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CONTENTS DEEP TROUBLE SERIES 2
Stephen Croucher : The Psychology & Politics of Hate ......................... 06 Jessica Trisko : Women at War ............................................................... 07 Rev. Dr Chris Mulherin : Faith, Science & Cimate Change ...................... 08 Carmel Bird : Fair Game ........................................................................... 09 Jenny Graves : The Genetics of Transgenderism .................................... 10 Dean Cocking : Evil Online ....................................................................... 11
JOHN WATERS : MAKING TROUBLE
interview with Dr. Mark Halloran .............................................................
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER SALON
Outstandingly Nice ....................................................................................
THE ROAD TO DARWIN : PART 1
Ben Laycock ..............................................................................................
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COVER: John Waters photo by Greg Gorman. Issue 169 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 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 Mark Halloran, 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. DIS IS DE DISCLAIMER! The views and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the publisher. To the best of our knowledge all details in this magazine were correct at the time of publication. The publisher does not accept responsibility for errors or omissions. All content in this publication is copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without prior permission of the publisher. Trouble is distributed online from the first of every month of publication but accepts no responsibility for any inconvenience or financial loss in the event of delays. Phew!
Stephen Croucher : The Psychology & Politics of Hate In conversation with Professor Stephen Croucher about the aftermath of the Christchurch shootings, the rise of White Supremacist groups in Europe, and the psychology and politics of hate. 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.
SERIES 2 with Dr Mark Halloran
PODCAST
Jessica Trisko : Women at War In conversation with Jessica Trisko Darden (Ph.D), who is Assistant Professor of International Affairs with the School of International Service at American University, an inaugural Jeane Kirkpatrick Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a former Miss Earth (2007). As co-author of Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars (Georgetown, 2019), she discusses the role of female combatants in ISIS, The Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK, and other rebel groups, as well as the complexities involved in the potential repatriation of the women of ISIS. See also – jessicatrisko.com 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.
Rev. Dr. Chris Mulherin : Faith, Science & Climate Change In conversation Rev. Dr Chris Mulherin, the Executive Director of Christians in Science and Technology (ISCAST), we discuss the intersection between theology and the philosophy of science, what he believes the New Atheists get wrong, as well as why politicians should stop demanding scientific ‘proof’ of climate change. See also – iscast.org 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.
SERIES 2 (continued) with Dr Mark Halloran
PODCAST
Carmel Bird : Fair Game In conversation 2016 winner of Patrick White award for literature Carmel Bird, where we discuss her work Fair Game which examines the story of the first convict women who were settled in Van Diemen’s land, her own experiences of grief and loss and the significance in her life of the Mamestra brassicae, or white moth. See also – carmelbird.com 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.
Jenny Graves : The Genetics of Transgenderism In conversation with world renowned geneticist Professor Jenny Graves in regards to her work in sex determination, her infamous assertion that the Y chromosome is disappearing, as well as the evolution of the ‘gay’ gene and the genetics of transgenderism. See also – https://theconversation.com 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.
SERIES 2 (continued) with Dr Mark Halloran
PODCAST
Dean Cocking : Evil Online lIn conversation with moral philosopher Dr Dean Cocking in regards to his new book Evil Online which examines the evil that is perpetrated everyday by normal people online. We discuss his theory of a ‘moral fog’, Hannah Arendt’s idea of the banality of evil, and how social media echo chambers facilitate a kind of moral confusion and lynch mob mentality. See also – evilonline.com.au 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.
making trouble
John Waters Dr Mark Halloran
Q. I was interested in your childhood, and your parents Patricia and John, and being raised as a Roman Catholic in Baltimore. I was raised a Roman Catholic as well so I feel as though there is a kind of saturnine weirdness to it. JW: Well it was worse because my father wasn’t a Catholic, but my mother was, which at the time was a called a mixed marriage. I didn’t go to Catholic grade school I had to go to Sunday school where the nuns were really mean to you because they knew your parents didn’t send you to Catholic school, so they would be really hateful. I think my first rage came through that, and the first act of rebellion when you had to stand up and take the Legion of Decency pledge where we [say we] wouldn’t see any films condemned by the Catholic Church. I was about seven years old and I refused to take it. I remember that my mother was just horrified that I wouldn’t do it, and that was my first rebellion. Q. I read about you going to a Catholic high school and how you tricked the nuns and the priests into letting you read the Marquis de Sade’s 120 days of Sodom. JW: When I got to high school it was Christian brothers, they were like impotent priests; they were like priests who didn’t have the power to say mass or do the ultimate magic trick of communion. And they drink a lot too. I was so rebellious they thought that [reading de Sade] would shut me up. And I would read and I got a good education, but I would not read the books that they gave me - I would read the Marquis de Sade and William Burroughs and they didn’t know who they were so they didn’t care, they didn’t get upset – they just thought I was reading.
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Q. I felt as though the Catholic experience can really be about guilt and shame, I thought perhaps that your creative expression in terms of touching on the forbidden was a rejection of that? JW: Well it was in some ways. You know you said guilt and shame, but I have a lot Jewish friends who would say that Jewish people are made to feel shame and that Catholics make you feel guilt. I think that the Jewish [people] have the right idea they raise their kids to say they are the chosen people, whereas Catholics you’re taught that babies are born guilty which I think is the most terrible thing to tell a child… Q. Original Sin? JW: Yes, Original Sin, do they even say that anymore? I haven’t heard that term uttered a lot. I mean they did get rid of Limbo and they got rid of Saint Christopher so I’m wondering if they have gotten rid of Original Sin too? Maybe not. Haven’t they gotten rid of saying that the Pope is infallible? Q. I’m not sure. He’s supposed to be in succession with Simon-Peter the Rock. But there are some strange ideas, transubstantiation and so forth… JW: Oh I don’t know. I don’t let the Catholic Church make me mad anymore but I do have a whole chapter in my new book Mr Know-It-All where I do come out against them because they have been bashing me and my culture for centuries. Q. I remember reading that you said that Pasolini, who was also a Roman Catholic, was the only saint that you would pray to… JW: Yes … and my prayers have been answered. Q. Your prayers have been answered? JW: Sure I’ve got a good career for 50 years. Q. Why have you been so drawn to the forbidden? JW: I always felt that people got upset about things that they didn’t really John Waters interview / Mark Halloran
need to be upset about and the villain in fairy tales is a much more interesting character than the hero or the heroine… they were kind of dull … the villain had better outfits and better dialogue and got to a die a very melodramatic death in the movies. I was always kind of on the side of the villain. And later on in all my movies the heroes were what would have been villains in regular movies. The villains were true to themselves so they weren’t villains to me. Q. You’ve also talked about the mundane, of growing up in Baltimore, of being stifled [not by your family], I wonder if you are the villain compared to 1950s suburbia? JW: No I don’t think I was the villain. I think when I first started, when I first went to summer camp, I was twelve and I would write these campfire stories that were filled with gore and horror and I’d read them and all the kids would have bad dreams and the counsellors would call my parents … And that’s how I started my career. And then I was a puppeteer for a long time [performing] at children’s birthday parties. So I had a career really early, I knew what I wanted to be – they just wouldn’t let me. I think I enjoyed causing trouble because then people would listen, it was a way of getting people’s attention and then if you can make them laugh after that then they’ll be on your side. I think it’s easy to be shocking it is much harder to be witty at the same time and that’s how you get people to change their minds and listen to you. Q. I felt like Pink Flamingos was influenced by Salò and people like Paul Morrisey… JW: Pink Flamingos was made before Salò I think, Pink Flamingos was made in ’72, when was Salò made? Q. I’m not sure … [Editors note: Salò was made in 1975] JW: I think I saw Salò after Pink Flamingos. I think the influences I had were Warhol and Kenneth Anger and some of the underground movies – at the same time I went to see Russ Meyer and all the exploitation films… and the gore movies and I ended up putting those all together to try to make movies. Exploitation films that were only shown for art theatre.
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Q. There is humour that comes through with films like Pink Flamingos. There is this idea that you are the Pope of Trash and that it’s part of Filth Culture… JW: It’s all been said with a chuckle and good humour. I think that called me those things said it in a good way – I don’t think any of them were bad reviews. There were bad reviews but they weren’t the bad reviews. Q. I remember you saying that Salò makes a bad date movie. I actually watched Salò on one of my first dates with my partner and we’ve been together eight years. JW: I have had a lot of people come to me and say that they got married after seeing Pink Flamingos on a first date – I think it either makes or breaks it. It’s either your good date or your really terrible one. Q. You’ve been a champion of the LGBTQIA community for a very long time. I remember you saying that there were minorities that came to see Pink Flamingos that hated other minorities. I was just wondering what your experience was of the LGBTQIA community then and what it is now? JW: Well it was kind of square – the first time I ever went to a gay bar I thought ‘well I may be queer but I’m not this’. I was into Bohemia and [I am] into Bohemia still – I like mixed bars, I like where there are all kinds of people because it’s more of a mystery and at the same time I think people shouldn’t be separatist. I don’t want to hang out in a bar where everyone is exactly like me. I want to hear everyone’s crazy stories. So, first of all it was illegal when I went to gay bars, and secondly it became hipper as the years went by, especially when the hippies came out and everything and I think that the first Stud was the first hippy gay bar I went to in San Francisco, that was really great it was all bearded men and they were all hippies but they were gay. And then there was a bar nearby called Squeeze Box which was kind of the first punk rock gay bar, but also straight people came too. Those are the two bars I remember really fondly but when I was really young in Baltimore I wanted to be a Beatnik and I went to Beatnik bars and certainly in Beatnik bars there were gay people – but the kind of gay people I wanted to meet. They didn’t want to be Miss America they wanted to be, I don’t know, William Burroughs.
John Waters interview / Mark Halloran
Q. Do you feel that the LGBTQIA community has changed and if there are things that you like or perhaps even dislike about the changes? JW: No, I am glad that gay people don’t have to be an outlaw. I did an art piece called ‘Beige Stroller’ – it was a child’s stroller from Walmart but the cloth on it was decorated with the logos of the most hideous gay sex bars of the time. Because today in the same neighbourhoods where the most insane gay bars were are now gay people married with children – so I think I am celebrating both. I think those extremes are good. I think it’s a wonderful society we have now where we can have those extremes. Whereas in the old days the bars were illegal, and it may have been more exciting but it’s certainly better for gay people where they can get married and do whatever they want. Q. I remember reading that Pink Flamingos was released in a gay porn cinema originally and you were displeased with that. JW: Yes, but I don’t think many people have masturbated to Pink Flamingos but if they have they are in trouble [laughs]. I don’t think it makes you horny. It might make you want to commit a crime or be political, I don’t know how horny you’d be, maybe you never know what makes people horny… At the same time it didn’t work in a porno theatre, I didn’t go see it [at that theatre]. Q. The interesting part for me was when I found out that you were really interested in the Manson family case and how Pink Flamingos was to some extent a story about what makes a family and how all families are different. JW: That’s the problem with the Motion Picture Association of America and the films now… there are lots of different kinds of family now, family isn’t the same as when they started. A family can be no relation to each other, it can be a tribe, it can be [people] who live together and support each other and gain strength and love from a certain group of people; that is a family. So family values, which has become a code word for censorship, is no longer the same anymore – times have changed radically. So when you say family values – which kind of family? There are lots of different kinds today. PREVIOUS SPREAD: John Waters signing the jean jacket sleeve of a fan at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, 1990. Photo by Davidphenry [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]
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Q. I know that you had advocated for the parole of former Manson family member Leslie Van Houten and I just wondered what drew you to the women of the Manson family? JW: I don’t really comment much on it anymore, since I wrote Role Models where I wrote a lot about her she has been granted parole three times and the governor turns her down. I think her lawyers are the ones who should be talking now. I believe that she has served almost 50 years – that she is incredibly sorry for what she did – she met a madman when she was 17. She doesn’t blame him she blames herself for making him a leader. I believe some people if you could ever forgive them they deserve a second chance so… I’ve visited prison, I don’t believe many people really deserve parole, but I believe she certainly has. Q. It sounds like you empathise with her and the other women, and I think that would have been difficult for a lot of people to do. JW: I don’t know about just the women I think that everybody that was in that cult had the same story; their minds were taken over by a madman. And so I think they all have the same story, it’s not just the women. Q. I’ve heard you say once that you were unblackmailable. JW: [Laughs] I think I am pretty unblackmailable, because what do I not admit [to] really? I don’t know. Now your phone knows everything about you and I think that I’ll be driving down the street and on a billboard a porn thing will show up that I’ve looked at. Your phone knows everything about you now. I can’t think of anything that I’d be blackmailed on. Q. Has there ever been anything that you’ve felt you wanted to keep a secret? JW: Well if there is I sure as hell wouldn’t tell a journalist! [Laughs] Q. Yes well I didn’t expect that you’d tell me [laughs]. Has someone not been able to forgive you? JW: You’d have to ask them. I think that over 73 years I maybe have a tiny John Waters interview / Mark Halloran
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number of enemies. After a while you just say you can’t win them all. I feel guilt about one thing: smoking cigarettes. Q. Why? JW: Because it’s the one thing I did that in the long run will probably kill me. I didn’t know when I was young in the 50s that you shouldn’t smoke cigarettes, but I regret it. If there’s one thing in my life that I would change it is that I never smoked cigarettes, because it was so hard to quit and it was such agony. I don’t smoke now. But that’s the only thing I regret. Even all my ex-boyfriends I’m still friends with, some of them took a lot longer, but I’m friends with all of them. So no I don’t regret much in life, I don’t think I’ve been unkind to people or unfair to people. Q. Is there anything useful about guilt or regret? JW: Well I guess everyone has to self-examine themselves to see if they feel bad about anything they’ve done. I think once you can admit to what you’ve done – you can learn by getting older. But at the same time, you can’t change things, you can’t go back, but you can learn from it and if you do feel bad about what you’ve done you can learn from your mistakes. As you get older that’s what maturity is, you can’t be angry at my age or really you’ve just wasted your life in a way, you should’ve worked something out by now. Q. I remember you saying once that you feel as though you’re incredible politically correct. JW: I think I am politically correct. I know that a lot of other people might disagree but I think I am. But I do believe that crazy political correctness is what is going to make Trump win because you can’t make people feel stupid. And some of it is crazy. I mean I get what they are saying, but let’s pick and choose the battles that we can win. Q. I was interested in you saying [on Real Time with Bill Maher] that the way to change this is not to make the people who voted for Donald Trump to feel stupid. That doesn’t work.
John Waters interview / Mark Halloran
JW: No it doesn’t you have to make them feel smart to think about [how] maybe they made the wrong decision. And that’s a tough thing to do. Unfortunately I think he’s going to win again. I don’t think we have anyone that strong, and they don’t look like they are having any fun being politicians. Someone said to me the other day ‘no matter how much I hate Trump he does look like he is having fun being this awful’. And I hate to admit that’s true. Q. I feel as though your personality and your work has been defined by a kind of anarchist spirit. I know that you’ve said in 2011 that you had kind of thrill about the idea of Donald Trump and Sarah Palin in power. The chaos of that. JW: It’s hard for me to say I want to be an anarchist when I own three homes. I mean come on [laughs]. I have to be realistic about things. Q. I was interested in the idea that you would like the chaos of that. JW: Someone said to me recently they thought that if Trump lost he would refuse to leave the White House. That would be exciting because it would anarchy. It’s maybe a movie I’d like to see, I don’t know if I’d like to live through it – I think though it would be exciting from a journalistic viewpoint. Q. It seems like it would be interesting to you if you are interested in the forbidden. JW: Yes. I think that’s it right? An infamous auteur of transgressive movie classics and a champion of LGBTQI visibility, John Waters appears in his new show, Make Trouble : • Tuesday 15 October, Sydney Opera House - sydneyoperahouse.com • Wednesday 16 October, Brisbane Powerhouse - brisbanepowerhouse.org • Friday 18 October, Hamer Hall Melbourne Arts Centre artscentremelbourne.com.au • Saturday 19 October, Nolan Gallery, Hobart MONA - mona.net.au John Waters portrait photos by Greg Gorman
october/november salon
PREVIOUS SPREAD: Sue Ford, Time series 1 1962-1974, silver gelatin photographs, 11.0 x 8.0 cm each (6 x diptych), State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia. Purchased through the TomorrowFund, Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation, 2015, with the generous donations of: Linda Savage, Susan Adler, Lisa Baker, Tracy Blake, Karen Brown, Catherine Cole, Susan Cullen, Elaine Featherby, Lisa Fini, Alison Gaines, Kathleen Hardie, Anne Holt, Gillian Johnson, Carmen La Cava, Heather Lyons, Joanne Motteram, Susan Pass, Lisa Telford, Clare Thompson. Screen Space – Sue Ford, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth Cultural Centre, Perth (WA), opens 12 October 2019 - artgallery.wa.gov.au ABOVE: Kawita Vatanajyankur, Shuttle 2018, HD video 3:27 min. Image courtesy of the artist, Nova Contemporary, Clear Gallery, Tokyo and Antidote Organisation. Commissioned by Dunedin Public Art Gallery. © the artist. IN HER WORDS, a NETS Touring Exhibition curated by Olivia Poloni, Wangaratta Art Gallery, 56 Ovens Street, Wangaratta (VIC), 1 November – 15 December wangarattaartgallery.com.au RIGHT: Isabelle Rawlins, Picking up the pieces 2019, painting. Artfulness, an exhibition featuring artworks by students from Bossley Park High School, Margot Hardy Gallery, Western Sydney University, Foyer, Building 23, Bankstown Campus, Bullecourt Avenue, Milperra (NSW), 22 October – 21 November 2019 - virtualtours.westernsydney.edu.au
october/november salon
PREVIOUS SPREAD: Anvil Productions presents: 2.20am, by Rebecca Lister; directed by Hallie Shellam. Produced by Anvil Productions, Jesuit Social Services and Support After Suicide. Supported by Creative Victoria and SANE Australia. Photo by Sarah Walker. ON TOUR October & November 2019: Dandenong, Traralgon, Swanpool, Mildura, Ringwood, Thomastown, Frankston and Kyneton (VIC). See site for details & bookings: anvilproductions.com.au ABOVE: Raj Panda, Looking Back to Look Forward 2019, acrylic on canvas. VICT Emerging Artist Award ($2,000 Acquisitive) & RIGHT: Barbara Tyson, Weight of Living 2019, oil on canvas. Nevile & Co ‘Runners Up Award’ ($2,000). 2019 ANL Maritime Art Prize Award, Mission to Seafarers Victoria, 717 Flinders St, Docklands (VIC), 4 – 20 October 2019 - missiontoseafarers.com.au NEXT SPREAD: Martha Ackroyd Curtis, Exhale 2019, digital print on microfibre cloth. She Sings. She Breathes. She Sighs., Meat Market Stables, 2 Wreckyn Street North Melbourne (VIC), 12 - 18 October 2019 - marthaackroydcurtis.com
the road to
DARWIN part one Ben Laycock
Chapter 1 - Hattah We leave Castlemaine on the last day of July, heading for Darwin and beyond. We don’t see anything to write home about on the first day. Inglewood seems like a thriving little town, plenty of locals out in the street, until you notice they are actually shop dummies dressed up in old clothes. Good ploy though. You’ve got to have a gimmick these days if you want to stay ahead of the pack. After that we don’t see many real people, but there are flocks and flocks of sheeps. But they are really dirty. I am not impressed. After a few hours we come across a farmer outstanding in her field. I wind down the window and give her a piece of my mind:
“Your sheep are filthy.” I say. “It’s a disgrace. You should be ashamed of yourself. When we go to the country we like to see nice white sheep surrounded by nice green grass.” She ambles up to the fence, gives the vehicle the once over like it’s a mangy dog that should be shot, fondly pats the dead fox hanging off the barbed wire, wipes the sweat from her brow, takes off her Akubra, swats a blowfly, scratches her crotch laconically, sticks her thumbs in her braces, spits out her chewing tobacco, assumes a nonchalant air and launches into a long and sibilant soliloquy (due to her missing teeth, no doubt). Something about the drought, the wool price, the wheat board,
the water board, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, the Government, the mouse plague, the locust plague, the dust storms... “That’s all very well,” I say. “But what about our visual amenity, have you taken that into consideration?” She lets out a loud fart and wanders off, shaking her head. We get as far as Hattah Lakes on the first night, where we camp with a flock of wild emus. Emus can be very curious. They scare the living daylights out of our poor old deaf dog, Gunyarr. I don’t complain to management because it is a National Park after all.
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It’s great to sit by a log fire again. I haven’t done that since last night. (Did you know that the television was invented just after the introduction of the electric radiator. It was designed to replace the trance-like state induced by starring into the flickering flames of the open fire.) Next day we get sprung with a shit load of fruit and vegetables on the South Australian border. I am talking top shelf, organic, free range, biodegradable produce here. Goods we paid good money for. Such a shame to see it chucked in the bin, but there are only so many raw vegetables one can eat in a single sitting. It’s all a big scam of course: we are meant to restock the larder at the next town. Very good for business.
The Victorians do the same thing in the opposite direction, so I guess it’s all fair enough, but a terrible waste of fine food none the less. I politely suggest that the confiscated items could be given away to the poor. The officer replies: “That is a matter for the Welfare Department, not Border Security.” We cross the Murray at the cute little town of Morgan, our cute little car on the cuttest little barge, like something out of yesteryear. It’s really hard to find a camp on the river. In the socialist enclave of Victoria, you can camp pretty well anywhere on any river you bloody-well like, because the rivers and the beaches belong to the people. (Make that ‘Communist The Road to Darwin / Ben Laycock
enclave’.) Not here in the Fascist State of South Australia, where private property extends right through the river and up the other side. Of course we camp there anyway, ready to tell any belligerent land holder that it actually belongs to the blackfellas, who are traditionally in favor of camping. Morgan is the point on the river where it takes a left hand turn and heads South. That is why there is a massive pump that pumps water all the way to Whyallah on the Eyre Peninsula, some 360 kilometres to the West. Unbelievable, isn’t it? Some of the water cooling those giant smelters has come all the way from Queensland.
Being skeptical by nature, we decide to follow that pipeline and see if it really does go all the way to Whyallah. As soon as we leave the river it gets rather arid. Nothing but salt bush, dotted with stone ruins. We have crossed the famous Goyder Line. For those who didn’t pay attention in Form 2 Geography: some time back in the late 1800s, there was a wet period in South Australia. This happened to coincide with an influx of Prussian refugees (presumably from the losing side in The Crimean War). The naive immigrants were sent North, with their goat herds in tow, on a quest to tame the wilderness and quell the restless natives. Their first mistake (one of many, it appears), was to eradicate the natives before asking them probing questions about the prevailing climate in the
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area, a subject the local natives knew well, I might add, having studied it studiously for countless generations. As you can guess, the good times didn’t last. As luck would have it, their halcyon days were an aberration, a blip on the flatline of semi-endless drought that we so quaintly refer to as ‘life in the outback’. The hapless pioneers scuttled back to Prussia, with their tails between their legs, leaving behind a treasure trove of quaint stone ruins to add to the rustic charm of the landscape. Having failed to learn their lesson from the locals, nature set about teaching them anyway, with the help of George W. Goyder, who traversed the land with a pointy stick, drawing a long and meandering
line, delineating the arable land from the wasteland. Henceforth all lands falling to the north of the Goyder line were to be referred to as The Badlands. It was decreed that no farmer should ever sow a single seed outside that line, no matter how deceptively fecund the land appeared, for, as sure as night follows day, they would all be ruined. This maxim was strictly adhered to for as long as the latest drought persisted, but, irrepressible optimists that we humans are, as soon as the heavens opened, the happy peasants forgot about Mr. Goyder and his pointy stick. The downpour had washed away his markings anyway. They rushed North again with gay abandon, astonished to find perfectly good homes to The Road to Darwin / Ben Laycock
inhabit, complete with barns and weather vanes, just waiting to be filled with ‘hard working families’. What a Godsend! We can all see where this is heading, can’t we? Let’s leave the story here before it gets too grim. Suffice to say, it doesn’t have a happy ending. ... So that is why the heroic deeds of George W. Goyder have been passed down from generation to generation of Form 3 Geography students, making sure his name will go down in the annuls of history alongside the late, great Richard Bowyer Smith, fellow South Australian and inventor of the stump jump plough no less.
Now where were we? Ah yes, we are passing through endless waistlands dotted with rustic stone ruins, surrounded by hills dotted with those ghastly wind turbines. They are everywhere. Such an eyesore. So glad to get to Whyallah and see the lofty chimneys on the steelworks, choofing out black smoke, just like Puffing Billy, so much prettier! I ask a local why it is called Whyallah. He tells me an Afghan Cameleer once built a statue of the Muslim God up on the hill here and everyone would ask: “Why Allah?”. It is apparently the only statue of Allah in the whole world because whenever anyone else built one they got their head chopped off. Thank God the Taliban never got as far as Whyalla.
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Chapter 2 - The Giant Cuddlefish-fest I just went for a swim with 250,000 cuttlefish. Awesome! (Yes, they do breed quickly, don’t they?) For reasons best known to themselves, cuttlefish have chosen to spend their most intimate moments, before they die, between an LPG refinery and a steel smelter. I suspect the cuttlefish were there first. They have chosen this unlikely spot because it is shallow and protected and has lots of rocks and seaweed to lay eggs under. They don’t seem to mind us swimming around about 2 metres above them while they do their thing. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever encountered.
The Australian Giant Cuttlefish can grow up to a metre long. They live a solitary life roaming the seas for a year and growing up big and beautiful ‘til they all suddenly get that urge to return to the place of their birth, and perform one of the world’s greatest orgies. As you can well imagine, having five long, slippery tentacles, this involves a lot of groping. Then they all die together. Isn’t that romantic? Lamentably, the rapacious fishing squads were the first to discover this unique event, but they did not see a great natural wonder, all they saw was floating wads of cash! In the late ‘90s, at the height of the pillage, The Road to Darwin / Ben Laycock
over thirty boats extracted 270 tonnes of cuttlefish in the space of a few weeks, sending cuttlefish numbers plummeting towards extinction. Luckily, some bright spark realized they were much more valuable as a spectacle than as a piece of mock crabstick at the fish and chip shop. So now the cuddlefish flourish, unconcerned by the toxic activities all around them. One can only assume that smelting metal pollutes the air far more than the sea. The locals claim the air is perfectly fit to breathe, even though the entire town and its residents are covered with a dusting of soft, grey soot. Roaming the streets I couldn’t help but notice the hospital is unusually
large for such a small town, and the cemetery is vast! I searched for the mythological statue of Allah, but alas I was too late. It had been reduced to a pile of rubble, like so much of our cultural heritage.
Chapter 3 - Coober Pedy Done Whyalla, Darwin here we come! Nothing to see except salt-bush until we pass Iron Knob. It looks different every time I see it. It is definitely getting smaller every time. More saltbush and the occasional dirty, lonely, mangy sheep, then more
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salt-bush. Plenty of rotting kangaroos being devoured by crows, and wedge-tailed eagles, salt lakes, one cow, nothing else until Coober Pedy, where there is lots of holes in the ground. Apparently an old Italian Nona was the one who discovered how to find opals, way back in days gone by. After eking out a meager existence scratching in the dirt for the first thirty years, watching her delicate complexion become all hard and leathery, and her children run off, one by one, to the siren call of the big city, she came to understand that the opals grew in fissures in the rock. These elusive fissures held a little bit of water that made the grass just that little bit greener. So she and her faithful husband, who had grown equally withered by her side, went in search of
thin lines of slightly green grass. She devised a most ingenious method of detection: standing at the top of a long ladder tied in the back of a ute, scanning the barren wasteland day after day, through shine and shine. Her method was very successful. They both became rich beyond their wildest dreams. But their road to riches was not without its potholes. At first they refused to divulge their secret method under pain of death. Folklore has it they were tortured mercilessly for days on end, covered in honey and tied to ants nests and such things, but being hardy peasant stock from Sicily, where they endured much worse from the Cosa Nostra, they both kept mum. The Road to Darwin / Ben Laycock
It was many months before they recovered from their ordeal and continued their quest. But of course, their every move was being tracked. Their secret was soon exposed. It is pretty difficult to be surreptitious when you are wandering around the desert on the top of a 4 metre ladder tied to a ute. Even the most incurious start to wonder what you are up to. [continued next issue]
Iron Knob
Iron Boob
