Editorial: ANUSA Election candidates attempt to prove relevancy for another year
It Starts with Education, It Ends with Respect: August 1st protest calls out ANU’s Consent Education BIPOC Department releases 2023 Racism Report
The Quest for Kanak Independence in New Caledonia Wilderpeople, Wildebeest and Other Wanderings
Letter From the Editor
Dear readers,
It feels very special to be writing this. Having been with Woroni for three years, I have had the privilege of watching the organisation grow with each new cohort of editors and contributors leaving their own mark and contributing to Woroni’s ever-evolving journey of storytelling and expression.
The edition you hold in your hands is the result of many months of hard work by the students here at Woroni. Behind every article, essay, and poem, a dedicated team of sub-editors works tirelessly to make sure that every student submission finds its voice in Woroni magazine.
This is a very chaotic time on campus! Just as the blossoming of some suspicious smelling trees signal the arrival of spring, a sudden bloom of campaign frames on Facebook profiles marks the beginning of StuPol season. During this time, be kind to your student media friends - it’s brutal out here.
Speaking of student media, I would love to take this opportunity to bring to your attention the inaugural student journalism conference hosted by Honi Soit, happening in September. It is a fantastic opportunity for budding StuJo hacks to learn, connect, and cosplay Lee Lin Chin. Check out @studentmedia. au on instagram for more info.
Thank you to everyone who made this edition possible this magazine is a labour of love from our Content Editor Claudia Hunt, our Art Editor Jasmin Small, and their respective teams.
Finally, thank you to everyone who wrote for this issue. good as the submissions we receive.
Editor-in-Chief
Communications
Deputy Editor-in-Chief
Managing Editor
Content
Phoebe Denham (they/them)
Charlie Crawford (he/him)
Radio Editor
Cate Armstrong (she/her)
News Editor
Raida Chowdhury (she/her)
Art Editor
Jasmin Small (she/her)
Editor Claudia Hunt (she/her)
Sarah Greaves (she/her)
TV Editor Arabella Ritchie (she/her)
Art by Jasmin Small
Editor Bella Wang (she/her)
Art by Vera Tan
Editorial: ANUSA Election Candidates Attempt to Prove Relevancy for Another Year
Charlie Crawford
As we welcome Semester 2 with open arms — praying for warmer weather and a fresh start at boosting our GPA — we also fear the state of our Messenger DMs in the coming months. One by one the people around you will begin to fall victim to the plague of matching Facebook display photos, and you may realise that even those closest to you are not above pursuing their dreams of student politics (‘StuPol’) hack-dom.
That’s right. It’s ANUSA Election season. And no one can escape its wrath.
In the great spectacle that is pestering students trying to walk to class and jeering at one another in the comments of anonymous forums, the same political factions from last year will form a ticket under a new name and again attempt to bring down the mostly ‘grassroots independent’ incumbents (‘grindies’, colloquially).
At the end of the day, however, most candidates will simply be begging you to vote in the first place. Every year Facebook groups are flooded with complaints directed at ANUSA, but voter turnout come election time is consistently dire. It is all too easy for people to use ANU Confessions (or Schmidtposting for the more bold) to complain about the functioning of the Union with little understanding of how these systems actually work and little desire to do anything to change it themselves.
ANUSA receives 55 percent of the total sum of Student Services and Amenities Fees (SSAF) that the ANU collects from students (yes, you) annually. This is more than the 38 percent allocated to the University of Sydney Union, 37 percent to Arc@UNSW and 35.5 percent to The University of Melbourne Student Union.
Don’t get me wrong, a well-funded Student Union is vital to a university that truly values student experience. In an ideal world, the entirety of the SSAF paid for by students ought to go back into the hands of students themselves.
However, this argument becomes difficult to maintain when even the union with the highest SSAF allocation in the country struggles to engage students in their systems of governance. In 2023, 1362 people voted in the election for ANUSA President, 1199 for Vice President, 1178 for General Secretary. This number continues to decrease with each position. At best, this is a voter turnout of 7 percent. This number is down from ~11 percent in 2022, however this is mostly due to the recent inclusion of postgraduate students, as undergraduate participation remained more or less consistent.
Whilst I wish I could go back to a time where ANUSA occupied less space in my brain, this 7 percent has pestered me for much longer than I care to admit. Why on earth is it so low? I have a few theories.
Free Toast isn’t Political… Is It?
The average ANU student is likely unaware of what exactly their vote goes towards. It is easy to feel like the clubs system, O-Week, and Market Day are inherent to university life and are thus a product of ANU, not of ANUSA. The members of a club will probably not know that their club’s continued existence is contingent upon satisfying certain requirements laid out in the ANUSA constitution. If they did, perhaps more people would take an interest in informing their vote (or maybe that’s wishful thinking).
Even for students who do engage more actively with ANUSA’s services, this involvement does not necessarily translate to an understanding of how the Union functions. I have no doubt more than 1000 people use the Brian Kenyon Student Space (BKSS) annually, but every day it would be easy to find plenty of students using the space who didn’t vote last year. These services have become so commonplace and obvious at ANU that students are unlikely to draw the connection between them paying their SSAF fee and the free tote bag they receive on Market Day.
Some BKSS staff members report that students frequently misunderstand who provides the services on offer. Whether they believe that these services are wholly ANU funded, or simply guaranteed year to year by some other means, many students are happy enough to receive their free toast for breakfast or free vegetables from Student Bites on Fridays without really looking into why these things exist in the first place.
But many ANUSA services are newer and less secure than they seem. Prior to an initiative by 2022 Vice President Chido Nyakeungama (from the Independent ‘Grassroots for ANUSA’ ticket), the BKSS didn’t provide free food. Moreover, The Mutual Aid shelf, situated outside of the ANUSA Office and providing free toiletries, textbooks, and other products, was only introduced in 2022 by Welfare Officer Grace King (from the same ticket).
The services currently offered by ANUSA are clearly nowhere near as secure as the people who use them think they are – these initiatives themselves are the best example. StuPol veterans will remember that Socialist Alternative (SAlt) have continually argued against ANUSA’s provision of free food services. This is based on the argument that mutual aid contradicts claims to be an activist union which fights for the improvement of student living conditions (i.e providing free things is not activist enough). It thus remains unclear what a vote for SAlt would mean for the future of the BKSS.
Clearly, free vegetables, toast, and microwaves are inherently political.
Student Privilege
With a high proportion of ANU students living on campus at increasingly expensive student accomodation, and only 4 percent of students reported to have come from a low socio economic background, ANU oozes privileged private school. This inherently affects the perceived necessity of the services ANUSA continues to offer.
On campus residents can find community in their hall in the absence of clubs. Students who don’t need to work while studying are also less likely to need ANUSA grants or free lunches. Whilst privilege does not preclude students from passive involvement in the services ANUSA offers, these students have less incentive to care about ensuring they are sufficiently maintained because they rely on them less.
A common complaint this year in particular has been that while salaries and wages for ANUSA employees have increased under the 2024 budget, overall Clubs expenditure has been reduced. This discourse has been quick to overlook the fact that affiliated clubs have actually applied for less funding this year than in years past, suggesting that funding is not a budget issue but a demand issue.
Additionally, ANUSA’s wages and salaries not only go to the student staffers running the BKSS and ANUSA reception, but also to maintaining the Student Assistance Team and the ANUSA Lawyer. These positions often provide vital support to students. In 2023, The ANUSA Lawyer helped reveal that the ANU were seeking criminal convictions against students for parking fines.
This is all to say, it is easy for the majority of ANU students to overlook a significant portion of what services ANUSA does (or could) provide because they simply do not need them. Time and time again, complaints made on Facebook lack understanding of the whole picture of ANUSA services – and the broader purpose of a student union – because it is very easy for us to only latch onto the parts we engage with. Come this year’s election, it will be interesting to see the main platforms each party campaign on as this outspoken demographic continues to proliferate.
The National Union of Students
The National Union of Students (NUS) Delegate position is by far the most confusing to the general student population. For the uninitiated, the NUS is the union of university student unions, who meet annually in November at the NUS National Conference (NatCon) which then decides the general direction for nationwide student campaigns in the coming year. Whilst fantastically convenient in theory, the NUS has faced significant controversy particularly in the wake of NatCon 2023.
Whilst the NUS have a heavy presence on other university campuses, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne, there is almost no NUS involvement in ANUSA and very little ACT student activism sees NUS participation.
You may ask, why then is ANUSA the only student union in the country paying the full affiliation fees? Great question. The NUS is dominated by Student Unity (Labor Right) and National Labor Students (Labor Left), and in 2023 members of Labor Right and Labor Left were successful in passing a motion at an ANUSA SGM to raise the fees ANUSA pays from $20,000 to the full affiliation cost of ~$34,000. In the context of the NUS being increasingly distant from the general life of ANU students, and NatCon’s factionalism a sign of its continued ineffectiveness, one has to wonder (and voters ought to) what ANUSA has to gain from this.
Students have the opportunity to vote for six NUS delegates, who will go onto join the bloc of their respective political party. However when the tickets don’t advertise their political affiliation, it’s hard for the average student to know just what they’re voting for – regardless of any campaign promise, a successful candidate will toe their party line. This is likely why most NUS delegates also happen to be successfully elected executive candidates. In the absence of any true candor by the candidates to disclose their political affiliation, voters are left to vote for a name they recognise.
Whilst I personally encourage you to delve a little deeper into the promises made by the NUS candidates this year – the real trick would be to go to the heart of the problem, and question why ANUSA is fully affiliated, particularly if you’ve barely heard of the NUS.
I Give Up
At the end of the day, if a student is not already too privileged or too unaware to be involved in ANUSA’s day to day functioning, they are still left disillusioned. How am I supposed to feel like my vote makes a difference when there is no accountability for candidates to stick to their election promises? After all, it took the independents four years and $7,000 in consultancy fees to admit defeat on the Night Café.
ANUSA feels like a bubble of those in the know. Three ANUSA executive members this year occupied positions of the 2023 executive, with four in 2023 and three in 2022 also having occupied positions from the previous year. Current President Phoenix O’Neill has been on the ANUSA executive for three consecutive years. Whilst the incumbents use this to defend their ‘activist experience’ it’s easy to understand why the average student may feel like ANUSA is too clique-y to break into. If you don’t have an ‘in’ into the realm of StuPol, you really have no reason to want one.
Candidates are also often sheepish in acknowledging their alignment with a political party, and annually each ticket feels comfortable pretending as if their proposed policies are not largely inconsistent with what they have been pursuing the year prior (e.g. Treasurer Will Burfoot running on the Stand Up! ticket in support of free education is caught proclaiming the benefits of the HECS system at NatCon 2023).
The ANUSA election often makes it harder, not easier, to understand the function of the Union.
With a cost of living crisis and an increasingly commercialised tertiary education sector, having a student union that accurately represents all students’ needs has never been more important. Every service explained above is unstable and subject to change, as long as you vote (and know what you’re voting for). No matter your personal involvement in ANUSA, at the end of the day it is still your union – the successful candidates will go on to represent you regardless of whether you know their name.
So, despite the bleak picture painted above, it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. If you’re part of a club, have taken a free tote bag from Market Day, or simply have made it this far in the article, the very least you can do is understand the source of the services you use. Maybe you could start by following Woroni ’s election coverage. But more on that later.
Jocelyn Wong
It Starts with Education, It Ends with Respect: August 1st Protest Calls Out ANU’s Consent Education
Rae Siddiqi
Content Warning: Discussions of Sexual Assualt and Sexual Harassment (SASH) and Institutional Betrayal
On the first of August, the ANUSA Women’s Department held their annual protest against the ANU’s inaction on Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment (SASH) on campus. Protestors marched from Kambri lawns to the Chancellery, demanding the ANU increase consent education and raise awareness on sexual violence on campus.
This year’s theme was “It Starts With Education. It Ends With Respect”, centring the conversation on consent education and its preventative nature.
The protest marks seven years since the Australian Human Rights Commission Change the Course report into sexual violence on university campuses. The Commission found one in five (21 percent) of students were sexually harassed in a university setting, excluding travel to and from university. ANU ranked first in the country for incidents of sexual harassment and second for sexual assault in 2017.
The protests come as part of the historic protests organised by the Women’s Department, and the Department’s continued efforts to raise awareness about the increase in sexual and/or genderbased violence on campus. As part of their Follow Through ANU 2022 report, the Department called the ANU to accept, respond, and implement six overarching recommendations based on student consultation.
These involve engaging with intersectional aspects of SASH, improving staff conditions, increasing transparency and accountability, clarifying reporting and support processes, and creating a system that accommodates survivors. The University was given until 1 August 2022 to respond to the recommendations, making the August first protests a direct response to ANU’s failure to adequately address these issues.
The University’s Sexual Violence Prevention Strategy, launced in 2019, aims to make the “ANU free from violence”. The strategy has three phases, with the third and current phase being, “Maintaining efforts and getting results”. The phase requires that “the social norms, attitudes, behaviours and systems contributing to violence will begin to shift.”
The University also anticipates that, “these behaviours will be more widely recognised and considered unacceptable, and will be more confidently challenged by peers, friends and colleagues, both in private and in public.”
“We expect that incidents of sexual violence and violence against women will start to decline. We will begin to reduce the load on crisis response services.”
However, this year’s protest outlined the shortcomings in the ANU’s consent education programs.
ANUSA Women’s Officer Lara Johnson (she/her) told Woroni, “Consent education is so key to our lives here at ANU.”
She explains, “That’s both what the ANU itself can provide to students through more comprehensive, intersectional consent education…but it’s also important that students take on board and do some thinking and introspection about the behaviours and attitudes that we allow to slide…that build up to those more incredibly harmful behaviours.”
The protest featured speakers including Deputy Women’s Officers Anna Denishensky (she/her) and Shalena Brito (she/her) and ANUSA General Secretary Milli McDonald (she/her). A large focus of the speeches was on the inadequacy of the consent education available on campus, with many criticisms directed toward the Rights, Respects and Relationships (RRR) modules.
Introduced in 2023, the RRR modules replaced the Consent Matters module. The new program aims to increase awareness surrounding sexual assault and sexual harassment (SASH), educate on the values and expectations of healthy relationships, and increase awareness of available support services.
The online module can be accessed anytime by students. It is compulsory, with an in-person component, for new students moving to on-campus residential halls.
However, one student at the protest told Woroni, “I found the online training was good as an introduction. But ultimately, there’s only so much you can get across online.”
“It might be hard to just take a solely online course when there’s no real support, or anyone to help you through that process.”
“And there are a lot of barriers which might make it hard to access, from straight up internet access, to if English is your second language. It might be hard to just take a solely online course when there’s no real support, there’s no one with you to help you through that process.”
They continue, “ I found the in person training wholly inadequate. Like it very much felt kind of piecemeal. It was a good start, but we could do a lot better.”
The 2022 National Student Safety Report revealed that the ANU still has the second highest prevalence of SASH in the country, and the problem which protestors pointed out, still persists.
“We need to have much more, the university really needs to listen to students about this.”
The ANU has made no public comment on this year’s protest.
If you or anyone you know is affected by the content of this piece, please contact one of the support services below:
ANU BIPOC Department sa.bipoc@anu.edu.au
ANU Indigenous Department sa.indigenous@anu.edu.au
ANU Counselling (02) 6125 2442
1800 RESPECT 1800 737 732
ANU Women’s Department sa.womens@anu.edu.au
ANU Queer* Department sa.queer@anu.edu.au
Student Safety and Wellbeing Team +61 2 6125 2211
BIPOC Department Releases 2023 Racism Report
Raida Chowdhury
Content Warning: Mentions of Racism, Discrimination and Institutional Betrayal.
On the 30th of July, the ANUSA Bla(c)k, Indigenous and People of Color Department (BIPOC) Department premiered its 2023 Racism Report documentary. The twenty minute long documentary recounts the experiences of racism of BIPOC students, including international students, black students, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students among others, in classrooms, residential halls and the wider University scene.
This report comes after two previous racism reports and the continued efforts by the Department to advocate for BIPOC students’ experiences with racism and discrimination.
ANUSA BIPOC Officer Selena Wania (she/her) told Woroni, “In 2021, BIPOC Officer Chido published the first racism report — it outlined 73 shocking incidents of racism at the ANU and outlined recommendations to the ANU. Unfortunately, ANU’s response to this report came a gruelling 11 months late.”
“In 2022, BIPOC Officer Chanel published the second racism report revealing the ANU had only implemented 1/14 recommendations provided to the ANU.”
She explains, “The history [of the racism report] is one of BIPOC advocates repeatedly alerting the university to the fact that racism exists at ANU. To which the ANU has often responded with limited or insufficient action.”
“Traditionally, our reports are presented in written form where audiences read. This time we want our audience to see. See the faces, hear the voices, and feel the emotions of those impacted by racism at the ANU.”
She continues, “Through a documentary, we hope to ensure that the lived experience of BIPOC students aren’t obscured by a block of text or statistics.”
The report recounts the experiences of previous BIPOC Officers including Chido Nyakuengama and Chanel Nguyen who termed the role as “the hardest challenge”. The Officers detailed their experiences of feeling “unqualified for the role,” given they were expected to handle “disclosures of massive proportions of racial violence.”
They also recounted working with, “university stakeholders, who do not take claims seriously.”
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students recounted the generalisation of First Nations students and racism they felt in classroom settings. Students explained they were often expected to “answer things [relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people] on which they have no knowledge about.” Other First Nations students explained the pressure and burden of having to, “pull [other students and staff] into line,” during discussions relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
One First Nations student explained, “Scholarships allow Indigenous students to be brought closer to other students who haven’t had setbacks, and…it’s a way for [Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students] to come to university and close the gap.” However, she explained that it is “frustrating and demeaning”, when other students “question” why First Nations students receive scholarships.
She recounts racist remarks from others including sentiments akin to, “we don’t deserve [scholarships and financial assistance], we are just given all these handouts and all that.”
The report also extensively details the structural and cultural gaps within residential halls which perpetuates racism. In particular, BIPOC students shared experiences of “isolation”, “alienation” and feeling “forgotten” while living in residential halls.
International students of colour explained that in residential halls, “there was split in the kitchen, with white students and students of colour.” These students also detailed a, “heavier pressure to fit in, [which often meant] subscribing to a very white norm … often for leadership roles.”
Black students recounted often being the only black student in residential halls and classroom settings. These students reported feeling isolated, and “difficulties in making friendships.”
Overall, the 2023 report has five main findings:
1. There is no infrastructure at the ANU for handling incidents of racism.
2. Racism is perpetuated by students and staff in academic settings notably in classes, resulting in distrust, unsafe and alienating academic environments.
3. Need for inclusion of the work of BIPOC academics in the NAU curriculum to overcome the potential for racial bias and the systemic exclusion of the work of BIPOC academics.
4. BIPOC residents in ANU residential halls experience racism manifested through racial microaggressions. Such behaviour has resulted in BIPOC students unable to freely share and express cultural identities.
5. Residential staff including Head of Residence fail to provide support to BIPOC residents when racist incidents are perpetuated in residential colleges, resulting in racial trauma being undressed and leaving BIPOC residents more vulnerable.
The report also details the University’s delay with providing the BIPOC safe space. The Department campaigned for the safe space in 2022, and was promised the BIPOC safe space for early 2023. However, the safe space was not fully ready to be used until months later.
Wania told Woroni, “The Department wants the ANU to take away a profound understanding of the lived experiences of BIPOC and Indigenous students on campus. We aim for the university to recognise the urgency and importance of addressing systemic racism and to take concrete actions based on our recommendations. Many of our recommendations this year echo those found in the Anti-Racism Taskforce report.”
“It is crucial to emphasise to the university that the Task Force’s recommendations, along with the report itself, must not be forgotten.”
The department’s series of recommendations requires that the University implement the recommendations in the ANU Anti-Racism Taskforce, in particular recommendations in phase two and three, which remain largely publicly unaddressed by the ANU.
These three reports remain the only publications detailing the experiences of racism and discrimination suffered by BIPOC students at the ANU, all produced by BIPOC students themselves.
Wania told Woroni, “The interview process [for the 2023 report] began in 2023 as we reached out to past and current Department Officers with the addition of posting a call out on our social media for further students from different backgrounds.”
“The editing process began in 2024. We spent hours compiling interview footage into a powerful 20 minute documentary.”
Following the premier, Wania asked the audience to contemplate the prevalence of racism at the University, saying, “I encourage everyone here today to go home and reflect on what you’ve seen. Spread the word of and raise awareness...”
“The voices and stories we’ve seen--it’s just a 20 minute glimpse of what we as BIPOC students experience every single day.”
by Vera Tan
You Think You Just Fell Out of a Coconut Tree? You exist in the context of all the political campaign-altering memes that came before you Sarah Greaves
In the last few weeks, I have begun to identify as a coconut truther. This is a ridiculous way of saying that I have spent so much time online that my thoughts are now primarily occupied by Kamala Harris memes.
Astonishingly, it was pointed out to me that within 48 hours of Joe Biden stepping down from the US presidential race, leaving Harris as the presumptive nominee, my entire social media was dominated by Kamala Harris memes. And as though I am now the victim of some sort of psy-ops program, I cannot go two minutes without singing, joking or talking about coconut trees. And it’s not just me. Hawaii senator Brian Schatz formally declared his support for Harris as the nominee via his climbing a coconut tree. Colorado Governor Jared Polis kept it simple by tweeting out three emojis: a coconut, a palm tree and an American flag, and the message was clear.
But how did it begin? In the now infamous speech, Harris is speaking at a swearing-in ceremony in 2023, during which she utters the admittedly ridiculous phrase, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree,” *maniacal laughing* “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you”. The strange turn of phrase, combined with its seeming nonsensicality and Harris’ transition from almost giggling to a serious life message, made it immediate fodder for the internet. Interestingly, it was first picked up by Republican social media at the time of the speech, now well over a year before the current situation the US faces. Unfortunately for them, it backfired massively and has now become a symbol of youth support for Harris.
Of course, the underlying irony of the coconut tree speech is that it has been entirely removed from the context of all in which it lived and what came before it. The swearing-in ceremony that Harris spoke at was not just any swearing-in ceremony; she was in attendance at an event for initiating the Commissioners for the “White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics”. Ignoring that this sounds like a slightly made-up initiative designed concurrently to irritate all sides of politics, it was a speech addressing the importance of equity and opportunity in the Hispanic community.
Throughout the speech, Harris explores barriers to economic equality through an intergenerational lens. Prior to the coconut adage, she raises the important point: “We cannot support and help our young people if we also — don’t also look at the context in which those young people live and are being raised”. This is the theme of the speech; “none of us just live in a silo”, and so addressing systemic issues of opportunity requires an analysis of the context in which we all live. The coconut line was simply an anecdote from her mother to emphasise the speech’s contention.
Yet despite a line all about context being taken out of its context, in the wake of Kamala Harris’ assumed presidential nomination, one particular trend has placed this speech straight back into context.
Enter Charli XCX’s Brat. Dubbed by many as the album of the summer, this highly consumable hyper-pop ode to the imperfections, messiness, and intricacies of modern girlhood has brought a new type of it-girl to the foray. It seems that in a bid to avoid a second Trump presidency, America’s Gen-Z has deemed Harris to be “brat”, with the album’s music serving as the soundtrack to the overwhelming majority of coconut edits.
Of the albums’ many hits, a fan favourite for Kamala edits has become the song “Apple”. A track with a catchy synth beat and accompanying TikTok dance that serves to distract from emotive lyrics about Charli XCX’s experience as a half-Indian woman growing up in Britain (yikes). The lyrics include, “I think the apple’s rotten right to the core from all the things passed down from all the apples coming before”. Take away the music, and these lyrics are not a far cry from Harris’ speech about intergenerational inequality. Something even further amplified by Harris’ own Indian heritage.
No matter how ridiculous the edits of Harris’ face on apples flying through the sky with coconut tree backgrounds and her laugh edited in tune become, there is something undeniably poetic about it. In response to Republican attempts to troll Harris by taking her words out of context, Gen-Z social media users have taken her words, put them alongside another piece of media about the same thing that has also been taken out of context, and used it to make people laugh.
Sure, one could argue that this is incidental, and “Apple” just happened to be the trending song of choice for producing meme edits. Yet this is surely an underestimation of youth intellect and engagement. Many have pointed out similarities with a famous Marx quote, and I have been subject to multiple influencer rants exploring the philosophies behind “falling out of the coconut tree”. From intersectionality to postcolonial trauma, there are entire theses that could (and probably will) be written about the memeification of contemporary theories and philosophies captured by this speech.
“The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living” - Karl Marx
“You think you fell out of a cocunut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live & what came before you.” - Kamala Harris
“I think the apple’s rotten right to the core, From all the things passed down, From all the apples coming before” - Charli xcx
Regardless of the intellectual acuity of this meme, one does not need to explore the niches of the psychology of intergenerational trauma, immigrant experiences or multi-layered irony to find them funny. These are campy, overblown edits of Harris appearing as a likeable and genuine figure, endearing her to a key voter group in a tooth-and-nail election battle. Somehow, the whole idea finds a way to be funny on multiple levels and appeal to as broad a group as possible.
Whatever happens in November, it should not be forgotten that the deployment of one good joke has catalysed and enlivened an entire presidential campaign, contributing to a record-smashing $81 million USD raised in the 24 hours since Biden’s withdrawal. The choice of Harris’ campaign team, Kamala HQ, to embrace the meme wholeheartedly, encouraging other party figures like Schatz and Polis to use it, has demonstrated a recognition and respect of Gen-Z that will serve the democrats well.
The coconut tree heralds a new generation’s entry as a major political stakeholder, one that either side would be foolish to underestimate as a driving force in the upcoming presidential election.
Art by Jasmin Small
by
Jocelyn Wong
The Quest for Kanak Independence in New Caledonia
Cleo Robins
On the 13th of May this year, riots broke out in the capital city of New Caledonia, Nouméa. The protests, led by Indigenous Kanak people, were characterised as ‘deadly’ and ‘unprecedented’ by Western media outlets around the world. Most of this coverage was based upon press releases from French President Emmanuel Macron, and the testimonies of tourists, stuck due to the closure of the international airport. Reading the news online, it seemed as if the riots had sprung up in response to recent constitutional reforms, and that their roots could be traced back about fifty years or so to another isolated instance of tension between Kanak and white settlers. There was an implicit, if not explicit, suggestion that the protests were unreasonable, and that the responding use of force by the French militia and white settler civilians was something to be celebrated. Seldom were the views of Kanak people presented within the hundreds of articles published daily about the riots.
While major media outlets glossed over New Caledonia’s long history, the gaps and silences in the coverage underlined the pervasive influence of colonial ways of thinking, both upon the international audience and upon the trajectory of New Caledonia’s fight for independence from France. France’s political, economic and social control over New Caledonia is not the status quo by chance. Nor is Kanak resistance a pot that has just happened to boil over at this moment in time. Rather, the situation today is the result of a lengthy and calculated oppression from the French, which has been continually resisted by the Indigenous Kanak population ever since the first contact between tribes and settlers.
A history of resistance
Located in the South Pacific, approximately 1,500 kilometres east of Brisbane, New Caledonia has James Cook to thank for its colonial name. Allegedly, the landscape reminded him of his native Scotland when he visited in 1774. Despite the lack of tropical beaches in Cook’s homeland, the comparison persisted. It was adopted by France, who, anxious to strengthen its presence in the Pacific, lay claim to New Caledonia in 1853 and established a penal colony. The French authorities took immediate control of the lives of Kanak people, disciplining those who broke French laws and sending them to hard labour camps established around the New Caledonian archipelago.
From the very beginning, Kanak tribes resisted the authority the French claimed upon their invasion. One of the most well-known instances of resistance occurred in the region of La Foa in 1878. Historians have attributed the La Foa revolt to a growing discontent among Kanak people with the actions of French settlers, who were encroaching onto tribal land and damaging yam and taro plantations with their agricultural practices, particularly the grazing of cattle. Angered by the French settlers’ disrespect for his lands, La Foa Chief Ataï brought his concerns to the French governor, who suggested that the tribe build fences to protect their crops. Ataï is said to have responded to this suggestion by telling the French governor: “When the taro eat the cattle, I’ll build the fences”. In retaliation to the French authorities’ lack of respect for tribal lands, Ataï united several neighbouring tribes and launched a guerilla war against the French settlers. Eventually, the French subdued the rebellion by dividing the Kanak tribes and overwhelming them with reinforcements from another French colony, Indochina.
After the resistance of the tribes at La Foa, the French colonial government worked to institute a new system of governance designed to subdue the Kanak people. 1887 saw the introduction of the indigénat, a set of colonial laws which gave the French governor ‘special powers’ over the Kanak population. This included controlling every aspect of the Kanak population’s lives, from their “clothing, sanitation, taxation” and “mobility”. The indigénat in New Caledonia was part of the colony’s legal framework until after the end of the Second World War. In 1946, the French government abolished the regime, making all Kanak people French citizens, who supposedly enjoyed the same legal rights as settlers. This abolition coincided with a change in New Caledonia’s political status; no longer was it considered a French colony, but rather an overseas territory, with its own government to make laws on domestic affairs, but with France still managing international relations and economic decisions. Despite the change in terminology, make no mistake — Kanak people were as much colonial subjects of France after 1946 as they were before.
A contract of compromise
Despite the abolition of the indigénat, material inequalities persisted for the majority of Kanak people. Starting in the 1960s, as decolonisation movements swept French colonies the world over, Kanak political parties and grassroots groups began coordinating protests against French rule on increasingly larger scales. This activism culminated in 1984 with boycotts of national elections and local mines, and skirmishes between the activists and French militia intensifying in the following years. The tipping point of the violence came in 1988, when members of the Kanak and Socialist Liberation Front took several French militia police officers hostage on the island of Ouvéa, in order to force the government to negotiate terms of independence. The French refused to do so, and instead sent reinforcements to retrieve the hostages.
Wong
In order to avoid a civil war as a result of the crisis, French Loyalist and Independence politicians worked quickly to come to a political agreement that would end the unrest. The compromise was the Matignon Accord, signed between the leaders of the Independence and Loyalist Parties. The Accord instituted a truce between the Kanak and the white French settlers, with provision for a referendum in ten years’ time to determine New Caledonia’s independence. The political work that achieved the Matignon Accord was renegotiated throughout the 1990s, with Loyalists and Independence Party members working together to establish a legal framework to govern New Caledonia’s decolonisation. The proposed 1998 referendum was abandoned in favour of a longer term plan which promised three referenda held in the late 2010s after a period of peaceful collaboration. The subsequent 1998 Nouméa Accord not only created a timeline for decolonisation and independence, but also encouraged a culture of compromise and reconciliation which lasted for over twenty years.
The quest continues…
The referenda proposed by the 1998 Nouméa Accord were held in 2018, 2020, and 2021. All three saw an overwhelming ‘No’ response to the question of New Caledonia’s independence from France, however the final vote was mired in controversy due to the government’s poor handling of complications related to COVID-19. Before the 2021 referendum took place, several Independence groups called for the postponement of the vote due to Kanak communities being hit hard by the Delta variant of the virus, but France continued on with the planned date. This led to Independence groups boycotting the referendum and objecting to its final outcome. Ever since the 2021 referendum result, France has steamrolled over any attempts to revive negotiations with Independence groups, celebrating the supposed victory of a ‘No’ result and recommitting to its control over New Caledonia’s politics and economy. The 2024 proposed constitutional reform, which would give an increased proportion of settlers voting rights in New Caledonia, is only the latest in a string of liberties that Macron and his government have taken with the Kanak people.
Looking at the three identified periods of New Caledonia’s history – the colonial, the decolonial, and the ‘postcolonial’ — it is clear that Kanak resistance has occurred in a cyclical fashion. They respond to oppression from the French, and then are subdued through military and legal means, leading to a period of truce which still perpetuates colonial injustices.
The 20 years of compromise between the Nouméa Accord and the 2024 riots saw Kanak people face massive inequalities. The mining industry’s land exploitation continues, and local businesses miss out on much of the revenue created by tourism due to the dominance of international cruise ship companies. The proposed constitutional reforms were just a catalyst for unrest which has been twenty, or rather two hundred years in the making. While the French government has, at the time of writing, now decided to suspend the voting reform, the continuing lack of New Caledonian political independence and Kanak sovereignty means that this is but a small win in a larger fight. As we can see from history, the quest for independence will continue, which, while French control continues also, sustains hope for a free Kanaky.
Wilderpeople, Wildebeest and Other Wanderings
Adam Jubb
[Shot over shoulder: Ricky Baker reads an encyclopaedia]
[Fade in sound of stampeding hooves. Cut to book text reading “Wildebeest”]
[As hoof sounds crescendo, rapidly cut between stills of running, leaping wildebeest herds] [Hoof sound stops suddenly]
Ricky: Hey, you know when the Wildebeests migrate, they walk up to a thousand miles. Is that heaps?
Hec: Yeah. Heaps.
Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) is a tightly scripted comedy film that follows the physical and emotional journey of delinquent youth Ricky and his reluctant guardian Hec through the New Zealand bush. It is from the above scene that Ricky comes up with the duo’s moniker: wilderpeople. Like the wildebeest, Ricky and Hec wander the wilds on foot — walking and walking and walking. It is also where Waititi gets the title of the film.
There’s a lot to love in Wilderpeople. It lands weighty gut-punches among the tongue-in-cheek punchlines. There are strong line deliveries from talented performers. It’s a stunning showcase of Aotearoa New Zealand.
But still, I think the wildebeest sequence might be my favourite eleven seconds in the film.
Why?
Perhaps it’s the drama of the sudden fade-in and even more sudden stop of the stampede noise, ripping me out of New Zealand and throwing me around the planet to East African grasslands.
Perhaps it’s the rapid-fire slideshow of wildebeest in mid-stride and mid-leap across the Mara River, that works with the sound effects to create a sense of urgency and motion despite being still images.
Art by
Jasmin Small
It might be that the sequence is tonally distinct from the rest of the film, but somehow only deepens my hard-won immersion.
To be honest, though, it’s probably a combination of all three, multiplied by the presence of an ANIMAL FACT!!!
22.
As a young kid, I was given ANIMAL: The Definitive Visual Guide to the World’s Wildlife, a hefty tome that catalogued many of the world’s animals in taxonomic arrangement. Like Ricky, I picked up a thing or two from my encyclopaedia, including a love for animal facts.
So, here’s some eclectic ‘journey’-themed animal facts I hope you’ll enjoy!
Where exactly birds went in winter was a mystery to 18th century northern Europeans. The top 3 theories in the time of Carl Linneas (who developed the system for naming species) were: hibernation in the Baltic Sea, transformation into mice, or flying far away. Obviously to us, one of these options is far more sensible, but that wasn’t confirmed to the European scientific community until 1822.
In 1822, a white stork (Ciconia Ciconia), landed in its breeding grounds on the Baltic Sea with an 80 centimetre central African spear piercing through its neck. On 21 May that year, the stork was killed in the German village of Klütz, from where it was sent to Rostock University. It is often referred to as the Rostocker Pfeilstörche: the Rostock Arrow Stork. It is also the logo for Rostock University’s Zoological Collection, who still display the taxidermied stork. The term pfeilstörche (literally “arrow stork”) refers to the Rostock specimen and the 25-odd other White Storks that have flown to Germany decorated by the shafts and fragments of Central African weaponry.
It wasn’t until the 1890s that the Danish ornithologist Hans Mortensen pioneered the practice of marking birds with numbered rings, allowing for systematic study of bird migrations. Seven decades earlier, the Rostock Arrow Stork provided the first solid evidence to the naturalists of Northern Europe that the birds that go missing in winter were journeying south into far off lands where warmth and food could be found.
As well as the familiar migration North and South, many animals migrate up and down in elevation.
The Himalayan Tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus), for example, is a species of agile goat endemic to… the Himalayas. They live higher up the mountains in the summer, but the winter ice and snow reduce the availability of food at higher elevations, pushing them down the mountainside. H. jemlahicus is also invasive across the ditch in Aotearoa, where they have been observed undertaking a daily commute down to lower elevations at night to feed under a cloak of darkness, and back up again for the daytime where they are less accessible to predators. Such a “daily commute” could be more scientifically termed a diurnal migration. This wouldn’t be as effective in their natural range given that snow leopards don’t particularly mind the higher elevations.
The Dusky Grouse (Dendragapus Obscurus), by contrast, spends winter at a higher elevation than in summer. They live in the Rocky Mountains of North America and winter uphill in the evergreen forests of conifer and Douglas Fir. They migrate downhill in spring to mate, lay eggs and browse fresh leaves, berries and insects. According to Guinness World Records, this is the shortest migration of any bird at just 300 metres.
Arctic Krill (Euphausia superba) is one of many small ocean creatures that move up and down in the water column, in a daily cycle called Diurnal Vertical Migration, or DVM. In 2006, researchers Geraint Tarling and Magnus Johnson called DVM “the most widespread and coordinated movement of biomass on Earth.” Arctic krill spend their days safely at 50 metres below the sea surface and then journey up to the top 30–15 metres at night. In Krill Migration: Up and down all night, another researcher, Kerrie Swadling, advances the case that krill actually make multiple trips each night! They go up, eat until they are full, swim back down till they are hungry, and repeat all night. Other researchers, such as Dominik Bahlburg say that this is not an appropriately nuanced understanding and that different swarms exhibit different behaviours, with other factors such as the presence of predatory fish driving the adoption of other time schedules of DVM. Bahlburg and his collaborators do, however, agree with Tarling, Johnson and Swadling that understanding the daily journey of large krill swarms is important to understanding parts of the carbon cycle and marine chemistry as a whole.
Lastly, I would like to return to the cool fact Ricky Baker learned in the rangers’ hut in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. His reference work told him that “when the Wildebeests migrate, they walk up to a thousand miles”. Mine tells me that “large herds migrate hundreds of kilometres”. The specific wildebeest that partakes in the ‘great migration’ is the Western white-bearded wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus mearnsi), which are a subspecies of blue wildebeest (C. taurinus). There are 1.4 million of these wildebeest participating in this migration every year.
Their migration is a loop around the Serengeti and Maasai Mara ecosystems in Tanzania and Kenya, and includes a famous crossing at the Mara River (where the epic photographs that appear in Wilderpeople were taken). The round trip is roughly 650 kilometres in a direct route, but radio-tagged individuals have been measured to travel on average 1,550 kilometres in a year. This is very close to Ricky’s 1000 miles or 1609.344 kilometres. This means we have a group of wildebeest roughly the same size as the population of Adelaide walking the distance from Canberra to Sydney five times. So, to once again quote one of my favourite films:
Ricky: …Is that heaps?
Hec: Yeah. Heaps.
23.
by
Art
Vera Tan
To the New Beginning
Shivagha Sindhamani Pathak
“It is great to desire, but you must deserve to desire. Thus, start working towards deserving it first.” – Vivek Oberoi.
“I love you, Momma,” 18-year-old me said to her mother while bidding her a long but not permanent goodbye.
As we stood in the bustling airport terminal, the announcements echoing overhead and the scent of coffee lingering in the air, the scene was both familiar and surreal. My mother’s eyes glistened with unshed tears, her hand squeezing mine gently, a silent reassurance amidst the swirling emotions. Around us, travellers hurried past with their own stories and destinations, oblivious to our heartfelt farewell. The soft murmur of conversations in different languages formed a backdrop to our quiet moment of goodbye, a moment etched with both love and determination.
“Love you too, Shonna (a term of endearment in Hindi meaning ‘sweetheart’). Your father and I are so proud of you. Always remember, it’s just a distance on land. You will always be here with us in our hearts. And nowadays, it’s all digital, so FaceTime us anytime you want love,” my mother replied. She was crying. I felt a lump in my throat and tried my hardest not to cry too.
You can’t blame me for trying to hold back my tears. I just wanted to prove to myself that I could bear being alone from now on. After all, it was my decision to study abroad, a degree I set my heart and soul on since I first learned about it: International Relations. But it would be a lie if I said the dam didn’t break that day. With final hugs and kisses to my lovely family, I embarked on my journey to Australia.
As the plane took off, leaving the familiar sights of my homeland behind, a mixture of excitement and anxiety swirled within me. I was on my way to a new country, a new chapter in my life. The thought of navigating a foreign land, with its customs and culture, was both thrilling and daunting. Questions flooded my mind: Would I be able to manage everything? Would I be able to perform well academically? Would I adjust socially?
I took a deep breath and pulled a small statue of Maa Kali, an image of a divine Hindu deity, and a picture of my parents out of my fanny pack. Holding it brought me comfort. I knew that everything would be fine if I worked diligently. On that aeroplane, I promised myself I would make my family proud by being the best and most refined version of myself, both academically and socially.
When I entered my on-campus accommodation for the first time, I felt something different. It wasn’t sadness or outward happiness. It was as if my mind was taking time for the reality to sink in, reprogramming me to accept how everything would be from now on, how I should navigate this alone. The walls of my room, painted in a sterile white, seemed to stretch endlessly around me, devoid of any warmth or character. The desk, a simple wooden slab against the far wall, appeared stark and unwelcoming under the harsh fluorescent light. The space felt cold, not just in temperature but in the atmosphere, lacking the familiar comfort of home. It was a stark contrast to the bustling warmth of my family’s living room in India, where every corner held memories and mementos.
But amidst this initial solitude, one thought lifted my spirit: the prospect of studying at the most beautiful campus I had ever seen. The anticipation of engaging in stimulating courses, meeting people from all walks of life, and seizing the countless opportunities that ANU offered filled me with excitement. With that comforting thought lingering in my jet-lagged mind, I eventually drifted off to sleep, embracing the promise of new beginnings.
The first few days of university life were a challenge. The academic system was different, the expectations were high, and the workload was intense. I often found myself overwhelmed, questioning my decision to study abroad. Every lecture felt like a mountain to climb, and every assignment seemed to test my limits. Homesickness added to the mix, creating a perfect storm for a total meltdown. I had quite a few of those during my first semester.
One vivid scene that comes to mind is when I went to office hours for my Asian Studies course. It was my first time meeting any professor in such a setting, and I was there to discuss the readings. I expected a professional and to-the-point conversation, but my professor surprised me by asking about myself at the end of our session. She inquired where I was from and how I was liking Canberra. When she learned it had only been a month and a half since I arrived and that I was alone, she said, “Then you must be feeling a little homesick, considering it’s been less than two months since you’ve been here.”
That question was the tipping point. I was already starting to get emotional talking about my home and what I loved about my life in India, but her question ultimately made me have a meltdown in front of her. Looking back, I feel a little embarrassed because it wasn’t like I was out of touch with my family — I literally called them every day! But I realised I needed that moment. I needed someone from Australia, someone who had lived there for a long time, to tell me everything would be fine. I needed reassurance that I would find my place and create a space for myself — a home away from home.
Eventually, I did find peace in what I was doing. The subjects I studied fascinated me. International Relations is more than just a degree; it is a passion. I love delving into the complexities of global politics, understanding the intricate web of international diplomacy, and exploring the cultural dynamics that shape our world. Each class is an opportunity to learn something new and to see the world from different perspectives. Late-night study sessions in my room became moments of quiet reflection. Surrounded by books and my notes, I felt a sense of purpose. The more I immersed myself in my studies, the more I realised this was where I was meant to be. The challenges became part of the adventure, each obstacle a stepping stone toward my goal.
As the weeks went by, I started to see the fruits of my hard work and received positive feedback from my professors. Slowly but surely, I was finding my place in this new world. But if I say that only the academic side of my life in Australia gave me memories, it would be a lie. The people made it all so much better. My friends, whom I hugged every day, cooked meals with, and shared my favourite memes with, were angels of happiness.
In the midst of lectures and assignments, it was their laughter and companionship that brought warmth to my days. Together, we formed a tight-knit group, bonded not just by shared experiences but by our shared journey of exploration and growth. Whether we were exploring the city’s vibrant markets, venturing into the Australian wilderness, or simply lounging in our dorm rooms swapping stories late into the night, every moment was infused with camaraderie and a sense of belonging. They weren’t just friends; they were my support system.
Looking back, it’s these friendships that I hold closest to my heart. They were the thread that wove through my time in Australia, transforming a foreign land into a place I could call home. Beyond the classrooms and textbooks, it was the bonds we forged that defined my journey — memories of laughter, shared dreams, and the enduring strength of friendship that will continue to inspire me long after my return home.
One evening, after a particularly challenging day, I sat by the lake on campus, watching the sunset. The sky was painted with hues of orange and pink, reflecting on the water. In that moment of tranquillity, I realised how far I had come. I was doing something I loved, surrounded by incredible people, and growing every day. But this is not the end of the journey, nor the end of any story. It is a continuing loop of self-reflection and introspection. Holding these thoughts with me, I came to understand that success was not just about reaching goals quickly, but about embracing the journey. Along the way, amidst my academic pursuits and personal growth, I learned to cherish the little moments of happiness and count my blessings.
I remind myself daily that while striving for achievements, it is equally important to savour the friendships made, the knowledge gained, and the personal insights that shape us. Each challenge and setback is a chance to learn and grow stronger. As I navigate through my life at ANU, I hold onto this belief that every experience, whether joyful or difficult, is part of my journey towards becoming the person I aspire to be.
With my family’s love and support always in my heart, I embraced each day with renewed determination and a sense of gratitude for the opportunities that lay ahead. The journey is tough, but it will also be incredibly rewarding. I am not just pursuing a degree; I am following my passion, expanding my horizons, and becoming a better version of myself. And in this realisation, I have found peace and contentment.
In a faraway land, sits a mind aglow, Determined smile, with dreams to sow. All she seeks is for her dreams to come true, Learning from life is a practice she’ll pursue.
by Oliver Stehens
Newton’s Third Law
Ali El Zein
I find that very often after travelling, I feel a very particular sadness as soon as I return. The hangover of travel leaves me with an anxiety that creeps through my chest and settles as a lump in my throat. I can feel the lump, and it’s as if from there that a cocktail of sadness, loneliness and longing is pushed throughout my body. Sometimes it lasts a day, other times weeks or months. I’ve started to develop a level of familiarity with the feeling, accepting it, safe in the knowledge it will eventually pass.
The first time I felt it was when I moved to Canberra. In my first week out of home I had already decided that I would weather the first year and then return to Sydney with my tail between my legs. The feeling came and went, and alongside the standard growing pains I settled into living in Canberra.
In those first few years of university, I would go home and work over summer. Whenever I came back to Canberra to start the semester, I would feel a tug of loneliness and sadness, paradoxically about returning to my friends.
When I went on exchange, despite having lived out of home for four years, my old friend returned, leaving a lump on my throat for at least the first couple of months. It was easy to pin-point the feeling as homesickness, given the physical distance I was from home. I thought back to my childhood, when I was stuck at a sleepover I didn’t want to be at. Wanting with all my might to go home but knowing I couldn’t, the barrier being embarrassment rather than thousands of kilometres. I guess even on exchange, or during my first weeks in Canberra, the barrier to leaving may have been embarrassment too.
Unsurprisingly, I ended up enjoying my time on exchange and stayed for ten months instead of five. My flight home was from Paris, and I had organised to stay with a friend I met travelling. However, the feeling returned in those last days, and the soft tears allowed me to do what I could never do as a child and leave to go and stay at my aunt’s house (to complete the analogy to childhood, I was driven by my friend’s mum).
I’ve racked my brain for what the feeling is. A mix of loneliness and longing, maybe. Moving between places is a necessarily lonely activity, and I can see how the longing is attached, wishing for the stability of where you once were. But the more it happened to me and paradoxically the more familiar with it I’ve become, the less I’ve tried to analyse what it is. I know that it comes, like the shadow, or the other side of the journey. It’s a distinct feeling, which exists unto itself, unable to be neatly divided into a combination of existing emotions.
I prefer to think about it as me lugging myself from one place to another. Maybe I forget bits of myself, or they’re lost on the way, and it is these missing pieces that cause my post travel blues. Or maybe the sadness are those pieces of yourself which are left behind, calling out to remind you to wait for them or at least not forget.
It is hard to separate the feeling from its context, which is the privilege of being able to travel, as well as come home. The hangover for me is an inevitable part of moving between places, and probably a healthy sign that I’ve enjoyed the places I’ve lived, even if I’m leaving them. My sadness, by this logic, is correlated to my connection and happiness in certain places. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction — Newton’s third law.
Art by Xiaochen ‘Fiona’ Bao
The Present Brooke Corkhill
Travel often provides a fresh perspective on your regular life. As funny as it seems and as annoying as it may sound, being on the other side of the world is sometimes the distance needed to see some small things at home clearly. Whether it be a fresh take on friendship or family dynamics, a reassessment of your love life, a dive into your inner world, or thinking about priorities for the future, there is always something to be learnt.
After studying abroad for the last few months, I definitely gained some fresh perspectives. One of the largest was a renewed sense of gratitude for being able to travel, for my loved ones at home and for the life I was living.
A few of my best friends from exchange and I were lucky enough to take a weekend trip to Paris (one of the primary perks of cheap European flights and studying in cities with international airports). Sitting under the Eiffel Tower with them one night, I asked them if I could say something a bit cringe.
“Of course,” they quickly replied. (They already understood how cheesy and sentimental I was by this stage, postliving-with-me-for-three-months.)
“I thought it might be nice if we say something we’re grateful for.”
I proceeded to say how grateful I was to have met them and to be travelling generally. We commented on the sparkling of the tower, the delicious crepes we were polishing off, and being in the city of love and lights. We are so young and witnessing things that some of our parents and grandparents never have. But one of my friends’ responses surprised me with its powerful simplicity. She said how grateful she was for her health and life—to be living.
I have lost people in my life over the last few months, as have some of my close friends. Being on a journey far away meant that distance was a factor that made many of these losses unnecessarily tough. While any loss comes with a vast array of challenges, it is also a sobering reminder of life’s fragility.
Life is full of ups and downs, and travel is certainly no exception. If anything, I have often found it to be an exaggerated version of an everyday rollercoaster. Yet, taking time to re-centre your focus on the important things is vital. As John Green aptly put it, “What an astonishment to breathe on this breathing planet. What a blessing to be Earth -loving Earth.”
Every day is a gift, whether travelling or waking up at home. That is why it is called the present (how original, I know).
In the typical hustle and grind of an Aussie university semester, I often fall into the trap of focusing on getting through each week and day, focusing on assessments coming up, my work schedule, and all the homework and prep I have left to do. It was refreshing to take a step back and focus on the greater purpose of my degree, why I was passionate enough to study it in the first place and consider where I may like to take it a bit more.
Some questions I asked myself to reflect on after a journey were:
What is something you discovered about yourself?
What surprised you the most about your experience?
What are some things you can take away from the people you met along the way?
What songs remind you of your trip?
While it sounds quite trite to have had to go around the world to become so grateful for some of the simplest things at home, that is what I found. How can you live a life that aligns further with your values and priorities every day?
Serge, Soup and Sidney Nolan
Lee-Francis Evatt
It was lonely, and the cool morning light was sieved of all its natural illumination. The windows have had their blinds down for over twenty years now and it shows. The planes of brutalism, the high ceilings, the ‘loot’ that looked down at you, far away from its sacred home, preserved by the rectangular guards that, from a distance, could be mistaken for the bollards. Electric Chair was on the ground floor, haunting you with its neon violence, a darker work by Warhol — or weren’t they all subtly so? — with Marlyin Monroe killing herself, her immortal garish face merchandised into pocket mirrors and toothpick holders for $14.95 at the store if you walk straight and take a left. It is almost a church here, the absence of music rings like a drill perforating your skull.
Serge stands in front of the Monet. The Water-Lily Pond is dry, he imagines how it must have looked wet, the water-lily pond amongst the The Water-Lily Pond, the layers of sky growing as time pushes the clouds, as it shows us different angles of duplicates in the water. It doesn’t look right here and maybe its moment has passed and we should let it go.
He looks at his watch, it’s ten to nine, he is early, he decides to go to the bathroom. There is nothing more painful than the desperation to pee whilst on the job. As he washes his hands he sees a neurotic cockroach flicker across the tiles. He knows what he must do; he must cart it to quarantine for a full inspection. Elegantly, Serge corners the intruder, it pauses, perhaps as a defence mechanism. Then it’s in the darkness, trapped. It knows it’s trapped and won’t stop squirming.
The quarantine room is in the basement of the building. It is a drag to get there so Serge will have to go ask Jerry to patrol his area. He can’t switch on his radio mic, his hands are full, full of the single cockroach. He’ll have to walk through two rooms and meet Jerry there.
As he passes the Chargal, his favourite work on route, he can’t enjoy it, the feelers, he can feel them brushing inside his hands as they try to find an exit. It reminds him of that medieval torture method he had read about, the one where rats are trapped in a container on the victim so they eat their way out to get free. Serge held his breath for a moment before exhaling and shaking the intrusive thought free.
‘Quarantine,’ Serge says covertly, holding up his hands, then he looks back over his shoulder at the stairwell exit, then back at Jerry, Jerry nods and radios quarantine.
‘Quarantine, this is Jerry from level two, we have a pest coming in from our new staff member Serge, run him through the protocol will you? Over.’Jerry changes channels.
‘Diane, Diane this is Jerry. Please send another staff member to Level Two, Room Four, perhaps Tristian on Level One. Over.’
Serge begins to descend the triangular stairwell to the quarantine room, not a long way to go, nearly there, he passes Peter Starkling, the head of curation,
‘Serge? Serge!’ says Peter Starkling, ‘Mr Starkling Sir.’ Serge nods,
‘I like the new haircut,’ Mr Starkling waves his fingers around his head to sign it. Serge tries a smile but he can feel the little legs scratching at the crevice where his fingers meet, he nods again and Mr Starkling departs upstairs, thank god, Serge exhales.
It is a nice compliment coming from Mr Starkling and Serge cares about that stuff, appearance is important for one’s own self preservation, it is particularly important for a guard to be presentable. But instead of feeling flattered by the compliment, all Serge could think of was the cockroach. Why didn’t he get a paper towel to pick up this filthy creature? He was in the bathroom of all places. How unhygienic. How unlike him. What will Diane think? He will make a terrible impression but he must commit to it now.
He finally makes it to the quarantine door, with his card attached to his belt, he thrusts his left hip to the door scanner, the card misses and swings on its keychain dramatically. His face flushed, he makes a second attempt, this time slower, angling it carefully. Doo Doo Doot. Serge leans his shoulder into the door and opens it. He tries to make it a smooth entry. He smiles at Diane, who has swivelled her chair around to face him. Serge raises his eyebrows with his hands forward like he has bought her a little treat, something small like an easter egg. This of course was not a game of ‘picka-hand’, not a single muscle in Diane’s face lifted.
‘You must be Serge,’ she jested, her eyes open wide with judgement.
‘Yes, Ma’am.’
‘Please call me Diane.’
‘Yes Ma— Yes, Diane’
‘Right, now is that the vermin in your hands?’ She came up to Serge, flicking the arms of her thick glasses out and sliding them over her sharp eyes to inspect it.
‘Yes.’
‘Next time grab one of the containers from the store room where the signs are kept, free up your hands.’
‘Thank you, I will, I did not know that.’
‘It’s alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘From Level Two?’
‘Yes.’ Serge flinched. It was certainly alive.
‘I’m impressed.’
‘Just following protocols, I didn’t want it to get away or damage any artworks.’
Diane laughed and opened a ziplock bag, indicating to Serge to place his hands inside it. Serge let go of the cockroach, it did not fall in the bag, it clung to his hand, he tried to shake it free, it crawled up his arm, Serge gave out a small but audible shriek and flung it onto the ground. Diane almost instantly killed it; she lifted up her shoe then flicked it into the bag with a piece of scrap paper.
‘Next time, for insects, just kill ‘em. Easier to transport. Oh, and feel free to call us if you need help catching something.’ She smiled.
Serge felt like the king of idiots.
‘Yes, sorry.’
‘Right Serge, I’m going to show you how we log things.’
Diane is interrupted by a call, she gives Serge a “one moment” smile. The corners of her mouth then droop. Bad news. Diane exhaled with her back.
‘Serge, we are going to have to pause this, there’s some action happening back where you left off,’ said Diane with an anxious laugh.
As Diane and Serge approach the stairs there is a muffled sound of a crowd shouting. It amplifies with each step upward. She opens the door and now the crowd’s chants are legible to the ear.
“Stand up, fight back! Clean air is a right, we will not give up the fight! Clean water is a right, we will not give up the fight! Clean earth is a right, we will not give up the fight! Our future is a right, we will not give up the fight!”
A crowd of 30 or so university students swarm the gallery. There is soup splashed violently all over the opening Sidney Nolan. Several of the students had adhered themselves to the wall. All they could do was watch.
by Sanle Yan
Riding the Waves A journey of flow and serendipity
Kunj Guglani
I’m Kunj, an international student from India, currently pursuing a Master of Statistics at ANU. My journey to this point has been anything but linear, filled with twists, turns, and a lot of going with the flow.
Back in India, during my school years, I had to choose a field of study for higher education. But the truth is, I’ve never had a clear aim in life. I’m like a river, going with the flow, generally unconcerned about the circumstances and final destination but always harbouring a deep desire to be a successful woman. I eventually chose science as my field of study and graduated with first division.
When I went to university, the confusion continued. I chose a BSc and learned several mathematical and computer programs. During this time, I had a reputation for stubbornness. If people told me not to do something, I would cheekily say, “Whenever I go in front of you, please close your eyes if you don’t like it.” Despite my stubbornness, I was very emotional and deeply afraid of losing people forever.
I am a very friendly and approachable extrovert. During my college years, I made many friends, became deeply attached to them, and invested my resources, energy, and everything to maintain those relationships. However, life doesn’t always go as planned; it moves with its own current, teaching you lessons with each wave. Upon graduating, I realised that not everyone is as genuine as you might think, and it’s important not to form emotional connections with everyone. Despite this, I graduated with high academic achievements and pride in my parents’ eyes, and a few best friends remained by my side. They are my whole heart, and I carry them with me on my journey, holding them close with unwavering strength. No matter how heavy the heart feels, one must keep moving forward, because life is a race!
After my BSc, I thought I would tackle India’s most challenging civil service exam. But soon, I learned that cramming general knowledge wasn’t for me. So instead I decided to pursue an MSc in Mathematics, which I completed with high distinction. Then came the question: what’s next, Kunj?
I genuinely enjoy studying, and it has always been my go-to activity whenever I feel down. I’ve never had a specific goal; I just wanted to be successful. So, after my MSc, I spontaneously decided to dive into statistics. I got admitted to ANU, and to my surprise, my visa was approved in just 20 minutes. Life has been incredibly fair to me in that sense.
Now, here I am in Australia, grappling with my MSc program in Statistics. It’s challenging, but I know it will lead to new experiences and new paths for me to explore. I want to normalise the idea that sometimes, it’s okay not to have a specific goal. Being carefree, enjoying life, and going with the flow can matter a lot.
So, here I am, riding the waves of life, with no fixed destination but a heart full of dreams and the courage to go wherever the current takes me.
Art by Jasmin Small
Photography by Henry Carls
Photography by Lekh Bahtia
Photography by Lekh Bahtia
Photography by Lekh Bahtia
Diary of a Twinky Kid Jaden Ogwayo
I came out to my mother the same year as the Plebiscite: 2017.
That night, I sobbed, unable to trace the pivot in our conversation where discussing the possibility of dyeing my hair had led to me coming out as gay. Earlier, I had socially identified as pansexual, sporting a homemade pink-yellow-and-blue bracelet for months before I recognised my conflation of romantic and admiring gazes: I loved Trent and Gwen from Total Drama Island for two very different reasons.
Before that, my initial queerness was neither distinctly labelled nor expressly articulated, but bullies—oracles in disguise?—presciently insisted that I was “either gay or a girl”. To many, my precise gender identity was inscrutably disrupted by my conspicuous deviations from normative male expression. And while the binary world made my exclusion from boyhood clear, it left me without an alternative: not exactly a boy, but not exactly anything else. But it wasn’t just bullies who would interpellate me into that liminal void; for the last decade of my life, children have frequently asked me if I am “a boy or a girl,” in varying tones of derision, humour, and pure curiosity.
Long before I would gain access to a vocabulary of non-binary identities and the option to adopt ‘he/they’ as my pronouns, I think I erected a foundation of genderless potential through acts and interests which were read externally as weird, feminine, or both. For instance, from Year Four, I spent so much of my free time self-teaching colour theory and memorising obscure shade names that ‘blue’ and ‘green’ expired as straightforward answers to “What’s your favourite colour?”; prophetically, ‘rainbow’ served as my favourite instead.
My passion for colour was liberating for me and striking to others, years before I knew of the queer symbolisation of the rainbow. Vibrancy took over my gaudy wardrobe of mismatched socks and multicoloured raglan shirts, and this early maximalism culminated in a homemade unicorn hoodie which I wore to my Year Six disco against my mother’s wishes. Surprisingly, my sartorial choices were encouraged by my father (read by him, I suspect, as rebellious in a cool, non-gendered way) but discouraged by my mother (who was, admittedly, likely well-intentioned in her concerns for my safety as a visibly non-conforming student at a Catholic primary school).
My embodied love of colour evolved into an obsession with drawing, art, and stationery. Pinterestsourced crafts collected around my two bedrooms (easy distractions from divorce for an only child) and I yearned most of all to experience nail art—a mode of expression I saw as reserved for the women in my life. Iron-on badges and fabric marker ink devoured the blank spaces on my clothing, and I developed an expensive hobby of melted crayon-wax canvas art to objectify my discouraged creativity into emblems of labour recognisable by my parents.
40.
Inevitably, these interests, traits, and experiences pushed me to the margins of boyhood as I teetered on the serrated edge of maleness and otherness without ever finding my place in that murky terrain. Then, as a “gifted kid”, my love of letters, learning, and language took over: I discovered anagrams with fridge magnets; made a game out of improvising acronyms for cars’ number plates; learnt to recite the alphabet backwards in less than 15 seconds (a talent I retain); memorised the Periodic Table (a talent I mourn); and for my last Halloween, I went as Albert Einstein in a lab coat I embellished with a palimpsest of chemical equations and elements.
These nerdy, creative passions—along with my desire to subvert, rearrange, and play —hadn’t felt transgressive to me in any gendered way; it was mostly a solution to boredom a riposte to threats (I had hoped that “dumb-undies” would one day catch on as a clapback to “smarty-pants”). However, the rapid onset of puberty brought with it a scourge of heteronormativity that I suffered (and unknowingly perpetuated) before knowing its name, and I became acutely aware that my nerdy interests were read almost universally by others as feminine. Until then, I had never felt any discomfort with my embodied gender identity—I felt no need to see myself as male, necessarily—but it was as though I faced a social dysphoria where my mode of life brought more anger to others than it brought me joy.
After years of boasting to coworkers and customers about my science knowledge and spelling skills, my father warned that my interest in reading feminised me, persuading me to instead revisit soccer. He hid the scarf I knitted for his AFL team and banned my favourite YouTube channel ASAPScience after suspecting that the creators were boyfriends. In Year Six, when a gay couple appeared on First Dates, he flung our TV remote across the living room to discharge his duty to shield me from the spectre of ‘gay television’ that, in his eyes, peaked in 2015 when Maya Avant from The Bold and the Beautiful came out as transgender.
In Year Six I was also asked out by a girl who was far from shy about her incessant crush on me. It was my one chance to kill three birds with one month-long stone: 1) to appease her; 2) to gloat to my guy friends; and 3) to gain a shred of gendered validation from a father who often casually muttered catcalling remarks about passersby in my prepubescent earshot. No longer sated by the thrill of eleven-year-old romance, I dumped her during recess with a level of remorse that far outweighed the seriousness of our short lived “relationship”. After all, my best friends since kindergarten have always been female.
With my girlfriend gone, I grew desperate to pass as male despite identifying as male. I was plagued by an overcompensatory dysphoric craving to inhabit a maleness which I had come to know less in terms of proximity to some pure, recognisable masculinity and more in terms of a complementary relation to the feminine. It was the same understanding of complementarity that I had developed through colour theory, only this time swapping red and green for pink and blue (or fuchsia and cerulean?). I developed a habit of fabricating elaborate crushes on fictitious girls to keep up with the nascent machismo of other tween boys who described dreams with women that I would never have dared to admit were entirely foreign to me.
Since Year Seven, I have never really seen a need to ‘come out’ to anyone, outwardly fulfilling the prophecies of my primary school bullies. With some older friends, I secretly attended rallies in support of the Yes campaign and I implored my family to vote in the affirmative without disclosing my personal stake in the matter. I’d end parades around London Circuit by ‘debating’ the sinfulness of my sexuality at counter protests with priests thrice my age, preparing myself for the conspiracies about interspecies marriage which circulated my high school. In that climate, I survived on an unhealthy trio of rage and wit and addiction to study that served to distract me from my own battles of the self: afflictions which still eat away at me in my seventh post-closet year.
Despite the pressures of conformity, Years Nine and Ten surprisingly presented a sporadic range of chances to step out of a tenuously maintained maleness. When our school hosted a two-day workshop with a local primary school’s Year Six students to build various tactile projects in teams, the team I led read me as gay immediately. They all called me ‘Mum’ as a term of endearment which I initially found quite jarring, given my lack of intention to adopt female pronouns or names. I offered Dad as a substitute (if they felt compelled to give me a familial title)—but it was ‘Mum’ or nothing. I acquiesced to the former, which conferred a more joyful status with less shame than expected.
And when my aunt’s size-two bridesmaid couldn’t attend the dress fitting, my family had 14-year-old me try on her gown instead. In unison, we marvelled at how the navy satin revealed a gamine figure, but I wore a suit to the wedding, which was fine if somewhat dissatisfying. I never again brought up that moment in the dress, nor when I wore a wig and stuffed my bust to play Juliet for a duologue in Drama, nor when, for the launch of our school’s op-shop, I paired my suit with deep scarlet heels on the assembly stage. Every opportunity to ‘cross-dress’, each successively more public, authenticated that love of play and subversion which I had learnt to neglect in a poor effort to fit in.
Even though these experiences did not necessarily evince some innate, repressed female sense of self that we might see in a typical instance of (trans-)gender dysphoria, these lurid highs still irreparably severed my ties to male subjectivity which brought about its own battles. In Year Ten, I loathed the heterosexualised ritual of ‘Social Dance’ in PE, whereby boys and girls line-danced in ordered pairs and complained about the rigidity. That same year, also in PE, I was asked to extemporise a rundown of queer sex-ed for my classmates and answer my teacher’s questions in front of the class, which further exposed the severe queer lacuna of education.
Over time, I recognised my alienation from a culturally entrenched heteronormativity; however, I only gained the vocabulary to articulate and elucidate this disjunct through the gender, feminist, and queer theory I discovered in my final month of high school. After an unutterable decade of gender roles and labels, my queer journey found itself quite the crisis as Monique Wittig’s separatism convinced me to slowly de-identify as male while Judith Butler’s performativity theory convinced me to slowly de-identify as anything, altogether.
by Amanda Lim
Because I Could Not Stop For Death
Caelan Doel
I’m thinking about the blackness of Eternity, but there is sunlight inside the Carriage, and I’m greeted by a sense of the familiar.
Death, beautiful in black and silver, speaks no words, and nor do I. I wonder if there are belly-laughs in Eternity.
His applewood walking-stick is dark and slender, atop it a little silver crow, and rested atop that His own limp hand. I can’t see His face; He keeps on his hat, which sets His features in shadow. I understand Him, though, and I think that I have known Him all my life. My breath comes more freely than it did. He is in the business of replenishing.
I notice now that there is rain against the roof. The rain doesn’t shout; it hums. There is a melody in it, and I think that maybe it is something forgotten which I sang in my childhood. There is the rain, and gravel beneath slow wheels, and there is no great revelation or particular reclamation of knowledge long lost to us. It is only a feeling of ease which takes the Carriage for its haunt. Like retiring to your sofa after a long day, steaming cup of tea in hand.
Out the window is the School I attended in my youth. The Children are at their break, laughter and shouting and clapping games. If I look closely, I am almost sure I can see myself, kneeling with a stick of chalk for hopscotch.
It is gone, and there are the Fields where I have spent my afternoons and sleepless nights for all the years I can remember. The stems of Grain watch us from afar, swaying in the breeze and basking in the rain, reaching for Heaven, wise old stems of Grain. Somewhere in the dirt is the ring my mother gave me for my sixteenth birthday, which was a little too big and slipped right off when I tossed a ball to my sister in a game of catch.
Then the Sun comes down, great Setting Sun. Bright and low so that we meet each other’s eyes. He sheds on us the last of His warmth with a smile.
Now I feel the cold setting in, the Dew falling as a blanket over the School, the Grain, the last rays of the Sun. My Gown is only Gossamer, my Tippet only Tulle. Had I foreseen this impromptu journey, I’d have brought my winter coat.
I draw the curtains together on the sleeping world, and we come to a quiet stop. Death helps me from the Carriage as a gentleman, and when I step out, I look back on the home I have loved. But my glance is fleeting, and now there is the thrill which comes with uncertainty, and my hand is unflinching in the crook of Death’s arm.
Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses’ Heads Were toward Eternity –
Art by Jasmin Small
The Wake Annie Little
Is it strange to say my most treasured memory
Is that of crying?
My father with eyes swollen and spilling, smiling,
Seeing his father finally seen.
No formal education to speak of
Yet he was the smartest man I knew.
He was constantly trying to learn more
- my father says.
He was the glue that stuck my family together
- my father says.
Maybe that’s why it fell apart when he died
- he doesn’t say.
A typist, he may have been,
But an artist was who he was.
He carried a colourful history of Newspaper blankets, bleeding feet and suburban sluggishness.
He carried stories told better by
The tongue than typed.
He carried me
When I couldn’t carry myself.
He moulded us like he did his clay.
I know him through the idioms my father recites,
- Like I would the times tables,
His most important learnings,
His most important teachings.
I know him from the metaphors he saw the world as –
Is that where I get it from?
A person seen through gauze and clay; he was.
My father made me who I am.
I cherish the memory of
Him seeing his father’s work
On pristine white walls, With little white plaques, Which left wet lines
Framing his wide smile.
Art by Jasmin Small
Journey Into the Heart of Darkness
The fallacious promise and fetishisation of ‘ego death’ while tripping
Anonymous
As someone who has only smoked grass and is too fearful to swim into the depths of psychedelic drugs, I lived vicariously through the experiences and stories from my peers during my final year of high school and my first years of university.
The playground of those first years at university sees the young and curious swinging through the discography of The Doors, sliding through the prose of Aldous Huxley and building a sandcastle of ideologies based on the often duped ‘buddhist’ Philosophy from the 1970s. The notions of enlightenment in these mediums arose from the social-anarchy in the late 20th century, and this drive for social change coincides with the uptake of psychedelic drugs. For the young adults who are ignited by the messages from these materials, the result is a full idolisation of psychedelics. But of course, our young sages easily glorify and over-intellectualise the use of drugs, as they could never witness the truly unceremonious and unintellectual nature of its taking at the beginning. Within the tumultuous first years of university, our peers become attracted to and maybe eventually take psychedelics as a means to find solace and self-fulfilment. But of course, the same can be said for the bored and freshly un-shackled from their parents.
Many described an enlightenment, contentment, and existential understanding from the good or ‘bad’ trip they experienced. During the journey, and in the aftermath, some described feeling closer to nature, and gained more respect for their world and the people in it; seeing the earth as its own organism with themselves being cradled in its arms, simultaneously a micro and macro-cosm. These experiences can be called an ‘ego death’. These experiences can be called an ‘ego death’. Hearing of these instances made me wonder whether the key to gaining insight, to becoming a better person to others and obtaining the contentment of the ‘hippies’ and the intellect of Jim Morrison, was solely dependent on experiencing this transient ‘ego-death’, via psychedelics.
These stories of ego death when tripping initially made me excited, curious, and eager to experiment with psychedelics and hallucinogens. I wanted a new world to crack open like a splitting headache. I had a genuine belief that such material would guide me towards the most idealistic version of myself and open new connections with my world.
However, I then heard an account different from the rest. I asked a friend from home about his experience.
“Did you have an ‘ego death’?” I asked, half joking, half sincere curiosity.
“It’s all bullshit. Yeah I saw things and had moments of euphoria. I appreciated everything I had afterwards. But it’s just a drug. I never had an ‘ego death’, at least not to the extent people tell you.”
As I went through more years at ANU, I had a couple more discussions with people holding similar sentiments, yet the amount of ego death experiences outnumbered the ‘non-converters’.
It became apparent to me that experiencing ego death was not the default experience when taking psychedelics, nor was it necessarily a beneficial thing. After contemplating the words from my friend at home, I concluded that to face ego death meant to fall from your ivory tower. It is the revelation that you are on equal standing with the ‘other’ things in your world, and it implies that such equality was priorly unrecognised. Such a tumble suggests the individual holds an established superiority complex, or to put simply, an ego. Some may misconstrue this as being a part of an innate human greed, but I couldn’t be convinced of this age-old assumption. Alternatively, greed may be a parasite infecting the plants that society has encouraged us to eat off of. Regardless of whether greed is post or prior to ‘humanness’, its assertive and unequivocal existence would imply that a means of redemption for one’s infected character would be through the reflection provided by the mirror of hallucinogenic materials.
by Jasmin Small
I began to question the potential placement of this ugly, underlying ego within me.
I couldn’t imagine my world being any more alive, compassionate or enlightened than I currently see it. I’ve always tried my best to be considerate of others and the things around me, also to be open minded. My outlook gave me hope and faith that my character was considerate enough for there to be no overgrown ‘ego’ within me to kill. But what if an ego death of my own proved I was not this person? I feel as content as possible with myself. Would there still be a purpose in attempting to take psychedelics considering the legal risks and potential life-long damages if I had a ‘bad batch’ of unregulated substance?
Again, I considered my friend at home. Despite his denial of a transformative ego death, he continues to periodically take hallucinogens. But why? My underlying suspicion wanted to deny his words; that despite his opinions, there was a secret sliver of himself still searching for a connection to internal oneness. Maybe he was still chasing the ego death to change his perspective.
But to take him at his word, maybe he enjoyed the simple leisure of having peace from the restlessness of the external world, not an internal one. After this analysis of my friend, it seemed my own attraction towards taking shrooms or LSD was dependent on the payout of an existential and metaphysical reward. But who’s to say that, like my friend, I couldn’t find relaxing entertainment via a small high on a sunny afternoon near the mountains?
As someone in an institution filled with young people trying to cement an identity, it’s easy to be allured towards the instant self fulfilment and gratification that drugs such as marijuana, MDMA or hallucinogens can promise. There are obvious legal and health risks in taking these drugs, and concerns over the potential devastating consequences if the emotionally unstable or those with an unknown predisposition would consume them. But why did so many people in my first years at university pride themselves on the fallacious appearance of self-knowledge and awareness that resulted from an ego death during their ‘trip’? Do we fetishise experiences of fulfilment and contentment because we are incomplete in our youth? Or because in the lucid state of hallucination we are finally of the same texture of the psychedelic world we see?
The fetishization of ego death seems to be a reach for knowledge during a period of hopelessness about one’s own character that the world, society and politics has placed on the individual. I would dare to stretch that within some of the pretentious fetishisation of intelligence and knowledge that such an establishment as ours runs on, the more insightful we appear the more social power we hold.
As I grew older, I began to see those chasing an ego death as committing an act of self-felatio. Having the experience of an ego death seemed to be a badge of honour in making the best out of what was, for the most part, unnecessary restless behaviour via an over-consumption of psychedelics. Ego death is not a staple experience required to become a good person or to find the good in others.
However, despite my dismissal towards ego death, I can’t deny that for some “ego-deathers”, its high regard is due to its immense transformative power to un-obstruct the world and the connections one has with the people around them.
Despite this, as the term “ego death” implies, the phenomena can only occur if the trip-ee holds the notable trait prior to the journey.
Art by Sanle Yan
by Jasmin Small
The Man Behind the Mask One Killer Clown’s Journey to Self-Acceptance
Daniel Minns
Content Warning: Reference to Murder, Violence and Animal Death
Dear Dad,
I’m writing this letter on recommendation of my therapist, Dr Blatchnik. As part of the healing process I am to contact everyone with whom I have unfinished business. Leave no words unspoken. Please know, this letter has gone through a lot of iterations, I’ve written and rewritten it many times. I think the reason I’ve been struggling is because there is so much that I could say to you, Dad. So many things I’ve screamed into a mirror while applying my clown makeup, or heard echoing around my head over the mechanical whirr of my hacksaw. But I realise now, there is only one short sentence that is actually worth telling you.
I am enough.
And whether or not you agree with me, I know that I am enough.
I am one of the most highly accomplished killer clowns working today. I have a thriving, dedicated fan community, have played an integral role in five massacres, and was voted the number two reason to stay out of New Mexico by Teen Vogue Magazine.
You know, most parents are worried that their child will do drugs, steal cars, lie to them. But no, I find myself in a rewarding and dynamic career and suddenly I’m “not your son” and “scaring you” and have to “stop murdering people”. I am happy, Dad, I found my passion. Why couldn’t you just be like other parents and be proud to call me your killer clown son?
I still remember the day a bright-eyed six year old me showed you the slaughtered squirrel sculpture I made behind the shed. The horrified look on your face is still burnt into my mind. Most parents would be delighted if their son showed some artistic expression, but no, if it wasn’t about football or cars it was never ‘manly’ enough for you.
You have no power over me anymore, Dad. I don’t take orders from you — you aren’t my hand puppet Marco, and you never will be. Of course I wish that you hadn’t put me through the pain and punishment that I had to endure as a child. But I hope you know, you locking me in a circus every night and blaring merry-go-round music at me when I misbehaved has had absolutely no effect on my life going forward.
You will no longer rob me of the enjoyment that I deserve. From now on when I’m chasing camp counsellors through the woods my laughing won’t be tinged with insecurity, when I corner young couples in mirror mazes I will no longer be afraid to look at my own reflection. The voices in my head will no longer be ones of self-doubt, just general killer clown voices.
So yes, Dad, I may don makeup and a red nose, and yes, I may lure people into my death carnival. But between the two of us, you, sir, are the clown.
Yours sincerely, Stabbo (on orders from Dr Blatchnik and Marco)
Peregrinatio Cyan Metcalf
The blare of cloud-trumpets ooze
A husha-hush of spacious notes
Of spice and a wound
Of sunken belly: a porthole, rearing, roaring, Of an earthquake starvation in a Sump of corpse-flesh
Daydreaming
A ballet of useless wishing:
A nomadic lust to roam
The planetary lengths, see Obsequious sunbeams flash through deserts of space-time, The dot and da’sh:
A code forgotten
A coded clash
A mind wandering the museum
Of a quarter-life crisis
Cursing and cooing
Over Philosophy or prosody
The ears pop
Sound is lost
Tire touches tarmac:
A coal-black baptism Awakens
I squeezed
Into existence with a stomach-formed White, silhouette-like Head
I sought existential land
My landscaped visage, equestrian, Ever-galloping
With the body of dust And unbridled lust
Surgical lights in one-night hotels And sawdust restaurants
Dissect the soul
I am walking through amnesias
Soft to a tourist’s eye And pondering Socratic like a fly
On the wall
Wondering of our shrill fall Into the doorsill of disappearance
I walk in walls of sugar-cane, Olive groves, Hayfields, Nearing the glitter Of glaciers, Sterile mountain tops,
Commodious lines of crops, and The river’s fan-like Polyps of sand
Nearing marvels of nature:
A horse-shoe ravine, the issue of steam From a cleft
In a rock
I am present to the world with its mendicant shadow: Let the suits be flash
The ministers insane Let jazz rain on the huts And Beauty make excisions and cuts
I am diminished to impulse,
Swimming sea-salt miles of arteries and veins Until a limp heart surrenders me to lung Throat-filled abyss
It is all S P E C T A C L E
Like a man struggling up the street Or a mime
It is all symbols and signs
A commodity colony
Stationed in
The rotting teeth in the mouth of the city, Harbour high-rises, Are fragile tender
Human mesh and will be mush And mushrooms grow in, There is room in, ruins
To roam the rearticulated harm And roam and roam all roads that lead to Rome
Art by Brandon Sung
With great fleets and argosies
Who see the seas in Socrates
The gloom laps lasciviously between my toes And my eyes drop to follow
Those slender windrows, chaff, straw, splinters of Wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Left by the tide
AND those cloud-trumpeted cacophonic callings, Misplayed, Mistimed, Unaligned, Unrhymed, Are a goodbye to mankind.
AND in the doo-wop of today In time’s gradual decay
I travel from one pollution to another And I return from whence I came: My mother, A stranger to all men. Happily, happily, To a city lit up with love.
As the cymbals crash, Curtains collapse, AND the vacant audience stares idly by As I wave goodbye to mankind.
Jasmin Small
Art by Vera Tan
Float Jaden Ogwayo
A scaly school of fingertips wade Through your wisps and rippled waves. Laps long, long and wide. A florid torrent of freckles constellate; Splotches spot and splash.
You ebb, you return, you elide. Crash –Crash! The weightless churn. Tacitly, I watch your stippled face. I sit and wait against your back. My fingers trace the Dipper on each limb.
They glide and slide on either side.
An astral wash. I traverse Your speckled universe
In many laboured strides. I dip my toes into the tumult of the lake.
Swirls of cool, cool blue.
A whirlpool; a temperate fondue. You hold me as you tend to do, As if to delay my departure. I taste the tempest.
Salt chipped off and flaked. Beckon the sirens. Clear the bay. The clouds are black, black as coal. Tonight, he awakes. The sky-high tide shreds the atoll
As the waves bellow their lucid tune. They follow the white, white Moon — Shore breaks. A slew of water floods the room. Little light left at all
To illuminate the dune.
Brittle, I erode. Pale sister of the coral. You embrace my shaky stream. Do I intimidate?
Do you fear me? Am I mean? You rise and run and rise again;
Your presence, tentative as dreams. You pin me down into the deep. Palm to nape, wrist, and waist. You ground my space.
I paddle out to no avail; no escape!
I slip. You fall. We drown.
by Amanda Lim
Art by Brandon Sung
Gossamer Ganderson’s Case of Gigantism Lee-Francis Evatt
Tuesday 12th of September
My name is Gossamer Ganderson and I have gigantism, not to be confused with acromegaly. Gigantism is a rare condition caused by a benign tumour that forms on the pituitary gland, which is responsible for regulating the growth hormone. Individuals with gigantism develop the tumour at a young age, before their bones’ growth plates have hardened. The tumour disrupts hormone regulation and glucose distribution, resulting in intensive growth. In comparison, acromegaly is when the tumour forms after the growth plates in the bones have hardened and results in thicker bones, which makes individuals appear larger than average. For example “Andre the Giant” doesn’t actually have gigantism, he has acromegaly, but of course it’s more gladiatorial to call someone “Andre the Giant!”, rather than “Andre with Acromegaly!”. In a wrestling ring it is more appropriate to be a “giant!” then be labelled as disordered.
I give this prefix about my condition because in my rare case, I also had excessive brain growth, and that is why I can write. I also wanted to give this prefix to show that I do understand my condition, and if there is someone out there who is like me, I want them to know that this is not just some fabricated story for the circus, as my name makes a grand alliteration. It is my story and it is a true story and it is as serious and as humorous as you want it to be. This is my diary.
Tuesday 19th of September
This diary is written on a laptop, another important detail in case there are publications of my work in the future. This is the laptop of my friend, owner and client, Lucy Crescent. Lucy has very generously purchased a steel keyboard protector for me, because I type with my beak and it has led to some breakage as it is not as cushioned as the fingers of a human being. Lucy has been immensely supportive of my need to write and I am so relieved that she was understanding when I accidentally broke her last keyboard while writing a very tragic romance between a frog and a flower. She was more concerned about the fact that I could have been electrocuted. I did feel a strange spark but it didn’t worry me, not because I’m cocky, I do not believe I am too gigantic to get properly and fatally electrocuted, I was just in the zone. I am not amused by dangerous situations, nor do I toy with them out of respect for Lucy. It was purely an accident. I broke it last monday. That is the reason why there is a bit of a gap between entries.
The breakage happened because: when a goose writes, a goose does not look up to see the words. When a goose writes, its hand is extending from its eyes. When a goose writes, a goose does not need to stop and stretch…
Well, in this instance anyway. I actually don’t know any other goose writers but I suppose it would be arrogant and missguided to think that I was the only one… and I do enjoy making grand statements like these. They aren’t entirely true though, as I, a goose, can write with my feet and a pen. It is just very difficult because my feet are webbed and not to mention… ginormous. I imagine that if I were maybe an eagle or a chicken, I would be a flourishing calligrapher, but I am not. I am a goose. Writing by hand takes me too long and feels utterly jarring to my sense of balance. Perhaps the reason typing feels more natural is because us geese are built for beak-toground contact. Our neck muscles are designed for this vertical movement; we do not suffer from whiplash or neck pain the same way humans would if they were to do something similar with their nose.
Wednesday 20th of September
I do find humans’ design peculiar, not to be rude but if I were a human I would be disappointed about the limitations of my neck. Having a long neck and maybe even a beak would save them from their need for the rather fiddly ‘cutlery’ as they could just recline their heads down and begin eating normally like we do. I suppose this is where the hands come in. The hands move things around and act as cranes for food transportation rather than the necks. It’s questionable, it seems like double handling. I too am a pentadactyl, but imagine if I were to pick up an insect with my wing? It’s ridiculous, it would get away alive! Or seeds, how would I open them? Even if I were to have human hands it would be difficult to open something as small as a sunflower seed, and sunflower seeds are my favourite! I suppose geese weren’t built with special fleshy fingers and humans weren’t built with special multifaceted necks, but all that aside Lucy and I feel like siblings.
It is probably important that I write about my relationship with Lucy. I do realise I have written this diary in a very ad hoc manner, but that is what a diary is like, it is not a perfect autobiography it is just a record.
I have been Lucy’s therapy animal since I was a gosling because she has an anxiety disorder, so I am like a sort of therapist. I am good at being present. I do feel a sense of guilt as I feel that as of late I have been a cause of some of her anxiety due to my gigantism.
When she adopted me I was normal sized for my age amongst my brothers and sisters. I was average, I remember vaguely that my younger brother Paul was taller than me, I don’t know where he is now but I suspect if he did have gigantism, we would have heard about it. Rachelle was a notable goose breeder and I doubt it would be something she would keep to herself, I saved myself the trauma of Googling it. I am sure Paul is either living well in good hands with Rachelle or someone like Lucy.
Lucy has actually banned me from using the internet browser because she was concerned with my Googling. We had a very heated meeting about this last Wednesday, I say a meeting because having conversations is more difficult for me than writing so I don’t usually communicate through speech unless it’s a “meeting”. It is more convoluted than writing because I have to speak in Gorse, which is like morse code but spoken with goose sounds, or colloquially known by humans as the ‘honk’. I might add, if I am speaking in goose with other geese I’d never refer to it as simply ‘honking’ as it makes us geese seem stupid and without an actual language. The truth of the matter is that it is very hard to translate goose pronunciations into English because there are lots of silent letters and ghostnote sounds.
I shall use the ‘honk’ to explain gorse, as it translates easily with the English language. For example “hello” in morse code is ‘.... . .-.. .-.. - - -’ which translates to ‘Honkhonkhonkhonk honk honkhooonkhonkhonk honkhooonkhonkhonk hooonkhooonkhooonk’ in Gorse. As shown, dots equate to staccato-sounding ‘honks’ and the lines to legato-sounding ‘honks’. I do not expect Lucy to be able to understand goose language, let alone speak it. It’s very complicated and the pronunciation is very easy to mess up. She hasn’t got the throat for it, and it’s impossible for me to speak English, so I’ve come up with Gorse as an alternative. Lucy is very good at understanding Gorse.
Anyway, I have had the internet browser usage banned because I was looking, and I here emphasise the looking part. I was looking at brain transplants and I found that it’s actually impossible to do them as it is very difficult to reconnect the nerves. What has been done successfully is a full head transplant by Dr. Sergio Canavero and Dr. Xiaoping Ren, however this was performed on a dead body. Valery Spiridov, the volunteer for the operation, did not end up undergoing it as the risk factor was too high so Dr. Sergio Canavero fulfilled his dream on a dead body in China with help from Dr. Xiaoping Ren. The only partially successful live head transplant was from Vladimir Demikhov and his two-headed dogs. However, the maximum life expectancy was short, at only 38 days which is disturbing and is where I stopped on this journey to find out about brain transplants. I was disappointed that there wasn’t such a thing yet and I’d hardly go for the head transplant. Even if I were to want a human body, as bad as I do, then I’d still have this big goose head and I will still not be able to communicate by speaking English because I will still have this stupid goose honk box. Maybe the transplant donor/recipient and I would become friends and ultra freaks. We could start a show about how we are each other’s half, it’s sentimental, classic, commercial and tacky. It’s exactly what would ruin my life. I can already picture myself being blinded by the camera flash as I am being asked to take my mask off but it is actually my face and no one understands Gorse. This is why we don’t go outside anymore. I can’t imagine what kind of person would want a giant goose body anyway, that makes me shiver.
Lucy found out about the Googling as I used her Youtube to look at some videos about it in my computer time. I didn’t know this but apparently if you look up stuff once, similar stuff related to your search appears the next time you go on Youtube in the recommended panel. This is called the browsing algorithm. This happened to Lucy and she was rightfully disturbed. I am so annoyed at the computer, it feels cruel to have my privacy invaded and I do miss Google searching. I guess I am the stupid one for trusting a robot.
Thursday 21st of September
I have come to write at night. I didn’t need morning journal time because I was interested in reading the book on megafauna. Lucy got it for me as a gift so I don’t get anymore ideas about brain transplants. She wrote a note on it that says “Big is Beautiful”. I am “nostalgic” about megafauna, Lucy uses the word “nostalgia” a lot. She believes that things were more appealing in the past, I would say that is how I feel about megafauna. In the time of megafauna it was normal to be giant, it wasn’t a result of a tumour on the pituitary gland. The worst thing is that megafauna are long extinct and if I were to be alive during the time of megafauna I would probably be short amongst Genyornis Newtoni (megafauna geese) at a steady seven feet tall as they are on average nine to ten feet tall. Their height does make up for their rather pathetic and useless wings. At least I am not flightless. I sound so mean. It is because I am frustrated. Big is not beautiful, it is bloody annoying. I can’t even go to the Library because my size attracts too much attention.
Part of my job is meant to be a moral support animal, but I have to go for a while. I have to leave. It’s going to be difficult to go unnoticed but I can’t be stuck at home any longer.
Art by Leung
by Jasmin Small
Becoming God (un) Like You
Emily Sutherland
She was woken by a familiar rhythmic thumping; a body, dragged and skipping like a pebble, but the ocean was cold hardwood stairs, and the pebble, a young scrawny boy of maybe 13. You.
Amongst her fear, guilt and helplessness, you who were once God became this scrawny boy, whom, despite her doubly pitiful stature, she vowed to protect. And the role was inherited.
Again descending the steps of hell, but not God herself could save you. Her title, not unlike yours, found dumped in the backwash, But yet to be dragged back to sea.
But He does not allow one’s reign to last, and so condemned those before us, for power is a threat to His untouchable Atlantis. Swaddled like a child in our blanket, while Naked, we brave the storm.
One must have nothing to lose to oppose this ruthless force, Something so rare it needn’t be accounted for. But there I was, or rather, there she was.
A child’s goal of protection so viciously misconstrued by He who I protected against, Until the protected could justify betrayal. And all that was left was myself.
But isolation and entrapment could never mean detachment, as with two banks of a gushing river; the bridge that connects them may crumble but they shall not drift apart.
Both our wrists trapped by His, with no escape in sight, you played dead and hence, a part of you died. You must think me foolish for fighting, But so do I.
Careful not to mistake silence for approval or worse, ignorance, or forgiveness for weakness, your reservedness for untouched innocence. But what else is there to mistake you for?
As she fought against the pull harder and harder, and you let the rip carry you to sea, your actions could be elucidated. Except you couldn’t swim back, And thus, the outcomes are synonymous.
Omnipotence eluded her grasp, her clambering regressed to writhing, the Waves repressed her and her salt-soaked hair whips and strangles.
Had her crashes reciprocated its own, Would she have outsmarted the divine? Or, to mock me, was He omnipotent?
Your transparent skin screams of Him but though I try I cannot blame you, for the mirror shares this tendency. And thus, my enmity is yours, mine and His.
The icy blackness of the deep, my destiny, seeps into salt-filled and sand-afflicted wounds of the struggle. The sting subsides but until they are dry, Soaked wounds cannot heal.
Thus my sparse cracks are eroded until I am a sponge.
Absorbing and becoming the icy darkness as I sink, Is this how He felt? Am I Him?
Now, as one who should have protected me turns and strokes my hair, I am reminded of my role as the rock. “You did more than you should have had to.” If only it worked.
Although I am, and she is finally seen as she begged for, retrospective praise for ‘maturity’ will never make up for Time and self lost.
I wish for gods to be kids once more.
Art by Oliver Stephens
Puzzled Happiness
Toni Pham
Your name is like a mosaic a pie, a sweet, a music sheet fancy to hear fancy to look
Your face is like a canvas a scene, a colour, a rave I draw this love we crave
Your voice is an aria a day, a play, a ray you say things Like a play
You are like a warm blanket a candle, a coat, a cuddle under the Christmas lights of our home we nestled.
The Beauty You Give Toni Pham
My happiness was a completed puzzle pieces began falling off taken away by other people or lost in the mess stolen by jealousy consumed by rage sickened by sadness. I looked for my missing pieces in places, in people, in objects I collect them one by one some pieces I can instantly collect some are tucked and hidden in the creeks of a soul that would only open by a tender touch. I gather them, pieces of happiness in my hand. I piece together the corners and sides. I thought my puzzle was complete. There was a hole in it.
I drew on a piece of paper, resembling its soft edges confused by the strange picture.
Jocelyn Wong
Art by Jasmin Small
We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which Woroni operates, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. Their land was forcibly stolen, and sovereignty was never ceded.
The name Woroni, which means “mouth”, was taken from the Wadi Wadi Nation without permission. Consultation with First Nations people recommended that Woroni continue to use the word, provided we acknowledge the theft, and continue to strive for better reconciliation in future. Woroni aims to provide a platform for First Nations students to hold the University, its community, and ourselves accountable.
Historically, Canberra has been an important meeting place for First Nations people in the region, who travelled to Tidbinbilla to meet, trade, marry, make laws and conduct ceremonies. When we walk across our campus, we are walking over paths that have been trodden countless times before, for as long as 20,000 years before our time.
This land always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.
