The Big Issue Australia #646 – The Wiggles by The Big Issue Australia

Ed.

xx.

646 01 OCT 2021

28.

40.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND and STEPHANIE ALEXANDER

S E L G G I W IT’S A

WORLD

G,, NG O ON S S F F O O S S R R A A E E Y Y 0 330 S VIIEES IIV VV K K S S & & E E C C N N A A D D

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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

646

28 SMALL SCREENS

Velvet Love They’re the outcast arthouse band beloved by musos, and they’re finally getting the movie they deserve – filmmaker Todd Haynes on his new doco The Velvet Underground.

30 MUSIC

Fields of Glory Twenty-odd years since her debut performance singing Grease love songs as a toddler, indie rocker Ruby Fields has released her long-awaited debut Been Doin It for a Bit.

12.

It’s a Wiggly World

by Aimee Knight

TASTES LIKE HOME

Hot potato, hot potato: The Wiggles are 30! To celebrate three decades of the Wiggleverse, we talk to founding member Anthony Field AM and new recruit Evie Ferris – two Blue Wiggles – about good fun, finger guns and colour blocking. cover and contents photos supplied via The Wiggles

THE REGULARS

04 Ed’s Letter & Your Say 05 Meet Your Vendor 06 Streetsheet 08 Hearsay & 20 Questions 11 My Word 22 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

Pizza Stephanie Alexander reckons a gathering fuelled by pizza is a fun one indeed – just crank the oven, knead the dough and get those toppings ready!

Ed’s Letter

by Amy Hetherington Editor @amyhetherington

Wheels of Fortune

LETTER OF THE FORTNIGHT

here is something very special about your first car. Mine was called Victor – not an especially creative moniker since he was a 1964 Vauxhall Super Victor. He was that light grey-blue of 60s cars, with red leather bench seats, a three-gear column shift, and a high-beam button on the floor. He was retro even in 1995, and I loved him – almost to death. I’d been eyeing Victor as he sat in a Melbourne car yard, a prize among more modern cars, slapped with a $4000 price tag. I’d saved a ton working as a check-out chick through high school. And, then, during O-Week at uni, I ridiculously won $2000 as a home-viewer on Wheel of Fortune. Victor was mine. It was a turbulent relationship – he broke down regularly, notably in the middle of Chapel Street when I was still in my PJs. But he

still managed our big move to northern NSW, back to Melbourne, and then Sydney, where he gave his final shudder. I packed him off to a retired Vauxhall mechanic, who gave Victor new life. This edition will likely take you on a trip down your memory lane, too. Old cars and their owners, from Fremantle to Cottesloe, are the stars of photographer Ben Reynolds’ Big Picture feature. And we catch up with the famous drivers of one modified, bright-red 2008 Volkswagen New Beetle Cabriolet, which you might know better as toot, toot, chugga chugga, the Big Red Car! Yes, it’s The Wiggles, who are celebrating 30 years since they released their first album and changed kids music for the better. And they’re also welcoming four new skivvied band members and one very cute non‑binary unicorn.

IT’S BIG, BIG, BIG!

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

Your Say

Re: Karen W, ‘Your Say’ Ed#645; I also purchase my Big Issue from John in Sandgate, Brisbane. Like Karen, I also leave my magazine, after it reading front to back, in random places, asking others to read and pass along. I think a great Big Issue story would be to follow the trail of one of these “left for others to read” magazines and find out how many people the magazine passes through and, more importantly, how many choose to then buy The Big Issue themselves. SIMON MARTIN DEAGON I QLD

I don’t want to be indelicate, but I took our copy of Ed#642 to the bathroom, opened to page 43 and read Andrew Weldon’s cartoon and simply cacked (in the laughing sense) myself silly. Now, I think it is self‑evident that he is simply one of the best cartoonists working today, but this was precisely the break with the reality of lockdown I needed. Weldon is the funniest, most brilliant cartoonist in the universe… Thank you for helping to keep us sane, amused and connected in an often crazy, stultifying, atomised world. ROBERT JACK REID I ACT

• 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

Simon wins a copy of Stephanie Alexander’s new cookbook Home. You can test her recipe for pizzas 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

XXX

SELLS THE BIG ISSUE ON KINTORE AVE AND OUTSIDE HUNGRY JACK’S ON RUNDLE ST, ADELAIDE

01 OCT 2021

interview by Erica Rees photo by Nat Rogers

PROUD UNIFORM PARTNER OF THE BIG ISSUE VENDORS.

Elizabeth

School was okay. I enjoyed the friendships. I didn’t like kids teasing me. I wasn’t well-liked because of Dad and Mum. Dad drank a lot. It was a small town. When Mum and Dad split up, I went to Mount Gambier with Mum. Dad was living at Meadows, but we didn’t want to go to Dad’s. He was a bit different. It was hard but Mum looked after us. I was 18 when Mum died. I saw her and I said, “You’re going to die aren’t you?” And Mum said, “No I’m not. Don’t be silly.” But I knew it, I knew she was going to die. Mum died from a heart attack out on the front verandah. It took six months to sink in. I can remember when she used to send me down to the shop for Choo-Choo Bars, black cats and aniseed balls. She was a liquorice fan. When I die, I’m going to be cremated and I want my ashes to be put into Mum’s grave. My sister Eileen doesn’t like this idea – she was the responsible one, the oldest, she got the brunt of it all. She’s a good girl. I love her. There are eight of us. I am probably closest with Teresa; she is the youngest. She is very easygoing. And I get along well with David. I got along with all of them. I used to waitress in a guest house at Port Elliot; that was when I was 18. The work was good. We’d get tips under the dinner plates when the diners had finished. I think this is why I like selling The Big Issue, because I’m getting out of my unit and socialising. I was 19 or 20 when I got married. We were married for 25 years. I know what went wrong with my marriage but now I am looking ahead. I’m a great‑nanna now. My daughter Janet encouraged me to sell The Big Issue. I signed up last year. People who come past my pitch are very friendly and encouraging. One lady gave me a hat, a scarf and two pairs of gloves. And one man loved my smile. I always say, “Good morning, good morning.” When we had chickens on the magazine, I made lots of clucking noises. That brought in lots of sales. I bought myself an old record player with the money I’ve saved from working at The Big Issue. I like country-and-western music. I also love Kamahl – he has a lovely clear voice. I bought some of his records from the second-hand store. I am so fortunate to have the things that I want. I would like to go on a holiday, but I am scared to on my own. I would like to go to the Holy Land. Selling The Big Issue has given me something to do. I especially look forward to the pocket money. I treat myself to a nice dinner nearly every week. I’m saving for a nice new handbag and a pair of pants that has pockets in the legs. I have always wanted them. I will work for The Big Issue as long as I can. I would really like to go away. Perhaps for my 80th birthday – I am 73 now, so in seven years – I can go up in a hot air balloon and take the family up.

Streetsheet

Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends

A Busy Life First we live, busy life Catching the bus to the city, I go to the Market Lots of people happy, enjoying yummy food, music, The Big Issue magazine Home next day I go on train rides, Seaford, Tea Tree Plaza, cafes, The Rundle Mall. So many people, music, traffic, fire engines, The Big Issue magazine Then bus home again I have a week home; rest, get things done At home. Clean house Then I look forward to going back

VENDOR SPOTLIGHT

DAVID L

What a Shot!

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very day I hear on the news that this Delta virus is out of control. Travelling interstate can be expensive and difficult now, and internationally is even harder and more expensive. Being in lockdown, having no choice but to stay at home, unable to work with bills needing to be paid, not seeing friends or family, not going to restaurants or shopping – what a catastrophe. It’s a terrible and sad situation, but safety comes first. My mum is a COVID nurse. She works at the Royal Perth Hospital and the airport – at times doing 12-hour shifts. Mum helped me get my Pfizer appointment. I waited for five minutes, and then had the jab. It didn’t hurt at all. I sat in the waiting room for

15 minutes afterwards and felt a bit light‑headed, which is quite normal. I didn’t get a sore arm afterwards and drank lots of water as advised. Three or four weeks later I got my second jab, so now I’m fully vaccinated. I feel safe and comfortable going out on the streets selling The Big Issue and keeping my customers safe. My brother lives in the UK, and both he and his 12-year-old son caught the virus. Luckily, they both made it through with mild symptoms. I strongly recommend people go get their vaccine to stop the spread of the virus, to open up the state and international borders, so we can all get back to work, see our friends and family, and see people happy living their normal life. DAVID L MYER BRIDGE I PERTH

To The Big Issue, then I get word to Stay home for another week lockdown 7 days. The Big Issue magazine 1. Gives me a place to go, feel part of a team. 2. I get to make people happy by even saying hello, helps people help themselves. 3. No stress, helps homeless off the street. 4. Reason to get out of bed. Lockdown takes that away. The Big Issue gives me hope. DEBBIE H ZUMA’S (CENTRAL MARKETS) & HINDMARSH SQ I ADELAIDE

Be Nice Despite COVID’s effects, after a break of some 20 months I sprang back into sales of The Big Issue at the start of spring. I think EE Cummings’ most famous poem ‘In Just’ talks about the same thing. This poem mentions a boy named Eddie, and it makes me remember a vendor, from my early days with The Big Issue, who has since passed away. He was one of the nicest companions and always spoke well, with marvellous eyes and a beautiful smile. If I was busking (when not selling mags) he would often put a donation in my hat as I tootled away on my recorder. But I have a much more serious message to my fellow vendors: be nice. Respect the public space and express your true and giddy self in the best light. And look at other street performers for shining examples of good conduct: in Brisbane, most of you will be aware of the balloon man

and everyone seems to know what a decent and funny individual he is. If only we could be as nice and chatty to the impressionable crowds as him. And, of course, if only we could make balloon animals grow out of thin air. MARC L SPRING HILL I BRISBANE

On the Money Money is good for buying food and clothes and paying the bills, but money has a downfall on your mind and your health. If you are not careful with your money it will control you. That is why I do not worship my money anymore. STEVE J BURNSIDE, WALKERVILLE, CASTLE PLAZA, ZUMA’S & KURRALTA PARK | ADELAIDE

Hip Hip Hooray! I want to thank the staff for the 25th birthday party and for the two-for-one magazine deal for vendors. The extra money

meant I could go to the movies. I hope everything is going well for everybody in other states. TED J AVID READER , WEST END MARKETS & TOOWONG I BRISBANE

Adrian’s Funnies Q: Which famous film star started the saying “I’ll eat my hat?” A: Carmen Miranda ADRIAN H SURRY HILLS | SYDNEY

Global Citizens In the 18 years that I have been selling the magazine, I have met a lot of great vendors. Don is a vendor and a great mate – we have known each other for a long time. One of the things I love is the diverse backgrounds of all the vendors. When you’re a Big Issue vendor you meet vendors that were born all over the world – you don’t even need to travel! BILL FREMANTLE | WA

Dancing Meme Seeing myself as a cartoon in a Big Issue ad made me very happy. It didn’t feel strange; I like it a lot. I chose to be illustrated as loving music because music makes me happy – music motivates me to work hard. What kind of music? I like any style, especially hip-hop, disco, Christmas songs…even love songs! Any kind of music. Music is my life. In fact, before, I didn’t know how to speak English. But listening to music helped me learn. Now I even have a TikTok account! There, you can see me dancing and singing, too.

TH ... JE FF RE Y WIY! JE FF RE

ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.

01 OCT 2021

JEFFREY ST KILDA I MELBOURNE

Hearsay

Andrew Weldon Cartoonist

“ Just don’t Meatloaf it!

Birds of Tokyo frontman Ian Kenny on the advice he received from mates ahead of the band headlining the AFL grand final entertainment. THE MERCURY I AU

“Poor guy was just sitting in there shivering. I’m not sure that kangaroos can express a want and a need, but he just looked like he wanted help. He just looked so sad.” Nic Crowther was out for an early jog in Canberra when he ended up stripping off his pants and jumping into Lake Burley Griffin to help save a kangaroo stuck in the shallows. ABC I AU

“In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to, in turn, feel the need to be constantly visible, for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success, do not be afraid to disappear, from it, from us, for a while, and see what comes to you in the silence.” Actor Michaela Coel in her stirring acceptance speech on winning the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for her series I May Destroy You. CNBC I US

“Yeah, girls wanna have fun. But we also want to have funds. Equal pay. Control over our bodies. You know, fundamental rights.” When the working day is done, oh girls just wanna have fun...damental human rights: pop star Cyndi Lauper calls for action at the MTV VMAs. NEW YORK POST I US

“It is like a big spool. They just unwrapped the roll and went around the base of the tree.” Mark Garrett, a spokesman for a fire incident team in California, on a unique way of saving ancient sequoia trees from bushfire – wrapping them at the base in fire‑resistant foil blankets.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES I US

“It’s not something to tick off the bucket list, like a bungee jump or a cruise.” Once upon a time, fairytale princesses kissed frogs, nowadays folks like Rak Razam, co-organiser of the World Bufo Alvarius Conference, spruik the hallucinogenic power of smoking toad venom (dubbed “speed-toading”) to cure the ills of the modern world.

“Yes, you sneeze and pee ourselves or jump on the trampoline and it happens again, but ultimately, it’s a normal thing and it’s part of the gift of giving life and I feel incredibly privileged that my body does show and wear the scars of motherhood, because sometimes I need that reminder.” Olympian-turned-doctor Jana Pittman on the realities of completing yet another gruelling challenge on TV’s SAS Australia just six months after giving birth.

“I’m great at my job, but I’m not sure I’m the man for the job. I’m a highly sensitive person. I’m not built for pop star life. To have a public-facing existence is something I find really intense and is something I’m not good at. That natural charisma is not what I have. I have the brain in the jar.” Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor – better known as Lorde – on not being good at being a pop star. She doesn’t want to live that fantasy.

“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls… Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.” Facebook’s own secret internal research on Instagram – leaked to the press – that suggests its app is harmful for a large number of teenagers.

DAILY TELEGRAPH I AU

VOGUE I US

THE GUARDIAN I UK

VICE I US

20 Questions by Rachael Wallace

01 Roughly how many bananas are

consumed globally every year? a) 500 million, b) 900 million, c) 100 billion, or d) 250 billion 02 Who replaced Lecy Goranson as the

character of Becky Conner in TV’s Roseanne? 03 Who is the Roman goddess of

wisdom? 04 What is the name of Prince Harry

and Meghan Markle’s charitable foundation? 05 Which two teams were involved in

the 2010 AFL Grand Final replay? 06 In which city is The Doors’ lead

singer Jim Morrison buried? 07 Where would you find the only

McDonald’s outlet in Cuba? 08 Henry VIII introduced which tax in

England in 1535?

JAPAN TODAY I JN

“The pandemic was the first opportunity I had to be able to have a moment to myself to say, ‘This is something that I’m really passionate about and I think I can do a lot of good.’ I decided to just take the leap. A lot of people don’t realise not only how hard it is to become a funeral director – that work is just as hard as bartending.” New York bartender Danielle Hengge on her decision to stop mixing cocktails and go to mortician school. From nightlife to the afterlife. NEW YORK MAGAZINE I US

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

launched in Australia 1 March, 1975? 10 Which animal can move by jet

propulsion? 11 Who immediately preceded Sir

Robert Menzies as Australian prime minister? 12 Which five tennis titles did Dylan

Alcott win to claim the recent Golden Slam? 13 By what name is Creutzfeldt-Jakob

disease better known? 14 What do writer Aldous Huxley,

US President John F Kennedy and author CS Lewis have in common? 15 “All right, Mr DeMille, I’m ready for

my close-up,” was a line uttered by Gloria Swanson in which film? 16 Who wrote Darryl Braithwaite’s hit

song ‘The Horses’? 17 Which TV show broke the record

for most Emmy losses in a season at this year’s awards? 18 What art movement did Yoko Ono

help make famous in the 1960s? 19 Which Australian wellness guru

fraudulently claimed they had been cured of multiple cancers? 20 Which was the last state or territory

in Australia to grant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the right to vote in state elections? ANSWERS ON PAGE 43

01 OCT 2021

THE NEW YORK TIMES I US

“By improving this technology, it will be possible to not only reproduce complex meat structures, such as the beautiful sashi [or marbling] of Wagyu beef, but to also make subtle adjustments to the fat and muscle components.” Michiya Matsusaki, from Osaka University, on successfully 3D printing a piece of steak, with the aim of developing lab-grown meats. A side of 3D fries with that, too, thanks.

09 What technological innovation

“We don’t comment on Listening to Prep specific incidents remote learning: or officers. We Teacher: “Matilda have protocols in what did you ask place for when sorry?” individuals report possible Matilda: “Um, Um… anomalous health Why is everything incidents that in our world back to include receiving front?” appropriate Overheard by Lorin of Fitzroy, medical Vic. treatment. We will keep doing everything we can to protect our officers.” A CIA spokesperson on another suspected case of Havana Syndrome among its intelligence ranks. Incidents of Havana Syndrome began in late 2016 at the American Embassy in Cuba, when diplomats and CIA officers reported hearing strange sounds or a sensation of heat and then feeling headaches, nausea and vertigo – thought to be a byproduct of surveillance technology. EAR2GROUND

My Word

by Sara El Sayed @sarakelsayed

t is 2007, I am 12 years old, and am getting ready for my primary school band end-of-year concert. I’m fresh out of the shower, and even fresher off the scales of the Wii, which have just told me that I am obese. I slip on my long-sleeved white shirt, my silky black vest with red music notes printed on it, and slick back my hair. My mother notices something on my scalp. “You’ve got white…” she says, pointing to her head. I swat at my own. “No,” she says. “Lower.” I miss it again. She tries to pick it out. Dandruff. She asks me if I washed my hair properly, and I insist that I did. Nana appears with her camera, telling me to smile. I stuff my hands in my pockets, with an attitude of resistance, and try my best. In Nana’s room there are entire shelves filled with albums, all filled with pictures, not unlike this one, that Nana has taken and printed. Using a film camera means every image is treasured. There is mystery and anticipation that surrounds these photographs as we wait days for them to be developed. Who knows what they will look like? But, whatever the outcome, Nana will not waste a print. Nana’s compulsion to capture every single moment, no matter how banal, is often met with groans and sighs. But her response is always the same: “I have to keep photos. You’ll thank me when I’m dead.” Nana tells me all about the albums she lost when she left her husband in 1976. Financial abuse. My mother would’ve been around the same age I was in that band photo when Nana decided to pack up and leave. The record of her daughter’s childhood, erased. She doesn’t regret leaving, she says. She just wishes she had taken the albums with her. Years pass and Nana graduates from a film camera to an iPad. This is a game changer, because the results are instant. She can see the image straightaway, and so her standards rise. They have to be perfect. Perfect gets printed. If they are not, they are instantly deleted. This does not mean we have fewer photos in the albums. No, this just means it now takes three working days to get the right shot before we are released from our poses. It is 2020 and my mother organises a trip to Australia Zoo, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. It is the first family outing Aaron and I have been on since we got

engaged. The zoo covers a lot of ground, so we hire Nana a wheelchair. Her iPad balances on her fingertips, a five-inch crack slashing across its screen. “Wait. Stop,” she says every 10 metres, hoisting herself out of the chair. She finds an unwitting patron to take a photo of us as we pose in front of the lemurs, who are meditating in the sun. Once the photo is taken, Nana scans the screen, and expresses her disapproval to the stranger-photographer. “Terrible,” she says. “Sorry. Not you. Just me. I look terrible.” The stranger moves on before Nana complains about their shaky camera work. It’s hard to see the image clearly through the fracture, I say, but she is not convinced. “These people don’t know how to take nice photos,” she says. “I just want one nice photo.” I take a photo of her, then another, and she sits back down, semi-satisfied. Nana heads to Kmart the next day to get the images on her iPad printed. She buys another album while she’s there. I help her load the new pictures into the fresh plastic sleeves. As I hold them one by one in my hands, I feel a debt to my grandmother, for this wealth she has kept for us. I find myself flicking through all the pages, pulling albums off the shelves. I come to one of the oldest looking albums, filled with black-and-white photos of Nana in a wedding dress, and her ex-husband standing next to her. She looks beautiful. English lace, she says. That’s what her dress was made from. Very expensive. These are some of the very few images I’ve seen of my grandfather. He died a few years ago, and stopped speaking to my mother three decades before that. He didn’t leave anything behind, and Nana never got her albums back. Select all, delete. Aaron and I are having our “white” wedding next year, inshallah. I tell Nana we have hired a photographer, so she doesn’t have to worry about taking photos. She can enjoy herself, without the pressure. She tells me she has to bring her iPad. I tell her that the celebrant we booked recommended what they call an “unplugged” wedding. Nana laughs. She has to keep photos of her own, she says. And she doesn’t need to bring the plug. She will just bring the iPad.

Sara El Sayed has a Master of Fine Arts and works at Queensland University of Technology. Her first book, Muddy People, is out now.

Sara El Sayed has a photographic memory – thanks to her Nana.

01 OCT 2021

Picture This

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BLUE, YELLOW, RED, PURPLE: ANTHONY, EMMA, SIMON, LACHY

Y L G WIG

IT’S A

WORLD

The first generation of Wiggles fans are adults now – and 30 years on, their kids are dancing and playing in a more diverse and inclusive Wiggleverse. by Aimee Knight @siraimeeknight

01 OCT 2021

PHOTOS SUPPLIED BY THE WIGGLES

hen the Wiggles’ line-up changes, who sees red: children or parents? “Parents, a hundred per cent,” laughs Anthony Field AM, better known as the Blue Wiggle. “And politicians,” adds Evie Ferris, apprentice of sorts to the Wiggle elder, though already sporting the cheekiness needed to excel in kids’ entertainment. She’s alluding to Nationals Senator Matthew Canavan, whose potato recently got a little too hot upon learning that Australia’s leading preschool artistes had added four new, culturally diverse performers to their roster. “It was nice while it lasted,” he told The Australian. “But you go woke, you go broke.” His assertion is, at time of writing, yet to be verified (despite it rhyming). Meanwhile, the Wiggles’ estimated net worth holds steady at $50 million. “I’ve always wanted the Wiggles to be diverse,” says Field, 58, who co-founded the rainbow juggernaut back in 1991. He says the impetus to finally “go woke” – or, in transparent terms, update the group’s line-up to accurately reflect Australian society – came while taping The Wiggles’ World (2020) for ABC TV. Broadway star James Harkness, who plays a cafe owner on the show, observed to Field that while people of colour are frequent guests in the Wiggleverse, they don’t get to don the iconic blue, red, yellow and purple skivvies that are core to the stars’ fruitful brand. “He said,

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‘To me, as a Black man, that says, You can’t be part of the real club,’” Field recalls. “So I really wanted to do it right. I thought, When Evie, John, Kelly and Tsehay join, let’s give them Wiggle colours.” The new Wiggles debuted in September on Fruit Salad TV: a hypercolour web series “dedicated to celebrating and embracing all Australians”, released exclusively on the band’s YouTube channel. Both episodes were written by Field in consultation with Professor Michael McDaniel AO, the Pro‑Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Leadership and Engagement) at the University of Technology Sydney. “He was so brilliant at advising me,” Field says. “He told me that 10 per cent of people are going to absolutely love it, 10 per cent are going to really dislike it, then there’s all the people in the middle. “He said, ‘It’s a courageous decision, but if you don’t do it, you risk marginalising children who don’t see reflections of themselves up there on the screen.’” “It’s such a beautiful, important message,” says Ferris, a 24-year-old Taribelang and Djabugay woman born in Cairns, now living in Melbourne, with a day job at the Australian Ballet (she’s only the second First Nations woman to join the company). Since every Wiggle needs a shtick, blue pointe shoes are part of her costume. Though Ferris cites the Wiggles as her first concert as a kid, her path didn’t properly cross with Field’s until 2016, backstage at the Sydney Opera House. She was there dancing in the ballet; he, playing bagpipes for Barnesy. “Anthony needed someone to take a photo of him,” Ferris says. “I was that person.” The two got talking, formed a friendship, and started collaborating on bits and pieces, including the ‘We’re All Fruit Salad!’ music video released in March to commemorate the Wiggles’ 30th anniversary. “It could have been anyone in the green room to take that photo,” says Ferris. “I’m a big believer in the universe putting people together,” says Field, who hand-picked the new Wiggles – Evie (blue), Kelly Hamilton (yellow), John Pearce (purple) and Tsehay Hawkins (red) – based on his knowledge of their previous work, plus a bit of gut feeling for good measure. “John lives around the corner from me,” he says. “I kept running into him so many times, I thought, There has to be a reason for this.

“There was no audition,” says Field. “It was just basically, ‘Would you guys like to do this?’” But before any new recruits could climb aboard the big red car destined for stardom, the seasoned Wiggle – who’s long been honest about his experiences with chronic pain and depression, as exacerbated by life in the public eye – spoke plain. “The spotlight is going to be on you like never before,” he told the incoming Wiggles. “And, you know, sometimes I worry about that.”

TOP: WIGGLES: THE EARLY YEARS MIDDLE: IN THE STUDIO BOTTOM: FILMING ‘WALKING ON THE MOON’ AT NASA IN 2003

It’s Sydney, 1991, and three Macquarie University students are itching to start a band. Not to emulate the grunge lords or hip-hop mix-masters defining the zeitgeist, but to road test their degrees in early childhood education. Field, along with fellow mature-aged pupils Murray Cook and Greg Page, have their hearts set on enchanting the toddler crowd with fun, kid-friendly, instructive rock’n’roll. It helps that the guys have all been in bands before. Field co-founded pub rock outfit the Cockroaches, for whom Page was a roadie and occasional vocalist. Cook played guitar around the traps – most notably for Finger Guns, if only because their name presaged what would become the signature hand gesture of his nascent new group. To flesh out their desired pop‑rock sound, Field rings in former bandmate Jeff Fatt on keys, plus composer Phillip Wilcher, who plays a crucial role in their early songwriting before leaving in 92 to pursue a career in the financially lucrative but artistically desolate field of classical music. Echoing the Cockroaches song ‘Mr Wiggle’s Back in Town’, and honouring their target demo’s signature moves, they christen themselves “The Wiggles”. Their eponymous debut album – which opens with a rejigged version of the aforesaid Cockroaches’ track, now titled ‘Get Ready to Wiggle’ – drops in August 91 and sells 100,000 copies before Christmas. But the Wiggles don’t truly crack the code of kiddie hypnotism until they embrace the sartorial art of colour-blocking. In 92, each member adopts their own unique shade and, with it, commitment to a skivvy-based wardrobe. Field takes blue; Page, yellow; Cook, red; and Fatt, purple. Field predicts this will help kids identify them, and it works a treat – possibly resulting in an overcorrection. Parents start reporting that little ones refer to colours by the corresponding Wiggles’ name: “My child doesn’t call purple ‘purple’. She

SIMON

ANTHONY

EMMA

LACHY

EVIE

KELLY

So, what qualities make for an ideal Wiggle? “From what I’ve seen, working with the OG,” says Ferris, “compassion and genuine care for kids. Working closely with the Wiggles this year, they really embody those qualities. “Right before we started filming, I remember Anthony said, ‘There’s being childlike and childish. There’s a big difference,’” Ferris explains, noting that the Wiggles’ wide-eyed performance style, delivered not to a live crowd (yet) but down the barrel of a camera, takes some fine‑tuning. “I definitely had to overcome a bit of selfconsciousness,” she says. “But it just makes sense, in that environment. It’s easy to believe in what you’re doing.” “You lose any inhibitions when you’re working with children,” says Field. “I’ve never felt silly doing what we do. Even though we are silly, I’ve never felt silly,” he stresses. “This is what my audience wants, so I’m going to do it.” He says honesty is his most cherished trait in a Wiggle. Kids can spot disingenuity a mile off. “All those years ago at Macquarie University, we learned about how children think, and we tried to reflect their world in what we do,” says Field. “I think Fruit Salad TV is trying to reflect a broader world. There are lots of audiences out there from different areas, different worlds, different cultures.” Nothing’s made that so clear as the technological changes that have shaped the Wiggles’ career trajectory. “When we started, technology was a letter and a stamp,” he laughs. “We had cassette tapes and LPs, so yeah, things have changed, but you get instant feedback. You

MEET SHIRLEY SHAWN THE UNICORN!

01 OCT 2021

calls it ‘Jeff’,” Field remembers. Others plead, “Can you do something in short pants? My son won’t go anywhere without long pants on.” The group’s wholesome star continues to rise throughout the 90s as their hit machine pumps out such jams as ‘Fruit Salad’, ‘Hot Potato’, ‘Big Red Car’ and ‘Wake Up Jeff!’. They corner the home entertainment market with cassettes, CDs, VHS tapes and, eventually, a feature film – The Wiggles Movie (1997) – all despite (or, perhaps, due to) their audience outgrowing them every three years or so. When the Wiggles nail the US market in the early 2000s, thanks largely to an international distribution deal with Disney, they start booking over 500 gigs a year. In 2009, their annual revenue reaches $45 million. Even when the global recession strikes in 2011, they still earn a cool $28 million. All that cold spaghetti takes its toll, though, and in mid-2012 – after 20 years on the road with arguably Australia’s hardest-working band – Page, Cook and Fatt decide to retire. This is actually Page’s second departure, as he first left in late 2006 due to health concerns. That’s when understudy Sam Moran took on the yellow jersey full-time, only for Page to return (for a spell) in 2012, before passing the torch to back-up dancer Emma Watkins in early 2013. She became not only the first woman Wiggle, but a playgroup sensation unto herself. At this time, Simon Pryce also took over for Cook, and Lachlan Gillespie for Fatt, rounding out the Wiggles’ squad as it looks today – save for the recent additions – with Field continuing as the band’s only original member. But while their faces sometimes change, the Wiggles’ song remains the same, appealing to children around the world with earworm persistence and polychrome cheer.

JOHN

TSEHAY

ANTHONY FIELD

01 OCT 2021

You lose any inhibitions when you’re working with children. I’ve never felt silly doing what we do. Even though we are silly, I’ve never felt silly.

to the Indian community, or to add value to ethnic stereotyping. Apologies.” The song has been pulled from the Wiggles’ repertoire. Today, he asks Ferris, “What did Christine Anu say the other day? ‘If you can see it, you can be it.’” That begs the question: where to from here, for the next 30 years? “Keep remaining child-centred, keep writing catchy songs, just keep evolving…and, also, keep it fun,” says Field. “I think we’re on the right track. I’m more proud of this than anything we’ve achieved. So I think this is the real way to go.” “Exactly,” says Ferris. “It’s a really relevant project and I think it’s going to change a lot of people’s lives. It probably already has. Who knows what it will lead to, but I think something great. “Your guidance through the whole process,” she says to Field, “I think that’s why we get great feedback – because you’re allowing us to be ourselves, but also guiding us to do the right thing.” “It’d be wrong to have four clones, everyone being the same person,” he replies. “I can’t wait till Evie, John, Kelly and Tsehay are in front of a live audience with us, in front of children,” says Field. “And this is me, personally,” he adds, engaging that textbook Wiggle sincerity, “I want the Wiggles to always be, from this moment, inclusive and diverse. I don’t want to go back.”

ONE THING DOESN’T CHANGE IN THE WIGGLEVERSE: THEIR COMMITMENT TO SKIVVIES

can put something on YouTube and know what part of the world’s watched it, what part of the world stayed on longer, or where you’re not connecting.” He mentions plans to reignite interest in the Spanish- and Mandarin-speaking Wiggles, who never quite hit their stride in the mid-00s, before citing the work that fans do online to ensure the Wiggles’ longevity. “These days, things get put up on TikTok. Somebody put up [Shirley Shawn the Unicorn] and said, ‘Hey, look, the Wiggles have got a non-binary unicorn!’ And then the word got out, not through our TV show, but through social media,” he says. While news of a costumed mascot using “they/ them” pronouns got the goat of conservative lobbyist Lyle Shelton back in August, it may have also saved a life. “We had a beautiful email from a teenager who said, ‘I had the strength to come out,’” says Field. “I thought that was just fantastic.” This isn’t the only time a stranger has uploaded Wiggles content to the world wide web, catalysing controversy. In October 2020, a clip from Wiggle House (2014) surfaced on Twitter, featuring the song ‘Pappadum’. It was written by Field, and the accompanying video drew on Indian stereotypes. When users explained the ways in which both the song and video were offensive, Field replied, “It was not my intention to be culturally insensitive

Take These Broken Wings Luke Wright’s dad is on a high-stakes, flanno-shirted race against time to breed Coonabarabran’s first black budgie. Luke Wright is a freelance writer and is currently working on a book of short stories about his life. @writelukewright

illustration by Daniel Gray-Barnett

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or the past two years, my father’s primary focus has been winning a two‑man race to breed Coonabarabran’s first black budgerigar. You might ask yourself, as I did, is this the most needless contest to have ever taken place in human history? After all, the humble budgie’s most redeeming quality is its vibrant, multi-coloured plumage, right? Yet, despite my suggestion that engineering a plain black specimen is akin to creating the world’s tallest miniature goat, for Dad and his opponent, this feathery endeavour is a hugely important, high‑stakes tussle. Operation Black Budgie began one morning at the Coonabarabran Men’s Shed a couple of years ago when a bloke, fatefully called Blue, got chatting with my dad, who likes to go by “Sir Reginald” although his name is Garry. “What kinda stuff you wanna do here at the Shed?” Blue asked Dad, a newcomer. “Well,” he said, looking around to see if anyone else was within earshot, “if I’m honest, I wouldn’t mind knocking up a few little aviaries for my birds.”

“Birds, you say?” asked Blue, stepping closer and also checking over both shoulders before he spoke. “Um, why don’t you come with me?” Shortly after, Dad was in the passenger seat of a busted-up ute with a grinning Blue driving in silence. At Blue’s house, he was rushed right through the front door and out the back door with not even a word of introduction to his wife and family. “Told ya, didn’t I?” asked Blue, looking closely at my dad’s face as he surveyed 20 big aviaries. Then and there, in Blue’s garden, a bond was forged – just two grey-haired men in faded jeans and second-hand flannelette shirts marvelling at hundreds of noisy birds. “You know, when I was a kid,” Dad confided, “I had a budgie that was completely black. The only one I’ve ever seen. I loved that thing. And I came home after a weekend away one time and my mum had sold the damn thing for a dollar.” Blue looked at him, wide-eyed. “You’re not gunna believe this,” he said, “but I bloody well had a black one when I was younger, too.” At the Men’s Shed next week, over Tim Tams and tall stories in the breakroom, Dad told Blue he was thinking of having a go at breeding another black budgerigar. Blue, perhaps not one to readily abandon his title as the town’s foremost budgie authority, almost spat out his Dilmah tea. “You’re not gunna believe this,” he said, “but I’ve been thinking the same bloody thing.”

01 OCT 2021

for him to admit he’s just spent the night sleeping beside a 350kg pig because it was unwell and needed regular spoon feeding. This is a man who, as a pensioner on the poverty line – often gripped by fatigue, loneliness and depression – ensures his menagerie of dependents receive constant attention, while he routinely neglects his own basic care. I visited Sir Reginald in Coonabarabran a while back and his black-bird experiment was still in full flight. We stood in his yard and admired the huge number of budgies chirping away in their aviaries. “I know this sounds silly,” he told me, “but these things bring me some joy every day. I don’t know what I’d do without them.” I asked him if he remembered a time, years ago, when the two of us were walking along a back street in Launceston, Tasmania, and came across a baby bird that had fallen to the ground from a tree above. He couldn’t place it, but it’s a memory that stays with me. I can recall the way he spoke to this little creature in a soft voice, and how he cradled it so gently, holding the frightened, disoriented thing close to his chest. I recognise now that only a man who has himself had a few falls could hold such a delicate thing so tenderly. And in that moment of kindness, I saw the old tangled rope that was my dad – the man who once, long ago, scooped me up whenever I’d taken a tumble – had just unknotted a little more. “Dad,” I said, as we watched his budgies flitting about on a warm Coonabarabran afternoon, “you do realise that after almost two years, not a single one of these things resembles anything even close to black, right? I mean, if anything, these are some of the brightest, greenest and yellowest budgerigars I’ve ever seen.” The colourful creatures came to rest on their perches, looking out at us as we looked in at them, completely unaware of the high-stakes failure they each represented. But he loved them, all the same. “Don’t you bloody well tell Blue that,” Dad answered, his eyes brightening. “This race isn’t even close to over yet.”

And so it was agreed that a race was on to see who could first hatch an all-black budgerigar. Like a pair of rural Australian Dr Frankensteins, Blue and Sir Reginald withdrew to their backyard laboratories and got to work. “It’s not easy,” Dad tells me when I ask him over the phone how one goes about ridding a bird variety of its most dominant trait. “You need to first find dark-ish ones and then mate them with other dark-ish ones and hope like hell they produce something ever darker. It’s very slow.” Adding to his difficulties, my father is a man who believes the high point of human creativity and ingenuity is Mike and the Mechanics on compact disc, and, as such, he’s taken a vow to avoid this whole internet malarkey. “So how are you actually going about finding them?” I ask. “Sending word with a carrier pigeon? Not using Google must limit your ability to find the right shade of budgerigar for sale in the Warrumbungle Shire?” Although he won’t admit it, I’m fairly certain his search process involves quickly exhausting the almost-zero opportunities found in the Yellow Pages, and then just driving around regional New South Wales reading community noticeboards and hoping for a budgie-related miracle. Teasing aside, I’m glad Dad has made a friend and has a focus, as absurd to me as it is. I’d been worried about him. While I’m close to my dad, I’m not sure I’ve ever truly known him and the depths of his struggles. I guess most fathers are puzzles to their sons. They’re like a tangle of old rope we hope to one day unknot. Despite the many mysteries, the one thing I have always clearly understood about Dad is that he’s more at ease with animals than his fellow humans. As a young boy, I remember being surrounded by horses, chickens, sheep, cows, ducks, dogs and more. In his older age, his affinity for more unusual beasts began. From giant pigs to miniature goats, alpacas to donkeys, he’s always building something or doing something for his animals. He loves them like family. It’s nothing

n Monday, I go on one of my regular home visits to a woman in her fifties. She is palliative now and too anxious to attend appointments at the surgery. Her anxiety in this pandemic era is well placed. She is all jutting bones, hollow cavities and tissue paper skin. She needs more pain medications. It is something I could arrange over the phone, but she wants to see me. We sit side by side on her front verandah. The light and shade dapple through the leaves, the hum of traffic is soft in the distance, a magpie warbles noisily on the fence. I measure her blood pressure, even though the numbers are unimportant now. It gives me a reason to touch her. She has in the past been aloof, reserved. I keep my hand on hers and her pulse rate slows. She was never one for conversation but now that her time is finite she wants to share, so I stay longer and listen. An hour passes. I glimpse the cigarettes hidden under the cushion and want to reassure her that it is okay, but instead just pretend I don’t see them. I realise I have not let go of her hand and give it a squeeze. She never married, has no children. She asks when I will come again. One of the awful things of the pandemic has been the drop in human connectedness. Not the screen interactions that have flourished with social distancing, but real skin-to-skin contact: hugs, a held hand, the sharing of physical touch to communicate love and reassurance. While I support the measures used to limit the spread of the virus, this separation from others has lasting impacts on mental health, physical wellbeing and even immune function. Our tactile sensory systems develop very early in utero, and we spend the first months of our lives in constant reassuring contact with our mothers. This hunger for connection continues throughout our lives. Positive touch stimulates our vagal nervous system which leads to a drop in blood pressure, a reduction in heart rate. Regular healthy skin stimulation results in reduced production of cortisol and a rise in serotonin. This improves mood, reduces pain and has a positive impact on wellbeing.

Since lockdown, the shape of my daily work in general practice has changed. We no longer see anyone with respiratory symptoms or fevers inside the surgery, but down in the car park wearing full PPE. The benefit of this is that patients presenting to the rooms are unlikely to be positive for COVID-19, providing a safe bubble where we can touch patients without the barrier of protective gear. On one memorable day, I saw one of my regulars, a woman who lives alone and struggles with a long history of severe anxiety and depression. After a long absence, she presented at the surgery, head bowed. When I shut the door she whispered, “I know it is against the rules, but can I give you a hug?” She held on to me so long, I thought she might never let go. I was the first person she had touched in nearly seven months. With her permission, I contacted some of her friends and family to ensure she had regular contact with another human being. To touch one another is fundamental to our humanity. There is a reason that the photograph of 85-year-old Rosa being hugged for the first time in five months won World Press Photo of the Year. That evocative embrace responds to our inbuilt desire for inclusion, love, empathy and reassurance, particularly while in the grip of a pandemic. I find myself at the beginning of another week, another Monday. I ring my palliative lady, give her an opportunity to hide her cigarettes. I settle beside her again, check her pulse, keep my hand on hers, determined her final weeks will not be spent untouched and alone.

Jo Skinner is a Brisbane-based GP who writes essays and fiction. She can be found at johannaskinner.com.

01 OCT 2021

Dr Jo Skinner knows the medical benefits of physical contact. In a COVID world, she finds ways to bring comfort to her patients who are missing that connection.

Later, I do another regular visit to a 95-year-old woman, a former model. She always demanded a hug before we launched into a consultation. She is now confined in a nursing home, her cognitive function in steep decline. She still sports a pink streak in her hair, applies a slash of lipstick, and wears a string of pearls in bed. During the lockdown, when her daughters were not allowed to visit, a wise nurse gave her a doll. She strokes its hair, holds her close. Caring for the doll has reduced her loud agitation, and improved her sleep without the need to add medications. It has answered that primal need to express love through physical contact, even when it is not reciprocated. I sit down and hold her knotted fingers with their rings trapped behind arthritic nodules. She smiles, reaches out for a one-armed hug, her tactile memory left unscathed by Alzheimer’s. Dolly stays firmly tucked under her other arm.

A Touch of Humanity

series by Ben Reynolds

The Big Picture

Road Warriors Sure, they’ve been around the block a few times, but these old cars have soul – just ask the owners who love them.

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by Michael Epis Contributing Editor

LEMON BABY

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER SCOUT MKII

“I have always loved older cars as they have such character and seem to have an individual personality. The Scout is always a work in progress, replacing or repairing parts,” says Rob Shakespeare Hall.

here’s nothing like a great drive, and Australia’s cities offer plenty of them. Adelaide has its day trip to the Hills, or the 450km stretch on the Southern Ocean Drive. Melbourne similarly has the Dandenongs, leisurely bayside Beach Road or the more distant Great Ocean Road. Sydney boasts the Bells Line of Road to cross the Blue Mountains, and the Grand Pacific Drive heading south. And who in Brisbane hasn’t enjoyed a trip to the Mount Coot-tha and Mount Gravatt lookouts? Over west, Perth is no exception – head inland to the Perth Hills, or stick by the water on the West Coast Highway, cruising along from Fremantle to Cottesloe and on to Reabold Hill, the city’s highest point, from where you can take it all in. It’s this drive from Freo to Cottesloe that has inspired photographer Ben Reynolds’ upcoming book A Portrait of Cars – but not just the drive, the cars too. For reasons unknown, it’s home to more funky cars than you might see elsewhere in a lifetime. And every such car has its own story – and a loving owner, who more often than not will give their car a name. Usually it’s the oldest, cheapest, most unreliable cars that inspire such devotion. Like Jamie Thomas and his Ford Capri SA 30, which he calls “My Island”, and that he bought for a grand off Gumtree. It’s not Thomas’ first Capri; he had a hand-me-down from his dad, but the rego ran out while he was off travelling. All he could do was buy another. The dents over the front wheel don’t bother him, because the convertible roof brings him such pleasure. “I really enjoy driving with the roof down and refused to buy a car I couldn’t do it in,” he says. Thomas’ ride bears no resemblance to Rob Shakespeare Hall’s 1978 International Harvester Scout MkII – but their stories are very similar. The Scout is a convertible – yes, that big ol’ roof detaches. Likewise, this is Hall’s second Scout. He sold the first one when he went to work overseas in the 90s. “I had so much fun in that car and missed it so much I spent two years looking for another one,” he says. Being a four-wheel drive, they get banged about, meaning they don’t last and hence are in short supply. His wife calls it “Lemon Baby”; he calls it the “Buzz Bus”, because his dog, Busby, loves to catch a ride. Then there’s Lisa Ashford and her 1988 Saab Turbo Convertible – there seems to be a theme emerging here. It was gifted to her when she was a poor uni graduate, but Ashford has no reason to upgrade to anything else from her delightfully named “Wasaabi”. “She’s a real classic, oozes confidence and turns heads.”

01 OCT 2021

FOR MORE IMAGES VISIT BENREYNOLDS.COM.AU.

MARILYN 1960 MGA

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“She was named after Marilyn Monroe because of the famous car shoot with her. As a little boy growing up in Casablanca, Morocco, there was always this beautiful MG parked across the road. It was a dream from that moment that one day I would own one,” says Manuel.

COUGAR

1997 MERCEDES-BENZ

“About a year ago, by pure luck, I got a glimpse of my dream pink car,” recalls Danika. “It was like seeing a hot chick walk past and I instantly felt a connection. Some time later, by chance again, I stumbled across the very same car on Facebook Marketplace and I knew I had to have her. I call her ‘Cougar’…she’s older than me.”

MY ISLAND FORD CAPRI SA30

“The tarp roof has a couple of rips in it which makes it almost impossible to drive with the roof up. It’s pretty much a summer car to cruise around or go to the beach in,” says Jamie Thomas.

WONDER 1980 CM VALIANT

“I bought her from two sisters who were left with it when their father passed away several years earlier,” says Marcos. “As I drove away with it that stormy day, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw one of the girls wiping tears from her face and waving goodbye to memories of her passing father. I nearly cried too.”

WASAABI

1988 SAAB TURBO CONVERTIBLE

01 OCT 2021

“My favourite drives include a manic morning shift at the local beach cafe, a quick dip in the ocean and head home with the roof down and the sun shining,” says Lisa Ashford.

Ricky

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The trees are so unhealthy that they can’t fight off a few pesky beetles.

by Ricky French @frenchricky

Spore Losers

ow nice it was to get away to the Victorian High Country for a few days this winter. I’m not quite sure how this happened, as lockdown seems to have settled over Melbourne like a neverending winter. But for a few weeks we must have been free, because I distinctly remember a wonderful day among the snow gums. Well, mostly wonderful. Snow gums (or eucalyptus pauciflora as I call them when I want to sound authoritative) are Australia’s most iconic high-altitude gum trees. The wind that tears through the mountains torments their branches, sending them flailing backwards on rakish angles. Their smooth trunks can be white, grey and all shades of red and orange, each tree having its own pattern and personality. But throughout the alps, the snow gums are experiencing a mysterious dieback. They’re dying. Or dead. Many stands of snow gums on the Main Range of Kosciuszko National Park have already succumbed, and dieback is being reported nearby in Brindabella National Park, in ACT’s Namadgi National Park and Victoria’s Alpine National Park. It’s often difficult to pinpoint a cause of dieback. In the case of the snow gums, we know that a native longicorn beetle is ravishing the trees and ultimately causing their death by ringbarking (removing so much bark that a tree cannot transport sugars from the leaves to the roots). But the strange thing is the beetles have always been at war with the snow gums, and the snow gums have never yielded. Until now. So why the sudden decline in defences? The answer is we don’t really know. But we do have a few clues. We know that climate change is accelerating all sorts of threats to ecosystem health. The increasing frequency and severity of drought is putting huge stresses on vegetation. Along with that of course comes bushfire. The bushfire destruction often masks the dieback, as one dead snow gum looks much like another, until

you look closely. As the beetle larvae feed, the bark starts to dry out and crack. Eventually the bark falls off, revealing deep, ringed scars circling the trunk. By this stage it’s too late for the poor pauciflora. Some people think we need to literally scratch below the surface to understand why the trees are so unhealthy that they can’t fight off a few pesky beetles. In the soil lies a complex network of fungi that forms intricate connections with the roots of trees, in a symbiotic relationship. The trees supply the fungi with sugar, while the fungi give the trees nutrients in return. It’s a perfect arrangement, and an essential one. But things aren’t going too well for these subterranean, or mycorrhizal, fungi. In order to propagate, mycorrhizal fungi require their spores to be spread in a rather unusual way. They produce fruiting bodies just below the surface, which we know as truffles. These strong-smelling delicacies are irresistible to small, digging marsupials such as bettongs, bandicoots and potoroos, who dig them up, eat them, then hop along and spread the fungal spores through their faeces. It’s an ingenious system, because unlike mushrooms, which sprout above ground and whose spores can be carried by the wind, not a lot of distribution happens underground. The only problem is, we’ve lost most of our digging marsupials to foxes, cats and humans (there was once a bounty on bettongs, due to their love of digging up farmers’ potatoes). So the fungi can’t reproduce. You see how everything is linked? That’s why I love walking in the mountains (and why I hate seeing cat and fox footprints in the snow). Out here you can truly see the wood for the trees, if you look closely. I’m just hoping the gorgeous snow gums will be around long enough for our grandchildren to see.

Ricky is a writer, musician and gum-shoe.

by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND

o you know Sean “The Birdman” Dooley? Mate, look him up. A legend among twitchers, he’s a comedian and writer who turned his obsession into a career as a conservationist. He’s often a guest on the radio, warmly talking birds, dropping knowledge, raising awareness. He regularly breaks my heart, because spoiler alert, the birds are stuffed and it’s all our fault. I woke to him recently, on Triple R brekkie, chatting about the regent honeyeater. It’s one of Australia’s critically endangered birds – 300 left in the wild and 90 per cent of their habitat lost – and they’re forgetting their song. The honeyeater menfolk are supposed to lure the ladies with their distinctive warbling, but their population is so sparse that when chicks hatch there aren’t males around to teach the young their song. Their song – their identity – is being erased. As I lay there, staring at the ceiling, suspended between waking and another groundhog day of lockdown, I found myself relating hard. A spot of context, my life is not all chickens, international diplomacy and dating Benedict Cumberbatch, and you may notice that I work in the “Yartz”. The arts, particularly the performing ones, are fading like nan’s curtains. Or like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, dying because the applause has stopped. Because we are being actively forgotten. It was a portent, in February 2020, when the federal government abolished the Department of Communications and the Arts, and rolled culture into the bowels of the newly minted Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications. Just like that. Poof. Gone. It was quite the flex. The arts are absent not only from the title of their own department, but in the COVID briefings from state premiers, and the “road maps” that mostly ignore us. The talk is of restaurants and sporting events, schools and

offices; in Victoria music venues or theatres are not named. We’ve been…disappeared. Poof. Two years ago, the arts sector contributed $112 billion. Now performers, producers and venue owners parse the tea leaves, trying to triangulate what a restaurant directive of one person per 4m2 with a cap of 150 means if you’re a cabaret venue that seats 80. Or if you’re Harry Potter at the Princess, and need all 1452 bums on seats to be viable. Or if your venue requires bands playing in it. It means you can’t open, is what it means. It means you can’t plan. We are not spoken of, and people are leaving the industry in droves; we’re losing our song. Victoria’s “destination” event for reopening is the Melbourne Cup, of all things, which is like, oh bad pick. It only stops the nation these days because horses keep dying and it’s getting awkward. Also, look around, the nation’s already stopped. Other erasures: proposed changes by the government to tax rebates will gut the Australian documentary industry. Fifty-eight per cent of feature docs have a budget of less than $1 million, and without the rebate it’s unlikely they will be made. How...interesting. Entire departments have been erased since public universities were refused JobKeeper. Arts, theatre, science, maths, musicology. Hundreds of teachers, countless years of accrued knowledge. Just like that. Poof. Gone. Welcome to that sweet cultural amnesia. Do you believe in the arts? Then look around, listen, and notice that we’re disappearing. Our habitat is shrinking. Important voices are being lost. Because you’re going to wake up one morning and our song will be silent.

Fiona is a writer and comedian and lover of smart arts.

01 OCT 2021

Swan Songs

The arts, particularly the performing ones, are fading like nan’s curtains.

Fiona

Todd Haynes

Small Screens VELVET TOUCH: JOHN CALE, STERLING MORRISON, LOU REED (FROM LEFT)

by Luke Goodsell

Todd Haynes breathes new life into the music doco with his film on the band who breathed new life into music – The Velvet Underground.

Luke Goodsell is an editor, critic and festival programmer who writes on film for ABC Arts.

t’s one of music’s more famous quips, a truism that originated with a quote from Brian Eno and took on a kind of mythic quality as it passed from one studio campfire to another: “The Velvet Underground didn’t sell many records, but everyone who bought one went out and started a band.” Though consigned to virtual obscurity in their day, few groups have gone on to wield as much influence over the musical landscape as the iconic art-rock quartet, formed in New York in 1964 by songwriter Lou Reed and multi‑instrumentalist John Cale. Their subversive, avant‑garde pop planted the seeds of glam, punk, new wave,

PHOTO BY NAT FINKELSTEIN

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Velvet Love

@timebombtown

FILMMAKER TODD HAYNES

mirror I’m Not There (2007) – had his first transformative encounter with the Velvets as a Rhode Island college freshman in 1980. There, during his very first day on campus, an artist friend handed him a vinyl copy of The Velvet Underground & Nico, like some scene straight out of a nostalgic coming-of-age movie. “It was the first record that I immersed myself in,” Haynes recalls. “You felt that there was a destiny to this – without sounding too over‑dramatic about it – because all the music I was listening to would not have happened without this band. You’re going back to some source, just in finding that music.” Coalescing under the imprimatur of pop artist Andy Warhol, who brought the band into the Factory and assigned them the German model Nico as their sometime vocalist, the Velvet Underground specialised in dark, cinematic tales of hard drugs, sadomasochism and urban street life – think ‘Heroin’, ‘Venus in Furs’, ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ – that stood in stark contrast to the prevailing flower power sentiment of the hippie era. “Something about this music opens up this place for a creative response,” says Haynes. “The band themselves were so much the result of all of these cross-currents of influences and interests that were developing. It was such a fertile period for creative excitement and energy in New York.” A major first in the history of the band, the officially sanctioned documentary began when the musician and artist Laurie Anderson, Reed’s partner until his passing in 2013, was collating the late songwriter’s material, and sought out

THE VELVETANTIHERO UNDERGROUND IS RELEASED STREAMS 26 ON APRIL. APPLE TV+ FROM 15 OCTOBER.

01 OCT 2021

All the music I was listening to would not have happened without this band.

Haynes as a potential director for a film project. The Velvet Underground became an act of curation and preservation, as Haynes trawled through more than 600 hours of footage, much of it sourced in collaboration with the Warhol Museum. The result is a rock documentary like few before it: a portrait that is, in its own way, as singular as the band from which it draws its inspiration. Featuring the work of many experimental filmmakers that informed the period – from Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage to Kenneth Anger and Jonas Mekas – and employing Warhol’s famous Screen Tests of Reed, Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Moe Tucker, the film is a transporting evocation of time and place, immersing the viewer in the 60s New York art scene in ways that feel disarmingly intimate. “It was very clear that there was not going to be traditional material that one would associate with a rock documentary with this band,” Haynes says of his approach to the film. “What I did know was that this band had a unique relationship to avant‑garde filmmaking in New York City. That was the way in: to make a film about this band that will give it a visual vitality.” The film’s immediacy in turn electrifies the music, reanimating the Velvets’ presence and potency beyond the old “musical influence” punchline. It’s also a thrilling reminder of just how strange they sound, and how intoxicating, even more than half a century since they ceased to exist. Haynes identifies something so essential to the music’s appeal: Reed’s ability to summon queerness and paradox. “He describes how hard it is to live in our skins, in the world,” the filmmaker says, reflecting on Reed’s infamously prickly, though oft-misunderstood persona. “There’s a real masochistic strain to questions about masculinity, about identity, about a complicated sexual identity and curiosity. “That’s what made the Velvet Underground so different from the other 60s attitudes that seemed to be all about happiness and love, and that love would overcome all problems,” he continues. “This band was describing different kinds of experiences, and I think it’s why it took so long for them to be accepted and understood.” For his part, Haynes counts himself lucky that fate found him to deliver their story. “It was such an incredible privilege to do this,” he says. “I still sort of pinch myself that I made this movie – that John Cale knows my name, you know?”

and kickstarted the careers of more than a few aspiring filmmakers – including, as it turns out, a young Todd Haynes, whose new documentary The Velvet Underground arrives on Apple TV+ this month following its Cannes bow in July. The Oscar-nominated director of Far from Heaven (2002) and Carol (2015) – whose CV also includes the notorious all-Barbie-doll Carpenters biopic Superstar (1987), glam rock fantasia Velvet Goldmine (1998) and the Bob Dylan funhouse

Fields of Glory

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Music

Ruby Fields

by Doug Wallen @wallendoug

Doug Wallen is a freelance writer and editor based in Victoria, and a former music editor of The Big Issue.

uby Fields’ lyrics have always stood out. Her 2017 debut single ‘I Want’ imagined her as a warrior princess fighting off ninjas, while 2018’s ‘Dinosaurs’ recounted attending more funerals than weddings, and avoiding friends to comfort-watch Jurassic Park for the umpteenth time. Despite both tunes relishing the sudden jolt of hard-hitting indie rock, it’s the words that cut deepest. ‘Dinosaurs’ was a breakthrough for the Cronulla native in more ways than one. Released when she was only 20, the song hit number nine on Triple J’s Hottest 100 and eventually achieved platinum sales status. Airing her personal fears and anxieties against a lone electric guitar – until her band crashes in around the three-minute mark – the song proved to Fields that she could venture beyond her early songs’ lyrical litany of booze and drugs. “People want sad music [too], as long as it’s something they can connect to and it makes them feel less lonely,” she says. “I realised that I don’t need to write [within] a certain criteria of songs about drinking beer and having a shock factor.” Still, her debut album, Been Doin It for a Bit, doesn’t shy away from sordid anecdotes. The keyboard ballad ‘Bottle’o’ was inspired by Fields losing her wallet and needing to use her passport as ID to

buy beer, while ‘Pretty Grim’ describes being hungover and barely able to cover rent. The initially folky ‘Worms’ suddenly changes course to break out an anthemic call-and-response chorus of “Go fuck yourself”. But offsetting those cheeky rites of one’s early twenties are deeper songs like ‘Bruises’, informed by Fields’ strict Catholic upbringing. Fear and loneliness pop up again, but those themes are now handled with a much subtler touch. The same goes for ‘Pokies’, a song about reconnecting with her father. Guitarist Adam Newling sings from her dad’s perspective in a gravelly drawl against a mellow bed of organ and country‑style slide guitar. Though beer is still mentioned, it’s in the context of her dad switching to light draught for reasons of both health and marital wellbeing. “My mum always says my diction is terrible, so I’m gonna have to post some lyrics online,” Fields jokes about such newly mature content. Now living with her partner on a farm in northern New South Wales, where she’s been building a home studio in the guest room, Fields has been singing from a very young age. “I was always the performer in my family,” she says. “I was always standing on tables. I think the first performance I did was at the age of three, singing ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ [from Grease] to a waiter. He was mortified.” Busking followed a decade later, and eventually a casual backyard gig led to a short-lived band called Stay at Home Mum. Born Ruby Phillips, she adopted the stage handle Fields because her given name didn’t sound rock’n’roll

PHOTO BY COLE BENNETTS

From singing Grease tunes at age three, to songs about hangovers, Catholicism and falling in love some 20 years later, indie rocker Ruby Fields has indeed been doing it for a bit.

enough to her. “The name Phillips – sorry Dad – felt like a doctor or an author,” says Fields. “It didn’t seem like a name you’d see out the front of Enmore Theatre in lights.” She nailed down a backing band featuring some of her closest friends – Newling, bassist Tas Wilson and drummer Pat Rogers – after recruiting them for a song about a mutual mate who’d passed away (2019’s ‘Conny’). Fields now considers them family. And while she had never envisioned a future in the music business when she first started playing house shows and pubs as a teen, she’s now a firm part of the Australian music scene. She covered The Church’s ‘Unguarded Moment’ for Triple J’s Like a Version series in 2019, and her conversational yet cathartic singing makes her a ready peer to the likes of Courtney Barnett and Alex Lahey.

BEEN DOIN IT FOR A BIT IS OUT NOW.

The songs from Been Doin It for a Bit were written more than two years ago, and recorded at the cusp of the pandemic. Fields opted to hold off releasing the album for 18 months due to the widespread uncertainty, which means she’s had time to write a lot more songs. And if Fields seems like she pours all of her personal life into her lyrics, her songs penned since the album actually broach a previously off-limits subject: proper romance. “For a very long time I’ve kept these love songs private,” she admits. “But I’m keen to release them soon. When you’re a kid you have all your walls up, and I just don’t care anymore.” That sentiment echoes her wider progression as a songwriter in the four years since her recorded debut single. “I don’t think I’ve ever put myself in a box,” says Fields. “We started out as these ratbags singing about nightclubs, and then it turned into these introspective songs and stories.” She’s been working again with album producer Chris Collins on the newer material, roping in additional embellishments like strings, piano and layered vocal harmonies. Fields is even threatening to release an EP devoted entirely to those softer, string-laden songs. And after that? “Go back to heavy metal,” she quips.

01 OCT 2021

I was always standing on tables. I think the first performance I did was at the age of three, singing ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ to a waiter. He was mortified.

Shining a Light

by Declan Fry

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

@_declanfry

Declan Fry is a writer and essayist. Born on Wongatha country in Kalgoorlie, he has written for the Guardian, Meanjin, Australian Book Review and other publications.

tend towards economy,” says Jennifer Down over the phone. “I was as surprised and dismayed as anyone when it just kept getting longer. My editor and I always like to joke that the perfect book is under 200 pages. It was a shock to everyone.” The two-time Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelist of the Year is reflecting on her latest novel Bodies of Light. Weighing in at just over 400 pages, it’s longer and more ambitious than anything Down has attempted before – her debut novel Our Magic Hour (2016) and her

PHOTO BY LEAH JING MCINTOSH

Books

Jennifer Down

Jennifer Down’s latest novel is light-years ahead of anything she’s attempted before.

The origin of the novel was in a short story called ‘Newborn’, published in the now-defunct Australian Review of Fiction. “That was really about the moment when Maggie decides to leave,” Down says. “About a decade ago, I found this weird little pamphlet in a bookshop in LA called Vanishing Point: How to Disappear in America Without a Trace. Back then it was much easier to become a new person.” At first, the novel was closer to a collection of linked short stories. “It was very fragmented. I love fragmentation – Jenny Offill, Claudia Rankine – but it didn’t seem sustainable over a long narrative. When I read stuff by Jamie Marina Lau, for instance, I’m always like, Holy shit, this is the coolest thing. But it’s not what comes naturally to me. The fragmentation was probably a function of me not knowing the character and the story so well – I was trying to write my way through it. I always say to students that the first time you write a story, it’s just you telling it to yourself. You have to be prepared to really sit with the character, whether at the day-to-day level or over a period of 40 or 50 years. It feels a little bit more like witnessing; a bit more respectful.” Bodies of Light is anchored in a firm sense of place – from Mystic Court in Eumemmerring (next to Dandenong), to Frankston’s Karingal Hub and the University of Melbourne in Parkville, all the way to Aotearoa and Michigan. “I was lucky that my mum grew up in Dandenong in the 70s,” she says. “Right at the start of the writing

BODIES OF LIGHT IS OUT NOW.

01 OCT 2021

I wanted it to feel like a testimony. There is a risk we run when we write about trauma.

process, I was like, ‘Can I pick you up and we’ll go for a drive out in Dandy?’ And we kind of just trundled around Dandenong remembering Noble Park. That’s where I learned to drive – I know it like the back of my hand, but I don’t know what it was like in the 70s. I’m very lucky that Mum is a reader as well and she’s very attuned to small details. She was the perfect person to drive around with because she would come out with things that were perfect for the novel.” Bodies of Light is also anchored by reference to history, taking in a swathe of events from the 70s to the present, including the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, Maggie and her childhood friends playing at being Lindy Chamberlain and baby Azaria, the Challenger explosion, and Cyndi Lauper in Vibes. Down has a remarkable knack for capturing the texture of youth, its thirst for suburban transcendence. Her universe of fake IDs and smuggled Revlon is observed with all the breathless wonder of a Bruce Springsteen lyric; riding home with a boy one night, Maggie recalls how “a streetlight blinked on right as we passed beneath it and I felt like we were magic”. The novel came to fruition while working full-time – Down is a copywriter at Aesop (“I’ve always been a working fiction writer, writing at four o’clock in the morning or 9pm or on weekends”) – and much of the three-and-a-half years writing it was spent researching. “I tend to sit with ideas and questions and research for a really long time and then when I start writing it’s relatively quick – it comes out in a fairly clean way.” Down went into the testimony of those who experienced institutional or out-of-home care, sifting through parliamentary inquiries and Senate reports. She also drew inspiration from books on motherhood and non-traditional experiences of mothering: “I mean, everyone’s read A Life’s Work by Rachel Cusk. I really loved that and Jenn Ashworth’s Notes Made While Falling, which deals with the physical and mental trauma of birth. As somebody who has never given birth and is not a parent, I really wanted to do justice to that, because motherhood is such a big part of the book.” I asked Down what it took to inhabit and stick with the kind of witnessing that Maggie’s story requires. “I wanted it to feel like a testimony. There is a risk we run when we write about trauma. I wanted to ask the question of how we invite people to look at someone’s suffering, in a way that feels like a first-person narrative rather than asking people to witness suffering for some sort of gratification. It’s lovely to imagine that it has that kind of realism to it.” The sentiment is typical of Down’s modesty. Bodies of Light is an assured work; it sees her continuing to hone her craft and attempt something new in a way that is brave, thrilling and, ultimately, life-affirming.

collection of short stories Pulse Points (2017) were markedly more contained – with a sense of authorial commitment that looks like a quantum leap forward in her writing career. Bodies of Light tells the story of Maggie Sullivan, whose life we follow from the 1970s through to the present. She is institutionalised: her father is in jail; her mother overdoses when she is two. Maggie is crafted to invite sympathy, reflecting: “I thought about what it must be like to have siblings, to see your likeness in someone else’s face, to share another’s memories.” Down asks the reader to take on this role, soliciting the kind of emotional investment and sympathetic readership that novels like Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life and Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain lobbied for. After three of Maggie’s children die in mysterious circumstances, she flees the country, taking on a new identity overseas.

Film Reviews

Annabel Brady-Brown Film Editor @annnabelbb

hy would someone want to make a film about the Port Arthur massacre? It’s a question that hovers over but is never convincingly answered by Australian director Justin Kurzel’s latest meditation on male violence, Nitram – a dramatisation of the Tasmanian tragedy in which 35 people were killed and 23 injured by gunman Martin Bryant (the “unnamed” shooter played by Caleb Landry Jones). Kurzel keeps the violence mostly off-screen but stews in the events leading up to it. Judy Davis and Anthony LaPaglia star as the struggling parents, as Nitram shadowboxes with issues of mental health and revels in the damaged working-class community (filmed in Geelong). The 1996 mass shooting sparked swift gun reform in this country – a real-life coda that perhaps benefits international audiences who can draw something from this dark chapter. Many viewers in Australia, though, will have already taken the lessons to heart. A more palatable look at recent history – Karel Kachyňa’s The Ear (1970) – comes courtesy of the Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia, who present a virtual festival with a handful of films through ACMI’s website (7‑16 October). Banned for 20 years, The Ear is an electrifying exploration of state power in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia. Over one hellish night, a husband and wife fear for their lives as they succumb to both paranoia and all-too-real corrupt political forces in this gripping, Czech New Wave psychodrama. ABB

NITRAM IS MARTIN REFLECTED BACKWARDS

RIDERS OF JUSTICE 

In Anders Thomas Jensen’s new action drama, the dependably charismatic Mads Mikkelsen plays Markus, a military man who returns home to Copenhagen to take care of his teenage daughter, Mathilde, after her mother dies in a train crash. While clumsily trying to navigate grief and single fatherhood, Markus is approached by Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), a data analyst convinced that the tragedy was no mere accident. Energised with newfound purpose, Markus teams up with Otto’s absurdist trio of neurodiverse conspiracists to track down the gangsters who may have killed his wife. Fluid and freewheeling tonal shifts transform a cliché story of widower’s revenge into a rowdy black comic thriller – where slapstick, tragedy and coming-of-age narratives each fight for attention – as Mikkelsen plays the grim straight man to an ensemble of flamboyant performers. By the end, Riders of Justice overflows with intriguing provocations regarding fate and coincidence. Few of those provocations coalesce, but the ambition is bracing. KAI PERRIGNON A FIRE INSIDE

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

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The 2019-2020 bushfires that torched Australia’s east coast left more than physical scars on the landscape. Focused on the rural NSW township of Balmoral Village, A Fire Inside takes an unflinching look at the fire’s effects on a community as it struggles to rebuild houses and lives. NSW’s volunteer Rural Fire Service is often a family affair, with generations tackling the summer outbreaks together. But the 2019 fire season started early, blazed for months, and left entire regions scorched in its wake. Survivors describe a town under siege; apocalyptic footage taken during the fires is horrifying to watch. Directors Justin Krook and Luke Mazzaferro refuse to lay blame – even as it becomes clear that a lack of resources, both economic and social, are trapping locals in a frustrating limbo. There’s hope here, but the individual stories are often grim, with firefighters left psychologically damaged while the elderly struggle with back-breaking labour as they try to salvage their homes. ANTHONY MORRIS

I’M WANITA 

Country music gets a bad rap as the domain of white guys who love their trucks more than their wives. This aching documentary digs into the genre’s rich seams of unnoticed humanity. Firecracker Wanita is “Australia’s queen of honky tonk”, if only in her own mythologising. As a young’un growing up in rural Victoria, she revered Loretta Lynn’s songs for their working-class heart, and moved to Tamworth hell-bent on country music stardom. That was 25 years back, and yet – despite the mud pies life has slung at her – Wanita’s eyes still glimmer with the mirage of Nashville neons. I’m Wanita charts the singer’s chaotic US pilgrimage to record her magnum opus and, fingers crossed, jumpstart her career. It’s a riveting road trip through the fantasy, and reality, of life for outsider artists managing multiple mental health issues. Though an ethical question mark looms over this tale, first-time director Matthew Walker gets the benefit of the doubt for his character-driven take on creative aspiration. AIMEE KNIGHT

Small Screen Reviews

Aimee Knight Small Screens Editor @siraimeeknight

NEW GOLD MOUNTAIN  | SBS + SBS ON DEMAND FROM 13 OCTOBER

FRAYED

 | PRIME VIDEO

 | ABC TV + IVIEW

Who gets to appear in the historical canon, and who gets left out? Despite their trailblazing life, Pauli Murray remains relatively uncelebrated. Co-directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen (2018’s RBG) want to change that. The filmmakers introduce the legal scholar, civil rights activist, poet and priest by tying Murray’s remarkable legacy to their influence on better-known figures like US Supreme Court judges Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall. My Name Is Pauli Murray rushes to cover considerable ground: race, disability, sexuality, gender and, ultimately, Murray’s existence at the edges of these categories. The film breathes when lingering tenderly on Murray’s long romance with Irene Barlow, and in fond recollections by Murray’s students. The tension of these threads – Murray as woman, lesbian, trans man, Black activist, academic – persists in the different groups claiming the revolutionary figure as their own. But Murray, reclining with a grin, says it best: “My story is much more difficult to write than writing about somebody else.” HASSAN ABUL

The second season of tragicomedy Frayed opens right where it started – in London, with Sammy (writer and creator Sarah Kendall) threatening to defecate in the flowerpot of her charlatan lawyer Rufus (Robert Webb).. The season oscillates between London and Newcastle, NSW, between the aftermath of the accidental death of Sammy’s neighbour Terry and the trauma six months on. The 1980s backdrop of Newcastle’s beaches, sea baths and sunshine in Frayed ’s first season gives way to a grittier feel, but the outlandish hijinks, cussing and unexpected bursts of levity in situations of unrelenting bleakness remain. The strong supporting cast – the warm yet formidable Jean (Kerry Armstrong) in recovery; newly pregnant con woman Bev (Doris Younane) – sees the addition of a hapless buddy-cop duo intent on getting to the bottom of Terry’s disappearance. At times an affecting love letter to Newcastle, Frayed continues to brim with heart and humour as its morally questionable characters grapple with secrets, poverty, trauma and the weight of familial bonds. SONIA NAIR

sky-blue T-shirt emblazoned with the letters “USA” lets you know what Queenpins is about, straight out of the gate. Here we are in the promised land of wealth disparity and white-collar crime, where homemakers go to jail for playing Robin Hood with coupons, and billionaires get away with tax fraud and exploitation. The plucky caper stars Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars) as Connie Kaminski, a former Olympic racewalker now consigned to a frigid marriage and meagre job prospects in the suburbs. Connie and her best friend JoJo, an aspirant YouTube star played by Killing Eve’s Kirby Howell-Baptiste, are hooked on coupons – considered the classier answer to food stamps, which roughly 44 million Americans rely on to survive. The pair cook up a get-rich-quick scheme to sell unlawfully acquired coupons online. Hijinks ensue. You know the drill. Something of a lowbrow Hustlers or gross‑out Good Girls (both streaming on Netflix), Queenpins is inspired by a true crime, but is far from the sharpest take on class, race and the American Dream. The Good Place co-stars Bell and Howell-Baptiste have their work cut out for them, care of clunky exposition robbed of subtext. Bell usually excels in these “girlboss with a Napoleon complex” roles, but the direction from spousal team Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly leans too heavily on broad stereotypes and forced punchlines. Even with support from Annie Mumolo (Bad Moms), Jack McBrayer (30 Rock) and Paul Walter Hauser (Cobra Kai), Queenpins never strikes comedy gold. AK

01 OCT 2021

MY NAME IS PAULI MURRAY

SHADY LADIES

SBS’ first foray into period drama is touted as their most ambitious project yet, and it lives up to its promise. Set in the Bendigo goldfields of 1855, the story follows Leung Wei-Shing (Yoson An, Mulan), the headman of a Chinese mining camp during the Australian gold rush. When the body of a European woman shows up on his camp, tensions arise as the interests of everyone in the mining community are threatened by this single event. Part western, part murder mystery, the series is helmed by Taiwanese-Australian director Corrie Chen (Homecoming Queens), who captures a rich and lived-in world that boasts impressive production values. The characters are textured, brought to life by a skilled cast. Mabel Li (The Tailings) and Alyssa Sutherland (Vikings) shine playing women ahead of their time, while An delivers a nuanced performance as our complex protagonist. Special marks must be given for having the Chinese cast speak Cantonese instead of defaulting to Mandarin, giving the world an extra bit of authenticity. NATALIE NG

Music Reviews

Isabella Trimboli Music Editor

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

ountry music is synonymous with heartbreak, so it’s unsurprising that Kacey Musgraves would mine her recent divorce for Star-Crossed, a fevered, big‑budget journey through marital torment. Musgraves has always been an outlier in country music. Since her fanged debut Same Trailer, Different Park, the Texas-born singer‑songwriter has skewed the piety and purity expected of women stars of the genre. Instead, she’s filled her music with drug‑induced reveries and swipes at sexism in the country music industry. This has garnered her legions of fans who wouldn’t usually listen to the genre, but made her reputation in the scene a little more contentious. In 2018, this reached a head with Golden Hour, her universally beloved fourth album, which combined country with acid-inflected acoustic rock, disco and, most importantly, pop. It was her most accessible album and saw her nab Album of the Year at the Grammys. While Star-Crossed doesn’t contain the same blissed-out beauty as its predecessor – nor the cross-over radio hits like the catchy kiss-off ‘High Horse’ – it sees the 33-year-old still crafting sprawling, atmospheric spaces to map out a muddled terrain of emotions that swing from happiness to sadness, confusion and clarity. On Star-Crossed, Musgraves is less interested in taking aim at her ex (though there is the excellent, withering ‘Breadwinner’, where she states “He wants your shimmer/To make him feel bigger/Until he starts feeling insecure”), and more invested in the textures of heartbreak and grief that result in personal transformation. IT

STAR-CROSSED: KACEY MUSGRAVE

@itrimboli

DAWN OF CHROMATICA LADY GAGA 

Released in May last year, Lady Gaga’s sixth album Chromatica returned to the dance-pop that launched her career (‘Just Dance’), before the histrionics. While still everweird and conceptual, the album offered what Artpop (2013) and country-twist Joanne (2016) didn’t: radio hits, even as it looked towards 90s house, rather than the disco-synth that dominated 2020. Remix album Dawn of Chromatica unleashes the oddities within the original. Chart-topping isn’t Dawn’s goal: unlike Dua Lipa’s remix album Club Future Nostalgia boasting Madonna and Missy Elliott, Gaga hasn’t awkwardly stuffed stars on tracks. Instead, Gaga and producer BloodPop hand over stems to a who’s who of electronica and left-of-centre pop. The best tracks transform underneath an artist’s own trademarks: Berlin-based LSDXOXO turns ‘Alice’ into a seedy, sweaty affair; Arca infects Ariana Grande-featuring ‘Rain on Me’ with dystopic-ethereal glitches; Coucou Chloe distorts ‘Stupid Love’ into runway-ready techno. It doesn’t always work – Pabllo Vittar’s screeches ruin ‘Fun Tonight’ – but it is always exciting. JARED RICHARDS

ITALIANS DO IT BETTER VARIOUS ARTISTS

CERTIFIED LOVER BOY DRAKE 

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Tribute albums are usually tiresome, but despite the well-worn compilation convention, there’s been some real, rare gems. If I Were a Carpenter, the 1994 album, saw bands like Sonic Youth and Shonen Knife transform and distort anodyne hits from the sibling duo. The record understood the golden rule of the tribute: not to pick apart beloved songs, but to accentuate what makes them special and sacred in the first place. This is certainly the case with Italians Do It Better, an electrifying tribute to Madonna, executive-produced by shadowy synth-pop mastermind Johnny Jewel who runs a record label of the same name, and is the leader behind bands such as Chromatics and Desire. Here, Madonna’s hits are made strange through icy-cold synths and drum machines, bringing out their innate plasticity and apathy. Highlights include JOON’s breathy, creepy ‘Papa Don’t Preach’, MOTHERMARY’s sinister club take on ‘Like a Virgin’ and Glume’s angelic ‘Material Girl’. ISABELLA TRIMBOLI

Drake’s sixth album has had a long gestation. Following Scorpion (2018), the Canadian superstar’s rumination on fatherhood feels regressive and monotonous. The Certified Lover Boy discourse has largely centred on Damien Hirst’s flippant cover art, featuring 12 emojis of pregnant women. Summarised by Drake as “a combination of toxic masculinity and acceptance of truth”, the album opens promisingly with ‘Champagne Poetry’, yet Drizzy soon revisits old themes while only coldly acknowledging any contradictions. He intensifies his feud with an unnamed Ye on ‘7am on Bridle Path’ (ironically, Certified Lover Boy has been overshadowed by rival Kanye West’s bombastic Donda). The album is also unimaginative musically: enervating trap beats interspersed by calculatedly sentimental soul throwbacks. The sublime singer Yebba leads the piano ballad ‘Yebba’s Heartbreak’, but still there’s no obvious break-out hit. Certified Lover Boy is less a comeback than a sonic meme of nihilistic stasis. CYCLONE WEHNER

Book Reviews

Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor @melissajfulton

WILD ABANDON EMILY BITTO

MATRIX LAUREN GROFF

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Reeling from heartbreak and feelings of inadequacy, 22-year-old Will travels from Australia to the US to experience something different and, truth be told, make himself a little cooler. After making terrible decisions in New York, he ends up in Ohio where he strikes up an unlikely friendship with Wayne, an interesting but clearly troubled collector of exotic animals. Wild Abandon is the much-awaited second book from Emily Bitto, whose debut novel The Strays won the Stella Prize in 2015. Yet the writing here is vastly different: Wild Abandon is chock-full of ornate and complicated language – some sentences are 10 lines long – making it difficult to empathise with the characters and their predicaments at times. Nevertheless, this is an undeniably interesting story, with the most fascinating parts of the plot inspired by true events. Bitto’s exploration of young adulthood, masculinity and nature is done with nuance and insight, delivering a fresh and modern take on the classic journey of self-discovery through America. SARAH MOHAMMED

A powerful work of close intimacy, Matrix imagines the life of Marie de France, a real-life medieval poet whose true identity remains a mystery. Groff casts her as an illegitimate child of French royalty who is sent away to an English abbey. At age 17, Marie has had romantic liaisons with both her queen and her servant, making her placement among nuns all the more startling for her. But Marie’s force of will grows to rival her towering physical stature, and she ascends to the role of abbess while overseeing a radical period of expansion and prosperity for her “island of women”. There’s no mistaking the modern relevance of Marie accruing influence in a world where women are all but powerless, and the royal exile’s microcosm suggests parallels with today’s online bubbles. Don’t mistake this for biography or typical historical fiction: Matrix reads more like a commanding fable of hubris and humility, elevated by Groff’s graceful characterisations and fluid handling of time. DOUG WALLEN

FOX AND I CATHERINE RAVEN 

On a remote plot of land in Montana, Catherine Raven, a loner and biologist, observes the visitor who appears at her cottage each day at 4.15. The wild fox seems equally curious about the reclusive woman. Raven reads Fox passages from The Little Prince, and a remarkable friendship grows between the two. Raven is a member of Mensa and holds a PhD in biology, and her first non-academic book is a memoir of unique poignancy. Vividly describing her encounters with a companion she never sought to tame, she considers the repercussions of ownership of living creatures and examines the distinctions between the wild and “boxed” in all species. Fox and I is not a memoir of a painful family history, which is touched on only briefly, but an ecological narrative. From ants in the sagebrush steppe to juniper trees, musk deer and voles, the entire ecosystem figures in this extraordinary tale of connectedness with nature. Despite the pest status of foxes in Australia, Fox and I will find a sympathetic audience here. DASHA MAIOROVA

BEST OF THE WEST: MICHAEL MOHAMMED AHMAD

01 OCT 2021

appy Booktober! This month, not-for-profit arts organisation WestWords wants you to “stop, breathe and read a book” – read as many books as you can, actually – to raise funds for books and literacy programs in disadvantaged schools across greater Western Sydney. The process is simple: visit booktober.org.au to sign up and make a pledge, then ask your friends and family to sponsor you to read them. Keeping in Western Sydney, why not pick up a book by a Sweatshop writer? Sweatshop is a Western Sydney-based literacy collective, striving to empower culturally and linguistically diverse communities through the written word. Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Sweatshop’s founding director and Miles Franklinshortlisted author of The Lebs, released the moving and urgent novel The Other Half of You this year, which is a good place to start. Another great Sweatshop read is 2020’s After Australia anthology, edited by Ahmad, in which a host of exciting Australian writers imagine the country as we move towards the year 2050. If poetry’s your thing, Evelyn Araluen’s Drop Bear is extraordinary, as is Omar Sakr’s The Lost Arabs – both poets from Western Sydney. Then there’s the eagerly anticipated debut essay collection from writer and poet (and After Australia contributor) Claire G Coleman: Lies, Damned Lies: A Personal Exploration of the Impact of Colonisation. MF

Public Service Announcement

by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus

Now, I am not one of life’s natural dancers. I am, however, one of those people who doesn’t let that stop them, and as a lifelong nerd, I never want to disappoint a teacher. This is how I found myself engaged in a hugely competitive dance-off with a bunch of five-year-olds. Before the dance-off, I was fine. Okay, maybe I was slightly stressed. Quite stressed. Look, okay, I was a nervous wreck. Who isn’t lately? After the dance-off, though, I was giggly and puffed and entirely delighted, and I hadn’t seen it coming at all. I’ve been reading a few biographies lately and it’s funny how often you’ll read a version of the following phrase: right when I was about to give up, something good happened. And yes, I realise this means that things were pretty terrible before something got good. And yes, I realise that retrospection is a powerful re-framer of narratives, and humans are very good at making their past decisions look better than they were. But still, when you think back on things in your life that went well, there was probably a fair bit of other stuff that happened beforehand that you would have preferred didn’t happen. So you might be right in the middle of a terrible bit. Maybe even just a “meh” bit. You might not even know what you want your next bit to involve. But that’s the point of next bits. They could involve a dance-off, or a second chance, or a really lovely skeleton leaf that makes you smile. You might be lonely. Maybe you’re bored. You could be, quite justifiably, worried or stressed or sad or

wounded or furious or any of those human emotions that are so all-encompassing they can accidentally define you. But one day soon, something will surprise you out of yourself. Things change all the time. Sometimes in tiny ways. Sometimes in big ways. You’ll be talking on the phone and someone will make you laugh out of nowhere. You’ll turn a corner and discover a beautiful bird looking right at you. The bird won’t know about the thing that’s due in, or the love you’ve just lost, or the money you don’t have enough of, or how you’re kind of just hanging on by a thread. It will look at you. And you will look at it. Two creatures in the world. Two separate points of consciousness, without a shared language. Just eyes. Looking at each other. Not thinking about anything else for a few suspended moments in history. You’ll meet someone you didn’t see coming. You’ll be going about your business and you’ll suddenly have a new friend with in-jokes and music they want you to listen to. Or you’ll find yourself regularly chatting to the neighbour from two doors down who offers you lemons and stays for a discussion about how high up the river used to go, or where to get the best avocados. Maybe you’ll find the love of your life or a colleague who changes everything for you. A teacher or a mentor or a boss who lifts you up and shows you a view of the world you haven’t seen yet. Being surprised by people is pretty great. Not knowing what’s coming can be frustrating and terrifying and confusing. It’s also kind of the point, though. There’s never a good bit, until there suddenly is. There’s never a development, until the stuff you’re leaving in the rear vision mirror is done. Public Service Announcement: you’ll get there. Wherever that is. In the meantime, take your time to chat to the neighbours and meet the eyes of whichever creature crosses your path. And always, always say yes to a surprise dance-off.

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

he other day I was helping a kid with a technical issue. See, I am a bit of a techno whizz. Hahahaha, just kidding – the poor child needed help plugging the charger into the wall. Anyway. This kid, who is five, was logging in to one of those remote learning video programs in order to partake in a dance class. I found myself grinning self‑consciously at a bunch of tiny boxes with small children in them. A teacher-shaped box spoke to me. “Oh,” said the teacher box. “Perfect. Just what’s needed. An adult. For our dance-off.” Public Service Announcement: you never know what life has for you just around the corner.

01 OCT 2021

Groove Is in the Heart

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas

PHOTOS BY ARMELLE HABIB

Tastes Like Home Stephanie Alexander

Pizza Ingredients Makes 3 x 28cm pizzas 1 cup warm water Plain flour and fine semolina, for dusting Good-quality tomato sauce

Combine the pizza flour, salt and yeast in a bowl and give them a quick mix with a whisk. Tip the mixture into an electric stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. Mix the olive oil and warm water in a small jug, then add to the dry ingredients with the mixer on very low. Increase the speed and work until you have a fairly sticky dough that is holding together (maybe 10 minutes). Tip the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, then cover and leave in a draught-free place to double in size. Expect this to take 40-60 minutes, depending on the ambient temperature. Divide the dough into three parts, knead briefly and allow to rise again, covered with a clean, dry tea towel, for about 20 minutes. Now you are ready to shape, garnish and bake. Preheat the oven as high as it will go with a pizza stone or heavy baking tray in it – the stone or tray needs to heat for at least 15 minutes. Have the semolina-flour mixture nearby (you only need a handful). Shape your pizzas. (I use a rolling pin to roll the dough as thin as possible.) Scatter a pizza peel with a little semolina-flour mixture, top with the pizza base and quickly spread on the tomato sauce and add other toppings. Now open the oven door, pull the rack with the hot pizza stone or tray towards you and deftly give the peel a quick thrust so that the pizza slides onto the stone or tray. Be careful doing this as the oven will be very hot. Cook for 12-15 minutes until golden and bubbling.

A few good toppings

Smear a pizza base with a good-quality tomato sauce. Add your favourite sausage, sliced thinly, or pancetta, scatter with pitted olives, then top with freshly sliced mozzarella. When cooked, drape with a lightly dressed salad of rocket leaves. Scatter sliced mozzarella over a pizza base. Cover with thinly sliced ripe fig. Dot with some caramelised onion and a soft blue cheese – gorgonzola dolce is my favourite. Brush a pizza base with extra-virgin olive oil. Cover with thinly sliced parboiled potato and plenty of chopped rosemary. Scatter on sliced mozzarella.

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

Stephanie says…

remember with fondness a family night I was fortunate to experience in Perugia in Umbria a few years ago now. On that occasion I was invited to the home of my Italian-Australian friend Patrizia Simone’s extended family for a pizza night, the pizzas to be baked in the family’s brick oven, and garnished by many aunties and nonne, each at their own station, slicing, spreading and keeping the pizza chain moving. There were 14 invited guests and at least 20 relatives aged six to 80 years old. What a night it was. A reminder that a gathering fuelled by pizza and a bit of wine is a fun night indeed, with minimum effort. Everyone talked at once and I overheard astonishing conversations between non‑Italian-speaking Australians and non‑English-speaking Italians. There was lots of arm waving and back slapping and immense goodwill. As we arrived the wood-fired oven was being readied. Glowing coals were shovelled out on the peel to make way for the pizzas. Most of the toppings came from the family’s own gardens or their own gleaning. Fresh tomatoes, pecorino, scamorza cheese, porcini mushrooms from the nearby scrubby forest, roasted peppers, crumbled sausage, cooked potato with rosemary, and many more. The cooked pizzas were portioned with scissors with much laughing and the comment that they had never seen a pizza-cutting wheel. Were they joking? I’m not sure. That oven was really hot – each pizza cooked in less than 5 minutes! Another table was piled with salads – green beans, more tomatoes, roasted peeled peppers, and torn scarole, a local salad green. HOME BY STEPHANIE ALEXANDER IS OUT NOW.

01 OCT 2021

Method

400g pizza flour (strong baker’s flour) 1 teaspoon sea salt 3 teaspoons instant dried yeast ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

Puzzles

ANSWERS PAGE 45.

By Lingo! by Lee Murray lee.am.murray@gmail.com MAGPIE

CLUES 5 letters Capacity Frantic fear Hickory nut Savoury jelly Spiked clubs 6 letters Cassava For fear that (2 words) Inlaid design The Godfather star Al ___ Taking a chance (2 words) 7 letters Of a secret society Of the zodiac’s 12th sign Plant of the pink family 8 letters Awnings

O N P I

C E

M A

Sudoku

by websudoku.com

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

4 9

1 6 5 4 9 7 7 9 3 1 7 5 2 2 8 4 8 5 9 1 2 7 8 2 1

Puzzle by websudoku.com

Solutions CROSSWORD PAGE 45 ACROSS 1 Whale migrations 9 Crabby 10 Barnacle 11 Toll free 14 Relent 17 Featherweight 20 Rocket science 23 Nasdaq 25 Monetary 28 Location 29 Limpid 30 Rain cats and dogs

DOWN 2 Harp on 3 Label 4 Mayor 5 Gable 6 Aircrew 7 In all 8 Spectator 12 Frame 13 Ethos 15 Eagle 16 Strangler 17 Faces 18 Rhino 19 Ernie 21 Tequila 22 Trying 24 Drain 25 Minks 26 Nylon 27 Tamed

20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9 1 c) 100 billion 2 Sarah Chalke 3 Minerva 4 Archewell Foundation 5 Collingwood and St Kilda 6 Paris, France 7 Guantanamo Bay 8 A beard tax 9 Colour television 10 Octopus 11 Ben Chifley 12 Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, US Open and Tokyo Paralympic Games gold medal 13 Mad cow disease 14 They all died on November 22, 1963 15 Sunset Boulevard (1950) 16 Rickie Lee Jones 17 The Handmaid’s Tale lost all 21 categories in which it was nominated 18 Fluxus 19 Belle Gibson 20 Queensland in 1965

01 OCT 2021

Using all nine letters provided, can you answer these clues? Every answer must include the central letter. Plus, which word uses all 9 letters?

by puzzler.com

Word Builder

Magpies were originally just pies. In the 1300s, the black and white birds were pye (from the Latin pica). Over time, pie became a more general term for a bird. Another word then had to be attached to specify the exact type: sea-pie, treepie and, my favourite, murdering-pie, for the shrike, aka butcher bird. In 16th-century English slang, the name Margaret and its diminutives were used to represent qualities seen as particularly feminine – in this case, constant chattering. One of the common nicknames for Margaret was maggot! As these black-and-white birds were constantly chattering, they earned the name magget the py; by the early 1600s, it condensed to maggotypie, then magpie. The Australian magpie, though, is a completely different species.

Crossword

by Chris Black

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

Quick Clues ACROSS

1 Movement of large sea creatures (5,10) 9 Bad-tempered (6) 10 Tenacious sea creature (8) 11 W ithout charge (4,4) 14 G ive in (6) 17 Boxing class (13) 20 Easy to understand if it’s not this (6,7) 23 Stock exchange (6) 25 Fiscal (8) 28 Place (8) 29 Clear (6) 30 Bucket down (4,4,3,4) DOWN

2 Talk a lot (4,2) 3 Categorize (5) 4 Municipal politician (5) 5 Bit of architecture (5) 6 Flying staff (7) 7 As a whole (2,3) 8 Viewer (9) 12 Build (5) 13 Character (5) 15 Predatory bird (5) 16 Murderer (9) 17 Confronts (5) 18 Horned animal (5) 19 Bert’s roommate (5) 21 Type of alcohol (7) 22 Difficult (6) 24 Exhaust (5) 25 Animals hunted for fur (5) 26 Stocking material (5) 27 Broken (5)

Cryptic Clues

Solutions

ACROSS

(6,7)

23 QandA ’s heated exchange (6) 25 A rtist fairly irregular financially (8) 28 R eleased coal into environment (8) 29 Clear-cut energy implied change? (6) 30 Doting Cassandra provided forecast? (4,4,3,4) DOWN

2 Instrument working? Talk at length (4,2) 3 Lucille Ball holds up sticker (5) 4 Local politician’s poor performance on the radio (5)

Sesame Street (5)

21 Spirit of equality not quite managed (7) 22 Tough having a crack (6) 24 Doctor and patient oddly ignored strain (5) 25 Fur providers exchanged letters in Eastern

European city (5) 26 Sample of vinyl-onyx synthetic material (5) 27 Trained rag-tag team ahead of Grand Final (5)

7 9 6 8 3 1 5 2 4

3 8 1 4 5 2 9 7 6

4 5 2 6 9 7 1 3 8

9 4 3 5 2 8 6 1 7

1 2 5 7 6 4 8 9 3

6 7 8 9 1 3 4 5 2

5 3 4 2 8 9 7 6 1

8 1 9 3 7 6 2 4 5

2 6 7 1 4 5 3 8 9

Puzzle by websudoku.com

WORD BUILDER PAGE 43 5 Space Panic Pecan Aspic Maces 6 Manioc In case Mosaic Pacino On spec 7 Masonic Piscean Campion 8 Canopies 9 Companies

01 OCT 2021

miserable (6)

10 Ran cable around marine creature (8) 11 Foretell distress without duty (4,4) 14 The French invested in payment yield (6) 17 Endure destiny, says Spooner with class (13) 20 It’s hard to comprehend geology without alien?

SUDOKU PAGE 43

5 Hollywood star’s architectural feature (5) 6 Pilot part of this broadcast line-up? (7) 7 Altogether protected by criminal lawyers (2,3) 8 Witness protects a criminal (9) 12 Note about right shape (5) 13 Those characters show spirit (5) 15 Dog heading off to get bird (5) 16 Newcomer caught novice killer (9) 17 Encounters loud experts (5) 18 Rough edges in oilskin cap seen on safari? (5) 19 Needing no introduction, Sanders appeared on

1 Travelling with marine goals!? (5,10) 9 Shed tears about Swedish popstars, almost

Click NOVEMBER 1971

Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault words by Michael Epis photo by Getty

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

he man to the left is of course French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, while the man with the megaphone is Michel Foucault, commonly designated a philosopher, even though he was more properly a historian of ideas, as he himself said. The scene is a protest at the Goutte d’Or, Paris, where a month earlier a 15-year-old Algerian boy was shot dead by a French delivery driver, who claimed the boy, Djilali Ben Ali, was strangling his partner, at No.53, where she was the concierge. Ben Ali, one of seven children from a poor family, a troubled young man with a long criminal history, lived on the first floor with his uncle, a fabric merchant. The killing quickly became a cause célèbre, amid heady accusations of racism. But it also got overrun by events. Within months Foucault and Sartre, dressed exactly the same, were again demonstrating, at

Renault’s Boulogne Billancourt factory, where a sacked worker who returned to hand out Maoist leaflets was shot dead by a security guard. The two events were so close together that they are often confused. The Renault situation escalated. A company executive was kidnapped. The security guard did four years’ jail; upon release, Maoists murdered him. In 1977 the Paris Assize Court came to its conclusion and the boy’s killer, Daniel Pigot, was sentenced to five years’ jail, three years suspended. “Sans passion,” was how Le Monde led its report. “Yes, the second day of the Djilali murder trial passed without passion. How long gone were the days of the ‘Djilali committee’!” As for the slain factory worker, Pierre Overney, his death is still commemorated by French leftists. He is not to be confused with Pierre Overnoy, a purveyor of fine French wines.