Trouble June-July 2019

trouble 167

CONTENTS DEEP TROUBLE’S WAR ON THE CHASER’S WAR

ON THE 2019 ELECTION RESULT

Deep Trouble Podcast ............................................................................

THE FASHION FORCE

Inga Walton ..............................................................................................

JUNE/JULY SALON

Jumpin’ Jehosephat! ................................................................................

BOB’S CONVOY

Ben Laycock ...........................................................................................

04 06 26 40

COVER: Dolce & Gabbana, Milan (est. 1985), Domenico Dolce & Stefano Gabbana, designers, Handbag (2019), leather, resin, plastic, metal, silk (swatch). Collection, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

(Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, AM, and the Campbell-Pretty Family, 2019). Installation photography: Tom Ross. The Krystyna CampbellPretty Fashion Gift, National Gallery of Victoria (International), 180 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne (VIC) until 14 July 2019 - ngv.vic.gov.au Issue 167 JUNE/JULY 2019 trouble is an independent monthly mag for promotion of arts and culture Published by Trouble Magazine Pty Ltd. ISSN 1449-3926 EDITOR Steve Proposch CONTRIBUTORS Inga Walton, Ben Laycock, love.

FOLLOW on issuu, facebook & twitter SUBSCRIBE at troublemag.com READER ADVICE: Trouble magazine contains artistic content that may include nudity, adult concepts, coarse language, and the names, images or artworks of deceased Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. Treat Trouble intelligently, as you expect to be treated by others. Collect or dispose of thoughtfully.

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SPECIAL EDITION with Dr Mark Halloran

PODCAST

Deep Trouble’s War on The Chaser’s War on the 2019 Election Result In this SPECIAL EPISODE of Deep Trouble we interview Charles Firth of The Chaser.

He offers an analysis of the state of play for the major parties in 2019, why the Labour Party lost the ‘unlosable’ election, as well as the politics surrounding important issues from refugee intake to climate change. Firth completed an Arts degree in political science at the University of Sydney, where he was the subject of a reality TV styled documentary called Uni. He is best known as a member of The Chaser productions CNNNN where he hosted ‘The Firth Factor’, which was a satirical segment parodying Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly’s ‘The O’Reilly Factor’, and also appeared in a segment about American culture called ‘Firth in the USA’ for The Chaser’s War on Everything. He is currently the editor of The Chaser Quarterly.

Deep Trouble Season 2 rolls in July 2019. Listen to all of the Deep Trouble interviews we’ve run to date at troublemag.com or look for us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Mixcloud, etc.

the

ashion

orce Inga Walton

Krystyna Campbell-Pretty’s passion for fashion has endowed the National Gallery of Victoria with a substantial number of exceptional couture and prêt-à-porter ensembles, accessories, sketches and studio drawings, photography, fashion journals and supporting textual material over the last several years. >>>

An NGV Foundation Board member, and newly appointed NGV ‘Ambassador to France’, Campbell-Pretty’s unprecedented support of the Fashion and Textiles Department stems from her belief in the transformative power of the medium and its ability to reflect the period from which it derived. “Fashion can be simultaneously artistic, pragmatic, and a crucial physical record of complex construction skills and techniques that are all but gone. It is beautiful to regard and can bring great enjoyment. It reflects the human condition”, she observes.

“Today the financial pressure on museums is high, so if I can help I am happy. You give because deep down inside yourself, you feel you have to give ... without any other consideration”.

It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that Campbell-Pretty’s philanthropy has transformed the fashion collection. The depth of her contribution has been acknowledged with the stand-alone exhibition The Krystyna Campbell-Pretty Fashion Gift (until 14 July, 2019) featuring over 150 of the 250 works gifted by Campbell-Pretty to the NGV Collection over the last three years in memory of her late husband Harold Campbell who died suddenly in 2014. Supporters of the NGV since 2004, together they donated the funds to establish the Schools Access Program for disadvantaged children to attend ticketed exhibitions and Melbourne Now (2013-14). They also provided the funds for the purchase of the painting Don Luis Jaime Antonio de Borbon y Farnesio, Infante of Spain (c. 1774-78) by Anton Mengs (1728-79) in 2014. Campbell-Pretty then sponsored the inclusion of the Chinese designer Guo Pei’s dazzling and opulent Legend collection at the inaugural NGV Triennial (2017).

Patrons attending the NGV’s The House of Dior: Seventy Years of Haute Couture (2017) may have noticed that the exhibition included eleven ensembles acquired or gifted by Campbell-Pretty, examples often superior to the featured Dior Héritage Collection. Several of these works are on display again including Pré Catelan, dress (1947), Aladin, Cocktail dress (1947), Cavalière, suit (1948), and Village party (Fête au Village) Evening dress (1955) by Christian Dior (1905-57).

Making their exhibition début are three outfits, two from Dior’s H-line (1954-55), which presented a more youthful silhouette by raising the bust and elongating the torso. Cuba, Evening dress (1954), was christened ‘the Degas look’ by Vogue in reference to the French artist’s paintings of dancers, and the long, tight ballerina fit. The lightly bejewelled gold bodice and skirt of pink floating tulle evoked romance, femininity and quintessentially Parisian chic.

The Fashion Force / Inga Walton

Mexico, Cocktail dress (1954) is densely embroidered in gold metallic threads and sequins in stylised overlapping arabesques, and features a dramatic flared collar edged in black velvet. The work echoes an earlier dress, Mexico (Mexique), Evening gown (1951), held by Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, also using exaggerated volume, a favourite design device of Christian Dior. The crisp white Dress and jacket (1956) from Dior’s Arrow (Flèche) line is covered in embroidered white daisies with pink carpels. Dior used flowers as an inspiration for the structure of his garments and as a motif for embellishment, richly decorating the surfaces of fabrics with embroidery, beadwork and patterns. His initial designs were developed at his country home, Moulin de Coudret, near Fontainebleau where Dior would look out over the garden. Dior’s younger sister Catherine (1917-2008), the inspiration for his first perfume Miss Dior (1947), was a horticulturist and worked as a sales agent at Les Halles wholesale flower markets in Paris for many years.

Interspersed throughout the British & European Collection (19th Century), the International Collection (19-20th Centuries), and the 18th & 19th Century Decorative Arts & Paintings Galleries on Level 2 are designs ranging in age from a Dinner dress (c.1889) by the house of Félix, Paris to an Outfit (2019) from Christian Dior’s Resort collection by Maria Grazia Chiuri. “Building and completing ... if it’s ever possible, the collection is the whole motivation, because having started, and having really a very, very good beginning, you then become very conscious of what we didn’t have ... and I’m still conscious of what we don’t have. It’s a driving force. When I see very important garments I get a sense of great thrill”, says Campbell-Pretty.

Her desire to secure some of the most exceptional pieces available on the international market for the NGV is reflected in the recent acquisition of seven works by Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) from the collection of the Kuwait-born socialite Mouna Ayoub. Reported to have the largest private collection of haute couture in the world, and rumoured to never wear the same piece twice, Ayoub auctioned 100 various outfits by Saint Laurent (created between 1988 and 2001) on 23 January this year with the proceeds going to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris and La Cinéfondation, Cannes. An outrageous black and white Evening dress (1990) in an abbreviated traje de flamenca style is the couture equivalent of a mullet. A deceptively simple black silk gazar bodice with shoe-string straps tapers down to form a row of ruffles and a bustle back. A second layer of ruffles in white organza satin spills out to form a long train with a black embroidered latticework of jet beads and pompoms with a large black bow at ankle-level. Further pompoms PREVIOUS SPREAD Dolce & Gabbana, Milan (est. 1985) Domenico Dolce & Stefano Gabbana, designers, (l-r) Handbag (2019), leather, resin, plastic, metal, silk (swatch). Handbag (2017), painted resin, LED lights, plastic, leather, metal, glass, diamantés, simulant pearls, cotton.

Handbag (2018), painted resin, leather, metal (fastenings). Collection, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. (Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, AM, and the Campbell-Pretty Family, 2019).

Installation photography: Tom Ross.

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in various sizes are suspended from the white ruffles around the front, cascading down the sides and back, and fanning out across the train. As if to confirm the adage that money can’t buy taste, it really is one hot mess of a dress!

Of particular note is the lavishly embellished ensemble Look 113, Hommage à ma maison (Homage to My House) (1990), one of only two versions ever made (the other is in the Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Paris). Referencing the décor of his salon at 5 Avenue Marceau, it was also a tribute to the skilled artisans who realised Saint Laurent’s creative vision; the shimmering rock crystal, glass jewels and the scrolling gilt trim adorning the jacket required 700 hours of work. In an interview in 2010, François Lesage (1929-2011), Director of the renowned couture embroidery firm Maison Lesage, discussed his collaboration with Saint Laurent, which spanned forty-four years. Of Hommage à ma maison he recalled, “He showed me the chandelier that [interior designer] Jacques Grange had given him, which was reflected with the sky in a Lalanne mirror, and he imagined a Ciel de Paris [sky of Paris] embroidery. Morning, midday, or evening sky? ‘The three’, he responded. We made photos, and that’s how the embroidery of Homage to My House was born”.

Look 96, Evening Dress (1990) of pistachio green moiré silk has a deep décolleté edged in swirling gold lamé arabesques meeting in a central stylised bow.

Echoing the fabulous embroidery of Hommage à ma maison, Maison Lesage is also responsible for the dense pattern of jewels and rock crystal drops that trail around the neckline. The slightly ruched, above-the-knee, skirt gives the longsleeved dress a more playful aspect and enlivens the ornate detailing. Look 89, Evening dress and Robe (2001) is inspired by the glamour of Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s, a reference Saint Laurent deployed regularly in his collections.

A heavy silk-satin cream halter-neck gown, reminiscent of those worn by stars like Jean Harlow (1911-37) and Carole Lombard (1908-42), is layered with a diaphanous robe trimmed with delicate ostrich feathers by the plumassier Maison Lemarié (est.1880). One of the last plumassiers in the world (someone who works with or trades in ornamental feathers or plumes), Maison Lemarié also supplies artificial flower creations, and has a tailoring workshop that specialises in smocks, pleats, inlays, ruffles and matelassé (weaving on a jacquard or dobby loom to produce a quilted or padded appearance).

Since 1985, the House of Chanel (privately owned since 1971 by the secretive Wertheimer family) has progressively acquired many of the leading artisan-lead firms such as Lesage and Maison Lemarié as subsidiaries in their Métier d’Art partner network (under the umbrella company Paraffection). The intention is to preserve and promote the highly rarefied expertise of these paruriers, and the labour-intensive skills of their dedicated workforce. Twenty-six independent > Yves Saint Laurent, Paris (est. 1961) Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint Laurent (1936-2008), designer, Look 96, Evening Dress (1990), silk (moiré), metal, lamé, rock crystal (embroidery by Lesage). Collection, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. (Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, AM, and the Campbell-Pretty Family, 2019). Installation photography: Inga Walton.

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ateliers are now part of this fraternity, and also have long histories of working with couture houses to produce many of the splendid embellishments and accessories that are the hallmark of an haute couture garment. The current Métier d’Art circle includes the fabric pleater Lognon (est.1945), glove maker Causse (est.1892), embroiderer Montex (est.1939), specialists in tambour or Lunéville beading, Guillet (est.1896) floral decoration and master corsage-maker, the milliner and maker of hair accessories Maison Michel (est.1936), Goossens (est.1950) jewellers and goldsmiths, bootmakers Massaro (est.1894), the costume jeweller, accessory and button-maker Desrues (est.1936), and the Scottish cashmere supplier Barrie Knitwear (est.1903).

The exhibition includes sixteen works by Saint Laurent whose designs CampbellPretty has a particular affinity for, “I still love my vintage Yves Saint Laurent pieces – I still have my Rive Gauche long trench coat I bought with Harold in 1978, which has timeless design and elegance”, she enthuses. “My mother and I had different approaches [to fashion], as we were from different generations: I was really inspired

by Yves Saint Laurent, while my mother thought Christian Dior was the iconic figure of elegance. I still have a clear memory of an issue of Australian Vogue that pictured the model Veruschka [Countess Vera von Lehndorff-Steinort] in the famous Saharienne, outfit [c.1968] by Saint Laurent. Pure design, chic, modern, elegance ... this image was a new world to me”, Campbell-Pretty recollects. “There were also photos of many other key fashion developments like Saint Laurent’s critical Le Smoking, suit [1966], the Paco Rabbane ‘chain mail’ dress [1967], even Mary Quant’s chic minis with their paired back simplicity”. Campbell-Pretty would eventually acquire all of those outfits for the NGV, with the exception of a Quant mini-dress. However, a black and red wool Dress (1969) with vinyl details by Pierre Cardin more than makes up for that.

Many of the included works derive from the extensive Dominique Sirop Collection, a microcosm of the world of haute couture and international fashion.

The Parisian collector and designer assembled most of the works from auction houses and specialist dealers in America, France and London between 1989 and 2014. Sirop is regarded as one of fashion’s great insiders, having been apprenticed to Saint Laurent, and then hired by Count Hubert de Givenchy (1927-2018) in 1978 to be the assistant designer at his eponymous couture house. Sirop later worked for the Japanese designer Hanae Mori from 1989 to 1996, and thereafter established his own couture house. When Sirop decided to sell his collection, 130 works (ranging from 1800 to 2003) by more than thirty different fashion designers, it was offered on the condition that it was purchased in its entirety.

In 2016, it was acquired by the NGV courtesy of $1.4 million in funds donated < Paco Rabanne, Paris (est.1966), Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo (Paco Rabanne), designer, Mini dress (1967), metal. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. (Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, AM, and the Campbell-Pretty Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gift Program, 2018). © Paco Rabanne.

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by Campbell-Pretty, and represents the most significant French haute couture collection ever to be acquired by an Australian institution. “I knew this acquisition could change the entire position of the NGV in terms of fashion; it could re-shape its profile, and open it up to great future potential for growth”, she stresses. “Fashion is an important area of development for museums globally and represents a field with so much potential”. Campbell-Pretty was certain it was a project that fulfilled the intentions she shared with her husband, “...we had for some time wanted to do more and felt that the right opportunity would arise one day. When the potential to acquire this collection emerged, I felt that even though Harold was no longer with me, he would agree that this was that opportunity”. It was a transformative experience for both Campbell-Pretty and the NGV, “The acquisition of works from Dominique Sirop has changed my life in a significant way: I am working more and more closely with the Gallery. I feel I am now a committed collector of a very unique sort: I am collecting for the state, in agreement with the curators”.

Sirop’s collection also included an outstanding fashion research archive, including rare examples of fashion magazines including Gazette du Bon Ton (1912 to 1925), Harper’s Bazaar (1909 to 1966), L’Officiel (1929 to 2003), French Vogue (1923 to 1954) and American Vogue (1913 to 1969). Original sketches and studio drawings from fashion houses such as Boué Soeurs, Lanvin, Yves Saint Laurent, Hanae Mori, Jean Dessès, and Paquin, including a selection of original workbooks by Madame Grès (1903-93) and Jeanne (-Marie) Lanvin (1867-1946), and in-house photography from Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Lanvin, Schiaparelli, Vionnet, Grès and Worth round out the diverse trove. These rare ancillary materials form the basis of the Krystyna Campbell-Pretty Fashion Research Collection, an acknowledgement of the growing importance of archival resources within museum and gallery collections today. This specialist fashion archive is now housed under the auspices of the Gallery’s Shaw Research Library.

Grouped in the middle of the John Schaeffer Gallery is a display devoted to the ‘Little Black Dress’, with gowns by Paquin, Maggy Rouff, Lanvin, and five by Chanel (ranging from 1919 to 1929), atop plinths. Interspersed amongst the dresses are bronzes from the NGV collection by the German sculptor Joseph Uphues (18501911), French painter and sculptor (Paul-)Albert Bartholomé (1848-1928), Francis Derwent Wood, RA (1871-1926), James Havard Thomas (1854-1921), and of course Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Another black ensemble, the rare ‘Hall of Mirrors’ jacket and dress (1938), was a key work from the Zodiac collection by the Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973), which drew on the two main themes of astrology and the Palace of Versailles. The mirrored archways found in the palace seem likely to be the inspiration for the ornate decoration on the front of the jacket. Schiaparelli frequently visited Versailles and its grounds to call on her friend, the renowned interior designer Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl (1859-1950) who lived there. The outfit The Fashion Force / Inga Walton

was purchased Mrs Vera Worth from Schiaparelli’s London boutique, and remained a prized possession throughout her life until it was acquired at auction.

Positioned around the gallery walls are works from Maggy Rouff, Maisons AgnèsDrecoll, Schiaparelli, Lanvin, Patou, and a selection of seven dresses (1935-85), and one cape (1970s), by the French designer known as Madame Grès. A further work, the dark brown ottoman silk Hostess dress (c.1948-49), is displayed around the corner in the next gallery. Born Germaine Émilie Krebs, she was formally trained as a sculptor before she began producing high-fashion clothing. Krebs’ thorough understanding of classicism and art is evident in the ‘hand building’ technique she used to create all her gowns on the mannequin. Working under the name ‘La Maison Alix’ from 1932 to 1934 (with her co-worker Juliette Barton), and then under the name ‘Alix’ until 1942, Krebs won first prize for haute couture at the Paris Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) in 1937. The name Grès is a partial anagram of the first name of Krebs’ husband, Russian painter Serge Czerefkov, and the designer was notoriously secretive about her personal life throughout her long career.

Madame Grès reinvented the columnar dress, and perfected the art of pleating and draping, combining panels of various sizes, shapes, angles and curves to flatter the feminine form. Evening dress (1946) shows the complex pleating arrangements she often employed in the bodices of her dresses, using metres of silk jersey to create a self-supporting and deceptively simple form-fitting gown.

Grès progressed from the purity of Grecian classicism to more avant-garde expressions in her later years before she retired in 1989. Evening dress (1976) demonstrates the textured three-dimensional form she brought to her designs, using teardrop-shaped coverings of graduating pleated panels to conceal the breasts. The radically bare bodice is anchored to a gored skirt with a pooling hemline that follows, but does not cling, to the body. When grouped with earlier Grès gowns, the aesthetic and structural similarity is remarkably consistent.

Nonetheless, the influence of disco and the nightclub scene, as well as changing attitudes to women’s physical expression and sexuality in the 1970s, occasioned a subtle shift in the designer’s response to the ‘liberated’ female silhouette.

Amidst the European designers, there are several examples from British couture at the highest level. The Dominique Sirop Collection brought with it a number of works from the man widely considered to be the ‘father of haute couture’ Charles Frederick Worth (1825-95), including a vivid orange Afternoon dress (c.1890) of silk satin and cut velvet. Worth was born in Lincolnshire and worked in two London department stores before leaving for Paris in 1846, where he found employment at the prestigious textile firm Maison Gagelin-Opigez, Chazelle et NEXT SPREAD Grès, Paris (est. 1942-2012), Germaine Émilie Krebs (Madame Grès, 1903-93), designer, (L-R) Evening dress (1946), silk (jersey, crêpe), Evening dress (1980), silk (jersey, chiffon), Evening dress (1976), silk (jersey, organza), with, (second from right, yellow one) Alix, Paris (est.193442), Germaine Émilie Krebs (1903-93), designer, Evening dress (1930), silk, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. (Purchased with funds donated by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, AM, 2015).

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Cie. Worth soon made himself an asset at the company, and established himself as a taste-maker, by exhibiting prize-winning designs at both the Great Exhibition (1851) in London, and the Exposition Universelle (1855) in Paris. Together with his young Swedish business partner, Otto Gustaf Bobergh (1821-82), Worth set up his own establishment in the rue de la Paix in 1858 under the name Worth & Bobergh. Social success, and Worth’s entré into Court circles, was achieved in 1860 when a ball dress he designed for the influential Princess Pauline von Metternich (1836-1921) caught the eye of the Empress Eugénie (1826-1920), who summoned Worth the following day.

Worth’s position as official dressmaker to Empress Eugénie soon led other royal clients, such as Empress Elisabeth (‘Sisi’) of Austria (1837-98), to seek out his services. Although his most prestigious clients expected Worth to attend on them, his aristocratic and well-to-do customers visited his salon for a consultation and fitting, thereby turning the House of Worth (as it was by 1871), and the street it occupied, into a social hub. Worth revolutionised the business of fashion in several important ways: making clothes better suited to everyday life by tempering the line and length; using house models to parade his garments so clients could appraise them on the body; sewing ‘branded’ labels bearing his name into the clothing; and raising the status of ‘dressmaking’ in such a way that the designer-maker became a fashion arbiter.

Worth was as skilled at self-promotion as he was at tailoring, craftsmanship and design, so that his fame quickly spread throughout Europe. For celebrities and the socially ambitious, particularly in America, the Worth brand became a by-word for style. By 1874, Worth’s sons Gaston-Lucien (1853-1924) and JeanPhilippe (1856-26) joined the business, ensuring its viability in coming decades.

For Campbell-Pretty, these earlier works carry a particular resonance, “It’s the feeling that you are handling something that almost changed history, changed fashion history. I think fashion is exactly that, it’s living history, it’s social history, it’s how people lived. I’m obviously collecting women’s fashion, it’s how women were regarded”.

Another Englishman whose salon, in rue Royale, attracted European royalty, high society, and any number of pre-eminent stage and screen stars was Captain Edward H. Molyneux (1891-1974), a cousin to the Earls of Sefton. Appropriately enough, he started out as a sketch artist for the magazine Smart Set, and attracted the attention of the celebrated couturière Lucile (Lady Duff-Gordon, 1863-1935). Molyneux was hired to work in Lucile’s London salon in 1910, and was quickly promoted to assistant designer at her Paris branch. After his service in World War I, during which he lost the sight in one eye and was invalided out, Molyneux established his > Worth, Paris (est. 1858), Charles Frederick Worth (1825-95), designer, Afternoon dress (c.1890), silk (satin, cut velvet). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (Purchased with funds donated by Mrs Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, AM, in memory of Mr Harold Campbell-Pretty, 2015). Installation photography: Inga Walton.

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own fashion house in 1919. In 1922, he relocated his salon above the world famous restaurant Maxim’s, and would subsequently open branches in Monte Carlo (1925), Cannes (1927) and London (1932). Molyneux’s impeccable and refined designs, with their restricted palette and noticeable lack of superfluous decoration, suited denizens of Parisian café culture and the international jet-set.

Molyneux designed the costumes for the play Private Lives (1930) by his friend Sir Noël Coward (1899-1973), but his most famous commission was probably the white silk and silver lamé brocade wedding dress of Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark (1906-68) when she married Prince George, Duke of Kent (190242), fourth son of George V, in 1934. Molyneux had also supplied the trousseau for the new Duchess, the last foreign-born princess to marry into the British Royal Family. Princess Marina was widely admired for her beauty and sophisticated style, a contrast to the more traditional fashions favoured by her mother-in-law (and godmother) Queen Mary, and sister-in-law the Duchess of York (later Queen Elizabeth). Before his semi-retirement in 1950, Molyneux’s couture designs adopted a more light-hearted and romantic note exemplified by a strapless Evening dress (1949). In lustrous red silk taffeta, petal layers and soft scalloping at the bodice parts to a straight sheath beneath. An otherwise streamlined navy strapless Cocktail dress (c.1949-50) is enlivened by a double ruffle at the top of the bodice.

When the engagement of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer was announced in February, 1981, British Vogue invited “six of Britain’s best designers” to sketch ‘Wedding Dresses of the Day 1981’. Unbeknownst to the fashion fraternity, Lady Diana had already made her choice in early March of the comparatively inexperienced design duo of David and Elizabeth Emanuel. The notorious crinoline dress in ivory silk taffeta, that looked like an unopened parachute with its creased 7.62 metre train, was quite close in style to the design they had submitted to Vogue, and would haunt bridal fashions for decades.

One of the other five designers tapped by Vogue was Dame Zandra Rhodes, RDI, who then created her Renaissance collection, also known as the Gold collection in response to widespread public interest in the royal nuptials. Inspired by royalty, sixteenth-century Elizabethan dress, and eighteenth-century panniers, the collection evoked a sense of occasion. A bronze lamé Evening ensemble (1981), with its oversize pleated sleeves and fanned skirt, was purchased by Claire, Lady Hesketh, wife of the 3rd Baron Hesketh. The new Princess of Wales would later purchase at least two outfits from Rhodes: a white silk chiffon dinner dress (1985), worn in May, 1987 to a charity benefit in London, and a pink silk chiffon dinner dress (1986), worn to a banquet in Kyoto as part of the State Visit to Japan that year, both sold at Christie’s in 1997. < Molyneux, Paris (est.1919-50), Edward H. Molyneux (1891-1974), designer, Evening dress (1949), silk (taffeta), metal (fastenings). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. The Dominique Sirop Collection. (Purchased with funds donated by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, AM, in memory of Mr. Harold Campbell-Pretty, 2015).

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Five outfits by (Lee) Alexander McQueen, CBE (1969-2010) explore his volatile and often polarising fashion narrative of ‘sabotage and tradition’. McQueen’s Scottish heritage was very important to him; his father Ronald was born, and had ancestral roots, in Skye. He drew on Scotland’s fractious history of internal clan divisions, and protracted conflict with England, for a number of his collections including Banshee (1994) and Highland Rape (1995). Look 30, Dress (2006) is from the Widows of Culloden collection (2006), which presented a suite of outfits in the distinctive black, red, and yellow McQueen tartan alongside other signifiers of Scottish and Victorian-era dress such as lace jabots, bustles and underpinnings.

The collection was inspired by the final confrontation of the Jacobite rising of 1745, where the forces of the ‘Young Pretender’, Prince Charles Edward Stuart (172088), were defeated by the forces of George II, led by his third son Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (1721-65). McQueen reflects on the persecution and punitive penalties introduced in the aftermath, including the Dress Act of 1746, which made it illegal to wear clan tartan or kilts (repealed in 1782), and the Highland Clearances (1750 to 1860), which evicted tenants from land they and their families worked. Two toiles from this collection – a trial garment typically used by the maker to test the design, cut, fit and drape of the cloth – give an insight into McQueen’s design process. Usually they are made in inexpensive calico, but McQueen made his toiles with the fabrics he used in the final collection.

McQueen was appointed to the house of Givenchy (1996 to 2001), although it was an uneven tenure that seemed to be at odds with his wilder creative inclinations, and he chafed under the media and corporate pressure. Three pieces from his Givenchy period are displayed, including Ensemble, Look 40 (1997), a high-waisted skirt and heavily embroidered matador-style jacket, from his début collection, The Search for the Golden Fleece (1997). It used a palette of gold, white and silver to reference both the house logo and Grecian mythology, but was not well received, and McQueen himself described it as ‘crap’. Look 3, Dress and Boots and Look 4, Dress (both 2010) are from the posthumous Angels and Demons collection which was about eighty percent completed at the time of McQueen’s suicide. It was conceived and draped on the stands, but completed by the atelier under the direction of his long-term assistant Sarah Burton, OBE, and shown in a series of intimate presentations. Poignantly, the works explore themes of religion and the afterlife, inspired by the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516), and the type of heavy three-dimensional gilt embroideries typically seen on ecclesiastical robes.

A selection of nine Lucite handbags from the 1950s, now highly sought by collectors, shows how thermoplastics were embraced by the world of fashion and interior design after World War II. Lucite was created in 1931 by the US > Alexander McQueen, London (est.1992) (Lee) Alexander McQueen, CBE (1969-2010), designer, Look 3, Dress and Boots (2010), silk, metal (thread), leather, plastic. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, AM, and the Campbell-Pretty Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2017). © Alexander McQueen, London.

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chemical company DuPont as a durable acrylic material made from polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). Three novelty handbags from Dolce & Gabbana are more akin to small-scale works of sculpture than anything practical you might actually use. Handbag (2019), adorned with painted resin roses and giant crystals around the handles bears the sign ‘Do Not Disturb! We Are Creating...”. Handbag (2018) is in the shape of an entire basket of red painted resin roses, and Handbag (2017) expresses a resoundingly Baroque sensibility with its ornate gold hardware.

Three arched windows like a church are inlaid with diamantés, simulant pearls, and resin flowers, the central space features a floating cherub. At the touch of a button the windows light up with a colourful array of changing hues, the campy display augmented by gold padlocks. “Oh I love Dolce & Gabbana! Their style is about life and joy: flowers, colours, femininity and glamour”, coos CampbellPretty. “I love them because their fashion makes you happy; they make you smile.

That’s something I appreciate very much...”.

Campbell-Pretty is now more comfortable in her philanthropic role, and energised by her success thus far, “Let’s be clear, I am not shopping; rather, I am in a permanent dialogue with the curatorial team about eventual acquisitions that could enrich the collections of the Gallery”, she asserts. “Collaboration is the word. And for me it is also about learning; everything is interesting to me... It would be a mistake to impose my taste or my choices. I am here to listen to the needs of the curatorial team, and to help elaborate strategies in order to enlarge the fashion collection”.

Campbell-Pretty has her attention firmly focused on an upcoming generation of potential designers, connoisseurs, curators and fashion fans she hopes will be inspired by her contribution. “What I hope students will learn is the wide range of experiences women had, the wide range of ways that they presented themselves, and perhaps if they can be given some help from teachers and curators to understand how the various phases of female development and emancipation walked alongside these fashion trends”, she explains. “Everything is inter-related. I hope that they feel uplifted, challenged, surprised, and that they leave with a sense of having discovered something new, and perhaps something about themselves”.

The Krystyna Campbell-Pretty Fashion Gift, National Gallery of Victoria (International), 180 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne (VIC) until 14 July, 2019 - www.ngv.vic.gov.au Trouble congratulates Krystyna Campbell-Pretty on being appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, 2019. > Philanthropist Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, AM, in the John Schaeffer Gallery in front of The First Cloud (1887) by Sir William Quiller Orchardson, RA (1832-1910). To the right, Widowed (1879) by (Francis) Frank M. Holl, RA (1845-88) with, (attrib.) Chanel, Paris (est. 1909), Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel (1883-1971), designer, Evening Dress (1931), silk (organdie), Collection, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. (Purchased with funds donated by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, AM, in memory of Mr. Harold Campbell-Pretty, 2015). © Chanel, Paris. (Photo: Eugene Hyland)

june/july salon

LEFT: Robert Young, King of Kings 2019, acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist. National Reconciliation Week Exhibition 2019, Manningham Art Gallery, Manningham City Square (MC²), 687 Doncaster Road, Doncaster (VIC), until 22 June 2019 - manningham.vic.gov.au ABOVE: Wolf Wennrich (1922-91), Object 1974. Silver, acrylic, steel, brass, 7.7 x 7.7 x 4.7 cm. WE McMillan Collection. RMIT University Art Collection. Melbourne Modern: European art and design at RMIT since 1945, RMIT Gallery, 344 Swanston Street Melbourne (VIC), 21 June – 17 August 2019 - rmit.edu.au NEXT SPREAD: Hannah Gartside, The Sleepover 2018. Photograph: Louis Lim. Fantasies – Hannah Gartside, Ararat Gallery TAMA, 82 Vincent Street, Ararat (VIC), 20 July – 20 October 2019 - araratgallerytama.com.au

june/july salon

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Cody Ellington, Future Cities Wellington Live Performance, Hall of Memories, National War Memorial, Wellington, New Zealand, 16 June 2019. Also Future Cities Popup Show, Central City, Wellington, NZ, 14 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 22 June 2019 - derive.tokyo LEFT TOP: Mervyn Rubuntja, Plenty Highway, Near Yamba 2019, watercolour. Pmarra Nurna-kanhala Untha-lapp-urma : Walking Through Country, Artists from the lltja Ntjarra (Many Hands) Arts Centre, Broadhurst Gallery, Hazelhurst Arts Centre, 782 Kingsway, Gymea (NSW), 29 June â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 9 July 2019 - sutherlandshire.nsw.gov.au LEFT BOTTOM: Image by Jack Kirby Crosby for La Mama, The Intriguing Case of The Silent Forest, performance at La Mama Courthouse, 349 Drummond Street, Carlton (VIC), Wednesday 3rd July 2019, 8.30pm - lamama.com.au ABOVE: John Parkes, Conflagration 2017, cotton, wool cloth, cotton thread, hand stitch, discharge and over dye, enamel paint stains. Winner of the 2017 WCTA. Wangaratta Art Gallery Collection. Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award 2019, Wangaratta Art Gallery, 56 Ovens Street, Wangaratta (VIC), 1 June - 11 August 2019 - wangarattaartgallery.com.au NEXT SPREAD: Michael Cook, Mother-Bicycle 2016, Inkjet print, 80 x 120 cm. Private Collection, Courtesy of THIS IS NO FANTASY. Celebrating Culture: Contemporary Indigenous Art, Glen Eira City Council Gallery, corner Glen Eira and Hawthorn Roads, Caulfield (VIC), until Sunday 28 July 2019 - gleneira.vic.gov.au

Bobâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Convoy

by Ben Laycock

PART ONE : The Long Road to the Far North We set off from Castlemaine on a glorious afternoon: three enthusiastic, intrepid activists on a journey into the heart of darkness. We are not alone. Bob Brown is leading an entourage of cars from Hobart to the Galilee Basin, Central Queensland, some 2,800 kilometres away, where Guatum Adani would dearly love to put the biggest coal mine in the world. We stop every night at some big town or city. The next morning we have a rally and Bob gives a passionate speech and the local activists and blackfellas give us a rousing send-off. We spend the first night on the banks of the mighty Murray River, then back on the road, driving, driving driving further and further from our beloved Victoria, homeland of greenies, lefties and progressive types, into the unknown.

In Sydney, Pine Esera and Isaac Nasedra from Pacific Climate Warriors tell us of their sinking shrinking homelands. Dr. Kim Loo from Doctors for Climate health speaks to us all about the terrible health effects of breathing coal combined with the terrible health effects of excessive heat: a deadly combination. Adrian Burragubba from the Wangan and Jagalingou peoples explains the situation from thier perspective. His homeland is right on top of the mine site in Central Queensland. Adrian is an angry man, and rightly so. He describes Mr. Adani as criminal and an environmental vandal. We roar with applause and pledge to never let the mine go ahead.

Driving, driving, driving.

In Mulumbimby the whole town turns up: 3,000 chanting, singing dancing joyous hippies give us cheer and boost our moral. The people line the streets to send us off, hooting and tooting. Six silent and gleaming Teslas have pride of place with Bob in the first car, smiling and waving like the Pope, followed by the motley crew: 100 cars in convoy, an awesome sight. We are in a Prius so are feeling virtuous.

In Brisbane we march on Adani Headquarters and shake our fists at the empty windows. The notorious Queensland cops try to look their sternest and soon move us off the road. We acquiesce meekly as Bob has instructed. The whole country is watching. The Murdoch Press is poised ready to pounce. We can see the headline already: Violent Radical Extremist Greenies Run Riot.

< Black Throated Finch V Coal, by Deborah Woods

4

Activists

Driving, driving, driving further and further from our comfort zone.

We arrive at a beachside hamlet called Emu Park, just outside Rockhampton (Bogan Central), to an enthusiastic welcome from a phalanx of coal miners: 100 big, burly fellas and a smattering of big, burly shielas, high-vis vests covered in black coal dust. Wow, this is pretty authentic. We are agog and aghast. Most of us have never laid eyes on a real live coal miner before, but it soon becomes apparent they are not here for a quiet chat. They are milling about in an agitated state. They are cross, very cross, and we, it seems, are the cause. We lock horns, deploying our superior knowledge and sense of righteousness. We point out their foolishness in resisting the inevitable demise of their beloved industry.

We assure them sincerely that we empathize with their worries for their families and livelihoods, but they show no signs of being impressed. They don’t read The Age so they don’t understand us. In fact they tell us to fuck off. “This is central Queensland.

We mine coal. Now turn around and go back to where you came from.”

We then have our rally and our hero: Bob of the Bush, gives yet another rousing speech, peppered with insightful interjections by our mining friends like: “Bullshit!” and “What a load of crap.” At least they are here and they are listening. We then have a lantern parade. We invite the miners to join in but they soon get bored. A bridge too far, maybe?

As the miners leave they let us know they will be waiting for us when we get to Clermont, the little town in the Galilee Basin that is our destination. They warn us we will be shunned by the town, but our friend and comrade Adrian Burragubba assures us his mob will welcome us with open arms. His family has lived in Clermont for generations, and countless generations before it was called Clermont.

As the setting sun sets we gather for a gathering. Up ‘til now we have all gone our separate ways to find whatever shelter we could on the long and winding road.

But tonight for the first time we are having a party: singing, dancing, and the drinking of wine to nourish our sense of solidarity, for soon we must leave this idyllic coast behind and head out west, into the belly of the beast.

Finally, after ten days on the road, we arrive at our destination: the little town of Clermont, in the heart of what the local white folks like to call Coal Country, but it is actually Wagan and Jagalingou country. We run a gauntlet of coal miners yelling abuse at us, but the cops are there to protect us. A welcome change to be on the other side of the barricades for once. Apparently the local pub has given them all free beer to give them courage. I would have said ‘Dutch courage’ but we don’t say that sort of thing anymore. The hotel has some distinguished guests: Bob Katter, Pauline Hanson, Clive Palmer and the local PNP Rep. All sleeping in one Bob’s Convoy / Ben Laycock

big bed apparently, working out their ‘preferences’. The miners are actually getting quite inventive, making placards saying ‘Start Adani’ and ‘The only wilderness is between Bob’s ears’. Bob Brown comments that is quite disrespectful to Bob Katter.

PART TWO : Ursula The Immortal V The Evil Adani So here we are all gathered together at the Clermont Showgrounds.

A motley crew of over 100 vehicles. It is a beautiful day for the Water Festival, put on by the Wangan & Jangalingu people for our benefit. It is such a relief to sleep in and not have to get up and drive all bloody day. Driving all day every day to stop pollution doesn’t feel quite right to me somehow, but we can’t all be perfect, can we? The Wangas put on a bonza show, with heaps of singing and dancing. They even teach the whitefellas how to dance blackfella style. Very amusing!

Then out of nowhere a wild cowboy on a horse gallops right into the middle of the arena, a whoopin’ an’ a hollerin’ and waving his hat around like John Wayne.

There are people with little kids in the middle of the space so it is actually very dangerous and quite irresponsible. After a couple of circuits he heads for the exit but a daft woman decides it would be a good idea to close the gate on him. Dumb idea! The horse hits the gate and knocks her unconscious, then gallops off into the distance. The poor woman has to be airlifted to Mackay for tests, but she is okay.

Apparently the wild colonial boy is none too bright and has been egged on by the evil triumvirate having the love-in at the hotel (see previous epistle).

After that episode we need a drink to settle our nerves, but neither the bottlo nor the pub will have a bar of us. They said: “Go back to where you came from,” and other less savory expressions. I must admit I am shocked. I have never had such an ugly reception anywhere else in Australia. So we are pretty glad to get out of Clermont unscathed. Fortunately, the locals are happy enough to sell us petrol to help us on our way.

At this point the convoy and I part ways. The poor voyeurs have to turn around and retrace their steps with nary more than a day’s rest. I certainly didn’t drive 2,8oo ks just to turn around and go home again. So I head north, further into enemy territory, heading for Camp Binbee*, deep in the forest within cooee of Abbot Point, the coal port owned by Mr. Adani himself. To get there we must pass thru enemy territory. There are over sixty coal mines in the Bowen Basin.

The road wends its way between humongos muluck heaps, piles of coal, and holes in the ground, for hours on end. Coober Pedy on steroids.

4

The Meeting Room @ Camp Binbee

Camp Binbee is set amongst picturesque rolling hills and exquisitely beautiful grassy woodlands. Such a relief to arrive in a friendly spot and stop moving.

We have definitely landed on our feet. These people are bloody well organized.

The place is run like a Sandinista guerrilla camp in the Nicaraguan jungle. First, pick a spot out in the woods. Put up your tarp, lay down your swag. Home sweet home! Welcome to Tarp Town. Hark, the dong of the gong. Dinnertime.

Every morning we have a meeting, an opportunity to choose which task we shall undertake that day: cooking, washing up, cleaning, feeding the chooks. Then we get to decide what workshops we want to do: Non Violent Direct Action training, media, banner making, abseiling, composting, ecology, whatever anyone feels like teaching. After a very intense day we gather around the campfire and sing daggy songs we have made up about Adani.

The camp could be a model for harmonious coexistence. It’s a sharing economy.

We share all the urksome tasks, we share the bicycles, we share the cars. There is a garden laden with tropical fruit. There are chooks who seem content to share their bountiful produce, though the vegans may dispute that. We even have a choice of toilets: squatting or sitting. Everyone seems to go out of their way to make everyone else feel welcome. I think this place brings out the very best in people. It is really significant that we are all there for a purpose, and that purpose makes all our grievances pale into insignificance. I have come to believe that a meaningful purpose is a key ingredient for harmonious coexistence. It is not about ironing out every little issue, it is about doing something so exciting that niggling problems pale into insignificance.

After only one day of rest, we are thrown into a full day of feverish activity turning ourselves into sea creatures from The Barrier Reef. We retire weary to our tarpaulin homes to sleep thru the screeching owls and the eerie cries of the curlews.

At the break of dawn we spring into action. Everyone knows their allotted task.

We drive in convoy to Abbot Point, hoping eight cars in convoy will not arouse suspicion. We block off the road with tape and courteously advise the approaching drivers to park their cars and await further instructions. They dutifully comply, as if we are government employees. Power to the people! Then we swim around a bit and sing some songs, then we all die a long and agonizing death, twitching and moaning in our last moments, except for Ursula: a purple monster from the deep, who is of course Immortal. She writhes and thrashes about with rage, lashing out at the approaching constabulary, making their blood run cold, no doubt.

I don’t die either, because I am a jellyfish and as the prophecy has foretold: the jellyfish shall inherit the earth!

It begins to rain, which we love, because we are fish. Mr. Plod shows not Bob’s Convoy / Ben Laycock

the slightest concern at his light cotton shirt becoming completely sodden, maintaining his steely countenance throughout the entire performance.

Eventually, after much argy-bargy and toing and froing back and forth, Mr. Plod brandishes his clipboard and reads out the riot act: we are to disperse forthwith or be taken into custardy. We shuffle off as slowly as we can, bedraggled wretches that we are. Meanwhile Ursula maintains her fierce defiance, wriggling and writhing and screeching as she is arrested and dragged away.

For many of us this is the first time we have willingly broken the law. We have crossed the thin blue line. Now we are Outlaws, and it feels good, it feels liberating, emancipating, empowering, and we didn’t even get into trouble. *There are at least half a dozen groups all fighting tooth and nail to stop the Adani mine, but only the fearless activists here at Camp Binbee are prepared to engage in civil disobedience to achieve their aim. Everyone else is constrained by their charity status. If you are a charity you can garner tax-free donations, but you must forfeit your right to participate in civil disobedience that steps outside the law, like trespassing on Adani land. Furthermore, you must refrain from supporting any actions undertaken by any other group that transgress the letter of the law. Bear in mind that we have a strict code of non-violence, including no damage to property.

Pretty innocuous stuff, but the powers that be have seen fit to bring down the full force of the law on this little band of climate defenders, slapping them with $10,000 fines for trespassing, as well as suing everyone they can for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

PART THREE : A Short History of Central Queensland So, it seems Bob Brown and his merry band of climate defenders swung the election for the coalition, just by the sheer power of our presence in Central Queensland. Well, just for the record, we didn’t go there to stir up a hornet’s nest of disgruntled coal miners. We went there to stir up the rest of the country, the people that do care about more than their own self-interest. And stir them up we did. We had people wringing their hands and agonizing over that most difficult of choices: what do I hold most dear – my lovely money or my lovely, lonely, desecrated planet? Alas, just a few too many frightened little rabbits chose to hug their money tightly and left the planet to fend for itself.

So what are we to do about Central Queensland: spiritual home of every alt-

The Office @ Camp Binbee

right numbskull in the country? Bob Katter, Pauline Hanson, Clive Palmer, Frazer Anning, George Christianson – a rogue’s gallery of buffoons, climbing over each other to be king of the woebegone.

It wasn’t always like this. It may be hard to believe, but Central Queensland was once the most radical, even revolutionary, place in the country. Clermont, recently playing host to gangs of greenie hating bogans and their pet politicians, once played a leading role in the great shearer’s strike of 1891. In the midst of a depression, the station bosses wanted to cut shearer’s wages. The Union called a strike. It lasted for months. Scabs were railroaded in from down south (hence the expression: to be ‘railroaded’). There were clashes, it got nasty, troops were called in. Union supporters down south sent guns. There were 3,000 desperate workers gathered at Barcaldine. They were angry and they were armed. It was ripe for a bloodbath, a massacre like the Eureka stockade. Fortunately cool heads prevailed.

The angry workers chose to pursue their grievances via a new organisation: The Australian Labour Federation. Ten years later when Australia itself became a Federation, the workers federation became the Australian Labour Party, and the rest is history. They have been consistently losing elections ever since. Probably because they removed the ‘U’ in labour. So ‘you’ stopped working.

But not everyone felt it was possible to achieve radical change through the ballot box. How prescient they were. These visionaries came to the conclusion that Australia was fucked and always would be, so, in a spirit of foolhardy adventure they set sail for the wilds of Paraguay, as far from the reach of overbearing Australian authority as they could possibly get. There they proceeded to set up their very own version of Utopia. A noble cause indeed, but fraught with many unseen pitfalls, as you can well imagine. This brave social experiment would probably be described today as a cult. A cult of rechabites, who found great virtue in abstaining from the evil influence of grog and gambling and illicit sex. One William Lane being the self appointed charismatic leader, decreed from day one there was to be no fraternizing with the native women. Therein lay the seeds of his downfall (wild oats, no doubt). This merry band of adventurous idealists being comprised of 90% men, it was only a matter of time before this cardinal rule was flagrantly flouted. It took little more than a single generation for the Australians to be completely assimilated into the local population, the English language disappearing without a trace and the distant land of jumbucks and kangaroos entering the realm of mythology.

Meanwhile back at the sheep ranch, the locals had discovered something even

easier to sheer than sheep: coal, favourite fuel of the industrial revolution. You can heat anything with it! (Though some things can get a little over heated.)

The monolithic Central Queensland coal industry began in the 1920’s in a little known little town called Collinsville, or ‘Moonguya’ by the local blackfellas.

Apparently moongunya means ‘place of coal’ in the local Birri language. Maybe the blackfellas started the coal industry. The town was also known as Little Moscow because it was a nest of Bolsheviks, determined to overthrow the capitalist system by any (lawful) means. Not quite as gung ho as their Russian mentors, who had no qualms about spilling a little blood, our own home grown bolsheviks managed to elect Fred Paterson, a card-carrying member of The Communist Party of Australia, to the Queensland State Parliament in 1944. A feat unparalleled in the history of this sheepish nation. Well-done Fred! Alas, his glory was short lived. Sir Robert Menzies was the Prime Minister of the day, and many days hence, and he wasn’t having a bar of it. The electorate was summarily sliced up and glued on to surrounding, less revolting electorates.

That was the last we saw of Fred. But mind you, he was no upstart. Fred Paterson was a Rhodes scholar and studied theology at Oxford University no less, before straying so far from the righteous path.

So here we are, in just three generations those same coal mining familes have gone from the most radical left wing workers in Australia, eagerly following world events and grappling with big ideas, to the most right wing mob in the entire country, happy to vote for every nut job that ever walked the halls of Parliament. It is now a place so insular and parochial that they wear their ignorance like a badge of honour.

How on earth did this happen?

I have no idea, but I suspect money had something to do with it.

PART FOUR : Bill’s Bob Hawke Moment A riposte to those poor misguided fools who see Bob Brown’s convoy to Adani as a damp squib.

Far too many people in this blighted country are happy to accept the standard version of why we went to Central Queensland, and what happened when we arrived. Maybe there is some deep psychology going on here: Many people on the

left feel a deep and abiding sense of guilt for derelicting their duty to join us on the convoy: people who proclaim loudly and often that stopping Adani and saving the Great Barrier Reef is, without a doubt, THE most important issue in their lives. But when push comes to shove, and that claim is actually put to the test, it turns out there are many, many things more important than stopping Adani and saving the Great Barrier Reef. So naturally, when our convoy fails to achieve its lofty aims, to assuage their guilt these well meaning progressive types feel sharp pangs stabbing at their bleeding hearts, they clutch at any straw that gives relief from their anguish, grabbing at the first glib excuse that will let them off the hook. It basically goes like this: ‘It was a mistake! Bob Brown went up there to tell the miners what to do in their own back yard. A rude thing to do to the sensitive miners cowering in their tunnels.’ A version of events conveniently disseminated far and wide by the Murdoch media machine, then parroted ad infinitum by every numbskull that has it in for Bob Brown. Every nutjob north of Gimpy was sticking the boot in: almost the entire LNP, most of the Labor Party, even a few mentally challenged members of The Greens, plus Clive Grease-Palmer, Gina Rhinestone-Heart, Katter-the-madhatter and let’s not forget Bluey, the alt-right-ranger.

Although none of you have shown a skeric of interest in hearing from the horse’s mouth, I feel compelled to tell you anyway. For anyone willing to listen, now that the horse has bolted, we were invited to the Galilee Basin by Adrian Gurabulu, a leader of the Wangan and Jangalingu peoples, custodians of the land earmarked for violation.

We did not go there to stir up the miners, we went there to stir up the vast majority of Australians who said they were implacably opposed to that dreadful mine.

We hoped our convoy would help keep Adani and climate change at the centre of the election campaign. We went there to stir up one vacillating individual in particular: Bill Shorten. When the convoy returned triumphantly to Canberra for our finale, Bob Brown invited the now defunct leader of the opposition to join him on the podium. “Bill”, he said, “this is a golden opportunity for you to declare proudly and loudly, your total and unequivocal opposition to that accursed mine.

This could be your Bob Hawke moment.” He was of course referring to that historic moment some 40 years ago when the inimitable Bob Hawke declared: “If you make me Prime Minister of Australia the Franklin Dam will never be built.”

And it wasn’t! But alas, Bill Shorten is not a pimple on Bob Hawke’s arse. Despite the enormous effort we all put in, travelling thousands of miles to the middle of nowhere, just to focus Bill’s mind on the leadership required at this crucial moment, he fell at the last hurdle.

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him think!

Ben Laycock April/May/June 2019 www.binsblog.org

Further reading: • To follow the exploits of Frontline Action of Coal, see our Facebook page • The Guardian ‘Developing new Galilee Basin coalmines will cost 12,500 jobs, analysis shows’ (article 15 July 2018) • The Conversation ‘Adani’s finch plan is approved, just weeks after being sent back to the drawing board’ (article 31 May 2019) • Coal Mining in Queensland - https://www.qhatlas.com.au/ content/coal