderly cleaning algae off baby coral fragments, which hang suspended from fiberglass trees underwater. Mittiga recalls the moment he first saw the strange structures, each about three metres high, swaying in the gentle currents. “I was like, what is that? It looks exactly like a Christmas tree.” Actually it’s a seedling nursery: each one holds between 100 and 150 coral fragments on fishing lines, keeping them out of reach of bottom-dwelling predators. Algae-cleaning is just the beginning of the elaborate art of “coral gardening” on Bonaire. The entire island is a marine sanctuary, yet even here coral cover has drastically declined due to warming sea temperatures, disease outbreaks, coastal development and pollution. The fibreglass trees are one of several propagation methods created by Reef Renewal Foundation Bonaire, which aims to restore the island’s corals as a model for the rest of the Caribbean to follow. After six to eight months, the coral fragments are transported to the restoration site and attached to bamboo frames. A few years later the frames dissolve and the fragments fuse together, growing into the spiny dome of a typical staghorn coral. Despite this laborious method, the Foundation’s scientists are aiming to plant 100,000 corals by 2024. They’ve also developed other methods to reach much greater scale by assisting the natural coral-spawning process. On a moonlit night in the Caribbean, for just an hour at a time, vast coral colonies eject capsules containing eggs and sperm into the water at once. The capsules can fertilise only when they mix together, but with fewer and fewer corals these chance collisions are becoming less likely. Scientists play the role of matchmaker, diving down and funnelling the capsules into test tubes, then shaking them up so they collide. The fertilised capsules are then released back into the water. Mittiga keeps his scuba gear and camera ready in case he gets the call to attend one of these rare and magical events. “I feel very lucky. Only a relatively few people on Earth have the privilege to see the reproduction of the biggest living creature on the planet.” He sinks down in total darkness, waiting. The timing has to be perfect – the capsules are visible as a cloud for only about 10 seconds when they are released, before being dispersed in the water column. Small fish dart about the corals, a sign the spawning is imminent. Suddenly the flash of his camera reveals the spectacle: thousands of white spheres rising against the black water, like eddies of snow drifting upwards. “Just imagine that reef survival and propagation depends on these little spaceships,” says Mittiga, “drifting all alone in the ocean, totally in the hands of destiny.”
Renewal Reef Foundation Bonaire scientific divers on their boat, ready to enter the water at the coral restoration site
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A team of divers attends to a “coral tree”, harvesting and tagging the fragments before they are transported to the restoration site
The coral reefs surrounding Bonaire face a range of threats, including hurricanes, warming seas, coastal development and pollution A diver carries a few fragments of elkhorn coral over a damaged reef, searching for the right spot to plant these healthy specimens
A diver floats over the damaged reef, holding up a few fragments of elkhorn coral that have been grown in a “coral nursery”
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Fiona Murphy is a Deaf poet and essayist. Her memoir, The Shape of Sound, is out now through Text Publishing. @fi_murphy_
L
ately I’ve been watching a children’s television show about a possum and his best friend, Sally. Despite being well into my thirties, I stare at the screen with the same wonder and intensity as a toddler. In today’s episode Possum’s hands flex and extend as they float through the air. He is asking Sally about beaches: what they are (a wide expanse of water and gritty, hot sand) and why people go (to play, relax, splash around). Finally, he asks Sally if they can go to beach (yes, of course). Pressing pause, I lift my own hands and mimic Possum. My fingers curve taking the shape of a cresting wave. This sign for beach is used throughout Australia. After repeating the sign a few more times, I lift my right thumb and place it against my cheek. I stroke my face twice, moving my thumb in a firm backwards direction, reminding my body of the southern dialect’s sign for beach. The feeling of pressure on my cheek lingers for a few moments. I’m being too rough, hacksawing through phrases. A memory of my first Auslan teacher springs to mind – her cropped blonde curls bounce as she crosses the classroom. She places her hands on mine and instructs me to soften my hands and feel the language. Even now, several years since those first lessons, my fingers still hungrily grasp each sign, anxious that I’ll lose my grip on the language, again. Despite being born profoundly deaf in my left ear, I only started learning Auslan in my late twenties. I hadn’t planned to learn sign language. I thought that it was only for deaf people who were particularly hopeless or slow. Looking back, I realise now that this terrible notion had been planted in my head when I was just a child. Six years old, scabby kneed and impatient, Mum ferried me from medical appointments to audiology appointments. It was quickly declared that I was too deaf for hearing aids. Concerned, Mum asked whether sign language would be appropriate. Her question always summoned a swift
It wasn’t until my mid-twenties, having just relocated to Melbourne, I began to encounter Auslan on a regular basis. I spotted people signing on trams or in cafes almost daily. It took months for me to realise I now lived only a few blocks away from the state’s Deaf Society. Seeing Deaf people communicate with ease in crowded places – places that I had mostly avoided as it was too difficult to hear – made me feel wretched with envy. Eventually, a hand injury propelled me to enrol in a sign language course. I convinced myself that I was only attending to regain some strength and flexibility. I ignored the nervous flutter in my chest as I entered the classroom. During the first lesson, the teacher announced that most people assume that Auslan wasn’t a “real” language. Through signing, speaking and writing on a white board, she explained that sign languages have complex systems of grammar. She wrote a list on the board: Handshape, Orientation, Location, Movement and Expression (HOLME). “Change any of these elements and your sign can change its meaning,” she said in a low husky voice. She lifted her hands and signed: Sign language is precise. I felt winded. The doctors and audiologists who spoke so disparagingly about Auslan had been wrong. Sign language isn’t the last resort. Each lesson our teacher would sweep through the room detecting mistakes. Pointing out whether we made errors with fingerspelling, tense or timing. Despite fumbling through these lessons, I began to feel myself becoming more expansive and emboldened. It was a stark difference to the sly, scuttling sensation I had whenever I attempted to pass as hearing. At the age of 30, I finally admitted to myself that I was Deaf. I press play and watch as Possum gathers all the equipment he and Sally will take to the beach: a beach umbrella, towels, hats and sunscreen. I diligently practise these signs with soft, expressive hands. I’m certain that my life would have been different if the television show Sally and Possum had been available when I was a child. Instead of considering deafness a flaw, I would have learned to revel in Deaf culture.
03 SEP 2021
Fiona Murphy takes a lesson from kids TV show Sally and Possum – one she wishes she learned decades ago.
no. Doctors and audiologists praised me for being able to speak English fluently. They reassured her there was “no need” for me to learn Auslan. Sign language, they said, was “the last resort” for deaf people. For the next 20 years I believed that being able to speak meant I had somehow managed to beat my deafness as if it were a puzzle or a game. I learned to downplay my deafness by hiding any confusion, never asking people to repeat themselves and extracting myself from noisy environments. I was afraid that if anyone found out I was deaf, they would immediately think I was dumb.
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The Shape of Water
Letter to My Younger Self
It was the start of a whole new world for me Before he became a 1970s pop idol and Countdown favourite, John Paul Young was a revhead from Western Sydney. He talks girls, gum leaves and Strictly Ballroom. by Anastasia Safioleas Contributing Editor @anast
PHOTO BY
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W
hen I was 16 years old, I was a bit brash in one way and a bit sensitive in another. I had just moved high schools and encountered a co-ed class for the first time. Because of the girls, it really changed my outlook in every way. All of a sudden, I’m there all day with the opposite sex. It was scary because it was so new to me. It was different coming from a boys’ school where you just carried on like an idiot. You’re suddenly unsure of yourself. I’ve got sisters but that’s family. It’s not the same as being around attractive girls. I was with these young girls who were on the verge of being women and I was so far from being a man it wasn’t funny! I enjoyed school but I was no brainiac. I was a typical boy – I didn’t give the work enough concentration. I was too busy having a good time, to be honest. I mucked around all the time, and I was totally petrol driven. Everything in my brain was geared towards having a car – living in the western suburbs that’s just the way you were. I had a one‑track mind as far as all that goes. I wanted to get out; I wanted to be my boss. I changed my accent when I was about 11. At school there was a kid who probably repeated three times – he had facial hair – and he was a tough
FOR JOHN PAUL YOUNG’S UPCOMING TOUR DATES, KEEP AN EYE ON ABSTRACT.NET.AU.
TOP: A “LONG-HAIRED DISCO SINGER”, 1970S MIDDLE: STARRING IN THE MUSICAL LEADER OF THE PACK,2003 BOTTOM: WITH MATE MOLLY MELDRUM
03 SEP 2021
between me and him on screen because we’d known each other for a couple of years. The biggest challenge in my life was in the early 80s when my career was dead. No‑one wanted to know about a long-haired disco singer. I had to go out there and work, just me and my keyboard player. It was tough going. And my father died in 1982. The world just started crumbling around me. I went on tour but I wasn’t touring major cities – I was touring all the country areas. That was hard graft. I had to sell my house in Sydney. I’m so glad I did. I fell on my feet. Now I’m up here in Lake Macquarie. I’ve been here for 34 years, and a crane couldn’t get me out of here. Strictly Ballroom changed things for me again [the soundtrack featured JPY’s 1978 megahit ‘Love Is in the Air’]. That was totally out of the blue. Surprised the hell out of me. Again, I didn’t expect something like that would happen. I just thought, well, this is nice. I’m still living off that for God’s sake, that’s how big that thing was. I hadn’t seen the movie, I just thought it was a cute little arthouse movie and didn’t think anything would happen to be honest. I was very happy to say I was wrong. If I could go back to any day in my life, I have this fondness for the day we arrived in Australia. It was probably around 22 January [1962, aged 11] in Fremantle. There was a man at the bottom of the gangway who asked my dad if we’d like to see the sights of Perth. Dad said no, we don’t have any money. But this guy says, I don’t want money. I’m an immigrant myself and I like to take a family on a drive and show them where they’ve come to and to give them an experience. So we all piled into an old Vauxhall – there’s seven of us in this car – and off we went. He stopped at a shop and bought us kids huge square bottles of milk. I can’t remember much else about that day, except for one thing. We went to Kings Park overlooking the Swan River. He grabbed a handful of gum leaves off the tree, scrunched them into his hand, stuck them under my nose and said, “Welcome to Australia.” That story still gets me. If I had the chance, I’d tell my 16-year-old self that you’ll have more money than you’ve ever had! I’d tell him don’t worry about things, you’ll be okay. You’ll own that BMW – it will be 10 years old, but you will own it! You’ll have your own house, a little bit of land around you and a couple of chooks. And you’ll have that wonderful family – a wife and grandchildren. I’ve got nothing to complain about at all. I’ve really enjoyed, on reflection, the highs and the lows. And the lows have inevitably always led to something high. I’m very happy.
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MAIN PHOTO BY BROCK JOHNSTON, INSET PHOTOS BY GETTY AND SUPPLIED
kid. He used to give me the rounds of the kitchen because of my Scottish accent. About six months before we left Glasgow, I’d had a fight. It was fairly fresh in my mind, so I wasn’t in a hurry to have a fight with this guy because he was more powerful and bigger than me, so over the weekend I decided to study the Australian language. I thought I’ll just talk like him on Monday. And that’s what I did. He had nowhere to go! He left me alone. At 16 I was a music fan. I loved my music and especially the Beatles and the Easybeats – 1966 was the year of ‘Friday on My Mind’. It was a great time. A wonderful time. I didn’t really realise what was coming up – leaving school and getting a job was okay in theory, but I hadn’t realised how tough it would be to come up with what you wanted to be. I struggled with that. I suppose I was always a bit too concerned about things more than I should have been. The biggest surprise for me is also the happiest day in my life, and it was the day that changed everything for me. It was when a guy called Simon Napier-Bell walked up to me and asked if I wanted to make a record. That record happened to be a song another band was playing that I had fallen in love with. I would be out in the audience listening to this particular song, going, I wish I had a song like that. And it happened! That very song was put in front of me and [Simon] said, “Do you think you could sing this?” That was ‘Pasadena’. It blows me away that even happened. It was the start of a whole new world for me. That changed everything in my life. Simon was the manager of the Yardbirds in England. He discovered [T-Rex’s] Marc Bolan and he went on to manage Wham!. He was a bit of a star‑maker. I left my factory job as a sheet metal worker to go into theatre and a show called The Jesus Christ Revolution. It was an Australian production and they wanted to beat Jesus Christ Superstar to the punch. So I’m in this show playing in the Comedy Theatre in Melbourne, but it only lasts three weeks and then folds. I’m back in the western suburbs of Sydney feeling very sorry for myself and wondering what the hell I was going to do next. Luckily for me, there was a man called Jim Sharman at that show and he liked my voice. He sent a telegram to my mum and dad’s house in Fairfield and I auditioned for Jesus Christ Superstar. This all happened within three months of each other. Suddenly I’ve got a job, a real job, and Superstar lasted two-and-a-half years. It’s also where I met my wife. I met Molly [Meldrum] at the opening night party of Jesus Christ Superstar and we got along really well. I had no idea that two or three years later he would be the boss of [Countdown] the biggest television pop show ever to happen in Australia. That’s why there was a bit of familiarity
Ricky
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The only thing more scary than indoor rock climbing is outdoor rock climbing.
by Ricky French @frenchricky
Social Climbers
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n the 1997 American film Wag the Dog a fake war is constructed to distract the public from a presidential sex scandal. Released just before then President Bill Clinton’s very real sex scandal – and his equally real bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan immediately thereafter – the film was intended as satire but ended up very close to reality. Right now, the world is in the middle of a COVID-19 war, and with the Tokyo Olympics we got exactly the kind of distraction we all needed (sex scandals are so passé these days). I wasn’t expecting much of the Olympics, given there were no crowds, but like so many other pandemic-fatigued viewers I tuned in every night to become a self-appointed expert on sports I watch only once every four years. And now we’ve also had the Tokyo Paralympics, always a testament to resilience and forging ahead through challenges, qualities we all need to harness right now. The joy of watching the Olympics is discovering sports you’ve never watched before, and wondering just how the hell the athletes do it. This Olympics we discovered the new sport of indoor climbing, or “Sport Climbing”. I feel like indoor rock climbing is something we’ve all had a go at, at least once in our lives. It involves standing at the bottom of a big wall while a 16-year-old kid working a weekend job rummages around with straps and buckles in the vicinity of your crotch, before giving breezy but technical instructions to the mate you’ve dragged along to belay you (see, I am an expert). Your mate is usually hungover and not too good with following instructions at the best of times, and is now entrusted with your life. The only thing more scary than indoor rock climbing is outdoor rock climbing, which is why I’m happy to live vicariously through the feats of climbers who are now famous in our household: Adam Ondra, Brooke Raboutou and that bouldering freak Janja Garnbret. Sport climbing at the Olympics has three disciplines: speed climbing, bouldering and
lead climbing. “Real” rock climbers scoff at speed climbing – where competitors race each other to scurry up a 15-metre wall in around seven seconds – preferring the traditional method of slow, considered contortion offered by lead climbing, hanging upside down and dusting their hands in their chalk bag while working out their next move. It was quite unbelievable to watch those slender, muscular young things defy gravity to crawl along the underside of an overhanging ledge, pulling themselves up with only their fingertips, clearly in excruciating pain but having a great time nonetheless. Our favourite was the bouldering, where the competitors climb low but difficult walls, solving three sets of “problems” set out by fiendish route-setters. It wasn’t a problem for us. We drank wine and ate chocolate pudding and offered all sorts of learned advice about where the athletes were going wrong and where they should put their left foot next. And isn’t that the great joy of watching the Olympics? We can not only be slobs, but expert slobs in a matter of minutes. We also enjoyed watching the gymnastics, which never seems to change: girls twirling the pretty ribbons while the boys show off their muscles on the rings. Then of course the torture that is the marathon, watching runners collapse in the heat trying to chase down a Kenyan who’s winning by about 12 kilometres. But most of all it was nice to have a break from the pandemic. Good on Tokyo for staging the Olympics and giving the world a distraction. Who knows what the world will look like by the time Brisbane’s time comes around in 2032, but it’s far enough away to give me some hope. You see, if I start training now I reckon there’s every chance I could make the finals of the Sport Climbing. I pretty much know it all already. Left hand to yellow grippy thing, right foot to green notch. I was always quite good at Twister.
Ricky is a writer, musician and couch commentator.
by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman
PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND
H
ow does Dolly Parton do it? And by “it” I don’t even mean the July release on Twitter of a Playboy‑themed video for her husband’s birthday, where she referenced her own Playboy magazine cover from 1978 and wore a custom bunny costume. At 75 she looked legitimately better than she did in the late 1970s – more her somehow – and she was funny AND sexy AND wholesome AND classy AND unapologetic for being hawt in her mid-seventies. Okay, I want to know how she’s doing all that, too. I’ve watched and rewatched that clip, marvelling, and she’s got me, at the very least, reconsidering the overhead lighting in our lounge room and my stained tracksuit pants as tools of seduction. (I need, I think, to qualify that my go-toparticularly-in-lockdown Adidas pants aren’t precisely stained. But soon after purchasing said workout item, I splashed them with bleach as I cleaned the bathroom and now, no matter how fresh they are, it looks entirely as though I’ve just tipped a kebab with extra garlic sauce into my lap. Deep in my soul, I know that Dolly does not wear trackies, let alone besmirched ones. “Throw ’em out darlin’,” she’d say. “I wouldn’t give those to the hogs. Shimmy into something that makes you feel good.”) Dolly is kind and wise. But sartorial advice aside, I urgently need to understand how she so nimbly sidesteps the fray with a wink and a quick swish of a fringed skirt. It’s a magic trick in plain sight that allows her to fund vaccines and literacy programs. She deflects direct questions with a smile and a self‑deprecating gag about her boobs, throws in a bit of folksy wisdom, and deftly avoids being trapped into picking a side. If her skills were any silkier, she’d be a Bombyx mori moth. Dolly is beloved by everyone. She alienates no-one. Her audience consists of the dirt poor and filthy rich, the godly and secular, the left and right, the queer rainbow army and those for whom “gay” will forever mean “happy”. In
a world shaking itself apart, she is the centre that holds. She unites. How, in the name of all my chickens, does she do this? Because between you, me and the lamppost, we could all use some Parton-grade diplomacy. One of my long-term friends has taken to slipping invitations to anti-lockdown protests into my DMs. Most recently a link to an anti-vax petition being put to parliament. How to respond? All I can think is “eff no are you bonkers?!”, which I keep to myself. Other friends report similar situations; an escalation of mates gone rogue. The conspiracy madness is flickering closer to home. We trial different strategies, share advice. Snarky memes are popular (“Do you remember the kid with polio from school? That’s right, there wasn’t one. Thanks vaccines!”), others say dump her, she’s lost. Others say ignore. Others offer a blizzard of statistics and peer-reviewed papers that no‑one will read, particularly not those signalling wildly from the bottom of their rabbit hole, screaming about imaginary dead children. LOL do yOuR rEsEaRcH they say. Our allegiances used to be Ford vs Holden, Skyhooks vs Sherbert. Those were the days! Imagine getting incensed over two similarly packaged rock bands! Now it’s science vs magical thinking. What an unravelling. With the stakes so high it’s hard to not bite. To call someone bonkers, or much worse. Drop them. Yell into the abyss on social media. Hold parties during lockdown because Freedoms. Dolly’s superpower, I suspect, is discipline. She holds everyone equal and refuses to be divisive, no matter the provocation. I am not, currently, unprovokable. Sigh. But baby steps. I can find the discipline, I think, to ditch the trackies.
Fiona is a writer and comedian who’s from the wrong side of the trackies.
03 SEP 2021
I Beg Your Parton
Deep in my soul, I know that Dolly does not wear trackies, let alone besmirched ones.
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Fiona
Lucy Lawless
Small Screens
Bloody Good Fun Lucy Lawless is having a rollicking time filming comedy-crime series My Life Is Murder in her home town of Auckland. by Eliza Janssen @eliza_ janssen
Eliza Janssen writes about movies for flicks.com.au and roughcutfilm.com.
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ontrary to her name, Lucy Lawless is a woman of justice. Best known for playing vengeful badasses like Xena the Warrior Princess and Spartacus’ Lucretia, the New Zealand native returns to the crime‑centric comedy series My Life Is Murder – in her own words, a “cop show without a cop” – transplanted from Melbourne to her home town of Auckland for season two. “Well, it’s not really season two,” she explains. “It’s season one of My Life Is Murder: Aotearoa. “Bringing it to Auckland, I was really nervous,” she says. “Can we keep our promise to the audience? Can we
MY LIFE IS MURDER IS STREAMING ON ACORN TV.
FROM XENA TO MURDER: LUCY LAWLESS AND RENÉE O’CONNOR UNITE ONCE MORE
03 SEP 2021
considering her villainous roles on bloody projects like Salem? Ash vs Evil Dead? “There’s all these autonomic tells,” she says, “things that your body does that you cannot control. When you’re under stress, shit leaks out, man.” But that passion for crime isn’t what drew Lawless to My Life Is Murder. Instead, she specifically cites the 2016 US election. She wanted to be involved in a project about “kindness” to combat “where the world was at”. “I didn’t want to make anything full of sex and violence,” she says. “I’ve done tons of that in my career, and I grew up and out of it. When [producer] Claire Tonkin approached me, I liked the cut of her jib so much I was like, ‘Come on, girl, let’s go make this and see what happens.’” This “see what happens” approach bleeds into season two. The cast and crew include talent who’d never worked in the industry before, alongside local legends with whom Lawless grew up. We even see the return of Xena’s comrade and (let’s be real) girlfriend Gabrielle, with actor Renée O’Connor cast in a fan-pleasing cameo role. O’Connor may have some competition in the sidekick stakes, though, as Alexa has her own naive helper: Melbourne expat and phone hacker Madison (Ebony Vagulans). Lawless sees the similarity: “Two women, with no men supporting them, who are righting wrongs? It’s like, ‘Oh, I’ve flashed right back to Xena.’” For a show with “murder” in the title, this whodunnit is extremely wholesome. That’s by design. Lawless calls it the ultimate “psychic escape” for, say, Aussie viewers in lockdown. “It’s not about crime,” she says. “It’s about justice, with a feel-good factor at the end, which we all want right now. “The world has gone through tough times, so to have a bit of armchair tourism when you’re stuck in lockdown? Come on down to New Zealand!”
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PHOTOS BY CHRIS PIZZELLO/INVISION/AAP, MATT KLITSCHER/ACORNTV, MOVIESTILLSDB
replicate the tone? It turns out yes, you can! We’re bringing you to a beautiful location with people that you love and want to hang out with, and we’re gonna solve some crimes together.” The show is murderously good fun, following Lawless as Alexa Crowe, a private investigator who holds her cards close to her chest with a white-knuckled grip. Yet Alexa is apparently a “super easy” role for the bright and friendly Lawless to embody. “All drama, tension, is about withholding,” she says. “Somebody who lets all their feelings out on the screen – what’s left for the audience to do? The minute you display it all, the tension’s gone, you let the pressure out. “[Alexa] has some grievance with the world because her husband was killed in the line of duty,” she says. “That leaves you with a stone in your heart, doesn’t it? Your tendency is to want to hunker down.” As much as we’d love to watch 10 episodes of Alexa sitting at home scowling and baking bread (yes, the hardboiled character got busy with sourdough starter last year just like the rest of us), hunkering down is not an option. The sleuth has murders to solve, from a drag show gone wrong to a tragedy in the art world. “That’s a doozy,” says Lawless. “I love the poetry in that one.” Solving crimes – both fictional and horribly real – has been one of the actor’s long-time fascinations. As a child she dreamed of being a forensic pathologist, but, luckily for us, chose another path. “I used to watch Quincy, M.E. and think, Oh, I wanna be one of those! And later realised, no, I just want to be an actor – which was probably a good choice on my part.” Lawless is still a keen student of murder stories and courtroom trials, enthusing about the ongoing Robert Durst prosecution (as presaged in the 2015 docuseries The Jinx) and YouTube footage rabbit holes. “I kind of love it, you know? But, unfortunately, police videos are never quite good enough. I want proper 4K HD, up close and personal.” Nevertheless, after two seasons as Alexa and a career of legendary on-screen kills, Lawless doesn’t believe she could get away with murder. “Here’s the thing,” she says. “There is one commonality in almost every single murder you will see in true crime. There’s a streak of stupidity that runs through the whole thing. It’s always pathetic and banal at the bottom of it. I would like to think that I am not quite so stupid as to think I can get away with it – and I wouldn’t even want to. Boo. That’s for losers, man.” Not even
Despite the pandemic, Amyl and the Sniffers band together to have some serious fun on their second album – just don’t try to stick them in a box. by Olivia Bennett @cybergirl_x0x
Olivia Bennett is a Naarm/ Melbourne-based arts writer.
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Music
Amyl and the Sniffers
Scratch & Sniffers
SN IF FI NG TAYLOR (F SU CC ES S: AM Y RO ME R, DERO NT ) W IT H GU S C MA RT EN S AN D BR YC E W IL SO N
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kind of like it when stuff goes wrong,” laughs Amy Taylor over Zoom, “like when something gets cancelled or plans change, because it’s exciting. Unpredictability is cool.” The Amyl and the Sniffers frontwoman and her former housemates Dec Martens, Bryce Wilson and Fergus Romer never imagined their Melbourne punk project would turn into a fully fledged career. In 2016, the band recorded their first EP Giddy Up in Balaclava within the span of 12 hours, and quickly began playing at local dive bars. A second EP Big Attraction (2017) and a self‑titled album later, their high-octane sound and rowdy stage antics have seen them become a staple of the international touring circuit, front a Gucci campaign and win Best Rock Album at the 2019 ARIA Awards. “When we’re playing overseas people make a big deal about it but in Melbourne, it’s like when your friend from down the street comes over – you hand them a can of Coke and tell them to sort themselves out,” Taylor laughs. Now back home to that low-key life of Melbourne lockdown, the interruptions caused by the pandemic gave the four-piece a much-needed break from being “slingshot around the world playing shows every night”. But as Taylor explains, the Sniffers took it as an
group boxed them into a certain sound, politics and lifestyle. “It’s really fucking shaped me in a huge way. My tolerance for people’s judgement is sealed tight because we’ve had to go through the firing line,” she says. While unintentional, many of the new tracks on Comfort to Me speak to the experience and aftershock of COVID. On ‘Security’, Taylor sings of the struggle to find connections and romance in the wake of upended, anxious lives, pleading with a pub security guard to let her into a venue: “Security will you let me in your pub?/I’m not looking for trouble/I’m looking for love”. The album is a deft document of the strength that can arise out of dejection, and the community you can find during life’s roughest moments. Comfort for the band isn’t necessarily avoiding difficult feelings or conversations, but instead riding the wave of that discomfort, and seeing where that energy takes you. It’s there on single ‘Capital’, which reels through the frustrations of Australia’s social injustices and the bizarre trivialities of life under capitalism. “It’s a big whirly pool of ‘fuck this shit,’” Taylor says. “When the bushfire season hit Australia at the end of 2019, there was a feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness towards the government.
Before, I really valued and had fun expressing myself through clothes. But now I sorta feel like I’d rather express myself through my brain.
PHOTO BY JAMIE WDZIEKONSKI
AMY TAYLOR
opportunity to mature their sound, hone their craft and record their second album, Comfort to Me. “I feel like we’re such a live band and spent so much time playing that when lockdown came we were able to spend more time on the writing process, whereas prior to that it was very much ‘Let’s write a song that we can play live so that we can play live more,’” she says. This focus is notable in Taylor’s vocals, which have deepened and strengthened since the band’s earliest releases. She sounds more self-assured than ever, singing of protecting her energy and finding power in her own body on Comfort to Me’s first single: “Guided by angels, but they’re not heavenly/They’re on my body and they guide me.” Guitarist Dec Martens reflects that while they may not have had any expectations of the band when they made those rough, early recordings, Amyl and the Sniffers have since forged a path to collective self‑possession on the new album. “I feel like when the band started I had a really strong idea of who I was and what I liked, but now I feel like I have a shared identity with everyone in the band,” he says. Taylor agrees, adding that this collective strength became especially apparent as the media around the
“It’s also about being a woman who is constantly sexualised, no matter what I wear or think or do, but the second that I decided I’m going to exploit my body to further my career, it turns back on me.” Taylor explores these feelings further in ‘Knifey’, a bass-heavy track at times reminiscent of Joy Division’s distinct melancholy. “[It’s about] how I personally feel as a female sometimes. Where my safety is compromised and I have to be conscious of what I’m wearing when I’m out at night,” she says. “I don’t want to be tough; I don’t want to be this angry but I have to be.” Speaking with Taylor, she’s like the cool, older sister you always admired for their fearless confidence. “I want to be agile and wear pants and shirts, and walk everywhere and kick stuff,” she says, all while admitting that lockdown has “fucked up my whole sense of style, because now I only wear trackie daks and no make‑up,” she laughs. “Before, I really valued and had fun expressing myself through clothes. But now I sorta feel like I’d rather express myself through my brain.” COMFORT TO ME IS OUT 10 SEPTEMBER.
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Books
Paige Clark
Turning the Paige Paige Clark’s debut short story collection tells the story of her life for the past eight years – but it’s fiction, honestly. by Elizabeth Flux @elizabethflux
Elizabeth Flux is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and is the editor-at-large for the Melbourne City of Literature Office.
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or the past eight years, Paige Clark has been slowly piecing together the stories that would eventually make up her debut collection, She Is Haunted. In it, she offers 18 intimate glimpses into different lives. In ‘Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’, a woman makes a series of deals with Death. In ‘Gwendolen Wakes’, we watch a woman dispassionately answering phone calls from people desperate to fix their relationships. Readers see bonds fracture; watch as envy grows; feel the wrench of separation from a beloved pet. Though Clark seamlessly shifts between perspectives and writing styles, the same ideas and themes recur XX X throughout the book: devolving relationships, mother‑daughter dynamics, jealousy and competition between women, Asian identity, death and grief. Clark doesn’t shy away from the fact that she draws upon her own experiences in her writing. The stories are predominantly set either in the US, where she was born, or in Australia, where she has lived since 2009. “I just wanted to get as far away from where I was from, which has kind of been a theme of my life I guess, and Australia was as far as I could get,” she explains. Fiction writers are often – or maybe almost always – present in their own stories to varying degrees.
flame has come to visit. “A funny thing that happened, when a mentor of mine read the story, she found the character that is me – the visitor – to be horrible,” says Clark with a laugh. “She was like, ‘This character is just, she’s awful – she’s revolting. She’s so funny, but she’s horrible.’ She had no idea that I saw that as me, which I was completely fine with – I’m willing to put the worst parts of myself on the page.” This doesn’t mean that each of her stories features a character who is literally, unambiguously her. It’s fiction, with an undercurrent of truth. Sometimes Clark appears through a character that shares a version of her middle name, Elizabeth, or a piece of her personal history. Sometimes this is the main character, or a very brief cameo. Sometimes fragments of herself are scattered across different people. “I think that part of my instinct was to lean into this idea that it was me instead of shy away from it,” she says. “It was part of my writing process to think about where the stories come from. So, I like signalling to myself, well, this is the thing in the story that’s really you.” It comes back to why she originally started putting words on the page in the first place. “The relationship that I have with my mother was really kind of why
I started to write – to understand her and understand our relationship,” she explains. “I write to understand. It’s not really cathartic or healing, maybe in the way you would think…it’s like when you have a conversation, and you say the wrong thing and then you wish you could correct it. That’s what this writing feels like to me. It’s like I’m trying to say something to someone and I can’t reach them. But then if I get it on the page, then maybe I can do it better, or the way that I hoped that I could say it.” You don’t need to know Clark’s history to be able to take in the full experience of She Is Haunted – the stories stand on their own; however, her openness and vulnerability in the writing process lend the collection an authenticity – it’s this, rather than the shared themes, that make them feel connected. They feel real because in many ways they are real. Her hope for the book is straightforward. “A lot of the books that I love are not huge, runaway successes that have won lots of awards or anything like that,” she says. “They’re just books that I found, and I loved them, and they saved my life.” She pauses. “So, I hope that someone that really needs to read this book, will.” SHE IS HAUNTED IS OUT NOW.
03 SEP 2021
Perhaps there is a character off to one side who speaks for the author; sometimes pieces of their own history are speckled throughout, or spliced into characters who are otherwise completely different people. Often this presence is veiled, the wall firmly kept up between fiction and reality, with only hints of what is true and what is not true being offered to readers. For Clark, however, her presence is clear throughout the book – she doesn’t try to hide it. She Is Haunted is “kind of the story of my life in the past eight years,” Clark says. Characters share her love of dogs, or a similar grief to what she’s experienced. More than one character in the collection is learning Cantonese, something that Clark has been doing herself. “I’ve been very cut off from my culture in a lot of ways…and because I’m estranged from my mother, and my grandparents have passed away, a lot of my heritage I’ve lost complete touch with. It’s very painful for me,” she explains. “It feels like there’s a part of me that’s always missing – and then it’s complicated by the fact that I go through the world in this body where people see me and have expectations about my cultural background. I wanted to feel that connection to who I was.” Clark’s presence in her stories comes through in often unexpected ways. ‘In a Room of Chinese Women’ is told from the perspective of a woman whose husband’s old
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PHOTO BY MARCELLE BRADBEER
A lot of the books that I love are not huge, runaway successes that have won lots of awards or anything like that. They’re just books that I found, and I loved them, and they saved my life.
Film Reviews
Annabel Brady-Brown Film Editor @annnabelbb
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aking music is an alchemic art. It’s as much about the performers as the moment of creation. This process is by far the most fascinating aspect of Under the Volcano, which relies on archival materials and present-day interviews to tell the story of AIR Studios Montserrat, the utopian state-of-the-art recording studio built by Beatles producer George Martin on the Caribbean island, and the birthplace of many of the 80s most popular LPs. The documentary resurrects a number of intimate, VH1 Behind the Music-style moments that will appeal to fans of the performers who appear. Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder record ‘Ebony and Ivory’, Elton John pens ‘I’m Still Standing’, and The Police stop tearing at each other’s throats to record their final album, while Sting learns to windsurf. Directed by Australian Gracie Otto, the film deals feebly with the colonial overtones of the enterprise, with some clanger tone-deaf moments, including Jimmy Buffett joking about buying an entire bar so that he can get his beer faster. An Australian film that grapples better with men and their big dreams is Streamline, the beautifully shot, semi-autobiographical directorial debut from Tyson Wade Johnston. Less Old Man and the Sea, more young man and the pool, Streamline follows a moody 15-year-old swimming prodigy (Levi Miller) as he juggles the pressures of intense training with a fractured family life and the desire to just be an ordinary teenager. ABB
STREAMLINE: SWIMMINGLY GOOD
COMING HOME IN THE DARK
The shocking opening scenes of Kiwi director James Ashcroft’s feature debut set the pace of this captor-andcaptive nightmare. Teacher Hoaggie’s (Erik Thomson) family holiday in bucolic Northern Wellington is cut short by the arrival of two drifters: Mandrake (an unrecognisable Daniel Gillies, best known for The Vampire Diaries) and his towering companion Tubs (Matthias Luafutu). The strangers subject the family to seemingly senseless violence, recalling punishing horror excursions like Wolf Creek (2005) and Funny Games (2007). But rather than genre thrills, Ashcroft is clearly more fascinated by his inscrutable villains. In a slow drawl, Mandrake prods at Hoaggie’s past, and – with great pathos – the taut drama balloons to encompass the nation’s dark institutional history. Although the slumping middle portion doesn’t quite satisfyingly tackle the ambitious themes, a masterful sense of dread is maintained throughout, while the landscape transforms into a claustrophobic topography of past sins. CLAIRE CAO SUMMER OF SOUL
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This Sundance award-winning documentary – the directorial debut by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, drummer and bandleader of hip-hop legends The Roots – unearths phenomenal, never-before-seen footage of a weekend concert series that took place over the summer of 1969, known as the Harlem Cultural Festival. Taking place in the heart of the historically Black American neighbourhood, it drew over 300,000 attendees. High energy performances by leading Black artists – a young Stevie Wonder, BB King, Mahalia Jackson, Sly and the Family Stone and trumpeter Hugh Masekela – are mixed with archival material that sees the film double as a profound time capsule. News clippings evoke a turbulent era, which saw the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, police brutality and rising anti-war sentiment. Thompson has taken his musician’s intuition to breathe life back into this groundbreaking moment; as the spellbinding Nina Simone chants, “Are you ready to turn yourself inside out?” SAMIRA FARAH
THE KILLING OF TWO LOVERS
Opening with a man with a gun in his hand standing over two sleeping people, the tension rarely dips in this gruelling look at a father trying to salvage a family that might be better off without him. The armed man is David (Clayne Crawford), a small-town Utah dogsbody who started a family straight out of high school with Nikki (Sepideh Moafi). They’re now separated, taking time to “work things out”, which for her means testing out a new relationship. David tries to keep it together in front of the kids while their eldest daughter (Avery Pizzuto) demands he “fight for them”, but his muddled rage isn’t something anyone wants uncorked. Writer-directoreditor Robert Machoian’s fondness for long takes, fixed framing and casual-seeming dialogue gives a gripping, almost documentary feel to David’s confusion, weakness and anger. Everyone else largely fades into the background, creating the uneasy sense that we’re meant to side – or just sympathise – with a man who points a gun at his wife. ANTHONY MORRIS
Small Screen Reviews
Aimee Knight Small Screens Editor @siraimeeknight
ALL MY FRIENDS ARE RACIST | ABC IVIEW
A FLUORESCENT FEELING
| SBS ON DEMAND
| PODCAST
“I can’t breathe” reads the shirt worn by grieving mother Leetona Dungay. It’s a powerful slogan of the Black Lives Matter movement, but also the desperate words of her own son, Dunghutti man David Dungay Jr, before he died at Sydney’s Long Bay prison in 2015. Covering a range of overlapping issues including systemic racism, police brutality and the traumas of colonialism, director Dean Gibson (Wik vs Queensland) assembles a roll call of Indigenous activists, experts and leaders – Mick Gooda, Olga Havnen, Keenan Mundine, Vickie Roach, Chelsea Watego – to share their insights about a justice system that has brutalised First Nations people since its outset. The documentary ultimately opts for breadth over depth, cramming a veritable catalogue of horrors into its 90 minutes; it’s a gruelling watch, made more so by the forceful manner in which information is presented (relentless facts and statistics, blood-stained graphics, a doom-laden score). Insofar as the problems it highlights demand our urgent attention – and action – it’s essential viewing all the same. KENTA MCGRATH
More than three million Australians live with chronic pain. If that number seems surprisingly high, it may be due to the ambiguity of invisible illnesses – by nature unseen, yet viscerally felt. That intangibility is exactly what artist and writer Georgia Mill wants to evaporate with this audio series about the possibilities of pain. A Fluorescent Feeling explores the ways in which pain is communicated, received and felt by folks responding to chronic conditions with resilient creativity. Author Eula Biss reads from her essay ‘The Pain Scale’; video journalist Jameisha Prescod discusses her digital activism; and artist Nunzie Madden provides a sensorial soundscape using voice, song and the metallic rapid fire of an MRI scan. As Mill notes, the show isn’t about finding solutions, but telling stories, and her approach is thoughtful, if fettered with past tense reflection. The absence of field reporting means anecdotes lack urgency, the sense of a story unfolding. But in offering relief through belief, A Fluorescent Feeling is affirmative listening. AIMEE KNIGHT
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n 4 July 1975, journalist Juanita Nielsen entered the Carousel Club – in King Cross, Sydney – and was never seen again. Almost 50 years have elapsed since her disappearance, yet Juanita’s body has never been found, and no-one’s been convicted of her (suspected) murder. Enter: Keiran McGee and Pip Rey, two of Juanita’s presentday relatives. They call upon the ABC’s Unravel True Crime podcast team to help retrace Juanita’s movements and, perhaps, find some answers. The result is a seven-part podcast (Unravel: Juanita) and two-part docuseries (Juanita: A Family Mystery) uncovering neverbefore-heard nuggets of pertinent intel. If the case of the missing activist-heiress rings a bell, that could be because Juanita’s story has already inspired Donald Crombie’s thriller The Killing of Angel Street (1981), Phillip Noyce’s drama Heatwave (1982) and Zanny Begg’s experimental video work The Beehive (2018), previously installed at ACMI, and named in honour of Juanita’s iconic hairdo. These latest two additions to the Nielsen memorial canon seek to dispel the mystery and mythos surrounding her life and death by centring family members, close friends and fellow activists who fought against urban development in the Cross and Woolloomooloo. There’s a huge cast of characters, and it can be tricky to keep up. Assumed knowledge about Sydney’s socioeconomic history may pose a challenge to some viewers. But, as a true crime story that’s low on salacious exploitation, Juanita: A Family Mystery has its place. On ABC TV and iview from 7 September. AK
03 SEP 2021
INCARCERATION NATION
XXX BEEHIVE UNRAVELLED
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Chaotically queer and chronically online, this comedy from Enoch Mailangi and other rising Indigenous talents plunges headfirst into the miasma of Zoomer solipsism. When best mates Casey (Davey Thompson) and Belle (Tuuli Narkle) are ostracised for calling out their friends’ racism, Casey spins the outrage into online engagement to prop up his budding influencer lifestyle. In an era where “selling out” is a way of life rather than a death knell, both characters actively barter and perform their “Blackness” for career gain. All My Friends Are Racist mines the absurdities of this transaction to outrageously funny and discomfiting effect, and it’s by far the strongest focus of the series – which otherwise struggles to spin a fresh take on toxic friendships, cancel culture and mid-twenties ennui. The 15-minute episodes are too short to be substantial, and fixate on skewering one uninspired caricature after another instead of delivering on the show’s novel premise. It isn’t without its brazen convictions or the occasional laugh, but ultimately, Gen Z deserve better. JAMIE TRAM
Music Reviews
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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU
n the cover of For As Long As I Can Remember, Melbourne musician Geoffrey O’Connor, dressed in a navy suit, clasps a glass rose. The object is the perfect representation of his latest record, an excellent, icy synth-pop record that dissects the pleasures and pitfalls of romance and sexual obsession. The album, his first in seven years, sees O’Connor pair up with a number of Australia’s most interesting female artists (Laura Jean, Sarah Mary Chadwick, Sui Zhen, Jess Riberio, June Jones and HTRK’s Jonnine Standish, among others), for slinky duets that sound like something you might have stumbled across once upon a time in a smoke-filled lounge bar. It’s adult contemporary with a lust-fuelled edge, which conjures an illustrious musical history of hopeless lotharios and lovelorn crooners. The mood is languid, with longing the album’s chief concern. The schmaltzy balladry and pomp of the 1980s is still O’Connor’s main touchstone, but unlike his previous compositions on Fan Fiction (2014) and Vanity Is Forever (2011), these are stripped back, placing all the focus on each song’s dual vocals. Thankfully though, O’Connor is still fascinated by tortuous romance and gauzy glamour. The album’s best tracks include ‘Foolish Enough’ (featuring Laura Jean), a funk-laden lamentation of a reckless past; ‘Precious Memories’ (featuring Sarah Mary Chadwick), a dejected acoustic ballad about passion lost; and album closer ‘Love Is Your Best Friend’ (featuring Summer Flake’s Stephanie Crase), an unabashed defence of romance, complete with “lazy one night stands” and “an overlit liquor store”. IT
Isabella Trimboli Music Editor @itrimboli
COUPON SKYDECK
Coupon, the second album from Melbourne two-piece Skydeck, is trapped in a sense of disconnect with the world, emphasised by its being written and recorded while the band were split between their home and Mexico. The album takes cues from the mechanic coldwave of 80s bands like Solid State (who they shout out to on their first album, Eureka Moment), but never loses their earnest “dolewave” sound. Sounding often like an ultra‑despondent Tears for Fears, Coupon utilises the sounds of the past while speaking to our “no future” present, with lyrics that critique political ambivalence and the gig economy. There’s also plenty of references to guilt (including songs ‘Gut Guilt’ and ‘Guilty Of’). But for all the apathy, there’s plenty of catchy riffs. ‘Uptight’ sees the vocals wonderfully alternate between angsty and flat, with a dejected synth-pop sound that hits at the heart of our present. ANGUS MCGRATH
ALTERNATE ENDINGS SNOWY BAND
SOLAR POWER LORDE
On ‘Don’t Want to See You (Again)’, the acoustic guitar song that opens Alternate Endings, bandleader Liam “Snowy” Halliwell’s voice fractures and crackles as if waking from prolonged dormancy. Somewhere between quiet devastation and hope against the odds, it’s a mood that echoes throughout the album’s 10 tracks. Vocals are offered in an almost impressionistic hush, like on ‘Whatever You Want’ where the artist conjures up a scene of an Airbnb deathbed. Quality Australian guitar-pop will inevitably draw comparisons to The Go-Betweens, an appropriate comparison given Snowy’s devotion to songcraft and evocation of sun‑kissed landscapes. The wry swagger of ‘Bitter Pill’ examines the at-times futile self‑help notions of staying hydrated and hitting 10,000 steps – “I kicked the bucket. It was full of shit, enough to cover my body in”. Few lines resonate more than those in the reflective calm of ‘Call It a Day’ and its refrain of “I miss the small things, I miss the little wins”. LACHLAN KANONIUK
“I feel like 2014 Lorde would’ve hated 2021 Lorde,” says a viral meme about the Kiwi singer’s marked shift in Solar Power. It’s not wrong: 2014 Lorde wore black lipstick and mocked fame’s excesses; 2021 Lorde sings about celebrity compadres while sipping cherry-topped concoctions beachside. But who wants to be friends with their teen self anyway? Jaded by the spotlight and born of an offline stint, Solar Power is as much Lorde’s tropical retreat as an elegy to a career she’s grown uninterested in maintaining. On the exuberant, cathartic opener ‘The Path’, she sloughs off any vision of herself as a saviour, while on ‘California’ she bids farewell to LA for the simple familiarity of her native New Zealand. Sometimes, she flies too close to the sun, or at least to her early 2000s forebears – Natasha Bedingfield, Natalie Imbruglia – to whom she owes her breezy guitars and shiny percussion. Still, as they say, a change is as good as a holiday, and Solar Power is the only one we’re getting anytime soon. MICHAEL SUN
Book Reviews
Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor @melissajfulton
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THE LAST GUESTS JP POMARE
APPLES NEVER FALL LIANE MORIARTY
Imagine an Airbnb, your home away from home, in beautiful New Zealand. But unbeknown to you, this particular rental is not the cosy holiday option it first appears, for inside is a suite of hidden cameras, recording and broadcasting your every move to an online network of voyeurs. Paramedic Lina and her exSAS soldier husband Cain are looking for an easy earner to offset the financial strains of starting a family. But when they decide to renovate Lina’s family home and put it on the market as a casual rental, dark and sinister shadows begin to stalk the couple, and to monitor first their lives, and then the lives of a succession of their guests. With death and deceit in equal measure, critically acclaimed Melbourne-based author JP Pomare has delivered in spades with this chilling fourth novel, taking readers on a rollercoaster ride through a hightech and all-too-believable 21st century nightmare that will have you checking every light fitting and every air vent the next time you take a holiday, just in case. CRAIG BUCHANAN
The ninth novel by bestselling Australian author Liane Moriarty centres on a nice, suburban Sydney family: recently retired successful tennis coaches Joy and Stan Delaney, and their four adult children. The equilibrium of the family is tipped when a strange young woman moves into the emptied nest. As they struggle to deal with Joy’s uncharacteristic disappearance, the ugliness, betrayal, hurt and resentment lurking behind the shiny tennis trophies and family photos emerges, forcing everyone to face up to just what or where they never quite got to. Moriarty has sold 20 million books worldwide and it’s easy to see what all the fuss is about: she seamlessly builds scenes and characters with deftly wielded sensory details, while weaving intrigue by dropping carefully placed clues through various key players and a cast of random extras. Ultimately Apples is a bit too long and overworked, and the caricatured unlikability of everyone can grate, but if you’re a fan already, this won’t disappoint.
THE FIRST TIME I THOUGHT I WAS DYING SARAH WALKER
Sarah Walker brings her photographer’s eye and artist’s insight to this debut collection of essays exploring the manifestation of unruly bodies in society. Her clean conversational prose travels easily across feminist theory, arts practice, contemporary commentary and personal experience as Walker attempts to understand the questions that have long haunted her – “the sticky, human questions. The interpersonal questions. The ones that couldn’t be answered with neat line drawings and annotated arrows. The ones about how two humans could possibly navigate such a strange messy encounter – about how two humans could navigate anything at all, in fact.” Walker brings this messy, relatable humanity to every essay in the collection, whether she’s writing about body image through the photographic lens, or the early heady days of first love and lust. Walker makes a case for valuing the “enormous ecosystem of ourselves” through fierce curiosity, occasional disgust and complex, unifying fascination. BEC KAVANAGH
JANE LEONARD
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ONLINE ASSEMBLY: NATASHA BROWN
03 SEP 2021
t’s devastating that the Melbourne Writers Festival has had to cancel its live events for the second year in a row, but the news isn’t all bad. The festival is bringing forward its digital offering and extending its streaming events from 3-15 September, so that readers right across the world can bask in the bibliophilic glory of Melbourne’s UNESCO City of Literature status, all while enjoying the COVID-safe comfort of their own couches. Better still, all events are available on a “pay what you can” model, so anyone needing the comfort of some good book chat can access it. There’s also the option to purchase a digital pass, for those festival supporters who are willing and able. I’ll be tuning into Sigrid Nunez chatting about her expansive and genre‑defying What You Are Going Through (2020) – a novel about friendship in times of crisis that brought me immense comfort. I’m also keen to hear exciting newcomer Natasha Brown discussing her debut novella Assembly (2021), a blistering assessment of race, privilege and class in modern Britain, and to take in the cool and stylish intellect of Rachel Cusk, discussing this year’s Second Place. For those craving something local, Melbourne wordsmiths Tony Birch, Sophie Cunningham and Jennifer Down will star in the Writers on Film series – author‑narrated tours of the neighbourhoods and sites that have informed their books and writing – directed by Will Huxley. MF
Public Service Announcement
by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus
Recently, I awoke in pain for no reason. After a visit to a magician (she called herself a physio) I was told I needed to “take it easy”. I have been told this several times in my life and never have I been delighted. Never have I thought Hoorah! A chance to relax and look after myself. This time was no exception. But even though writing is my actual job, I’m apparently not in charge of writing my own life, so I just had to do what she said. This involved reading a funny book in the bath, going for some walks, and watching period dramas where people with high collars looked aghast as other people entered drawing rooms. Sometimes life just happens to you. I was in a library once with a small baby I know. There was another person there, also with a small baby. We looked at each other with a deep weariness. Neither of us felt like chatting. We both had more than enough friends we already felt guilty about never spending enough time seeing. We had a quick chat though, and then guess what? She was hilarious and amazing and we became firm friends. I wasn’t in charge of writing that one. Sometimes life shows you a leaf falling from a really high tree branch. Nobody else is watching, but your mind is prioritising this information, even if only for a few seconds. You’re experiencing one of nature’s exclusive screenings. Exclusive! This Leaf!
Occasionally life gives you one of those bits that contains nothing. If life really were a narrative, these bits would be edited out. It’s just you, lying on a couch staring at the way the light falls across the hallway and thinking I should get up. It’s you staring into the flames of a fire some time in the past, at a location you can’t recall. It’s you watching YouTube videos of dogs being reunited with their owners. It’s you halfway between slumber and wakefulness – the lazy, comfortable feeling of sleep still cushioning you from reality. Sometimes life gives you a little bit that could become a big bit, but doesn’t. An almost accident. A friendship that wasn’t supposed to happen or was supposed to happen but didn’t work out. Bits that dribble away or become less relevant as we move on. Little drafts of subplots all over the place that could become part of whatever the main plot turns out to be. Antagonists, bad guys, good guys, leads, extras – all the characters in your life are protagonists in their own. Except they’re not really. They have those bits where they’re lying on the couch. They have scenes where they eat a piece of toast and a few olives for dinner because they can’t be bothered. They wonder occasionally who’s in charge here. Sometimes they pause on those Instagram posts and think Maybe I should try and take control of my life by following this simple 17-step plan to wellness. It’s kind of liberating to think that there’s no set plan, or that if there is you’re not entirely in control of it. To let life happen, to some extent. To watch the leaf backflip to the ground. To stare into the fire. To understand that something didn’t work out the way you thought it might. You never know what random series of events might send you in another direction. A friendship in a library. A particularly good period drama. Public Service Announcement: sometimes it just isn’t up to you, so you might as well enjoy the view.
Lorin Clarke is a Melbourne-based writer. The second season of her radio series, The Fitzroy Diaries, is on ABC Radio National and the ABC Listen app now.
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ometimes, as a human, but especially as a human who is a writer, it’s easy to overestimate the extent to which life is a narrative. Life has everything you need for a good story. A clear beginning, a middle in which our protagonist struggles with a challenge or two, and an ending. Humanity has gone over and over the question of authorship – who’s in charge here? – through various methodologies such as religion, philosophy and the TV show The Good Place. There’s also the question of the extent to which you, personally, are the author – or at the very least, the coauthor – of your life. There are Instagram accounts that seem to suggest that not only are you the author, you’re also one of those authors whose name is bigger than the book title. Public Service Announcement: nobody knows who’s in charge. Nobody even has a script. Sometimes life just happens to you.
03 SEP 2021
All the World’s a Page
THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU
Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas
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PHOTOS FOOD PHOTO BY XXX BY LUCY TWEED, PORTRAIT BY SIMON DAVIDSON
Tastes Like Home Lucy Tweed
My Brother from Another Mother’s Thighs ½ cup sweet chilli sauce 3 tablespoons soy sauce 2 tablespoons sesame oil 1kg chicken thigh fillets, excess fat removed 2 limes, halved 1 bunch basil, leaves picked 1 bunch coriander, leaves picked
Optional ingredients Beer Wraps A laughter-filled family reunion
Method Combine the chilli sauce, soy and sesame oil in a large bowl. Add the chicken and turn to coat, then leave to marinate for 30 minutes. Heat a large chargrill pan over high heat, or the grill plate on a barbecue. Add the chicken and grill for 5 minutes on each side until cooked through with excellent char lines. During the last 5 minutes or so, add the lime halves, cut-side down, and let them soften and heat through. Roughly chop the herbs on a bread board. Arrange the chicken on the herbs and allow to rest briefly, heating and slightly wilting the herbs. Carve the chicken into fat slices and serve with the charred limes.
SHARE
TIP Take my advice and don’t cook this on your own barbecue. Wait till you book an Airbnb and sear the candy marinade onto that one instead.
PLAN TO RECREATE THIS DISH AT HOME? TAG US WITH YOUR BBQ CHOOK! @BIGISSUEAUSTRALIA #TASTESLIKEHOME
Lucy says…
I
have a big family. There are steps, halves, de factos and in-laws all masquerading (happily) as immediates. It’s what happens when hippy-ish parents separate but consciously uncouple (and remarry/re-couple) before Gwyneth and Chris made it a thing. Not everyone experiences a family breakdown positively but somehow, we managed, and I feel lucky to have all the extensions I do. It’s hard to explain the intricacies sometimes, but for us, it just means more people on your side. My brother is from another mother. These are his thighs. Not hers. And actually they’re chickens’ thighs, but his recipe. He made this when we had a weekend away up north at a sleepy little surf town and reconnected with an arm of our family that has the wit and energy to make you cry with laughter. You know, the laughter that comes over you and tears flood down your face. It was also a special trip for my late dad, who reconnected with his now passed sister after many years apart. They just grinned ridiculously at each other and held hands so tight their knuckles went white. It was pretty emotional and lovely. Sometime in the afternoon between beers, naked toddler sprinkler dashing and snoozes, the grill was fired up. Sticky marinated thighs are grilled until lovely and charry (it’s almost advisable to do this level of sticky grilling on a holiday barbecue instead of your own), then sliced on a board of fresh herbs and given a huge squeeze of caramelised lime over the top. Great with rice, in a wrap or plucked straight from the leftovers plate in the fridge. It’s one of those recipes you can make for four people or 40, early or late, for now or tomorrow. Or just because it’s a summer holiday – and that means the barbecue must go on. EVERY NIGHT OF THE WEEK BY LUCY TWEED IS OUT NOW.
03 SEP 2021
Serves 4
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Ingredients
Puzzles
ANSWERS PAGE 45.
By Lingo! by Lee Murray leemurray.id.au PRESSER
CLUES 5 letters Bellow Splutter Squeeze Sweet substance Zeal 6 letters Argentinian cowboy Looked for Person penning a book Song’s repeated refrain Stew 7 letters Extinct bovine animal Mountain lions 8 letters Fall asleep suddenly (2 words)
S
A
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Sudoku
Each column, row and 3 x 3 box must contain all numbers 1 to 9.
R U C H O G
by websudoku.com
2 3
8
4
7 5
8 6 2 6 4 5 8
7 1
2 1 7 1
8 6
6 4 3
2
8
Puzzle by websudoku.com
Solutions CROSSWORD PAGE 45 ACROSS 9 Mindset 10 Emerald 11 Rehired 12 Reverie
13 Limestone 15 Nosed 16 Archaic 19 Sternum 20 Panic 21 Spartacus 25 Spectra 26 Soupçon 28 Turnout 29 Slender
DOWN 1 Amoral 2 Anthem 3 Tsar 4 Studio 5 Learners 6 Heaven-sent 7 Harrison 8 Addendum 14 Staycation 16 Apposite 17 Canberra 18 Casualty 22 Assist 23 Cicada 24 Sundry 27 Uber
20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9 1 Penguin 2 Maggots 3 Bran Nue Dae , The Sapphires 4 Toowoomba 5 Alpha, beta, gamma, delta 6 A racing greyhound 7 2004 8 The Bold and the Beautiful 9 Rugby league and rugby union 10 David Niven 11 The Australian box jellyfish 12 Abbie Chatfield 13 Swaziland 14 Zero 15 Q 16 Seinfeld 17 John Paul Young 18 True 19 Brian Henderson 20 c) 100,000
03 SEP 2021
Using all nine letters provided, can you answer these clues? Every answer must include the central letter. Plus, which word uses all nine letters?
by puzzler.com
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Word Builder
Many of us tune in regularly to hear our leaders give us the latest updates, but this kind of presser hasn’t actually been around all that long. The noun press – “a device that presses something” – has been around since the 1300s, eventually including the printing press after its invention in 1440. By the 1600s, press had also come to include the physical newspapers produced by the printing press – and then, by the mid‑1800s, the journalists who discovered and reported the news. Fast forward to the present day, and public figures often speak to these journalists in a press conference Because Australians love a good bit of word‑shortening, it was only a matter of time before we renamed it a presser.
by Chris Black
Quick Clues
THE ANSWERS FOR THE CRYPTIC AND QUICK CLUES ARE THE SAME. ANSWERS PAGE 43.
2
3
4
5
6
9
10
11
12
13
16
14
17
20
7
8
15
18
21
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DOWN
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25
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23
27
Cryptic Clues DOWN
9 Babysits alien with attitude (7) 10 I lost remedial massage stone? (7) 11 Engaged again, heir spilled wine outside (7) 12 Priest has great lake daydream (7) 13 Slime damaged sound building material (9) 15 Pried overseas in Flanders (5) 16 Old-fashioned, cunning agents making a
1 Morning exam without standards (6) 2 Articles mock opening song (6) 3 Barbra Streisand entertained revolutionary
comeback (7)
24
1 Ethically indifferent (6) 2 Rousing song (6) 3 Emperor (4) 4 Kind of apartment (6) 5 Students (8) 6 Opportune (6-4) 7 US President (8) 8 Appendix (8) 14 Local holiday (10) 16 Suitable (8) 17 Australian city (8) 18 Fatality (8) 22 Aid (6) 23 Insect (6) 24 Several (6) 27 Tech company (4)
Solutions
ACROSS
19 Letters from Münster found in chest? (7) 20 Criticise one conservative state (5) 21 Film small role with a first class American (9) 25 Sweeps dirty carpets (7) 26 Trace liquid food scam (7) 28 First Test: Ashes trophy revealed to crowd (7) 29 Slim third volume penned by Mailer (7)
ACROSS
9 Way of thinking (7) 10 Gemstone (7) 11 Employed once more (7) 12 Daydream (7) 13 Rock (9) 15 Snooped (5) 16 Old-fashioned (7) 19 Breastbone (7) 20 Alarm (5) 21 Theatrical epic (9) 25 Bands of colours (7) 26 Small quantity (7) 28 Attendance (7) 29 Slight (7)
leader (4)
4 American quit academic office (6) 5 Apprentices to big money-makers (8) 6 Haven’t seen movement? Lucky (6-4) 7 President Ford? (8) 8 Commercial study ultimately recommended
grugru palm supplement (8)
14 At any cost, I arranged home visit? (10) 16 Pope is at fashion fitting (8) 17 Roughly developed barren capital (8) 18 Relaxed treatment usually ends in loss (8) 22 Perhaps McCartney cut intro to Help! (6) 23 CIA ensnared rogue with bug (6) 24 Several tomatoes prepared this way? (6) 27 Company kept by Flaubert (4)
SUDOKU PAGE 43
5 1 2 3 4 7 8 9 6
3 8 9 6 1 5 2 7 4
4 6 7 2 8 9 5 1 3
1 2 8 5 3 4 7 6 9
9 3 6 8 7 2 1 4 5
7 5 4 9 6 1 3 2 8
8 7 1 4 5 6 9 3 2
6 9 5 7 2 3 4 8 1
2 4 3 1 9 8 6 5 7
Puzzle by websudoku.com
WORD BUILDER PAGE 43 5 Shout Cough Crush Sugar Gusto 6 Gaucho Sought Author Chorus Ragout 7 Aurochs Cougars 8 Crash out 9 Roughcast
03 SEP 2021
1
45
Crossword
Click 1958
Sir David Attenborough and…?
words by Michael Epis photo by Getty
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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU
S
ir David Attenborough has been around since Methuselah was a child. Well, at least since Prince Charles and Princess Anne were children. Here he is with them on the set of Zoo Quest in 1958, the BBC program that put him front and square of the British public. They are inspecting a cockatoo, hunted down in Papua New Guinea and brought back to London, where it would end up in the capital’s zoo, after first being introduced to the populace on the program. Zoos don’t do that anymore – but we’re not going to cancel Sir David, are we? Sir David was actually born in the same year as the children’s mother – 1926, both in London, just two weeks apart (he being the younger). In 2017 the two nonagenarians shared 90 minutes, fittingly, in Buckingham Palace’s garden for a documentary, The Queen’s Green Planet. In it, a helicopter flies overhead. The Queen pauses. “Sounds like President Trump,” she says with a knowing twinkle. Three years later Sir David was knighted. That, however, was not the first time he was knighted, which
was in 1985. It does not mean you have to call him “Sir Sir David Attenborough”, which would be too Pythonesque. On that point, Sir David was the head of programming at the BBC in the late 1960s – it was he who gave the go-ahead for a new TV comedy series, Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Yet the knighthoods are not the highest honour the Queen has awarded Sir David. That would be his Order of Merit, awarded in 2005, held by no more than 24 people at any given time. Other recipients include Prince Philip and Prince Charles (seems a bit in-house) and John Howard (who I’m sure was chuffed). Perhaps the most serious interaction between Sir David and the royals was in 1969. He was opposed to the intimate portrait that was the documentary Royal Family. “You’re killing the monarchy, you know, with this film,” he wrote to his boss. “The whole institution depends on mystique and the tribal chief in his hut. If any member of the tribe ever sees inside the hut, then the whole system of the tribal chiefdom is damaged and the tribe eventually disintegrates.” The doco was aired – and removed from public viewing a few years later.
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18 JUNE 2020