q Ideas. Writing. Culture.

THE MOST HOLY OBJECT

Exile and the Hunger for Ritual
MAKING A SCENE
Running Pink
BLESSING
Equal Marriage

145

Words from
MIREILLE JUCHAU
RYAN ONEILL
DANIELLE WOOD
JAMES BOYCE
ANWEN CRAWFORD
ANTHONY LAWRENCE
JILL JONES
DAVID OWEN
and more

STUPID IDIOTS
Artful Political
Insults
DEFENDING
LOCAL
LIBRARIES
HOW SELFISH
ARE WE?
Human Nature
and Global Warming

VOL.145 2/2016 AUS $16.50

ISLAND 145

ISLAND

DBC Pierre On Drugs

Lars
Vogt's
ozart MMasasterpiece
terpiece
MMozart
IN
IN
RECITAL
INRECITAL
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International
International
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Mozarts
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LarsVogt
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Jeunehomme
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concerto,
concerto,
described
described
by
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legendary
legendary
beautiful Jeunehomme piano concerto, described by legendary
pianist
pianist
Alfred
Brendel
Mozarts
first
great
masterpiece.
pianistAlfred
AlfredBrendel
Brendelasas
asMozarts
Mozartsfirst
firstgreat
greatmasterpiece.
masterpiece.
Lars
Lars
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Vogt
conductor
conductor
&&
piano
piano
Lars Vogt conductor & piano
Tasmanian
Tasmanian
Symphony
Symphony
Orchestra
Orchestra
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
BEETHOVEN
BEETHOVEN
Consecration
Consecration
ofof
the
the
House
House
BEETHOVEN Consecration of the House
MOZART
MOZART
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BEETHOVEN
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88
BEETHOVEN Symphony No 8

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Truly
strange,
there is in the world nothing so

so fathomless as love. Our home is

not here, it is in Heaven; our time is
not now, it is eternity; we are here as shipwrecked mariners on an island, moving among
strangers, darkly. Why should we love these

shadows,
which will be gone at the first light? It is because
in exile we grieve for one another, it is because
we remember the same home, it is because we

remember

the same father, that there is love in our island.

Randolph Stow, The Girl Green as Elderflower (1979)

1

ISLAND
q Ideas. Writing. Culture.

Managing Editor Vern Field

Editor-at-large Geordie Williamson
Fiction Editor Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
Poetry Editor Sarah Holland-Batt
Art Features Editor Judith Abell
Proofreader Kate Harrison

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PAGE/ARTICLE TITLE

ISLAND

PAGE/ARTICLE TITLE

145
Cover image:
DBC Pierre, image courtesy of Faber & Faber

Editorial

Commentaries

Art

From Islands Editor-at-large

Geordie Williamson 6

In Defence of the
Local Library 58

Circus

Amongst Our Last

Democratic Spaces?
Ruth Quibell

Essays
Drugs

8
What Fuels the Writer?
DBC Pierre

@sawtoothers

Are We Really So Selfish?

Human Nature and

Global Warming
James Boyce

The Most Holy Object

in the House 16

28

An Exhibition of Migrant
Womens Photographs
Nicol Goc

Blessing

34
What is Marriage Really About?
Danielle Wood

The Noise Made

by People 42

Remembering British
Band Broadcast
Anwen Crawford

66

94
An Instagram Exhibition for Sawtooth ARI
Curated by Brigitte Trobbiani

Sunny Side Up

98
Grace Herbert Introduces
Dexter Rosengraves Exhibition at
Visual Bulk

Stupid Idiots 68
Artful Political Insults
Damon Young

Exile, Family and the

Hunger for Ritual
Mireille Juchau

In Light and Shadows

90
Eliza Burke Explores Theia Connells
Show for Constance ARI

Poetry

Fiction

Tests / Self and Nothingness

Francis X McVeigh

70

Ryan ONeill

The Dutch Fountain

104

Mongoose and Gantry

105

76

This Sentence is False:

Elizabeth Morton

Rachel Watts

A Confluence of Blues
Susan Fealy

David Owen

We Are All Stories

102

Jill Jones

88

Kent MacCarter

84

Emily Dickinson /
Listening to Yeats

106

Anthony Lawrence

Requiem

108

Liam Ferney

Making a Scene 46
A Feminist Politics of Running
Catriona Menzies-Pike

Pulled Teeth, Age 36

109

Belinda Rule

The Mitchell Memento 54

Intimacy

110
Caitlin Maling

Words and Sketches from

the Mitchell Sisters
Delia Nicholls

Anno Domini 452

Another Level
of Toughness 62

111

Ricardo Pau-Llosa

A Chatter Matters
Literacy Journey
Sharene

Image on opposite page:

Walti Ghner, pixabay.com

Editorial
Geordie Williamson

Technology can unflesh you, make you forget you

are a person who dwells in a particular place; accident
or natural disaster, like the fires that cancelled swathes
of the states World Heritage area in recent months, can
return you to your senses with a crash.
But that acknowledgement need not be an admission
of detachment from centres of population or power,
culture or industry. It need not be tyrannical distance
reinforced, more a privileged perspective regained.
The paradox of the metropolis is that it can become
a world unto itself: self-contained, self-regarding; incurious of anything outside its walls, or else misreading
the periphery, fetishising it as exotica. Reasserting the
connection between urban centre and rural periphery,
between culture and nature, falls then to those far from
the citys pull.
Raymond Williams wrote:

hange is always glacial until the iceberg

finally calves, then all is wrench and rush.
Richard Flanagan once said something
along those lines. And its true of Islands
latest number, which after years of discussion sees incumbent editor Matthew Lamb stand down
and a Hydra-headed monster step up.
Thats a small exaggeration. There are only two of us.
Hobart-based editor Vern Field has taken up the logistically intricate and demandingly expansive role of
Managing Editor while I evolve from my former position as Blue Mountains-based Fiction Editor to become
Editor-at-large: a title that sounds evasive, as though
Interpol were snapping at my heels.
Our hope is that this new situation plays to Islands
enduring strengths: that of a proudly local, place-bound
journal that nonetheless speaks to and of the broader
world. The recent severing of Basslink and its implications for internet traffic on the island only reinforces the
former aspect it recalls us to Tasmanias apartness.

Country and city are very powerful words, and this is

not surprising when we remember how much they seem
to stand for in the experience of human communities.
In English, country is both a nation and a part of a land;
the country can be the whole society or its rural area.
6

from Aquileia. Its refugees

would found Venice. The fish
burn against the gravel grey
like flares above a trench.
All is alien to us in the tank,
except that brethren ground.
It is the bottom of the sea which makes it ours.

In the long history of human settlements, this connection

between the land from which directly or indirectly we all
get our living and the achievements of human society has
been deeply known.

Until recently, of course. The brief period since the

industrial revolution has seen a severing of that old compact. So it is that we need magazines like Island, curating
argument and creativity at a distance to the metropolis,
more than ever before. Such as DBC Pierre, writing from
the unmanicured hills of County Leitrim: disporting like
some 21st-century de Quincey on the virtues of opium,
and many other substances besides, in relation to literary
creation. Or Anwen Crawford, who braids the death of
an old friend in Sydney with the short, bright history of
English experimental band Broadcast. Or the Cubanborn, US-based poet Ricardo Pau-Llosa, who we find
responding to a picture by the resolutely English painter
Stanley Spencer in which an aquarium appears:

Brethren ground is what these disparate pieces seek to

locate and map for us all.
This issue also sees the welcome arrival of a new Fiction
Editor, Anica Boulanger-Mashberg, and our inaugural
Art Features Editor, Judith Abell. So perhaps Island is
a Hydra after all. If nothing else, the team is proof that
the 36-year-old magazine has something of the fabled
serpents regenerative powers.

Legend
has Attila, siege tired, reading
victory in the sudden flight of storks

Geordie Williamson is Islands new Editor-at-large.

Image: Scorched Earth, Dan Broun, 2016

Who better to navigate the

various fuels of writers
than DBC Pierre?

ISLAND

By the next season, fledged by that activity, we added

new drugs. We no longer sought shit to make doing
nothing seem amazing; now we wanted shit to make
us amazing doing something. Speed. And so we sped
through the season. We were still on a road to nowhere,
but faster now, which brought its own sense of purposeful travel. There was still almost zero material creative
output of any note, but it no longer felt that way; there
would be one thing a painting, a design, a plan, or just
some random contact that we used as a banker. And we
banked on it, without being so stupid as to actually try
to do it. Apart from that we were an ants nest of projects
in development, with people we knew we couldnt trust
and would never see again. Our currency was bullshit.
The next season was precarious because we got
involved with women. Drugs, to the heights we had been
used to them, now had to shrink into the spaces between
girls. It wasnt that the women were so much against
drugs, it was that they disdained us when we were bent,
probably feeling excluded from the pack. Disdain wasnt
good feedback for us, so time was split between women
and business. Business meant getting bent with the
pack and feeling like the ants nest again. Thats what
mansion-dwellers do, the world over; its impossible to
approach something with the right vigour when it leads
to a smaller place than you already inhabit. If it also
comes with a risk, plain forget it. By this time, drugswise, we were old hands at dosages and effects, which is
a large habitat that doesnt automatically suggest trading
for a job stacking shelves. Shit needs to be automatic in
youth; were not going to play chess over everything.
The next season brought a chill breeze. The first of the
pack was dead. A lack of chess. The remainder of us split
up to try our bullshit on the wider world. We were in
different countries facing different realities flowing from
adulthood. I couldnt identify the breeze at the time,
but looking back I see that it came from an opening
door. Realitys door, whatever the fuck it was apart from
hateful. The only thing that could buffer the chill was
more drugs. But they felt lonelier. They were a movie
compared to the theatre of earlier seasons. A toke here,
a line there. Drink, smoke, ha, ha, ha. And this was the
dangerous season. Because the more the door opened,
the more drugs it took to warm up. And the more lonely
drugs you took, the wider the door opened. You come
to realise that you are the only physical creative output
of years.
Then you get sucked through the door.
After a solid kicking, then a break, the next season
was a tentative return to the tiny exhilarations of beer.
Shaving, being polite, and gentle beer. A reorientation.
Wearing pressed clothes. Creative output actually rose.
It rose like never before but it was timid and conservative. It was a dance with current standards, nothing new.
This brought its own chill, which gathered into a gale.
That conservatism and conformity led to the frustration of a dog. So the next season was a lusty pillage
of the first seasons ethos. There had been something
in its innocence, curiosity and gall that was essential,

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity

to anyone, but theyve always worked for me.
Hunter S Thompson

ll things that become familiar go through

progressive seasons. We can look back on
the season of their discovery and marvel
at how different the thing was a new
neighbourhood, a friend, a job, a hobby,
a love then its paradigms shifted and spun till we were
tattered by it. Some of this lies in our simply growing
familiar, trading dynamic quality for static; but within
that I feel there are seasons.
Looking back over my experience with drugs I
see that their effects went through a series of seasons.
Like Alice in Wonderland, through little doors and never
back again. Every one was a world of its own, and for the
first time I take stock of what each produced creatively,
if anything. For instance, the creative output from my
first ever joint was saying yeah a lot. In fact yeah pretty
much covered the first few joints. That first world was
one of inward focus, monitoring effects and comparing
them to so-called reality. By about the fifth joint I was in
a car sharing the experience with good friends. We didnt
come to feel we were Jesus, but we got close to being his
wingmen. Like divers hauling mysteries back from the
deep, we wrote the things we said onto cigarette packets
in order to laugh later at how bent they sounded.
Except they werent from the deep. We were talking
shit. It just felt like the deep. Still, it was a new world
and who doesnt love a new world?
The next season, a year or so down the track, was one
of ritual delusion. Of staking all your heart on the first
hit, going to any lengths to secure it, waking strangers
for it in the night; then realising it wasnt such a big deal.
But still saying yeah and wow and playing at having
achieved your essential state, while anxiously calculating the next hit. This was the season when the drug
world became an establishment, of rituals, of enabling
language and lore, of hierarchies of users according to
consumption and panache. Our spliff-rolling styles
were established and a mentality entrenched which disdained sobriety, and hence reality. But in hindsight the
experience of the days first hit during that season was,
after a minute, one of disappointment that it was over.
There was no output at all that season but there was
good talk of it.
Following this something must have clicked, because
the focus shifted from sitting around waiting for the
drug to fly us away. Now we went out and used it as a
licence to adventure. Abandoned amusement parks,
racing our cars, living night as day and day as night.
We still said yeah, but less now. We just watched things,
watched ourselves do them. We communicated more
with our eyes. The physical output was still zero but we
were living big, and that meant we were taking on fuel,
testing ourselves, calibrating for a big life. We couldnt
have done it on milkshakes.
10

DRUGS

Only one thing seems clear: if you have shadows they will
send their demons when you start to write seriously.
If they think youre shit, theyll come to prove it.
something that had been lost and overlaid with sensible
ideas of the kind governments propose as guidelines.
A joint relit a spark, stronger drink, other things, if they
happened by. I recovered my balls. And now the wind
had real strength, I angled my sails into it. Now ideas
were treated as a job. I recorded them and they fell into
a longer work until the work was its own drug and it was
impossible to get bent on anything else.
It was a weaning; but all the seasons before had predicted its taste.
This chapter fits here because if youre going to use
drugs, do it to write that first story. Drugs work for the art
but not so much the craft. Any job of writing obviously
relies on coffee, tobacco and at least one bender a week
to blow any nesting conservatism away. But some can
also benefit from drugs. If you dont already take them
dont start taking them for writing, there are too many
seasons to go through. But if you take them, this is how
they can work. Again, I write as though were all maniacs;
its not true, there are completely ascetic writers. But we
all seem to binge on something, if only moderation. As
for you and this piece, I have to presume that you have
an inner maniac. Your maniac is now useful, contrary
to current guidelines. The maniac and the drugs can be
useful used at the right moment.
To look at drug use and other opting-out mechanisms
such as psychological disorders we need to touch on the
ideas said to underlie them; and the school of thought
currently in charge one were strangely fond of, making
it exceptionalist by our own endorsement is the one
broadly saying that behind most compulsion, neurosis,
drug reliance and unhappiness is a deep-rooted sense
that were no good. If were errant its because we somehow think were no good. If were meek its because we
feel were no good. If were arrogant were compensating
for being no good. If were fat were buffering ourselves
from being no good. If were too skinny were trying
to lose whatever makes us no good. If we drink were
trying to forget were no good. Overachiever: no good.
Underachiever: no good. Indifferent achiever: no good.
The argument quickly vanishes up the arsehole of
philosophy because we have to define what good is, and,
more pertinently, ask if anyone at all is realistically able,
or should even be inclined to be that way, whatever it is.
But the no-good theory just has a ring to it. As a culture
we love and use it, and if it wasnt true at the outset weve
sure made it so by now. Face it: were just no damn good.
If we take this as true, any practical use of the idea
needs us to define how it affects us; and I think its effects

lie in issues of vulnerability and power. Which heres

the thing it seems to share with the act of writing. I stop
short of linking insecurity with writing; but Im inclined
to. Writing a book not only gives power, the power to
define worlds, people, and change them at a stroke, but
in battling our vulnerabilities to seize, wield and withstand that power we must also redraw ourselves. The pen
is also a pantograph. In the necessity of setting boundaries for characters, in having to scour our consciences
for outcomes, were forced to think and feel at once on
a broad scale. Some will say that being a police officer,
a government minister, a teacher imposes the same
effects, but it doesnt; those jobs thoughtfully speculate
on human outcomes but their power is limited by strict
procedure, precisely to shut out the gambles and whims
that infect our writing. They may impact other lives, but
only we get naked and design a world from scratch.
So if we buy into the school of no good, maybe writing
is an emancipation from some kind of powerlessness, if
only the powerlessness of all creatures. Perhaps its a new
upbringing. Maybe its proof to ourselves and the world
that were OK, if not good. Or it could be an empty cry in
the dark. Only one thing seems clear: if you have shadows they will send their demons when you start to write
seriously. If they think youre shit, theyll come to prove
it. If you set out to write from feelings youll especially
disturb them and they may try to kill you. If you play it
safe and write commercially they will merely try to stop
you from finishing if social networking and lifestyle
dont beat them to it.
However our experience is, the demons that come are
by many definitions our only challenge in life. Scaring
them into view is to our advantage, though it can be
unpleasant; stuck in an arena together we can befriend
or slay them. And there are few arenas as well furnished
for inner combat as writing, where you invent your own
weapons and outcomes. If with the faintest tremble you
suspect Ive identified you here, then this book is dedicated to you. If you read this with bemusement, on the
other hand, then the rest of us dedicate our works to you
because this is what some of us are like.
If at some point in life we have opted out and held ourselves back, or if our opting out has been solely or also
through drugs, it puts us in an outside place, and outside
places are the playgrounds of all art. We can use that.
Drugs therefore qualify. The side effects of disorder and
drugs can suddenly also be useful, such as distrust and
even paranoia. Distrust is a great writers tool, whether
it comes from personal philosophy or sensitivity to
11

ISLAND

While aghast at the thought of drugs, my mother lost weight

on prescribed speed and handled difficult days with Valium.
My father, a straight man, was fed amphetamines every day
by the government to help him pilot heavy bombers.
bullshit; it makes us dissect situations for ourselves, lets
us see the unspoken transactions and implications of
the everyday, all of which makes for lifelike writing. It
even works when were wrong: because the details still
carry the scent of real shadows. And the world is more
shadow than light, theres more power among neurotics
than among reasonable people; its easier in the world
for North Korea to happen than Sweden. And in some
measure our writing will reflect that state of affairs, even
if our work becomes Sweden by the end.
Were writing for people like us that is, ourselves.
To drugs and their practical application to writing,
we should start by throwing out all populist hysteria.
No one who sucks prescribed Ritalin, Elavil or Prozac
can throw a stone at weed and ecstasy. No one who gets
knee-walking at Christmas parties can finger cocaine
and speed as the root of any evil. We should accept that
weve always been an intoxicated culture. The wheel of
fortune spins from time to time onto new prohibitions
but the fact that they come and go, unlike murder, makes
them temporal ideas. Less than a century ago we could
buy heroin and cocaine in department stores. You could
buy them and more in over-the-counter preparations
at the chemist, many aimed at children. We fought two
world wars on them. And times havent changed: since
the medical-health complex discovered that GDP rises
with every doctors visit there isnt a panacea held back
from consumer markets. While aghast at the thought of
drugs, my mother lost weight on prescribed speed and
handled difficult days with Valium. My father, a straight
man, was fed amphetamines every day by the government to help him pilot heavy bombers. Of course, the
missing word in all this is recreational; they will say the
drugs were tools, not licensed to run amok with on the
streets. But neither is writing recreation. In our job we
can now say: they are tools, not for running amok with
either, except on a page. So fuck off.
Writing is heavy bombing.

attributed some of the feeling to them. I had to decide

to write in silence. It works, and the music of sentences
and passages is clearer. Be especially careful when
writing under pressure: angst promotes music for inspiration, then you find yourself in the cold light of a day
reading crap that only looked good along with music.
Having said this, music during a first draft can work,
before the arrangement of words matters too much. Also
a first draft and final polish can use speed music, in the
same way a tank commander uses heavy metal.

Sex
A question that runs straight to classical thought.
The idea is that sexual and creative energies are one and
the same, so if we spend them on sex it leaves less for
creative action. Its an old idea thats still at least suspected.
It might be true, its another one we like, we imagine the
bristling energies spent in orgasm being a power that we
could spend in other ways, as if its just damming there
waiting to paint or fuck. The mechanics of hunger and
satisfaction probably make it true by themselves in the
sense that were less ruthless when sated. Writing is also
the work of a clam, building nacre around some irritant. So to some extent we have to preserve the irritant.
It could be best to write conflict before sex, when the
future is tangy; and write resolutions and reflections in
the salty calm aftermath.

Alcohol
Between us and our livers. If you can drink and write at
the same time, go ahead and write drunk, edit sober.
I cant. Not because I write incoherently, although I
also can drunk but because a drink strangely distracts
me from the page. For me the key to using high times
is to wing notes from them on napkins, cigarette
papers and bring them to work later. It becomes a
custom and occasionally yields gold in images and ideas.
Other times what youve scribbled brings back the memory, but the buzz you were trying to capture has faded,
too nuanced to survive. Whether you do or dont drink
and write try it and compare the real boon of alcohol
is in the hangover. Next day after the pastries, the coffee,
any spinning, when life returns and the day opens onto a
sunlit plain, we can write like the people we wont be for
many years. Wisdom, altruism and microsensitivity can
blow through a hangover. Our work will have sections
that need those qualities, and we should plan to visit

Music
Starting with the heaviest drug, the jury is out on
whether listening to music while writing is a good idea.
I love music and used to listen to it while writing, but in
the end I made a sad discovery: I was susceptible enough
that it became a soundtrack to what I wrote, which made
the work seem better than it was. My feelings were being
stirred by the soundtrack more than the words, and I
12

DRUGS

them then. Write violence and conflict before a drink

resolve them from the bosom of a hangover.

MDMA and its family. As a feel-good drug it probably

joins music in posing the danger that amazing feelings
get attributed to the writing. Still, nothing some rainy
daylight wont cure. If you can stay still and put your
romance on the page, write a play.

Caffeine
We want to be perky for the job. Caffeine is the legal way,
plus cheaper and tastier than Benzedrine. Just beware of
burnout. Tea or coffee can get you started but I promise
once the jobs engine is running you will have more than
enough stimulus to carry on. Youll twitch just as much
on internal power; a few chapters into a book you might
find that sleep is being destroyed by the writing alone.
Management is key. Again, cut loose for the first draft
and final push, throttle back in between.

Opium
If you take it in the vein youre either going to write a
labyrinthine saga or nothing at all. Theres a test for it:
where you place a hundred thousand words in a book,
and what those words are, opens a spectrum from the
worst book ever written to the best as yet unwritten.
The words can assemble around any story youre trying
to tell, and the odds of any other work ever being the
same are beyond the number of atoms in the universe
to calculate. The question is: what will you write?
If you can answer this on smack, then youre good to go.
Chasing the dragon or making a joint of it could be more
lyrical. In quantity this will be a drug for the first draft,
or else a long book about your carpet. Otherwise make
notes for after rehab.

Cannabis
Weed is a writerly drug. Not rollercoaster but chill-out
strength. It is the drug of choice for staring at a blank
page and watching stories grow in tangents. Just the
tip of a joint will ripple thoughts, paddle the mind
out behind breaking concerns to where things play.
Not every part of the job can use it; its for first drafts and
snags needing unexpected thinking. Once the piece has
life, the effects can mess up critical thought, so theres a
time to dream and a time to be fastidious. Youll gather
that a first draft can be launched with all guns blazing;
but a natural effect of its coming to life is amping you
beyond comfortable stimulation. If you ever suffered the
horrors of a drug, such as anxiety or runaway thoughts,
they will be the first sign. You know youre onto something when youre electric without external props.
Im convinced its the reason artists go mad.
I recommend hash over grass; its mellower and pays
respect to Baudelaire.

Cocaine and Speed

The same goes for these times ten in terms of ampage.
Id also be wary of setting up a reward system with coke
that gets us hooked in order to write. If we wrote well on
it at first, it could keep us in fear of ever doing it again
without the drug. Then the solution could only be more.
If you go for it Id say try to finesse it into a perfect routine: open the page at the same time every day, lay out
the lines, and write to a specific target every time. Maybe
keep it brief, train yourself to go crazy at that time, then
retire after as little as half an hour and no more than three
hours, which seems to be the average maximum among
a host of big writers. Substitute espressos in leaner times.
As for street speed, we want to be alert without grinding
our teeth. I would find it too coarse, too distracting for
what were trying to do. Likewise, amphetamines can
surge and fall, which leaves you waiting for the downer,
although they were the drug of choice for plenty of
writers back in the day. Those writers probably avoided
the downer by taking more.

Hallucinogens
Not even for a first draft. Tripping expands the writer,
not the writing. So probably best to get this out of the
way before sitting down to work. On its trailing edge
a trip might shimmer like a hangover and be useful as
it dies, but its experimental territory. The leading edge
is too fast, and the peak will shake itself free from any
purposeful work. Wing notes, by all means, whenever
the walls are still.

Ecstasy
Im inspired to think this might be a playwrights drug.
Shifts in affect between characters, alternating warm and
stark dialogue, poignant spaces all come to mind with
13

ISLAND

Fatigue

Closing this I can already hear the next-of-kin reacting,

those who lost a loved one to drugs. This writing pays
no disrespect, its a factual reflection for people who
assess their own risks and run their own lives. Having
called the written word the last free space for discourse,
having told everyone to kill their censors, I cant now
write half a book owing to the sensitivities of the times.
Many people try to write, but this is for people who
wonder if theyre writers. I still wonder. To summarise:
writing attracts certain people and some will do drugs.
This part was for them. Consistent with our time and
place, social proof is currently everything in writing.
It means youre a piss-tank until you write your masterpiece; then youre an eccentric.
Either way, youre in good company: Proust worked
on opium powder and sedatives, Graham Greene on
amphetamines, Balzac on four dozen coffees a day,
WH Auden on amphetamines and sedatives, Sartre on
ten times the adult dose of amphetamines, plus alcohol,
barbiturates and two packs of cigarettes. A swathe of
writers worked only in bed, and Schiller couldnt write
without rotting apples nearby.
Which is to say: theres space enough for us in there.

If were in the business of other worlds, its best to go

there with faculties intact, and the most useful intoxicants for writing are already in the brain. Fatigue is a
sweet distancing device that also lures out strong feelings
I dont mean tiredness, an earlier state we have to pass
through, but the proper shiny-eyedness at the back of it.
As readers we talk of losing ourselves in a book, and
books more than many things give out what you put in,
not just in craft but in energy. Lose yourself in writing
and well lose ourselves in reading it. Midnight oil: the
page becomes the altered state, words belie excitement,
abandon, and glow with it for as long as the writing
exists. Nothing beats fatigue for charging the glow of
a work. Foster it in bursts, the earlier the better, after a
big day, a chain of defeats and triumphs, any emotional
vortex that can punch you to the page with nothing to
lose. Sit festering overnight and through a day; the work
speaks differently then, it looks different and we do different things to it. Nerves and censors are shut down.
Its an adhesion, a spinning of mental tyres till they burn
and melt to the page. Were authorised to test ourselves,
rough yourself up. Gather the comforts and triggers, the
old clothes, coffee, chocolate and resolve.
And change your luck with them.

Routine
The most common drug among writers, an outcome of
the job itself. Most find their way towards training the
muse to visit at certain times. Some do it as a matter of
discipline, because they find the work uncomfortable
and onerous, and others to control their output. But a
majority find a rhythm and cast it in stone, sometimes
down to the minute of every day. I met an author with
kids at home, a noisier life than mine, and she said the
only way her writing got done was by going to it before
she thought of anything else. Before breakfast, before
dressing, before speaking. It seems many writers get it
out of the way early, to a target of time or words, and
some swear the muse visits at those times. When their
target is met, the same writers use discipline to get up
from the job, leaving them keen with anticipation for the
rest of the day.
In the end the only real drug is our work. Whatever
our daily habits, however uncomfortable we find the job,
whatever tricks we have to play on ourselves to return,
whatever other madness we deal with we foster an
addiction to our pages.

DBC Pierre was born in 1961 in South Australia, raised across

continents, and now lives in Ireland. In 2003 his debut novel,
Vernon God Little, won a swag of awards including the Man Booker
Prize for Fiction. He has since published Ludmilas Broken English
(2006), Lights Out in Wonderland (2010), Petit Mal (2013) and Breakfast
with the Borgias (2014). This is the tenth chapter of his forthcoming
book Release the Bats: Writing Your Way Out of It, to be published by
Faber & Faber later in 2016.
Image previous page: The Universal Household Medicine Laudanum,
Charles Troedel, 1876, lithograph, courtesy of the State Library of Victoria

14

I felt my lungs inflate

with the onrush of scenery
air, mountains, trees, people.
I thought, this is what it is
to be happy.
Sylvia Plath

The Tasmanian Land Conservancys volunteers

are critical in the management of our reserves.
Our volunteers give thousands of hours to nature
each year. By giving they receive so much in return.
Register for spring volunteering on our reserves
with the Tasmanian Land Conservancy at
TASLAND.ORG.AU/VOLUNTEERING

Volunteer at the Vale of Belvoir Reserve. Photo: Matthew Newton

15

16

THE MOST

HOLY
OBJECT
HOUSE
IN THE

As Mireille Juchau bakes

bread, she remembers her
German-Jewish grandmother
who fled to Australia in 1939

17

ISLAND

dejection, and her earlier trauma, which had smouldered for years beneath a sunny countenance, grow
more intensely radiant. Though her fears and paranoias
were debilitating, they also shielded her from unbearable
possibilities: if her medical team were plotting against
her, she was at least held in their thoughts; she was not
alone, nor forgotten.
Its ten years now since Gerdas death. Beneath my
desk, in two archive boxes and a leather case are what
remains of her life. Here are the Berlin diaries from the
years with her mother Else and stepfather Friedrich; here
are the letters they sent from Theresienstadt and, later,
their Red Cross telegrams. Heres the certificate from her
hurried marriage to George Bergman, the passport on
which she travelled to Sydney and 30 years later her
divorce papers. Each document bears her Nazified name,
Sara. In the old albums, slipping from their desiccating
corners, photos of the many who did not survive, and
those including her outlawed love, a Gentile, Herbert
Stamm who did.
Some months ago I lugged those boxes into my study,
intending to write about their contents. Elses concert
piano was long gone, and her art deco jewellery had
been recently stolen from my home. My grandmother
had always promised me her mothers rings; she said I
reminded her of Else. It was perhaps Elses melancholy
that she saw in me, but Ive come to connect this affinity
to the time I struggled with acute despair and my grandmother alone had reached me.
After the robbery, when the policewoman arrived to
fingerprint, she sniffed the honeyed air. What was I
baking? It was a bronzed, spiced Honigkuchen from a
Jewish cookbook the only ritual I could muster to mark

We have no butter ... but I ask you, would you rather

have butter or guns? Preparedness makes us powerful.
Butter merely makes us fat.
Goering, 1936

uring her weeks in Concord Hospital with

kidney disease and cardiac problems, my
grandmother often complained that staff
members were refusing to give her butter.
It was her final stay in the renal ward. Soon
there would be weeks at home struggling with dialysis
and anaemia, and finally a risky surgery from which she
would not recover. On the day she was released from
hospital, she waited in her slip-on shoes and cardigan,
breathing heavily as I packed her bags. Inside the nightstand drawer I found a mound of butter pats, all pristine
in their dead-folded foil envelopes.
What, I wondered, what would she have eaten this
with? There was no other food in the drawer no crackers,
no matzo or bread. But I soon realised that butter was
talismanic. In 1939, after marrying to secure her ticket
out, shed fled persecution in Nazi Germany, leaving her
entire Jewish family. In Berlin, butter had been rationed
from 1937. In Australia, where my grandmother struggled to make a new life with a man she hardly knew, she
vowed to never go without it. Now, as illness wrested
control of her fate, butter might yet invoke those earlier
powers of salvation.
My grandmother was too mentally sharp to have substituted nurses for Nazis. But here they were, curtailing
her freedom so that she might live a bit longer. I watched
her fierce independence give way to an uncharacteristic

18

THE MOST HOLY OBJECT IN THE HOUSE

In Berlin, butter had been rationed from 1937. In Australia,

where my grandmother struggled to make a new life with a
man she hardly knew, she vowed to never go without it.
the loss. I blamed myself for losing the family heirlooms.
By doing so, I thought back then, Id consigned their
stories to a deeper darkness. As she dusted my shelves
for prints, the officer told me the best places to conceal
valuables: ovens, and beneath the dirty laundry. But the
prime hiding spot was among your lady things.
Now whenever I sit down to write I feel the archive
boxes against my legs. I feel their contents reproaching
me. And though Ive written some of this history before,
its the intangible, emotional material that calls for
expression now. My grandmother had kept this ephemera, it seemed to me, not just as evidence of persecution
and murder, but because each item invoked particular
emotions. The photographs are paper graves for people
with no burial place. The letters carry stories of loss, the
joys of reuniting. The contract from Barron & Martin
Pty Ltd noting the Condition of Furniture and Effects
before Loading marks the arrival of the grand piano on
13 October 1939. The request to depasture a cow, granted
due to the present shortage of fodder on Park Road,
Baulkham Hills in 1946, and the receipt for this cow
from a J Kaveney, which notes the animals colour and
name fawn, Nancy reprises the cherished creature
that for years provided the Bergmans with milk, cream
and butter. These remnants, taking up space in my tiny
study, are like something hoarded for a time of future
need. Each item, as Susan Stewart writes, can open itself
to reveal a secret life; each offers the daydream of life
inside life, of significance multiplied infinitely within
significance (On Longing, 1984). They too have become
talismanic touched lightly each day, a kind of insurance. When Ive nothing left to write, if I grow lost and
uncertain Ill have this story mine and not mine, and
yet terribly unhomely.

sourdough involves a mindfulness that commercially

yeasted bread does not. Once youve made your raising
agent the aged starter or sponge you must regularly
feed it flour and water. This produces a biblical increase
in dough and so to avoid waste it makes sense to donate
your excess leaven to other bakers. You realise, joked a
friend, that making sourdough has turned you into a
hoarder? I was, after all, saving food that would otherwise be considered spoiled. But in distributing this extra
dough, Id unwittingly become a sharer.
Kneading is a meditative act it can suspend you for
ten minutes in an undemanding present but its purpose is to make the dough more elastic. When a pinch of
dough stretched between fingers resembles a translucent
window, its ready to rest and prove. While the physical
labour of making bread halts time, this ritual has become
associated with a history that threatens to drift from my
comprehension, a story so epically barbaric that I cant
imagine my own children ever believing it.
Recently, my mother unearthed the recipe book that
was passed to my grandmother before she left Germany
in 1939. Inside this battered hardcover with its swirling
Dutch Gilt doublure are my great-grandmother Elses
pencilled notes for a Keks Schok. Theres a ticket to
Leon Jessels operetta Prinzessin Husch at the Theater
des Westens in 1926 and, on its reverse, Elses method
for apfel jelly. I had a hokey longing for a bread recipe
passed through the generations but when I turned to
Backwerk there was no such entry. This wasnt going to
be the story of a grandmother teaching me to prove or
knead. Still, Ive come to associate making bread with
my grandmothers secreted hospital butter, with the lost
generations; with what can be made from all that you
have left.
It seemed possible to track my grandmothers exile
from Berlin via London and then to Sydney in 1939
through the recipes in that book. I imagined, for instance,
that the page on rissoles and croquettes scissored from
the British Guardian had been found during Gerda and
Georges stay at Londons Jews Temporary Shelter. Three
years later, in Sydney, shed saved a feature on Savories
from The Australian Womens Weekly. On this page was
an ad for Copha and a recipe for chocolate crackles
Made in five minuteswithout cooking! Now that was the
more efficient style of the woman I recall.
In Sydney, when Gerda had more time and money for
cooking, she never seemed to have the inclination. I cant
recall a single good baked in her oven during my childhood, only cold cuts, veiny cheese, hard black bread.

A few years after my grandmother died I began making

bread. My kids were young enough then to delight in
dough and I was slowly adjusting to the new domesticity.
I quickly realised that writing was impossible my
young son slept barely an hour at a time, night or day.
After his difficult birth I could barely lift him, and after
months of feeling like I was running a low-grade fever,
I was treated for pneumonia.
I may have been incapable then of composing a sentence but there remained the urge to create. I bought
Claudia Rodens The Book of Jewish Food and soon
progressed from simple loaves using packet yeast, to
varnished wreaths of challah. But its sourdough bread
with its natural ferment that Ive persisted with. Baking
19

ISLAND

She was pragmatic about culinary matters and had a

depression-era frugality: apt to use powdered potato in
place of mash, or to fashion a meal from the bendable
vegetables in her crisper and a rusty tin of something
long expired. If she had no interest in what was fresh,
she could always muster a meal from the stockpiled cans
in her larder, however long shed been away.
But, as I paged through that recipe book, I wondered
if she or her mother might once have aspired to being
Die Hausfrau von Heute with crimped hair and pencilled
Dietrich brows featured on a pamphlet among the recipes.
Photographed gazing starward, this Teutonic domestic
goddess is heroic, Liefenstahlesque. Since I cant read its
gothic German Suetterlin script, its taken me a while to
realise what Die Hausfrau is spruiking. Its the gas oven
purchased by my great-grandparents in 1936. I find this
astonishing, not just in foreshadowing what was to come.
But it is more accurately backshadowing that accounts
for my astonishment: three years before Gerda fled
Berlin, and one year after the Nuremberg laws, her parents could still imagine enough of a future to install a
major appliance.
One morning, during my grandmothers world-travelling phase, I collected her at Sydney airport. Once
home, she made me a breakfast of salami, cheese and
the in-flight bread roll shed stowed up her shirtsleeve
during the flight. Maybe it was in resourcefulness
only that Gerda resembled that modern Hausfrau of a
rationing Germany so rigorously assuaging future
privation with her stockpiled goods; so eternally in exile,
always departing and arriving with her stash of bread.
This story is partly about my hunger for ritual, which
making bread can impose on a life, and the longing
for the rituals recuperative power in a family scoured
clean of them. So little remained after my grandmothers
exile, of cohesive communal or cultural practice. In my
extended agnostic family we do Christmas and Easter.
But these rites, inherited from childhood conventions
the tree and lights, the Santa bag at the end of the bed,
the Magic Puddinglike leg of ham, the crackers with
their jokes and tissuey hats seem symbolically hollow. I have no connection to them but habit. The brass
menorah remains in the drawer and the folds deepen in
the linen tablecloths embroidered with Elses initials. I
teach myself to bake rugelach for a Hanukkah happening
elsewhere. Each year, in spite of my childrens exuberant joy, I still yearn for another celebration or to ignore
Christmas altogether.
In her work on religion, Susan Mizruchi writes that
ritual actors thats me, making bread, I suppose are
always at a loss in relation to some prior moment of
greater spiritual promise and communal coherence
(The Place of Ritual in Our Time, 2000). This nostalgia
is partly what makes inventing any secular ritual feel
forced, and the result deficient. If rituals express a
chasm between what is sought or aspired to and the
historical present, then making bread has become one
way for me to connect with a Holocaust history that was,
in the postwar diaspora, suppressed and quieted. Now

that weve entered what scholar Marianne Hirsch calls

postmemory (The Generation of Postmemory, 2012) a
period in which those who directly experienced the
Holocaust have nearly all gone; now as one of the hinge
generation whove inherited an imperative to represent
this past, it feels more urgent to sustain a ritual that
might prevent this history from crystallising into myth.
How do we perpetuate a living connection, Hirsch asks,
when the last survivors have gone?
Bread-making has become the single bridging act
from my layered historical present back to a European
home I cannot reach, a home that was never mine but
was lost to the family, and yet has some propinquitous
hold over me.

As the children of German Jews in a postwar, xenophobic

Australia, my mother Madeleine and her brother Gary
erased their ancestry. Their early life in Sydneys west
among the tracts of cleared bush blocks and fresh-tarred
highways was shaped by a culture afraid of any foreign
food, word or name. My mother stifled all the Jewish
parts of herself, and the German, she says, which werent
kosher in those outer suburbs, far from Sydneys established Jewish community. This perpetual withholding
of any betraying emotion persists today in my mothers
reserve. When I ask what traditions she recalls from her
childhood, she can think of only one eating matzo, that
Biblical unleavened bread, which could be bought even
in the suburbs. She liked to dip hers in coffee.
The Bergmans spoke no German outside their home.
They admitted no association with Huns or the hooknosed caricatures in The Bulletin or Smiths Weekly. But
during the war they were classified enemy aliens. Their
radio, especially valued for its news of home, was confiscated. My grandfather reported each week to the police.
This experience of persecution, arranged marriage and
exile must have overshadowed their childrens struggles
to become faultlessly Australian. One by one, the German relatives were disappearing. Cousin Kurt Holstein
was beaten by the Gestapo for bringing food to Else and
Friedrich who were in hiding in a Pariser Strasse apartment. And soon the telegram arrived with news of their
transportation to Theresienstadt in 1943.
20

THE MOST HOLY OBJECT IN THE HOUSE

Even if my mother had not directly experienced

racism, immigration and loss, these events had imperceptible effects on the familys wellbeing. There are dim
stories of my grandmother taking Valium during this
time. My grandfather, whose English was poor, was
constantly out of work. Their marriage undertaken as
a short-term arrangement soon grew strained by poverty and the overbearing presence of my grandfathers
mother, Hedwig. One of her five sons was deported to
Auschwitz; another would commit suicide in Sydneys
Blue Mountains, leaving two young children. Their father
had died young, destroyed by shell shock from the First
World War. Loss and silence were part of family lore, and
still accumulating.
Since both my grandparents have died, Ill never
know if the absence of rituals that might have reprised
or restored some obliterated meaning in their straitened
lives was due to the pressures of exile or because they
just werent that spiritually inclined. Yet, in Berlin, where
Gerda had many Gentile friends and considered herself
assimilated, shed attended synagogue on significant
Jewish holidays. Her family hadnt kept kosher but were
consciously Jewish and her teenage diaries express a
wish:

That early assimilationist zeal

had perhaps left its legacy in
how we lived then we were
making ourselves up, not of
recycled materials, but from
shinier, improved resources
a suitable ethos for the
pioneering 1970s.
about a premonition of her parents deaths, in a letter
to the famous mentalist and BBC radio star Sydney Piddington, who replied: I would say that you had a highly
developed telepathic sense which seems most active in
moments of stress and danger.
My mothers silence about her childhood seemed to
me very potent. It wasnt that she wouldnt speak of it,
if asked, but her early life was never offered up as foundation story or homily to guide my younger self. That
early assimilationist zeal had perhaps left its legacy
in how we lived then we were making ourselves up,
not of recycled materials, but from shinier, improved
resources a suitable ethos for the pioneering 1970s.
A plastic Christmas tree was hauled from a cupboard
each December, my parents bought a two-storey blond
brick, the double garage became a rumpus room and
my siblings and I dreamed of conversation pits and a
pebblecreted in-ground pool. The grandparents visited,
but I cant recall any photos or stories of those who preceded them. Years later, once I learned of their existence,
I wanted my German great-grandparents magically
transported with all their rituals intact. I wanted the
tablecloths and the Friday night menorah, even if they
were blank and unyielding as a synthetic tree. I had no
wish for organised religion, but for a more reverent sense
of occasion, for the mystical resonance of Walter Benjamins aura, which had surely adhered to those ritual
objects. Perhaps, with a writers avidity even then, what
I wanted most was the stories they housed. This was, of
course, a classic nostalgic reconstruction, a longing in
which, as Susan Stewart writes, the present is denied
and the past takes on an authenticity of being. Ironically,
Stewart notes, this can only be achieved through narrative. But certain stories had fallen deliberately silent, for
they were almost unbearably tragic and utterly without
redemption.

to spend some time in a religious Jewish household ... to

understand those who are devoted to the religion and
the customs that they live and die for But one needs
to grow up in a Jewish atmosphere with understanding
people carefully showing you the way. Otherwise one
needs an amazing energy that I dont have, to tear oneself
away and free oneself, to become impressionable like a
child.

She considered joining the growing Zionist movement in Fascist Germany. But it would be her younger
cousin, Renate Grau, whod end up in Israel. And by
the time Gerda learned of the sufferings that led to this
emigration, her own dreams of Aliyah had extinguished.
None of Gerdas adolescent yearning for belief was
apparent during my childhood. But it was transmuted.
Though she was not what youd call spiritual, she seemed
of all my family most attuned to the profounder questions. Her innate curiosity was undoubtedly amplified by
the murder of her parents. As was the darker wordless
wonder in her personal ether. If this approximated anything, it was the word why. And if the answer would not
come from God, Israel, or Judaism, shed seek her faith
in other forms. During her first visit to Berlin in 1961,
shed called her former lover, Herbert, from a phone box.
It was his partner, Herma, who answered. After hanging
up, Gerda told me she walked toward Berkaer Strasse
quite slowly, then stood at Breite Strasse, looked into a
window, brushed my hair and composed myself when a
voice beside me said Frau Vogel. Herma had come to
meet me. By chance they lived just two blocks away.
Whenever she recounted such coincidences Gerdas
voice struck such a marvelling timbre that you felt the
events to be divinely orchestrated. She wrote as much,

Each day of my childhood in a Sydney suburb of subdivisions, derelict weatherboards and immaculate
estates, I passed the local church, set back from busy
21

ISLAND

many migrant families were as aspirational as everyone

else, but having achieved their ambitions were sometimes characterised as a bit suss or just less honest.
The areas rich Indigenous history, absent from any
curriculum or local event, seemed back then entirely
mysterious. In Whites novel, the creeping xenophobia
is all the more disturbing because of the suburban
drapes drawn against it. Himmelfarb, a German Jew
fleeing Nazism, had come from a culture where the racism was flagrant to one where it was tacitly accepted but
comparatively covert.
I must have passed Whites house countless times
during my childhood. But I hadnt known then of his
work or life. It was later, while reading his fiction, that
I recognised their people, and a feeling of foreignness,
a hollow unheimlich atmosphere that occasionally evanesced through my home. This was a loss I could neither
name nor identify, a quality of sadness withheld. I lined
up Whites characters with local residents Id known,
whose claustrophobic conformity seemed to repel any
deeper understanding. Mrs McCloud with her puffed
silver hair, glimpsed in slices between venetian blinds;
my piano teacher Dawn Loomes, who, when she wasnt
personifying her Dickensian name, sat loudly slurping
lemonade as I fumbled Fr Elise in her lounge. Miss
Loomes was determinedly earthly in her fawn slacks
and putty-toned Kumfs, and, looking back, seemed to
epitomise the acerbic gossips Misses Flack and Jolley
whose surveilling insights give Riders its chorus. Yet
mystical sights could be had in her postwar redbrick
the swathes of light through her pale nylon curtains, the
shadowy suite of uninhabited rooms.
It was the lack of deeper history that disturbed me
most in such places, yet I had no knowledge of my own
lineage to explain my outsider feeling. We hadnt known,
as children, about the generations because we hadnt been
told we were Jewish. Maybe wed been considered too
young for the Holocaust. Or possibly it hadnt occurred
to my mother that this loaded past had much to do with
our present. We were the unwitting heirs of a White Australia policy that had instructed my grandparents not to
speak German on the streets or the trams, a conforming
ethos that shimmered down the generations, turning the
discarded past spectral and all the more insistent.
My suburb was on the up and up with its columned
mansions and mock Tudor houses and their attempts
to reprise a little Europe. But there was a thick intrigue
about the demonstration homes, their spotless furnishings resisting all signs of habitation; there were
the auroras lifting from the neighbours pools at dusk;
the strict lawns nubbled with hail. On summer nights
Id sometimes wake, face down in a pool of my own
blood. Nosebleeds, worsened by humidity, never failed
to spook me, even though I knew by heart the head tilt,
the pincer-grip, time slowing as I waited for my blood
to thicken and cease. I would think, while I sat, of those
open homes, with their dream bedrooms unsullied by
nightmares, emanations, bodily fluids, death. In their
pristine containment they were the opposite, it seemed

Old Northern Road on a large paspalum-afflicted block.

Sydneys Hills District remains the citys bible belt and
now includes, among its ten churches, the evangelicals.
Theres Hillsong, flanked by the corporate glass-and-steel
of the Norwest Business Park, and Empower, with its
five crucial categories for Christs disciples, including
investing in Gods house. As I turned down Church
Street, past the ochre building it was named for, I could
not recall ever entering such a place. My classmates spent
weekends at Sunday school and youth camps. My best
friend took communion and owned a glow-in-the-dark
Virgin Mary that seemed to gaze on me with pity from
her bedroom shelf. Belief seemed enigmatic, and to me,
intensely desirable.
The feeling of something trembling beyond the ordinary realm of my district, with its dead-ends poshed up
as cul-de-sacs, its peeling colonial weatherboards and
funnelweb-infested vacant blocks, is captured by Patrick
White whod once lived in Castle Hill. Fictionalised as
Sarsaparilla in Whites Riders in the Chariot (1961), the
suburb throbs with racism and mysticism:
it was the scene in which Himmelfarb, the Jewish
refugee, is subjected to a mock crucifixion by drunken
workmates which outraged ... Naturally, it couldnt happen here except that it does, in all quarters, in many
infinitely humiliating ways, as I, a foreigner in my own
country, learned from personal experience.

It does, in all quarters, in many infinitely humiliating

ways. In the same suburb, 20 years later, wog and reffo
still rang across my school quadrangle. The districts
22

THE MOST HOLY OBJECT IN THE HOUSE

But if our recollections dont align with the facts, the feelings
accompanying them can still testify to whats astonishing or
unique about the past. They can tell us that butter is sacred,
or how unheimlich a home can feel without a mother in it.
to me, of my grandmothers house with its hoarders
cupboards and knick-knacks, the family portraits with
their patina of frequent handling. Where did I belong in
these universes? I could not properly fathom the present,
because the past had gone missing and I had no bridging
acts, no rituals to reprise it.

the strings. I pictured the ivories moving as if ruled by

undetectable pneumatics. I reinstalled each object in its
rightful place, but when it came to Else and Friedrich I
could not reprise them. I had no earthly memory to call
on, no grave to disinter. I thought of how it was before
they departed, how it must have felt to leave everything
but the one case they were permitted to take, and then,
of course, I wondered: whod inherited all their remaining possessions? The chairs and table, the gas oven with
its charry dust of dinners past. Whod moved in to
their house, which had turned, by abandonment, into
a reverse demonstration home, a house not for future
dreaming but having already been dreamt, a house that
was surely cleansed of its history or how could its new
inhabitants sleep soundly? It seems right that it is now a
hotel, where no one can fully settle, or belong. I recalled
the photos of Berlin homes split open by Allied bombing
at the wars end, all their intimacies exposed to the street,

My grandmothers childhood home was a modest,

ground-floor apartment in a gentrified area of Berlin.
The building is now a hotel and, if I wish, I can take an
online tour of its rooms with their Individueller Charme.
As I stood outside the block on my first visit to the city in
2001 I felt time concertina into the present, the past and
a possible present. It was unnerving to tour the city with
Gerda, whose feelings for the place swung from deep
affinity to terror. But especially uncanny was seeing the
houses in which shed lived. Each was deeply etched in
my imagination since Id first encountered them in her
photos. Yet, Id only seen their interiors; and it was the
people pictured in them that had truly made them home.
Here is Else, her dark hair in a wavy bob, making
coffee at the new gas stove. And here, stitching fabric
in the heavily furnished lounge. Beside her, Friedrich,
whose work for the Jewish press will soon send him into
hiding, holds a newspaper before him. The room is lit by
a domed tasselled lampshade, which projects on the wall
above his head a large black shadow. The cosy domesticity evoked by these portraits, and their ambience of
tragic unknowing, seemed incompatible with the boxy
spackled building I visited in 2001. As I stood in that
dove-toned European light, all the magisterial power
bestowed by my memory on this final home drained
instantly away. But if our recollections dont align with
the facts, the feelings accompanying them can still testify
to whats astonishing or unique about the past. They can
tell us that butter is sacred, or how unheimlich a home
can feel without a mother in it.
I hovered outside my grandmothers former front
door she a foreigner in her own country waiting to
see whod moved in after her parents. I had a brief fantasy then of reversing everything back into place the
Persian rugs and bookshelf, the club chairs and monogrammed linen, the china, crystal and flatware, the brass
menorah with its broken cup. I pictured the intricately
carved grand piano, an instrument that had become
on its journey to Sydney a kind of suitcase, carrying
the rings my great-grandmother had threaded along
23

ISLAND

houses that had already been violated to make the city

Judenrein. We stood and stood by the front door as the
sound of a daughters knocking rang through the empty
apartment.
Gerda Bergman was a compact, nuggetty woman, still
full of vim in her seventies. She had an open, animated
face and a year-round tourists tan that turned slightly
liverish in winter. She was stubborn and amiable and
teutonically forthright. Before she grew too ill to travel,
shed queue at Sydney airport, a spry pensioner, check
in her Rossignol skis, then, deadpan, ask the flight
attendant for a wheelchair so she could be first on and
off the plane.
In those first years in Australia she worked as a printer
and developer at Cremer Photography. Then, as travelling salespeople, she and my grandfather sold underwear
door-to-door, sleeping at night in their blue Chrysler.
Later, on Sydneys north coast, they ran their own photography business, but their camera was soon confiscated by
Armed Services. These improvised professions, linked by
two kinds of exposure and a certain intimacy with their
clients, were perhaps how they established some deeper
connection to community. A family whod noticed the
Bergmans roadside sleeping arrangements took them in
for a time and fed them. Theres a slight touch of Patrick
White about this family the Mercers whose choko
chutney recipe remains among my grandmothers things
and the name of their suburb, The Entrance. During
this period Gerda applied for permits to bring out her
German family, and each one was declined.

on their ship are survivors from Sachsenhausen concentration camp; unmistakable with their shaved heads and
shrunken clothes, which smell of the Lysol theyve been
boiled in. Though my grandmother speaks with them,
she will mention this only briefly, preferring to dwell on
the meal that awaited at Londons Jews Temporary Shelter.
Gerda is newly married and 22 and is, she writes in her
photo journal of this time, homesick and hungry. She
cannot imagine her parents will end up like those survivors of Sachsenhausen, or that they will not survive at all.
In the Jews Shelter at Aldgate my grandparents are
offered tea. They are offered butter a wonder! which
they lave, inch-thick, on white bread. I picture Gerda
devouring that bread, perhaps while reading the spread
from The Guardian on rissoles and croquettes. But on
closer inspection I see this clipping is dated the year
before. It must have been posted to my grandmother
before shed even left Berlin, and perhaps wasnt sent for
its recipes, but for the heartfelt column overleaf about
the threat of war. The writer, Andrea, unable to tear
herself from the wireless, listens to a broadcast on the
1938 Four Powers meeting at the Fuehrerhaus. These are
such troubled days she can find calm only in the Abbey.
Finally Chamberlain, a simple man with an umbrella
and a wing collar instead of a riding whip and a swastika,
returns from the Munich meeting with his pact in his
pocket. War is averted, for now.
If bread is the Biblical food of exile, work and struggle
as Ina Lipkowitz writes in her cultural history of food
(Words to Eat By, 2011), if theres a link between the
Hebrew for bread, lechem, and war, milchamah, then how
can I resist turning that charitable meal in London apocryphal? What else can bread and butter eaten in a shelter
symbolise but the oncoming struggle of diaspora life, and,
soon after, war? Much later, my grandmother would save
her butter in a hospital drawer with her lady things
even when she could not eat it.
My grandparents story contains no consoling
Abbey, no synagogue. But it does invoke the kind of
questions associated with church, cathedral or temple.
Where should the secular direct their existential searching?
What will remain of these generations when theyve passed,
as the last survivors are rapidly passing, into history and
myth? Whats to become of their emotional and domestic (or minor) histories: their habits and tendencies, the
personal items, which at first seem inconsequential, quotidian and uncovetable? The teenage diary, which charts
the rise of anti-Semitism and contains a yellowing fragment of handkerchief a fathers, a lovers or a mothers.
The 1939 pocketbook which records in its front pages the

It was late last year when I first made sourdough. After

reading the daunting four-page method, I mixed my
starter, the naturally fermented yeast used in this type of
bread. Day one of the three-week fermentation is called,
by my cookbook, Genesis it is after all a creation story.
The bread develops from the alchemy of the elemental
flour, water, oxygen, air. The first loaf begets countless
future loaves because a small amount of its batter is
reserved for future use. In this method, and in the way
the dough becomes warm and pliable as flesh beneath
your hands, sourdough evokes the birth of other things,
even people.
In the Genesis of the Old Testament and Torah, as the
creation of world, man and animals unfolds over 2000
years, one phrase recurs: these are the generations. Like
family history, Genesis is assembled from myth, legend,
philosophy, poetry; its facts are leavened with anecdote,
hearsay and lore, then shaped into one encompassing
narrative. Bread of course has its own Biblical associations with regeneration, and with how its said to assuage
not just physical, but spiritual hunger. And for Jews matzo,
the unleavened bread eaten at Passover, symbolises the
flight into exile, which left no time for leavening.
In 1939 at Berlins Zoo Station, my grandmother farewells her mother, neither knowing this is their final goodbye. With her new husband, George, she catches a train to
Denmark, then sails to England. Among the passengers
24

THE MOST HOLY OBJECT IN THE HOUSE

Where should the secular direct their existential searching?

What will remain of these generations when theyve passed,
as the last survivors are rapidly passing, into history and myth?
Geburtstag of Hitler and other top-ranking Nazis and later,
in the month of Marz, my grandmothers scribbled notes
on shipboard life as she sailed to Sydney on the Nestor
Blue Funnel Line:
swimming pool opened
Seasick
HousyHousy
Among the many Jewish names on that ships passenger list are Nassau and Infant, the Lichtensteins and
Lowensteins, Salomon and Selowsky, Zeissl and Zinner,
all bound for Sydney, Hobart, Fremantle, Brisbane,
Melbourne.

The pointillism, the lavishing, the ritualistic gathering. Tumarkins imagery brought my own grandmother
vividly to mind. In exploring the ways trauma is transmitted by gesture and custom throughout the generations, Tumarkin cites Carol Kidrons research on other
bread-related survivor practices (Ethos, 2003). For one
family of survivors, Kidron writes, bread became the
most holy object in the house. The communal act of
eating bread forever incarnates the sensuous memory
of life-threatening hunger and miraculous survival
and so survivors perpetually consume the Holocaust
past and are consumed by it. While my grandmother
was not technically a survivor, her history lent certain
foods and acts a ritualistic power. Twice removed from
the Holocaust and unscathed by it, I nevertheless feel a
duty not to forget that is greater than my considerable
self-consciousness about ritual.
My grandmother made copious notes about her life on
scraps of lined paper. Shed often be compelled to write
after watching a documentary or news report, which she
did more often in her immobile years. On one of these

In Traumascapes (2005), her memoir of returning to the

Ukraine of her birth, Maria Tumarkin describes her grandmothers habit of gathering breadcrumbs on the tip of a
finger, a tendency leftover from the Ukrainian famine of
the 1930s: My grandmothers handling of each crumb
individually, the way bread called out to her, the pointillistic quality of the attention she lavished on it, was precisely
how she carried the history and memory of her survival.

25

ISLAND

notes I found Goerings infamous slogan, Guns before

butter. It was underlined. And, in her account of those
hungry years in Berlin, she wrote, day old bread or
stomach ache.
If Goering had orchestrated the exclusion of Jews
from the German economy, from schools, organisations,
parks and forests, Aryanising their homes and business
and instigating an internal emigration, hed also succeeded in transmitting this ethos halfway across the
world. My grandparents Sydney had become, in its own
way, Aryanised; there was no Bechstein to reprise the
lyrical sounds of home and, apart from the German spoken only indoors, theyd whittled their cultural practices
down to coffee-soaked matzo. Theyd chosen not to live
among Sydneys Jews, and, by distancing themselves, lost
a possibly comforting cultural familiarity. But perhaps
this isolation also helped them to forget. At the time, in
Smiths Weekly and The Bulletin, Jews were stereotyped as
clannish: massing in sweatshops, working long hours for
nothing, and undermining Australian living standards.
In Berlin, my grandfather had sold silk fabrics in the
famous Hermann Tietz department store until it was
Aryanised to Hettie Company. By then my grandmother,
who was forbidden to study, could no longer cross Berlin,
swim with friends at Halensee, or sneak off with Herbert to a Grunewald glade. Shed always been athletic
but was by then forbidden to attend Waldlauf training.
She surrendered her fencing gear, because Jews were not
permitted to own weapons.
I recently found in those archive boxes, among the
folders of German correspondence, my grandmothers
pencilled list of Things Not Allowed Under Hitler.
It begins, sit on benches.
Although their names were on a list to emigrate to
America, Gerdas parents could not get out, nor could
aunts Hete and Herta and cousins Marion, Renate, Kurt
and Elschen, nor Harry, my grandfathers brother. Else
and Friedrich abandoned their apartment to gather with
the last Jews of Berlin at the Grosse Hamburger Strasse
deportation centre which stood by a small, dappled Jewish cemetery one of the last places Jewish children were
allowed. By these grounds where the young played over
the dead, and would soon no longer be young, Else and
Friedrich waited.
Elses sisters had gathered there before them, with
16-year-old Renate. After Auschwitz, where her parents
were gassed in 1944, Renate would change her name.
After Auschwitz, where Dr Mengele selected her for
medical experimentation, Renate emigrated to Israel.
But she was said to be too fragile to see her family and
they would never visit. When I imagine Renate, for I
have no photographs of her, I see an infinite, answerless
darkness. Reni, as her loved ones called her, became, in
Israel, Rachel Silbermann. I can find little more about
Reni, who died in Beer Yaakov Hospital, Tel Aviv.
She seems, of all the family, doubly lost by her suffering
and isolation. I have her altered name, some dates and
fragments of family talk. Reni, from Renatus, meaning
born again.

On her visit to Auschwitz my

grandmother gathered some
rocks and dirt at the site of
the crematoria sure to be
recent, she wrote in her diary
but, just the same.
Like Renata, my great-grandparents were first sent to
Theresienstadt, or what the SS called Reichsalterheim, a
euphemism that even the Red Cross used on their telegrams, Old Peoples Home. When her sister Else joined
her at the Bahnhof Strasse barracks in Theresienstadt,
Aunt Hete was overjoyed. When my grandmother visited Germany for the first time in 1961, Hete recounted
that last year the sisters spent together. Most indelible
is her description of stealing potato peel from the camp
kitchen for Else, who had heart disease and was by then
malnourished.
Theresienstadt was of course no old peoples home,
but a ghetto and labour camp. This kind of universe.
A model town. Peelings in place of bread. Like
WG Sebalds orphaned Austerlitz, Ive wanted to
scour The Gift of the Fuhrer, a propaganda film
inspired by the success of the Red Cross visit and shot
six weeks before my great-grandparents were deported
to Auschwitz. I might catch one last sight of Friedrich
or Hete, or even Else playing piano in a fake concert to
a fake audience, just as Austerlitz thought he saw his
mothers face in that footage: a final image transmitted
through light and air, a Geist, a chimera as Sebald narrates the story, and possibly not even her.
In 1945, my five-year-old mother watched her
mother collapse in the kitchen at Baulkham Hills.
On the telegram, the date of Else and Friedrichs transport from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. Please let us
know, requests the Red Cross, if you wish to continue
searching. Soon after, news trickled in of the relatives
whod survived. Among them, Hetes son Kurt, and
daughter Elschen, who was said to have had a stillborn
child of rape during the occupation. Both would commit
suicide many years later.
Challah, traditionally served on Shabbat and Jewish holidays, comes from the Hebrew word for portion because
Jews, notes Claudia Roden, were instructed by the Bible
to offer the priests one twenty-fourth of their dough
every Sabbath. Many observant Jews still burn a pinch
of challah dough while making a blessing. This pinching
off of the raw challah, which recalls the sourdough preserved for future loaves (also known as mother-dough)
26

THE MOST HOLY OBJECT IN THE HOUSE

all remind me of my grandmothers navel story.

Before one of Gerdas many operations, her specialist
asked, did she want to keep her navel? By then she had
little vanity. Shed never forgiven my grandfather after
discovering the post-office box through which hed
intercepted her mail, including letters from Herbert.
Shed lived alone ever since, though shed once placed a
personal ad using the nom de plume Geraldine. She had
her family, and photographs. The most loved were those
of her mother: in the shadowy apartment courtyard with
a bird on her hand, on a Berlin street in a fur-collared
coat that now hangs in my wardrobe. Else and Friedrich
had no grave but a vast field. On her visit to Auschwitz
my grandmother gathered some rocks and dirt at the
site of the crematoria sure to be recent, she wrote in
her diary but, just the same. What does this mean?
Perhaps that this dirt, standing in for a grave, might still
bear some authentic trace of her parents. Collected at
the very site of their deaths, these stones and dust, witness to what no living observer can see. In Sydney, my
grandmother asked her surgeon to please leave her navel
intact. It was, she told me, the last thing that connected
her to her mother.

Mireille Juchau is a Sydney-based writer of novels, short fiction,

essays, scripts and reviews. Her most-recent novel, The World Without
Us, won the Victorian Premiers Literary Awards and was shortlisted
for the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
mireillejuchau.com
Images: Courtesy of Mireille Juchau

TJALA installation. 2016.

RAFT South
GALLERY OpEn 11am-5pm, TuESdAY - SATuRdAY.

LEvEL 1, 30 ARGYLE STREET hObART TAS 7000. T 0438 335 131 E hobart.raft@iinet.net.au W www.raftartspace.com.au

south

In Light
and Shadows
Part of the Tasmanian Museum
and Art Gallery was recently
transformed into vintage
1950s rooms, enriched with
the family albums, framed
photos and loose snaps of
postwar European migrant
women. Here, the exhibitions
creator Nicol Goc opens
the shutter on the power
of family photographs

licja Boyd holds a faded, dog-eared, blackand-white family photograph: a handsome but stern-faced group in the early
1940s mother, father and six children
in their Sunday best. All but the father,
whose eyes are downcast, stare into the cameras lens.
This photograph has a surreal quality; the family
appears embedded within a wooded landscape, yet
seated on a parlour couch. The mother is strangely footless, and a ghostly mist surrounds her childrens feet.
Alicja is hesitant to pass the photograph over. I dont
think its the story youre really interested in, because
this is the only photograph of my mother and her family,
and I never met any of these people apart from these two.
Thats my mum, and this was her younger sister, and one
of the brothers that survived. There were more brothers,
there were 11 kids in the family, and they were all killed.
Most of them were killed in one day. Very tragic story.

ISLAND

I gently encourage. Alicja moves closer. When the war

started, I think it was 1941 when the Russian escapees,
prisoners of war escapees, started filtering through
the area, a very small village in the east of Poland.
They were running away from the Germans, and the
villagers, including my family, harboured them.
When the Germans came into the village, they
rounded all the men in a square, and rounded all the
women to stand around and watch, and shot all the
men, including, I think, this one She taps three times
on the blond boy on the far right. He was about 13.
My grandmother wouldnt leave the body, so she was
lying on his body crying and they just shot her through
the back of the head.
And all the other boys were killed as well. And then
they burned it, the village, and then they burned all the
houses. So theres actually no record. This photograph
surfaced about 40 years later: somebody had it, and he
gave it to my mother, and she gave it to me.
Alicjas mother (back row) and her aunt (in front of
her) fled into the forest soon after the massacre. Through
a second equally ragged black-and-white photograph,
Alicja tells of their lives as forest-living partisans fighting
with the Polish and Russian resistance. The story has
striking similarities to that of the Bielski brothers (Jews
from Nowegrodek in Belarus, formerly part of Poland,
whose parents were killed by Germans and who led a
partisan resistance group between 1942 and 1944),
popularised in the 2008 movie Defiance. But Alicjas
mothers story would have been lost to history if not for
this faded photograph about which Alicja knew nothing
until recently.

Alicja was one of 50 women I interviewed through

their photographs (a technique called photo elicitation)
over four years as part of my research on migrant women
and snapshot photography as an early pre-digital form
of social media, communicating migrants experiences
with family left behind, and maintaining memories.
I focused on postwar migrant women because, quite
simply, they are getting older and their important stories
are being lost.
When Alicja Boyd escaped Communist Poland in
1972, she arrived in Australia with few possessions and
no photographs. But as a new Australian she took snapshots of her new life and sent these home. Her mother
sent old family snapshots in exchange. Alicja showed
me her small collection of square, grainy, 1970s colour
photographs, the ones she sent back home.

30

IN LIGHT AND SHADOWS

In one, Alicja leans against a gleaming new refrigerator. She took the photograph to show her parents how
well she was doing in Australia. Yet the look on her face
is melancholic, her mind elsewhere. Despite being glad
to escape her pretty horrible life in Communist Poland,
Alicja brought with her the shadow of her parents history and her own miserable childhood. Her escape had
significant repercussions for her parents, Communist
officials.
It is all part of the migrant experience, she says the
trauma, the displacement, the loss. And the hopes, aspirations and achievements. Shadows and light. Such are
the stories the humble family photographs of migrants
can elicit.

Previous spread: Alicja Boyds Polish family circa 1940.

Opposite, top: Alicja Boyds mother and sister (centre) when
part of the Polish and Russian resistance during World War II.
Opposite, bottom: Alicja Boyd in her lounge room.
Right: Alicja Boyd beside her new refrigerator a symbol of
success in 1970s Australia.
All images courtesy of Alicja Boyd.
Below: Gilda and Vincent Fabrizios portrait photographs they
exchanged in the 1950s. Source: Gilda and Vincent Fabrizio.

A photograph can change a life forever.

In the 1950s, a young Italian woman, Gilda, was
encouraged by a priest and her family to send a photograph of herself to a young Italian man, Vincent Fabrizio,
working on the Tasmanian hydroelectric scheme. Gilda
went to a photography studio in Abruzzo in the new coat
a friend had made.
Vincents family wrote, encouraging him to send
a photograph of himself to a lovely young girl from a
nearby village. Vincent borrowed a suit, travelled to
Hobart from the hydro camp in the central highlands,
and was photographed at Beatties studio.

Upon receiving their respective photographs across

the hemispheres, Vincent and Gilda agreed to marry,
despite never meeting nor having any family ties. Gilda
took part in a proxy marriage in Italy. Vincent did likewise in Hobart, with his landlady as his proxy bride,
ensuring the couple were officially married before Gilda
left Italian shores bound for Tasmania. Some 60 years
later, they remain together.
31

ISLAND

Migrant families at times rejected Kodaks 20th-century

edict to take photographs of happy occasions only.
Cultural norms, particularly in Catholic Europe,
included photographing funerals and burials. Both amateur and official photographs were and still are sent
from the homeland to ensure migrants are able to participate in commemorating the life and death of loved ones.
Migrants in Australia also take mourning photographs
to send to family and friends overseas as visual evidence
of the commemoration of a loved ones passing and as a
way of bringing the family together at moments of great
sadness. Migrants insist that the physical photograph

depicting a beloved family member, rather than a maudlin practice, offers great comfort. For migrants arriving
in Australia in the postwar period, when other forms
of communication were not available, these mourning
photographs imbued a sense of family solidarity and
provided an important way to participate, from afar, in
significant rituals.

Above: Mourning photographs from Polish migrant collections. Source: Nicol Goc

32

IN LIGHT AND SHADOWS

Above: A room in the exhibition, Karen Brown Photography, 2016

Family photography became an international medium

from the time the Kodak Company launched the first
snapshot camera in 1900 and released its first family
photography manual, How To Take Good Pictures (which
remained in print for 88 years).
Although most family snapshots have a universal
resonance, the family snapshots of migrants are infused
with some particular qualities. Rarely in migrant photographs do you find the same informality that is commonplace in Australian family snapshots.
In the postwar migrant photographs I have been
privileged to view, a charming earnestness characterises
the poses and settings. These humble little photographs
seem to be showing migrant families at their very best:
dressed in Sunday clothes, the family stands to attention
on the terrace of a new 1960s house; they pose beside
a new car; they are captured formally dressed around a

table laden with food; posing at weddings, at christenings and at funerals. Other photographs sent to family
and friends in the old country record family businesses
a cafe, a corner store, or families working in extensive
market gardens all evidence of the good life in Australia. It is as if the intention is to convey that the new life
in the land of milk and honey has been worth the pain,
loss and lifetime separation.

Dr Nicol Goc is a senior lecturer in Journalism, Media and

Communications at the University of Tasmania. Snapshot Photography
and Migrant Women A Tasmanian Experience was exhibited at
the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery from March to May 2016,
supported by a grant from the Tasmanian Community Fund.
Nicol is now embarking on the second phase of her research and is
keen to interview women who arrived in Australia in recent years.
nicola.goc@utas.edu.au

33

34

G
N
I
S
S
E
L
B
The dairy aisle is the perfect place,
Danielle Wood discovers, to ponder
what marriage is really all about

35

ISLAND

t was a Saturday afternoon and I was standing by the

butter fridge in Woolworths wearing a house dress
and a sloppy pair of sheepskin boots. I had a grizzly
child at foot and was feeling mostly invisible in the
way that you hope you are when youve ducked out
to the supermarket in a house dress for butter on a Saturday afternoon. But from over by the frozen peas, she
saw me, and headed towards me wanting to talk, which
was odd, because in the many years wed known each
other 39 of them, I supposed wed never had much
to say to each other at all.
Just like when we were four years old and starting kindergarten in our little slate blue dresses, grey blazers and
straw boaters, she was tidier than me. Back then, shed
had pigtails, but now her thick hair was cut neat and
short, her figure enviably trim in blue jeans and something sporty on top. We were never really friends, but
neither were we enemies. We were what? Contemporaries? Life colleagues? For 13 years of our schooling we
moved in close but separate orbits. She played squash,
did well at science did well at everything, actually, in
that calm and steady way of hers wore her school skirt
at regulation length, stayed out of trouble. Meanwhile,
I was dramatic, erratic, good at English but scornfully
uninterested in maths, and usually in some sort of lowlevel strife. I suppose, when we were teenagers, I would
have dismissed her as exactly the kind of conformist I
was hell-bent on not being (though in truth, my rebellions were only ever in the laughable spectrum of not
wearing my blazer in town, and overdosing on Sylvia
Plath and Fruity Lexia).
Now here we were at 43 years of age standing by
the butter fridge and she was speaking to me in a
breathy voice that I was surprised to discover I remembered, its asthmatic edge as recognisable as a signature.
But although she gave a nervous laugh as she spoke,
what she said made me terribly sad. Not immediately,
but almost as soon as she walked away again.
The reason she wanted to talk was because shed read
something Id written for The Mercury: an opinion piece
on marriage equality. Its not as if I write opinion pieces
often this was the first in about a decade and the truth
was I somewhat regretted it. Part of the regret was that
it wasnt my best work: Id led with the wrong point, and
tried to say too many different things in the mere 700
words that were all I had in which to tell the Catholic Archbishop of Hobart why I thought he was wrong in opposing marriage equality. But the regret had other facets.
My column had attracted some hate mail not much,
but I had found it disturbing nonetheless. And then there
was the lingering sense of shame that in writing that column I had simply mouthed off, saying things that were
obvious, or had been said more eloquently elsewhere,
and anyway were someone elses business to say more
than they were mine. But now here was this old schoolmate of mine wanting to talk to me about it: wanting
strongly enough that she would cross the supermarket to
seek me out when nothing else from our shared history
would have warranted anything more than a casual wave.

She thanked me for the opinion piece.

Although the marriage thing means more to her than
it does to me, she said, and gestured back to her trolley.
Standing beside it was a woman, patiently inspecting the
frozen peas.
Oh, I thought. And then dawned the realisation that,
actually, Id never thought. If ever I had thought about
why shed (apparently, so far as I knew) abstained from
the high school explosion of flagrant heterosexuality, Id
likely have put it down to her being studious and focused,
a good girl, beyond reproach, much better behaved than
me. And then, having had that thought, I immediately
chided myself. Because being gay was probably, for my
schoolmate, like gender was for Julia Gillards prime
ministership: it explained some things, but not everything. And what a laugh: its me thats turned out to be
the conformist, with my husband, three kids, house in
the suburbs, Tarago. And perhaps it was because I was
doing all of this reviewing, reframing, ticking myself
off that I wasnt really listening.
The hardest thing, she went on, is to suffer prejudice
over something that isnt your fault. I didnt ask for this.
I didnt choose to be this way. Its not my fault.
I lifted my grizzly kid onto my hip and proceeded
to prattle away in the cheery way that I do when Im
taken by surprise and it wasnt until my old schoolmate
was walking away that I began to hear her, properly.
And it wasnt until I was driving out of the supermarket
car park that I was truly processing what shed said.
Not my fault, shed said. Not my fault? Those were the
words, but there was an aching subtext. Ive been good.
Ive tried. Ive done my best. I didnt choose, shed said, and
yet Im certain that she, like me, would equally defend
against discrimination towards anyone who did choose.
She wasnt speaking from her head, but from her pain.
I wanted to do a u-turn, run back into the supermarket and search the aisles, find her and hug her and say
say what? What could I a stranger to her, really
possibly say that would soothe or fix or restore or change
anything? Probably nothing, I know. Nevertheless, her
words did the rounds of my skull for weeks: echoing,
prodding. And my desire to say something has not gone
away. This essay is for her.
Marriage equality will be a reality in Australia. Even its
staunchest opponents must know that the global tide
has turned and change is coming to our nation, soon.
When my children are grown, they will marvel that there
was ever in their country a time when sexual orientation precluded some people from being able to marry
the person they love, just as my generation struggles to
comprehend a time when women couldnt vote.
I took my eldest daughter to see Suffragette, a film
whose fade-out is followed by a scrolling list of countries and the years in which their women won the vote
New Zealand: 1893, Australia: 1902, and so forth.
A collective are you serious? gasp filled the auditorium as
the audience registered Switzerland: 1971. How could
such an obvious freedom have possibly taken so long
36

BLESSING

to achieve in Switzerland? And yet, one day a darkened

cinema somewhere in the world might be equally filled
with incredulity that Australia a democratic nation
that prides itself on tolerance took such an embarrassingly long time to achieve marriage equality.
No one could present the legal, moral and culturalhistorical cases for marriage equality with more gravitas, calm, logic and intelligence than Penny Wong in
her recent article in The Monthly, or Rodney Croome
in his book From this Day Forward. Perhaps it is partly
because it has all been said, and said so compellingly,
and because it all seems so obvious to so many, that a
deadening complacency now characterises this debate.
There are many people, and many of them supporters
of marriage equality, who are tired of the debate and
have turned away from it, falling back on the notion that
there are other, more serious and pressing problems to
deal with.
Asylum seekers, world conflict, global warming,
looming environmental disaster of just about every
kind, the parlous state of the health system, declining
educational standards, child abuse, violence against
women a friend of mine listed these off as issues
which, for her, made the marriage equality debate a
time-wasting distraction. Same-sex couples in Australia
can live together, she said, they can have children,
they have pretty good legal rights; so why, when there
are so many real and desperate problems in the world,
are we pouring so much energy into this waste of political capital?
And why do you care this much? she asked.
It is true that I am an unlikely ambassador for marriage. On my wedding day, I woke up at 5 am in a bed on
the other side of the world, beside the man I was about
to marry, and threw a tantrum. It went something like
this: Why? Why do I have to do this? Ive said I want
to be with you for the rest of my life. I have promised.
I do promise. Why does it mean more if I say it in front
of other people? Why is it a better promise if you make
it in a special frock? I dont understand. Whats it for?
Why are you making me do this? And John, my husband-to-be who had endured a three-year engagement
full of these tantrums, and who had agreed to go to the
other side of the world to get married because I couldnt
face the prospect of doing it at home in the amphitheatre
of a huge extended family and all our friends sighed
and said, for the last time, because its important to me.
I was afraid, but not of the commitment, nor the
exclusivity of monogamy, nor the challenges of maintaining a loving partnership in the face of life and all
its merde. I was afraid not of the substance of marriage
but of the things that had come to symbolise it: the legal
institution of marriage, and, worse still, the wedding.
I would have said then, though I dont think I would be
so vehement about it now, that the promises we made to
ourselves, in private, were the real deal and the symbolic
aspects of marriage were flat, two-dimensional, and
meaningless. On the day of my wedding, I didnt want
any part of them.

Perhaps it is partly because

it has all been said, and
said so compellingly, and
because it all seems so
obvious to so many, that a
deadening complacency now
characterises this debate.
Wedding ceremonies brought out the petulant rebel
in me. They struck me as absurd, in much the same manner as graduation ceremonies used to. All those mortar
boards, ermine, silk and doffing. All that dressing up in
other peoples clothes, and saying other peoples words.
My instinct, with both kinds of ceremonies, was once
to mock, to deflate. When I was a bride-to-be, I looked
for ways to make my wedding funny. I considered
asking a male friend to be my best woman, in drag.
And since John and I were to be married in St Vincent
and the Grenadines, in the Caribbean, I (a thoroughgoing atheist) thought it would be amusing to have a
Rastafarian minister perform the ceremony. Mind you,
Im quietly glad that the Rastafarian church refused our
request; my motives were entirely impure.
If Im truthful, there was another thing that made me
flinch away from the symbols of marriage. It had its genesis in being a daughter of second-wave feminism, influenced by a mother and grandmother for whom one of the
central philosophical tenets of growing up female was
thou shalt not ever be financially dependent on a man.
I grew up in an era when people were shouting that girls
could do anything, as if sufficient volume might make
it so. I remember starry-eyed careers advisors announcing that girls could even be engineers! I think they even
laced the drinking water at least in my socio-economic
neck of the woods with the idea that it was not merely
our generation of girls right, but also our responsibility, to be career-minded success machines. Marriage?
That wasnt an achievement. It was possibly even the
opposite of an achievement.
And yet, and yet from the moment I began to tell
people that John and I were getting married, I knew I had
stepped over a threshold. Getting pregnant is sometimes
called joining the club, but getting engaged is that too.
I didnt want the membership card, though. I didnt want
to be acknowledged, rewarded, fussed over because I
was getting married. Id rather have been acknowledged
for other achievements, ones that were perhaps more
public, more unique, more (I thought) difficult. Even so,
I must admit that there were times when it was expedient
37

ISLAND

behalf of the glorious, elastic, mutable miracle that is the

English language.
I told him definitions of words change over time in a
process that is magnificently beyond the control of any
individual or group, even one so powerful as the Catholic Church. I gave the most obvious examples: enormity
once meant the graveness or seriousness of a bad situation, while now its just as often used as a synonym for
enormousness. Decimate once meant to kill one in ten,
and now its a much more general term for destruction.
Changes such as these were brought about by popular
usage, which is inexorable, and dictionaries have had to
catch up. Marriage is just another word whose definition is evolving. I wrote that the whole English-speaking
world will get to say what marriage means, not the
Catholic Archbishop of Hobart.
But really, all of that was beside the point. Had I taken
more time to think, I would have known that what
angered me to tears was not the hubris of the Archbishops attempt to pin the vocabulary of the debate in ideological place, but his elucidation of a hierarchy of value
for types of relationships.

Blessing binds and connects.

It can be a bequest; those who
go before give it to
those who come after, a
kind of protective talisman
to carry on the journey.
to invite the warm regard that is yours when youre a
bride-to-be. And there were even times when I liked it.
I hadnt known that there was considered to be such
a difference between being someones partner and being
their wife, but it turns out that a flimsy piece of paper
can carry a surprising weight. In some of the men I
knew, I detected a new deference, a kind of hands-off
respect. The biggest change, however, came from the
married women in my life. To Johns mother, I was no
longer to be her sons potentially temporary girlfriend,
but her daughter-in-law. I didnt feel the change of status
within myself, or within our relationship, because John
and my commitment to each other had been there from
very early. But now that it was official, it was clear that
his mother felt bound to me, that in her mind we now
belonged to each other in a particular way. Other married women relatives and friends, my mothers friends,
acquaintances all began to relate to me with a new
openness, a greater sense of sisterhood, a just-you-wait
knowingness. I suppose I was affirming their choice by
making the same one, and in exchange, they were giving
me their blessing.
Blessing is a subtle and beautiful gift. Wrapped in its
folds are approval, understanding, goodwill and support.
Blessing binds and connects. It can be a bequest; those
who go before give it to those who come after, a kind
of protective talisman to carry on the journey. And an
understanding of this is crucial in these final stages of
Australias marriage equality debate, because blessing
is the one last thing that the anti-marriage-equality
lobby can, and will, attempt to withhold from same-sex
couples.
This is what I tried to say, perhaps clumsily and hastily, when I fired off a response to the Archbishop. The
trouble was, I wrote in the first naphtha flare of my anger.
Had I reflected for a little longer, I would have realised
that the emphasis of my column was all wrong, and that
all I did was take aim at the Archbishop from a little
promontory of safe semantic ground from which I felt
safe enough to spit. He argued that the term same-sex
marriage is an oxymoron because the very definition
of the word marriage is a union between a man and a
woman. And, logophile that I am, I took him to task on

[T]he current argument is about whether society should

value relationships of lifelong sexual fidelity between
those of the same sex in the same way as it values marriage.
Society has valued marriage above de facto relationships,
and same-sex relationships, not simply because it is a
particular type of loving relationship, but because of the
unique contribution the marriage relationship makes to
wellbeing of children and because of this, more broadly,
the stability of society.

What I understand the Archbishop to be saying is not

only that society-at-large has, and does, put a premium
on marriage, but also that it is right for this to be so. I
acknowledge that he is correct about the first part, but I
am infuriated by the second. I dont believe the symbolic
act of marriage should make any difference to how the
substance of a relationship is valued. The relationship
I had with John before we were married was already
valuable, precious and intrinsically so. Marriage has not
altered me, nor given me anything that I didnt already
have, except perhaps a measure of social approval that I
could easily have lived without. And if ever Ive enjoyed
the approbation that married status brings, Ive never
wanted it at the expense of other couples who are just
like us, excepting that they have no marriage licence.
I dont want approval at the expense of heterosexual
de facto couples who have chosen, for whatever reason,
not to enter into marriage. But I especially dont want it
at the expense of same-sex couples who presently do not
even have the right to exercise a choice.
When our eldest daughter was 18 months old, she
refused to settle into childcare. Both John and I needed
to work, my daughter needed care. We needed a miracle.
We got Jo. She is the kind of child-whisperer every parent
dreams of finding. She is entirely loving but absolutely
38

BLESSING

firm; entertaining and educative; careful and exciting.

And as an extra bonus she has the kind of mild OCD
tendencies that meant my house was tidier when I got
home than it was when I left. Our daughter grew up, and
we no longer needed Jo to care for her, but by then, Jo
and her partner Jac had become family.
The kinship between us all is not of the blood kind, but
the heart kind. John and my three children, and Jo and
Jacs two, dress up as dragons and cats and chase each
other around the house, or else they go birdwatching
together in the garden, rushing inside to announce each
new species. Actually, there is a blood tie our kelpies
are first cousins, and they hare about together until their
tongues are as long as football socks. John and Jac drink
whisky and complain good-naturedly about having to
listen to Jo and I work through our annual Christmas
theology session, in which Jo explains Christianity to
me, and I explain to her why even an atheist can get
weepy over Christmas carols. And then we sing Hark the
Herald Angels Sing. And John and Jac pour more whisky.
Ive made my peace with the external trappings of
marriage, mostly, (and Ive even grudgingly accepted
the significance of graduation ceremonies) but I am
still ambivalent. Jo, however, is a strong advocate for
marriage, both its form and its content. Her Christianity means she regards marriage as a sacrament, a ritual
in which the guests bear witness to a solemn contract
between the wedding couple and God. She believes that
marriage provides safety and security for children, and
forms a crucial part of the bedrock of society. What a terrible, horrible irony it is, then, that I am married and she
cannot be. She and Jac are waiting for marriage equality.
While they wait, they suffer. Not the detention centre
kind of suffering, or the domestic violence kind of suffering, but the long, slow, atrophying suffering that makes a
woman by the butter fridge in Woolworths declare that
her sexuality is beyond her control, is not her fault. Its
the suffering that comes from the constant, low-level
message to same-sex couples that their love, their commitment, their families, are somehow less. Wrong, even.
That they are not blessed.

What is the nature of the few remaining ties that bind

Australia to a discriminatory past/present? What prevents Australia from moving forward into the inevitable
future? As Croome and Wong assert, with the statistics
firmly behind them, the battle for the hearts and minds of
the majority of Australians has been resoundingly won.
The marriage equality debate itself is not a time-wasting
distraction, but its unnecessary protraction surely is. So
why do we remain in this state of damaging paralysis?
I think the reason the debate is stalling is because
the anti-marriage-equality lobby has very successfully
deployed, and redeployed, one particularly harmful
and effective tactic. They entreat people who are considering marriage equality to think of the children, and
this works like a fog machine to cloud the thoughts of
those still sitting on the fence. But if we think carefully,
we understand that think of the children has nothing
more than a malignant, sideways relationship to the
issue of marriage equality. When more people can see
this, perhaps the last ties to discrimination will fray into
nonexistence.
The Australian Christian Lobby has gone so far as to
suggest that children of same-sex parents are part of a
stolen generation, and Hobarts Archbishop says that to
deliberately bring into the world a child that will not live
with its biological mother and biological father (who,
ideally, are married) is a violation of that childs rights.
But if the deliberate creation of families where one or
both parents are not the biological progenitors of the
children was truly the concern that the lobby suggests,
then there are many other fronts on which the anti-marriage-equality lobby would be campaigning with equal
ferocity: single womens access to reproductive technology, sperm donation, egg donation, infertile couples
using donor embryos, poor sex education, poverty, and
more.
Further, the lobby knows that the children of samesex parents are not hypotheticals that would spring
into being only if same-sex couples could legally marry.
The lobby knows that the children of same-sex couples
exist, and will continue to exist; they know that who
gets knocked up by whom, and when, and why, is in this
nation (mostly) beyond the control of the state. Penny
Wong says think of the children is not an argument
against marriage equality. It is an argument against gay
and lesbian Australians being parents. Actually, it is an
argument about gay and lesbian Australians being at all.
She is right. Think of the children is nothing more than
homophobia in concerns clothing. And dont let gay
people marry is not about childrens rights, but about
keeping in place the damaging message to LGBTI people
that they are unequal.
It has been put to me and by people on each of
the far ends of the spectrum of opinion that marriage equality would fundamentally alter the nature of
marriage. For the anti-marriage-equality lobby, this
is a problem. For those in favour, an opportunity. But
I must confess to having a much more simplistic view.
Perhaps I am naive, but to me marriage is simply two
39

ISLAND

and now I heard it echoed in my schoolmates not my

fault. These two womens words resonated with the same
feeling. They were, each of them, crying out for acceptance, approval, recognition. Ive been good. Ive tried.
Ive done my best.
But the difference is that my schoolmate wants to
be included; Blue Biro Woman wants a guarantee that
certain people will continue to be excluded. Blue Biro
Woman believes she has earned her blessings, but fears
that her boon might now be snatched away and given
to the undeserving. I ask myself: what part of her life, of
her soul, of her reality, does marriage equality threaten?
Does she really need to cling to her sense of superiority?
And, even if she does, why should she have the right to
insist that it continue to be underpinned by the laws of
the state? I see that she is afraid, and I wish I could soothe
her fears. I wish I could convince her that blessing is not
a zero-sum game; you dont have to withhold it from
some in order to be able to give it to others. I wish I could
convince her that it will not hurt her, or anyone else, to
be generous. There is plenty of room inside marriage for
all us; those of us who are already married dont even
have to budge over.

The marriage equality

debate itself is not a timewasting distraction, but its
unnecessary protraction
surely is. So why do we
remain in this state of
damaging paralysis?
people making a commitment to share their lives, to join
with each others families, to shelter and support each
other no matter what comes. For myself, I would have
preferred this promise to be private, but for the man I
love, it was important that it be made public, inviting
the sanction and support of society-at-large. To me,
marriage equality means only that the anatomy of two
willing participants can no longer determine their eligibility to make this public promise. Marriage equality by
itself will not end homophobia, nor satisfactorily address
broader questions of how society views, treats and values relationships in all their many forms. But it will tear
down one big, ugly wall.

My children are members of the Hobart Cavy Club.

Each month they attend meetings where one of the
activities is fancy dress. For the animals, you understand,
not the children. Last May, the theme was rainbow and
my daughter made a guinea pig mardi gras, complete
with Oxford Street backdrop, sequins and feathers.
On a cereal-box float sat two cavy brides in white tulle,
with banners proclaiming Guinea Pigs for Marriage
Equality. On the way to the event my daughter asked me,
Will anyone at the show find this offensive?
I said, I dont think so. But, what would it say about
someone if they did?
Silence. Thinking.
It would say they dont have anyone in their lives like
Jo and Jac.
And that is the next generation speaking.

Most of the hate mail I received in the wake of my

Mercury opinion piece came electronically. A handful
of bravely anonymous authors went down one of two
paths: Satanist whore or well, youre not a very good
writer, anyway. But one letter and not a piece of hate
mail precisely, though it was hardly complimentary
came in the post, on pretty stationery, to my work
address. The handwriting was an even cursive. Blue biro.
No immediate visual clues to strong feeling, other than
a bit of underlining. The author was a married mother
of three, she said. She had read my column and it had
devastated her.
You say [the Archibishops] comments are hurtful but
you are so stupid you dont even stop to think how you
hurt me, when you say that a relationship between homosexuals is the same as my marriage. My marriage and my
children are precious gifts from God and yet you say we
are no different from people who live in perversion. I
have followed the word of God and the teachings of the
Bible all my life.

It wasnt until much later, until I was driving away from

the supermarket, from my schoolmate, from her words
and her pain, that at last I properly understood Blue Biro
Womans message. Between the neat blue lines of that
anonymous womans handwriting was a hum of anguish,

Danielle Wood is the author of several books including Mothers

Grimm and Vogel prize-winning novel The Alphabet of Light and Dark.
Along with Heather Rose, she is Angelica Banks, author of the
Tuesday McGillycuddy adventure trilogy for children. She teaches
creative writing at the University of Tasmania.
daniellewood.com.au

40

PAGE/ARTICLE TITLE

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ISLAND

42

The Noise Made by People

In the dark ocean, Anwen Crawford listens for voices now
silent and the sounds of British band Broadcast
Corporeal

Lunch-hour Pops

After my friend Ned died, the act of swimming took on

a new clarity. He had been a swimmer and a strong one,
a beach child: some days I would watch him scythe out
beyond the breakers at Bronte, or swim from one side
of Gordons Bay to the other and back while I sat on the
boulders at the seas edge, only dabbling.
When he died I swam in order to find a reason to keep
moving, in order to keep order; to move in a way that
might briefly lift the weight of grief from my body. The
pool seemed full of stars. Or, inside the bay which he
had loved, I watched a beam of light illuminate a blue
fish, and then I kept on swimming into darkness, where
the depth changes fast, terrified of what might rear up
to meet me but willing to succumb to it. Do your worst,
I thought, it scarcely matters anymore.
And I thought that I might hear him, underwater, that
the sound of his voice would linger there even after his
body had been buried in the earth. I never heard him.

Tender Buttons, the third album by Broadcast, was

released in 2005. It was named after a collection of
poetry published in 1914 by modernist writer Gertrude
Stein. Elephant beaten with candy and little pops and
chews all bolts and reckless reckless rats, this is this,
writes Stein, in a passage titled A SOUND. And this
is Broadcast: a room filled with rattling tools and joys
and something vital stood at the centre, a large and
breathing thing.
For years I was a shopgirl, stuck in rooms where
I was never fully present, striving to keep some part
of me from display, from inspection, from the wagelabour exchange when my labour was all I had to sell.
Work and Non Work is the title of a collection of early
Broadcast singles, released in 1997. I would have been at
school then, and not yet a shopgirl. Some of these display
rooms no longer exist.

You and Me in Time

Before We Begin

Ned and I broke into buildings, often. Left-alone forgotten rotting buildings, and we went in with torches, spray
cans and our cameras. A tram depot filled with trams
that hadnt run since 1961 at the latest; weedy, gutted
warehousing; abandoned hospital wards piled high
with wheelchairs and filing cabinets. All of it useful, all
of it transformative, these portals, thresholds in plain
hidden sight within the city. Broadcast sound like the
past and the future simultaneously, a girl group in orbit,
Marianne Faithfull transmitting As Tears Go By back to
Earth via space probe.
And in these buildings we built things, temporarily,
or took photographs, our souvenirs. The portals dont
exist anymore Sydney has no time for malingerers,
the backwards glance: it drills only forward.

Heres what I can tell you about Broadcast off the top of
my head: they were from Birmingham and there were
two main members Trish Keenan, who sang, and
James Cargill, who played stuff. Most of their record
sleeves were designed by Julian House, an artist who also
founded a wonderfully cultish label called Ghost Box.
I have imagined the rest of what I think I know about
Broadcast. Trish and James standing in a rehearsal room,
the floor obscured by cables running to and from their
electronic boxes. The two of them building their songs
together, side by side, sometimes with other musicians
but often not. No matter how frequently I listen to
Broadcast I cannot prise apart the construction of the
songs: the final object is vivid, multi-dimensional, but
the method remains hidden.
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ISLAND

Arc of a Journey

Where Youth and Laughter Go

In Birmingham there are several impressive carparks.

Sixties concrete massive things, monuments to the
heyday of automotive optimism. And a Central Library
like a ziggurat now demolished and shopping
arcades and ring roads. And also lunatic, terracotta-red
Victorian Gothic piles: the School of Art, the Bell Edison
Telephone Building. All side by side. Witch cults of the
radio age.
I visited Birmingham in the late autumn of 2014, for
two days. It is the nearest city to a village called Tanworth-in-Arden, where the English singer-songwriter
Nick Drake who died in 1974, at the age of 26 is
buried. I journeyed to his grave. The village was verdant
and sheep-speckled and the sky poured rain.
On my first, or maybe second, night in Birmingham
I went to The Electric. It is Britains oldest operating
cinema, a small art deco building with a tiny screening
room. I watched a film about Northern Soul, not a very
good film, though I love Northern Soul and its ardour
for failure: a movement in celebration of records that
were not hits. I imagine myself as a shopgirl in the early
1970s, at home in a northern British town, and I would
dance to The Fabulettes. When I described my Northern Soul life to a friend he grew sad and said, But then I
wouldnt know you in this life. You would be trapped in
the footage of the past.
Did Trish Keenan, lifelong resident of Birmingham,
ever visit The Electric while she lived? I will imagine that
she did.

I saw Broadcast play live twice. Once in New York, in

2009, when I was living in that city. Once in Sydney, in
2010, when I was visiting home again. The Sydney venue
they played at no longer exists. That show was on a
Wednesday, the 8th of December.
They played beautifully well, and the songs retained
the mystery of their making. Trish danced in a white
dress, a witch robe of sorts, and behind her moved
images by Julian House, floating geometric seance
shapes. The next day I sat on a hillside looking out to
Wedding Cake Island, at Coogee, a little blast of rock
in the sea foam. The call came that Ned had cancer.
The boundary of BEFORE was that concert, and 18 days
later he was dead. Not long after his burial, Trish Keenan
died too, on 14 January 2011, from pneumonia brought
on by swine flu, which she contracted during Broadcasts
tour of Australia.

Oh How I Miss You

Trish Keenan does not sing her feelings, but she does.
Her voice has that upright bearing, like an early telecast:
no emoting, no indulgence. Distant and one-note-persyllable, proper. But always, the sense shes there with
you, just through the screen, if you could reach her.

Anwen Crawford is a Sydney writer and a music critic for The Monthly.
Her essays have been published in Frieze, Meanjin, Overland and The
New Yorker. Her book Live Through This is published by Bloomsbury.

Images: Courtesy of Warp

warp.net

44

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MAKING

46

A SCENE
Caught up in the pink
commercialism of a womenonly running event, Catriona
Menzies-Pike considers a
feminist politics of running

47

ISLAND

n a cold night in early May, a Saturday, I

stood in a park with 6000 women. We were
all wearing the same dark pink singlet. As
we shivered under the bright lights, two
clowns in heavy jackets and winter beanies
bopped around on a stage and barked commendations
into microphones. Ladies, you all look so hot. You girls are
amazing. You got yourselves here tonight and thats a huge
achievement. Give yourselves a massive cheer! The party
music didnt stop for a beat. That particular shade of pink,
a late-night raspberry with a hint of blood, is one of my
favourite colours, and I resented having to share it with
so many people.
I was waiting to start the 2014 Nike-sponsored She
Runs The Night event in Sydneys Centennial Park, a
10-kilometre, women-only night run. The words She
Runs SYD were printed at nipple-height on our 6000
pink singlets: no one could possibly forget where we were
and why we were here. No event singlet, no run. Sorry
ladies, those are the rules. I had everything that it took
to fit in: a singlet, a gender identity and a willingness to
run 10 kilometres in the dark. If youve never mustered
with thousands of people at the start of a running race,
you wont be familiar with the encouragements that are
bellowed into these crowds. At She Runs the Night, the
script had been tweaked to suit women runners. All of
you at the back of the pack, give yourselves a huge cheer.
Lets hear it for the first-timers! Anyone here from out of
town? Come on, give them a cheer! And lets hear it for the
mums! Youve all made it to the starting line, so youre all
winners to me. Id run in scores of races, and should have
been used to this relentless bonhomie.
The beginning of any big run is intimate and slightly
awkward. Nervous strangers are squashed into a small
space to wait for the starting gun, sometimes for hours.
Its more common to gather in the early morning, close
enough to other runners to inspect their tan lines, tattoos, scars and scabs in the half-light. That May night
was unexpectedly cold, and the floodlights picked out
goosebumps on the women around me. Some hugged
themselves and jumped on the spot, others danced in
front of a friends camera or turned cartwheels under a
disco ball.
At this bright, noisy threshold, I had no hope of accessing the steady roaming headspace that I reach when running alone. Thats what I love most about running but
without races like She Runs on my calendar, Id probably
slack off on the training, even though I know how exhilarating it can be. And so, despite my ambivalence about
the crowds and the fuss and the motivational claptrap,
my running career has been almost entirely structured
by events.
You know, Im not really into sport, I recently
reminded a mate whod invited me to a cricket match.
Yes, you are, he said, youve got your running. If this
claim that I dont really fit in with the running scene
keeps me going, over the years Ive had to accept that its
not completely true. Ive grown used to the carnival of the
starting line. I wish I had a story to tell about running that

didnt involve goons with megaphones and party crowds.

I wish I didnt need a race looming to convince me to get
up early and go for a run but I do. And so I keep finding
myself in places like this, fighting the instinct to elbow
a path to the perimeter, beyond the range of the strobe
lights and the amp, and then to hop over the railings and
bolt home.
Id never run in a women-only event before and I
hoped that night to encounter something new at She
Runs. One aspect of the event was distinctive: it was pink.
Shockingly pink. Magenta, fluorescent pink, cutie-pie
baby pink, stripper pink, and every shade of princess
pink thats ever tinted a plastic hairclip. Pink neon lights
stretched over the stage. A floodlight swept through the
crowd, picking out shining, happy faces and pink, slippery shirts. Glowing tubes were bent around scaffolds as
if to convince us that the lights were held up by musk
sticks. Stalls selling shoes and sport drinks were festooned
with pink fairy lights. A tour de force of monochrome
branding. The starting line hadnt been sluiced with pink
only to dazzle and seduce us it effectively conscripted
every raspberry-singleted woman as an extra in the show.
Above us floated drones fitted with cameras, as if we were
performers in a song-and-dance spectacular.
Only runners were permitted in this pink arena, designated the event village. Supporters had been banished
to the other side of the barriers. An event village might
sound cosy, but really it was just a set of stalls, stages
and scaffolds standing in what the day before had been
an open patch of parkland. Security guards held the barricades, their nightclub schtick ludicrous: Pink singlet?
In you go. In spite of the party trappings, the village wasnt
a space of gleeful exclusion, one freed from the inhibitions and restrictions of everyday life. No, it was much
more like a tiny Swiss municipality, complete with service infrastructure and many rules: first-aid officers and
ambulances stood at the ready, and so did Nike sales reps.
Event officials in safety vests and ask-me-anything smiles
fielded questions about public toilets and water bottles.
Flashes and cheers ricocheted around the event village.
I must have been the only runner there who didnt post
a jubilant selfie on social media. A huge screen loomed
over the stage, and several more hung high from pink
meccano towers. The most impressive was the selfie
tower, its four faces representing the northern, southern,
eastern and western suburbs of Sydney. Four queues of
excited women and girls spiralled around this tower, new
communities created by running bodies. If their pics
were marked with the right hashtag, they were projected
onto one of the screens. Photos of women in pink singlets
scrolled by: Pymble girls, Shire girls, #northsidecrew,
Bondi legends, Bankstown legends, Penrith runners,
Katoomba runners, on it went. We want to hear you girls
make some noise when you see your selfie, said the hucksters with the microphones. Let everyone know youre
having the time of your life!
This was the third year that a She Runs event had
been held in Sydney; similar women-only night runs
stamped with Nike swooshes are held all over the world.
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MAKING A SCENE

What happened in the marketing meeting that turned a

running event into a glorified shoe sale? Maybe Id forgotten
how to have fun.
The emphasis is firmly on inclusion and participation,
rather than aggressive competition. You should totally
do it, friends told me, you love running. They were right
a night like She Runs should have been just my thing.
And yet, why did it have to be a reiteration of the thesis
that ladies love pink? What happened in the marketing
meeting that turned a running event into a glorified shoe
sale? Maybe Id forgotten how to have fun. But whod
made the decision to give a pair of sexist dirtbags the
microphone at a women-only event? I was irked by their
assurances that we were all beautiful and amazing and
really, really hot. I just wanted to get on with it.

I felt extremely foolish, but I kept going because I was

drawn to the idea of a women-only event. I wondered how
it might be different to run in this crowd. The magazine
hadnt given me much cause for optimism, but I hoped
that some shared experiences might not, for once, be left
unspoken. I cant remember exactly what I was anticipating. Breasts, bras, bleeding and babies? Hardly. Would an
avatar of essential womanhood or a feminist trailblazer
be called up to lead us on our way and inspire us to pick
up the pace? Maybe the organisers would be bold enough
to acknowledge the lived experiences of trans women.
I hoped, I suppose, that the event would at least be free of
catcalling and pervy bystanders.
I also hoped that the sense of uneasiness which so
many women feel when running in public spaces especially alone, especially after dark would somehow be
suspended. Running in the dark piqued my interest.
I would never run in Centennial Park on my own at
night. Years ago, I sometimes cut through the park on
my bike after midnight, taking a route home from the
pub that mostly wasnt illumined by streetlights. I was
more reckless then, and still it frightened me. Id grip the
handlebars tightly and stare into the short wan beam of
my headlight, hoping its batteries would hold out. I told
myself that possums were responsible for the shuffling
and grumbling in the bushes, and chastised myself for
not having taken the longer, well-lit path, even if there
were more cars and hills to deal with. Every time I left
the park at the Oxford Street gates, I exhaled the tension,
shrugged my shoulders, and resolved never to take that
path again.
On morning runs, I have occasionally followed a dirt
and sand track that hugs the perimeter of Centennial
Park, encountering only a few dog walkers and other
runners. Usually its spookily quiet, a surprising contrast
to the packed main paths of the park. Id be overstating
it if I said that Ive felt in peril on that sandy track in the
early morning, but I am acutely aware of my surroundings there. I get a jittery sense of confinement in sections
with a high fence on one side and high shrubs on the
other, and mild alarm strikes when the path is too twisty
and overgrown to give me a strong sense of who might
be approaching. Do I expect belligerent strangers to leap
out of the bushes? Perhaps. I grasp at the hope that Im fit
enough and fast enough to run away from anyone now
and that the park is full of friendly people. Whenever
another lone runner crosses my path, we exchange greetings, maybe a wave, and carry on. I still often find myself

The day hadnt begun auspiciously. It was raining when I

woke up. Big races require participants to pick up a race
pack in the week before the event: essentially showbags
that are packed with advertising guff, samples of new
products for amateur athletes maybe a sachet of sunscreen or a can of electrolytes as well as vital items such
as timing chips and, in this instance, the pink singlet.
Carrying a race pack around is a quick way to signal that
youre a runner. In six years of running, Id amassed a
pretty good collection of them. This time, however, Id
neglected to pick up my race pack and now, to retrieve it,
not only would I cop a scolding from irritated officials, Id
also get drenched.
Home and dry, I ate a late lunch and flicked through
the running magazine that had been shoved into the
pack, seeking some last-minute training advice. Be thin.
Be strong. Be sexy. Be in control. Do it your way. Let yourself lose control. Live a little. Have it all. Eat more carbs,
more protein. Top up on good fats. Love yourself, but dont
slack off. Watch out for avocados. Treat yourself sometimes.
Wonderfoods, superfoods. Five-minute ab revolutions.
New shoes might put the spring back in your step. Romance
at the gym. Free workouts. There were so many rules,
so many exceptions to the rules. I lacked the dexterity
to dodge the cuts and thrusts. And so, rolling my eyes,
I chucked the magazine at my recycling pile.
The rain finally stopped, and I marched through the
twilight to Centennial Park. Id been warned that the
event village gates would shut early if I didnt appear
on time, wearing my uniform, I wouldnt be allowed to
run. These are the injunctions delivered to schoolgirls,
not to grown women. Id layered up: running shorts
over leggings, a slippery long-sleeved shirt under my
pink singlet. Neither flattering nor comfortable, but
I knew that Id stay warm.
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powerful it is to fill dark streets with light and with

exuberant human bodies.
Ive still got a calico bag from a late-1990s Reclaim the
Night march, which now stores obsolete computer cables
and plugs. (If the She Runs carry bag lasts as long, Ill
be impressed.) The image on the speckled cream fabric is
printed in purple ink, of course. When I tip out the junk
and smooth the bag on the carpet, I see a woman with
Medusa dreads wearing a kaftan and playing a drum,
blissed out on the beast, her eyes closed. Next to her is
a woman with Gloria Steinem glasses, stripy pants and
a guitar. The Harbour Bridge grins in the background.
Theres also a ballerina, a woman in a wheelchair with
spiky hair and a choker, a woman in a daisy-printed
waistcoat with her hair cropped short. Everyone is
smiling and holding candles, and someone has brought
a confused-looking cat and dog to the party. You can
almost smell the Nag Champa in the air.
I have to be honest: the bag is an incredibly daggy
artefact from feminist history, all right-on hairy armpits,
bongos and menstrual dirges. The kind of clichs that I
think make young women who are invested in equal pay,
safety from violence, and reproductive rights tell journalists that they dont actually see themselves as feminists.
Markers of identity are rendered in thick, earnest strokes.
Its hard to detect any cultural diversity. I think the shorthaired women are supposed to be lesbians. In these
days of intersectional, trans-positive feminism, the bag
strikes me as a friendly but very unsophisticated map of
feminist community.
In the battle over visual identity, Nike clearly has the
upper hand. Everywhere I looked at She Runs, I saw slick
branding. Pink cranes held bright Nike swooshes aloft.
Cheerful PR assistants wore backpacks to which floating,
logo-printed balloons were tethered. There were long
queues for the enormous inflated trampoline, another
unmissable selfie opportunity. The night was a virtuoso
demonstration of the marketing sleight of hand that
turns participation into consumption. Every orifice was
designed to reassure participants that we were sexy, modern and cool. This women-only event wasnt a gathering
of unfuckable angry feminists it was an empowerment
extravaganza. I drafted lines for the twerps on stage:
Were not here for politics, were here to pa-a-arty.
As unstylish as they might have been, it was in earnest
and optimistic environments such as Reclaim the Night
that I formed my ideas about gender and politics. They
made me a feminist long before I was a runner. And so,
to me, efforts to separate one section of the community
women, say from the rest, whether for profit or protest,
are inherently political.
It bothered me that I didnt hear one word from that
pink stage about street safety, about how frightening
big parks can feel to women alone at night, how crowds
can share not just fun, but also solidarity. No one asked
questions about the category of woman or made gestures
of inclusion to trans women. If there was a welcome to
country that acknowledged Indigenous women, I missed
it. Not a word about sexual harassment, or income

Women running for any reason

other than to get out of trouble
is an extraordinarily recent
phenomenon not that youd
know it under the pink lights.
uncomfortable when alone in poorly lit, depthless places
like these. And thats why, in spite of all the pink neon,
I was excited to see the park full of people, to see the
space cordoned off for a safe communal activity.
Centennial Park is the largest urban park in Sydney.
When it opened in 1888, no one would have dreamed
that 6000 women might gather to run its circuit, let
alone in the dark. Women running for any reason other
than to get out of trouble is an extraordinarily recent
phenomenon not that youd know it under the pink
lights. Its a shock to discover that only a few decades
ago, a women-only distance run would have been highly
controversial. In fact, the history of running is shaped
by ancient anxieties about women on the move and
stern prohibitions on where they could go. The road
for todays women runners was first trodden by brave,
rebellious athletes a few generations older than me.
They broke rules and bothered race officials, sports commentators, their fathers, moralising tut-tutters, and many
other women. Now the objections that were, not so long
ago, raised to women running even 10 kilometres its
unladylike, it might affect fertility, it might stimulate
weight loss, its altogether silly sound preposterous.
She Runs is a very well-groomed and well-behaved culmination of this history. That I heard no one mention
the past was at least, I told myself, a sign that it had been
left behind.
The title She Runs the Night makes the event sound a
lot like another gathering of women, Reclaim the Night,
and its American sister, Take Back the Night. These
explicitly feminist events also involve women and girls
taking to public spaces after dark but marching down
streets, not running around parks, in the name of safety
for women. When I joined these marches in the late
1990s and early 2000s, they were lit with candles rather
than neon tubes.
Its thrilling to venture into public places that are normally decreed out of bounds. Protesters and runners both
get the chance to take over the roads on foot, sending
vehicles into exile. When I first ran in road races, I was
vividly reminded of the wonderful city views Id enjoyed
when protests took me off the footpath and onto the
bitumen. Familiar sights transform when viewed
from the centre of the road. Anyone whos been scared
walking home alone at night can understand how
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MAKING A SCENE

disparity, or domestic violence. What a downer that

would have been. It was just a group of women running
in a brightly lit park on a Saturday night, their menfolk
relegated to the sidelines. Everyone around me was
having a great time. Whats political about that?
Grumbling away in the crowd on my own, I didnt feel
like an edgy feminist critic, I felt like the odd one out.

distances. In providing a set of new stories about strength,

speed and resilience, the womens running movement
was a powerful repudiation of patriarchal claims about
womens bodies: one of the reasons why those guys on
stage, going on about how hot we were, got on my nerves.
Theres a big difference between access to safe, legal
abortion and being able to wear a pink singlet that identifies you as a paid-up entrant in a running race, but they
both involve women having a say about what our bodies
can do. Being able to run in parks without fear of molestation, whether thats to train for a marathon or to get a
bit fitter, is part of a bigger freedom to be safe in both
public and private places. The decision to run 10 or 20
or 40 kilometres is a recognition that our bodies are our
own, and that we can choose how far we run, whom we
sleep with, what we eat, whether or not to take a pregnancy to term, and how we might swing our arms and
legs to take us through our days.
All this might have seemed a bit heavy in that pink
arena, were it not that She Runs the Night sounds like
a feminist slogan, and the organisers were making us
wait out in the cold for what seemed an unnecessarily
long time.

When I tell people that women didnt run the Olympic

marathon before 1984, that women werent allowed to
run more than 800 metres at Olympic level until 1960,
theyre incredulous. Its such a tangible exhibit of sexism. But you run, they cry, even you! How could it be
that women werent even allowed to enter 10-kilometre
events? The natural order changes fast.
Women runners now enjoy a visible culture of participation and inclusion, and sponsors like Nike have played
an important role in promoting this. Theyve sold a lot
of shoes and shorts in whatever shade of tough pink
or assertive grey the season favours and, on the way,
theyve helped to normalise womens recreational running. When events like She Runs were first organised in
the early 1970s, most sports officials were digging in to
defend the idea that even elite female athletes shouldnt
run long distances.
The first official womens marathon took place in
1973, in West Germany, and the first international womens marathon was held there the following year. These
events utterly confounded the conventional wisdom
about women runners. As the 70s got underway, so did
women-only distance events such as the Crazylegs
Mini Marathon in New York in 1972, a 10-kilometre
run hosted by the New York City Marathon founder and
race director Fred Lebow. The event was named after the
sponsors product, a brand of shaving gel for women. The
Bonne Bell Mini Marathon series started in the United
States in 1977, another 10-kilometre event. By 1978,
the Avon International Womens Marathon Series was
underway too. Over the next eight years, 200 women-
only marathons were raced under the Avon banner in
27 countries.
That cosmetics companies the purveyors of shiny
lips and glossy pins were among the key enablers
of womens running seems a little less incongruous in
the girlie party zone at the starting line of She Runs.
Corporate
-sponsored, women-only events are now a
fixture of the running circuit and have fostered several
generations of women runners with the promise of safe,
hassle-free spaces to run.
Equal running rights for all isnt the catch-cry of a
politically radical movement. When women werent
allowed to run long distances in the late 1960s and early
70s, campaigners made a straightforward liberal case for
equal treatment. They werent trying to change the world;
they just wanted to run in it. That said, the campaign to
allow women access to the Olympic marathon played
out in parallel to broader feminist battles over the body.
Women wanted sexual freedom, reproductive freedom,
access to the workplace as well as the right to run long

We didnt all start to run at once. No, the women of She

Runs were to cross the starting line in orderly waves.
Wed been invited to seed ourselves according to how
long we thought it would take us to complete the course.
There was no need to rush or to push when our wave was
called, we were assured. We were all chipped, wed all be
individually timed, and anyway, this wasnt a race, it was
an event, and we were all participants, running with and
not against each other. As we waited, the runners in the
green wave were called to cheer for their group, and then
the red wave, then the purple, and so on. In this state
of perpetual encouragement, you might even let yourself
believe that a level playing field could yield equal outcomes. God forbid we see each other as competitors.
Id predicted a sedate time for myself but, even so,
I spent much more time waiting to start than I did
actually running. Training runs are nothing like this
its off and away, immediately. I watched the crowd as
I waited, and I wondered at its identities. What stories
might the people around me tell about their lives and
their running if I got them at the right moment? That
trio of 23-year-olds with matching pearl earrings, were
they schoolmates or had they grown into versions of
each other working together at a bar? I was too shy to
interrupt their giggling and ask, Why are you here? like
some shonky workshop convenor. Maybe they played
in a sports team together and decided this would be a
fun way to cap off the season. Maybe a friend had died
and they were raising money in her memory. And the
woman in her mid-forties with huge burnished muscles
wrapped round her arms and a full face of make-up,
what drew her to this race? One of the few loners I spotted, she looked like she could run a hundred kilometres
and wrestle a python. What did I know, maybe she managed a womens health centre.
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52

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In that crowd, there must have been mothers, lesbians,

rich women, poor women, trans women, single women,
women who ran 10 kilometres five times a week, and
women who hoped to run the distance for the first time.
Some must have been dragged there by friends or sisters.
There were probably a few who, like me, had fronted up
out of an intermingled sense of curiosity and gender
solidarity, a sense that if youre going to join any running
crowd, it might as well be a crowd of women. I was so
engrossed in these reflections that I jumped like a bird
when a young woman asked me to help her attach a
timing strip to her shoe.
Looking back, whats really amazing is that I had the
emotional energy to grumble about the usurpation of a
particular shade of pink by a corporation that I hadnt
blown it all on worrying about whether I could run
10 kilometres. Id become so used to running that I was
wondering how many in the crowd were single, instead of
flipping out about the distance. In my first races, a more
immediate self-absorption prevailed, and it still does
over longer distances. I worry about collapsing in knots
of muscle pain and dehydration, about tripping on my
shoelaces and being too tired to stop myself falling; I used
to worry about being able to finish the race.
I learned to calm myself down with the clichs about
individual endeavour that are the natural language of
amateur athletes. Just run your own race, I made my inner
coach say. Relax, enjoy the atmosphere and take your
time. Somehow I found a kind of confidence. I stopped
seeing myself as a hopeless case, an injury risk, a likely
drop-out, and started seeing myself as a runner. Running
transformed me from someone who was terrified of long
distances into a woman possessed of the happy certainty
she could run 10 kilometres and then walk home to complain about the pinkification of feminist politics.
How far is 10 kilometres? A lap of a typical sports
oval is 400 metres. To run 10 kilometres you need to
make it around that oval 25 times. At school, I hated
running around the oval more than any other activity;
then, I could have imagined no greater abjection than
long-distance running. To a super-fit endurance athlete,
10 kilometres is nothing. It isnt much of a training run.
To a natural athlete, possessed of good coordination and
enviable confidence, 10 kilometres is a manageable distance, one that doesnt require any particularly rigorous
training. To someone who doesnt run, its a hell of a
long way.
That night, I knew my legs could take me 10 kilometres, further if I wanted them to. I had planned a longer
solo run a day or two after the race, and could have run
10 kilometres anywhere in the city on that rainy Saturday.
I stayed because I wanted to find out what it was like to
run in a crowd of women. I stayed because these experiences of being in a mass of runners, even as they irritate
me, remind me of all the ways that my life has changed,
that even the most unlikely scenes can yield possibility.
Running has a way of dragging you into the present
moment of exertion. In those early races, when I was worrying about my calves seizing up, the attention I devoted

to the sensations between my knees and my ankles made

me forget about any other concerns I had to lug around.
At She Runs, the present moment was pink and loud and
bright, and as the shuffle toward the starting line finally
gave way to running, I relaxed into the fizz of the crowd.
The first half kilometre was a narrow chute tightly
packed with sharp elbows, along which I hopped and
skittered, looking for clear space to move. The course
widened, and we left the lights behind. In the darkness
I found a rhythm. I wriggled my toes to feel the bounce
as my feet left the ground. My heart rate picked up, and
the real warmth of movement flowed through my limbs.
As my shoulders loosened, I pulled my head up higher to
better take in the crowd.
Other women were realigning their bodies to fit into
the space, as pleased as I was finally to be moving. Was
it the reliable endorphin hit that made me smile at this
scene? If we had nothing else to share, we had the same
finish line in sight. I waved at the kids who were huddled
on the sidelines waiting for their mothers to pass by.
I got dizzy running through a stretch of the park lit by a
spinning disco ball, then was surprised by darkness at
one point, when I looked down, I couldnt quite make out
my feet. I slowed down and placed each foot carefully,
worried that I might trip over my shoes or skid on a
loose rock.
I ended where Id started, in the candy-cane event
village. This is how most running stories end, back at
the beginning. And yet, I carry with me and so does
everyone, I think, who crosses a finish line the sense
that something momentous has taken place. Running
through the final colonnade decked with Nike flags, I
heard someone blurt out a triumphant, Yes! It could
have been anyone. To finish a race, even slowly, even
under pink lights, even when you harbour no doubts
about being able to complete the distance, is a fine feeling. The run had lifted my mood but not enough for
me to join the awesome pink party. I cut a path across
a section of the park that hadnt been lit up, and when I
reached the gate, I turned back to watch the lights of that
one-night-only running utopia flicker, knowing that next
time I visited the park, all traces of the event would have
disappeared.

Catriona Menzies-Pike is Editor of The Sydney Review of Books, and

previously edited online sites New Matilda and The Conversation.
Shes taught literature, film, journalism and cultural studies, and
ran her first half-marathon in 2007. This is the first chapter of her
new book The Long Run (Affirm Press).
Image, opposite page: modified, based on a photograph by Ignacio,
Los Pies de Mercurio, 2009
Opening spread images: (all modified)
Top row, far right: flickr.com/hannahnicklin
2nd row, 3rd from left: flickr.com/jdbaskin
3rd row, 2nd from left: flickr.com/theqspeaks
3rd row, far right: flickr.com/juanedc
4th row, far left: flickr.com/photos/rorris
4th row, 3rd from left: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1986-0622-016 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
4th row, far right: flickr.com/81549999@N00
All remaining images public domain

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The Mitchell Memento

Delia Nicholls sheds light on the lives of two sisters in Tasmania

in the 1800s, through a scrapbook of words and sketches

n the early 1930s, Sarah Elizabeth Emma Mitchell

was in her late seventies, living near Swansea on
Tasmanias east coast, when she began compiling a scrapbook in remembrance of her older
sister Catherine (Kate) Penwarne Ball who died
in 1878 (aged 31 years) of hydatid disease, within a
year of marrying the Reverend John Aubrey Ball, of
Bright, Victoria.
From the age of 13, Sarah was a diligent diarist and
dozens of her small Letts Scribbling Journals are boxed
and stored in the temperature-controlled Rare Book
Room in the University of Tasmanias Special & Rare
Collections. Each finely handwritten, crosshatched
daily entry states the mundane facts of lives defined by
gender, family, position and opportunity. Each annotation is tightly written, revealing little of the desires and
concerns of SEEM as she referred to herself.

So this large, bulging, battered scrapbook encased

in a handmade and handpainted black canvas cover,
containing dozens of pen and pencil drawings, the occasional photograph, the curled locks of sister Catherines
fine blonde hair sewn onto a maroon satin ribbon, the
pressed remains of her wedding bouquet, the randomly
written explanations in Sarahs large, round, aged hand
tells two stories: Catherines illustrated recordings and
Sarahs retrospective written remembrances.
Its a poignant look into the life of the Mitchell family,
whose father John (181280) arrived in Tasmania in
1837, married his Cornish fiance Catherine Augusta
Keast (181299) in Hobart in 1839, spent time as superintendent of Point Puer boys prison at Port Arthur,
before buying Lisdillon a 7000-acre farm near Little
Swanport in sight of the now famous Freycinet Peninsula. Of their ten children, only Edwin Harry John, Mark
54

Redbanks property nearby, or threatening to pour hot

tea on two boys reportedly torturing a march fly.
Catherine is in most scenes in the scrapbook. While
its not unknown for artists to insert themselves into their
works, they often do so for a purpose a comment on
their situation at the time or as a self-portrait. But Catherines drawings of herself arent about self-portraiture
and for the most part, without the captioning by Sarah,
you would not realise who the woman is. Catherines not
particularly good at drawing people. While her style is
naive, she has an eye for action and narrative, but you
wonder if she rushed home after each event and drew
from memory, because it seems natural to assume if shes
in each scene, she wasnt standing aside sketching. But
perhaps she was.
Sarah writes that after Catherine died, John Mitchell
said he lost faith in the scriptures. He died three years
later. Sarah stayed on at their home caring for her
mother, who lived until 1899. Sarah died in Hobart in
1946 at 93 years of age. She continued writing her daily
entries until two years before she died, when she instead
dictated her thoughts to her niece.

Septimus, Sarah Elizabeth Emma, Amy Mary Jane and

Catherine Penwarne are portrayed in the scrapbook.
Three boys died at birth; two studied in England (where
Frederick died at 17, and Frank stayed on to work in the
public service); and two (Mark and Edwin) attended the
Horton School at Ross. The girls, of course, stayed at
home until they married or died.
We dont know when Catherine started drawing, but
Sarahs scrapbook includes a childlike drawing of a house,
dated 1860, that states: Worrels house Lisdillon, drawn
from Papas window, Kate. There are quite well-executed
pencil and watercolour copies of floral paintings, horses
and picturesque Roman ruins, done during her time at
Miss Griggs School in Melbourne in 1864, at 17 years.
Most entries include two drawings by Catherine on
the left-hand page and Sarahs written notes on the right.
Entry 91 tells the story of a celebration on 10 April 1873
for the hop feast at Lisdillon. Groups of people stand
in front of the stone house or on the doorstep, some
peer out of the casement window, while children and
adults dance. Handwritten by Sarah on the drawing: Mr
W. J. Lyne trying to show a quadrille. William John Lyne
(18441913) is in the top hat. When you google him you
discover the likeness is quite accurate in the simpleness
of Catherines drawing style. Lyne was born in Tasmania
and educated at Horton College. He went on to become
Premier of New South Wales and then Minister for
Home Affairs in Australias first federal parliament.
Entry 92, illustrated by Catherine in June 1874, is captioned by Sarah: Dear Kate and self going out sketching
with Caleb [the family Newfoundland dog] carrying
camp stools.
In each drawing dear Kate is always identified the
same way, whether shes cooking chops in a frying pan
during the hop festival, riding to meet or farewell family
and friends, picnicking at Mayfield Beach, or wading in
her long, full skirt across rivulets, attending a party at

Special & Rare Collections has secured funding from The Plomley
Foundation (Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston)
to digitise Sarahs scrapbook. It will be freely available to view or
download by the end of 2016.

Delia Nicholls is a research curator at the Museum of Old and

New Art (Mona) in Hobart. She is a member of the University of
Tasmanias Cultural Activities Advisory Council, providing external
expert advice on issues associated with cultural collections.
Photos by Remi Chauvin
Images courtesy of Special & Rare Collections, University of Tasmania

55

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56

THE MITCHELL MEMENTO

57

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58

In Defence of the Local Library

Ruth Quibell reflects on the value of our libraries,

and the challenges they face

y first local library didnt look like a

typical one. There were neither the classical columns that typically mark the
grand state libraries, nor the landscape
of native plants typical of their municipal Australian counterparts. It wasnt even filled with
natural light, from large windows overlooking a pond
with ducks. I doubt there was even the customary mosaic
sculpture by a community group. This first library was
a starker revelation. Surrounded by acres of car park, it
was housed at the entrance to a large concrete shopping
centre: the only truly public space in a Westfield temple
of commerce.
Not that this location bothered me. It is only in hindsight that the lack of genteel amenity seems odd. Within
this library with its fluorescent lights, under the benign
supervision of my much older teenage brother studying
nearby, I learned about the freedom to read for its own
sake. I learnt that I could take down hardback after hardback from those functional grey metal shelves, without
having to ask anyones permission or nag a parent to
spend money. I could simply, eagerly, silently move from
one book to another for as long as it took the other members of my family to do the shopping.
This hunger for stories isnt unusual. I see it on my
Sunday trips to the local library. The children, like my
ten-year-old, who are still reading as they walk out the
library door. In feeding this hunger, the library is playing a fundamental role in their development. Not only
is it fostering reading for enjoyment and aiding literacy
skills, it also provides the stock of stories to make sense

of the social world. Deprive children of stories and

you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their
actions as in their words, argues philosopher Alasdair
MacIntyre in After Virtue. Hence there is no way to give
us an understanding of any society, including our own,
except through the stock of stories which constitute its
initial dramatic resources.
There are many ways in which children can discover
stories, from books to movies, from stories told and
passed on to songs and rhymes. Libraries, with the guidance of skilled and trusted librarians, are particularly
liberating spaces within which children can make these
discoveries, somewhat independently and free from
financial constraints. In Australia, even with other story
options, the local library remains pivotal.
In most states and territories, more than four in every
ten people are members of one or more of Australias
1500 libraries. In 201314, there were 112 million visits
to local libraries and 171 million items borrowed by
8.6 million members. Sixteen per cent of these borrowers are junior members. But libraries arent only about
physical books. They are also, increasingly, providers of
public internet with, on average, almost five terminals
for every 10,000 people.
The public library system as writer Rebecca Solnit
described it in a recent radio interview, is one of the
great miracles and sometimes feels like the last democratic space left. But the outside world is pushing in on
this civic sanctuary. Even with such impressive numbers
of feet through the door and books out the door, there
are threats to the public librarys continuity. Politics and
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ISLAND

technology are, by turn, threatening and reshaping the

librarys future and form.
In Britain, the political austerity measures introduced
in response to the global economic downturn have bitten
hard into regional government budgets, with the search
for saving resulting in extensive library consolidations
and closures. Over 300 libraries have closed since 2011,
with further closures planned. While this might seem
unthinkable here, policy trends tend to spread south in
some form sooner or later. Funding is tight, observed
a 2012 Australian Library and Information Association
(ALIA) report, putting the future challenges in typical
bureaucratic-speak, and getting tighter as the flow-on
effects of international financial difficulties increasingly
impact the Australian economy and cause funding agencies to stay within or reduce current outlays. Even the
continuity of the National Library of Australias innovative online history and newspaper resource Trove, for
instance, is by no means assured in this funding climate.
Technology changes, meanwhile, pose their own challenges for the nature and provision of library resources.
Librarians, it should be recognised, are often at the cutting edge of developments in, and provision of, digital
collections. The potential for the delivery of stories and
books to electronic devices does not necessarily erase
the other needs met by a bricks and mortar library, such
as a physical, shared civic space to read, with tangible
books and experts. Technology enthusiasts tend to overlook the role of librarians in helping people access and
use this very technology, assuming technological as well
as functional literacy. Yet, we cant assume that digital
natives of the smart phone cohort can naturally take

Politics and technology are,

by turn, threatening and
reshaping the librarys future
and form.
advantage of these devices. In the first decade of smartphones, from 1996 to 2006, the percentage of 1524 year
olds with adequate or better prose literacy actually fell
6 per cent, from 59.1 per cent to 55.4 per cent, according
to ALIA.
This is not a comprehensive account of all that the
local library offers, and what is at risk. Some changes are
for the better. I do not miss the days of card catalogues
or microfiche. But if we value libraries, then it is vital
to recall what these spaces, physical and virtual, contribute to our lives, and be ready to defend and shape
them accordingly. The stories we tell about these places,
even the plain ones in shopping malls on the suburban
outskirts, might make all the difference.

Ruth Quibell is a sociologist and writer. She has written for The Age,
the Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC.
Images: Architectural Fragment, Petrus Spronk, courtesy of the State Library of Victoria

60

Limited
Edition
Book
As serialised in Island
Only 350 copies available
Individually numbered
The first 100 copies signed
by the author

Order now at
islandmag.com

Image: Chris Hamnett

61

Artwork: WH Chong

ISLAND

62

Another Level of Toughness

Sharene (not her real name) struggled with reading and

writing through school, higher education and work. Dyslexia

made it even harder for her to cope as an international student
and to achieve permanent residency. Finally, she is accessing
the help she needs, and tells her story in her own words

remember getting any help for reading or study even at

school. I was laughed at when I was making mistakes.
I felt rejected, and I didnt feel like part of the rest of
the class.
I came to a realisation at that time if I dont study
I wouldnt get anywhere. So I started working hard.
And though it took me time, I took the extra time to
read and I also found this book called How to Study
for Exams, so in there I found clues. Like listening to the
teachers, and realising that whatever the teacher is writing on the board are the most important facts so those
are the ones I should concentrate on. And I learned to
summarise things so that I dont need to keep on reading
lots and lots. So that I had most of my work in key points
and then try to remember the details from key points.
And then I tried to reduce my amount of reading and
writing in order to survive. Im really slow in my reading. And even if I read slowly, I sometimes still wont get
some of the words.
I also learned to listen more carefully, and from the
listening I learned different words. My vocabulary would
be developing, but I wouldnt know how to spell it.
So when a person speaks to me they think Oh wow, shes
amazing, but not really they dont know whats going
on behind the picture. Im like a sponge when it came

remember when I was in Grade 2 or 3, I remember not knowing alphabet, and not knowing how
it sounds. I was living in Thailand. I remember
struggling with English especially because it was
my second language, but that doesnt mean that I
didnt struggle in my own language. The older I got, it
was easier for me to pick up my own language because
I was speaking the language more often and it wasnt
fully reliant on reading, it was listening.
I really didnt like reading and writing especially
English. Even in my mother language I would change
letters around when I was writing and it would be a
totally different meaning. Even when I was doing maths,
if it was meant to be 23, I would write 32.
So up to Grade 9, I had failed my way through.
Its from that point that things improved. It was my
maths teacher. He realised that I was good at visualising.
When it came to geometry I got full marks. I wouldnt
be good at anything else except that particular piece of
work. I was also good at drawing. Not great, but good.
It kind of helped me to get over the frustration, and to
realise that I do have a skill that I could work on.
At school I was a loner. Till my teens I really didnt
care about my studies, simply because I felt like a failure.
And I felt like I wasnt as smart as everyone else. I cant
63

ISLAND

And then I went to the TAFE and asked for help. And they told
me that I had to be diagnosed for it. And thats when I first
found out what dyslexia is.
to listening. And I used to remember all the idioms and
whatever I could gather. It would come from my listening.
So I came to Australia when I was 19 and started doing
my diploma in information technology (IT), and my flatmate started noticing me doing really strange things. The
way I leave things behind; and I would forget things and
she started questioning me as to what was happening.
And then, she saw my handeye coordination was not
that great either. So she asked Do you struggle in your
study work? I said, Yes, Ive always had trouble reading
and writing. And then I went to the TAFE and asked
for help. And they told me that I had to be diagnosed
for it. And thats when I first found out what dyslexia is.
I didnt get help because I was an international student.
All I could get was extra time.
It was helpful that IT was more logical and everything is structured, and it was all binary and zeros and
ones, and if its not this, its that there was no grey.
And that helped me do the programming and understand different languages and how they are structured.
When I moved on to the university, it was more work.
And when I showed them my diagnosis I was told to go
here, there, to get help, but I didnt get help.
That first year I failed all of my subjects. And I didnt
have any friends either, and I decided to go to a different
university, because my friends from TAFE were there.
So they had to give me another chance to do university and it was to do the degree in computer science.
At first I struggled and then, again, I didnt get help.
So I did the same things that I did at TAFE, like writing
notes from the blackboard. Highlighting was helpful
for me. To remember.
So, I came to the end of my university. I did well, the
last couple of years. And I was even good enough to get
a scholarship that was more in web designing, so it was
more graphical. And eventually I started working with
clients in a software company.
I guess another level of toughness came into that
because it meant reading lots and lots and lots of
paper regarding their software and how it works.
And at first I was told that I would be given someone like a mentor but that didnt come about.
Because I didnt tell them about my dyslexia at all.
Because before this point I had been shunned even
though I said Hey, this is going on, help me, it was
constantly No no no no no and nothing happened.
So I was working and I was reading all this work and
I found it really hard. And I found it draining. Everyday

I would go home and I dont feel like doing anything else

because I dont have energy.
At that point I was applying for my permanent residency and I also had to pass the IELTS exam, an
English exam. I was getting good marks for the speech
and listening side of things, but writing and reading,
always somehow I havent done well in that exam.
So I did it three or four times, that exam. So that means
I didnt have permanent residency also.
I gave them the diagnosis that was done when I was
21. They said Oh, thats too old, you need to get one
done now. By this time I was 28. So once again I went to
get the assessment done. In the assessment it mentions
that I havent got my permanent residency and that I am
trying with this exam. And when I gave them that piece
of paper, my work came back and said Oh, you never
told us that you are not a permanent resident.
Eventually, I passed that exam. But it was too late.
So I had to go back to Thailand and apply for a permanent residency to come back to Australia. That kind of
set me back a couple of years.
When I came back two years later, I was a permanent
resident. My first thing was to survive and find a job.
So I started working in a takeaway shop, then eventually
in the aged care industry.
I had the same problem in this industry, struggling to
read and write quickly as everyone else. I struggled to
quickly read client care plans and realise exactly what
was needed. So the way I survived was to get on the
phone to the case manager so I would know the background knowledge without having to read all that.
So it did get better, but still I was so tired coming
home. The days were a lot of organising. There were
more than 1000 clients and every person is different
and you need to remember those details when you are
handling them, so it was emotionally and physically and
mentally draining.
And it was more draining because I was trying to read
all these things and write all the details. There were many
times that I actually wrote the wrong date. Thank God
the carers called me up and said By the way, Sharene, did
you mean this?, and I said Oh yes, Im so sorry and then
I was able to fix it. I thought Oh my God, I cant rely on
myself to write the date properly. Or sometimes I would
be writing a different name because there are surnames
that sound the same and I would get the wrong person.
So the amount of times that I had to clarify and confirm
was more than a normal person.
64

ANOTHER LEVEL OF TOUGHNESS

I try not to say a lot because I dont want to sound dumb.

And I know I dont say point of views because I dont
want to be laughed at. I remember one of my managers
telling me that I was shy. And I thought No, you dont
know me, its just that I dont want to come out feeling
like a stupid person.
When I was at work, I never felt like I was part of it.
I still carry that doing-things-alone personality. It doesnt
mean that Im not good at team-working, its just me.
Its harder for me to connect with people. And I think
thats influences from my childhood.

This was making me depressed and eventually I just

broke down. And I did move away from the coordinating position to part-time administration, but I think
I made it worse for myself by going to admin because
that meant more reading and writing and making sure
everything is in order.
And it just snowballed. And I was never able to get on
top of things. And my manager questioned it Why was
I struggling? Was it because I didnt want to be there?
It wasnt the case; it was the fact that I was struggling
with the disability. And once again I didnt tell them
that I had dyslexia. Only after getting sick a depressive
episode. By the time I told them it was too late, and I was
struggling with depression and the dyslexia.
I left my job and moved to Hobart to recover. I was
able to access a supportive non-government organisation, and from that I was able to access speech pathology
help. See, all this time, I wish somebody would have told
me even when I was getting diagnosed I was told that I
could get someone to teach me, but I wasnt able to access
that. It wasnt clear and I wasnt given good instructions
as to how to go about doing it. And also, I had to think
about the financial side of things. Its not accessible for all
people to get speech pathology easily.

Sharenes story came to Island via Rosalie Rosie Martin.

Rosie is a speech pathologist at Chatter Matters Tasmania, a
charitable organisation building awareness and skill in human
communication, language, literacy and positive relatedness.
chattermatters.com.au
Image: Untitled #4, Chris Hamnett, 2014, acrylic and oil on canvas, 183cm x 152cm
chris.hamnett@gmail.com

65

Are We Really
So Selfish?
James Boyce asks whether

very old stories about human

nature might underpin
policy on climate change

or Western democracies to effectively address

climate change, decision-makers will need
to transcend deeply ingrained perspectives
about what can realistically be achieved given
human nature. In a rapidly warming planet,
it is no longer pragmatic but dangerous to assume that
people will not accept any policy that impacts too much
on their own interests. Even the most ambitious realistic program leaves our privileged civilisation in peril.
Few politicians will have thought much about where
their ideas of reality come from. They have, like the rest
of us, absorbed ancestral norms that are perceived not as
propositions but as common sense.
Most people assume that the modern understanding
of human beings reflects the rational thought that freed
Western culture from the chains of superstitious religion.
But what if the origins of some of our assumptions such
as the assumption that we cannot take radical action to
address climate change because human nature mandates
that people will never accept the required level of sacrifice have more to do with religion than rationalism?
Until the Enlightenment, everyone in the West,
be they peasants, philosophers, priests or politicians,
employed Christian concepts when discussing human
existence. Underpinning more than a thousand years of
discussion about human behaviour was a doctrine that
taught that every person had inherited the sin of Adam
and was born with a depraved nature innately inclined
to sin.
Although the rational philosophers of the 18th
century were mostly Christian, they were united in their
ridicule of a dogma which condemned people for the
misdeeds of a primeval ancestor. Charles Darwin, thank
God, completed their project.
There is no longer any serious argument about the
truth of evolution or the barbarity of seeing a newborn
baby as a sinner. But decades of anthropological and
sociological study have also shown that the influence of

66

a cultural inheritance does not end when people change

their minds about its truth or morality. So pervasive is
the influence of inherited culture that it should not be
surprising that the idea that human beings are essentially selfish creatures inclined by our nature to be primarily concerned with our own interests has continued
to be expressed by thinkers who scorn belief in God
Sigmund Freud and Richard Dawkins notable among
them.
I am often told that the most obvious explanation
for the endurance of this depressing view of humanity
is because it is the reality. Certainly there can be no
argument with the extent of suffering and selfishness in
both the past and the present. But it is equally true that
the countless acts of self-sacrifice and compassion that
have sustained all communities are the subject of few
history books or news bulletins. Brutality, greed, cruelty
and the promotion of vested interests have always been
widespread, but the very sustainability of human society
suggests that such behaviour has not been the dominant
story.
There is a bias to sin in how we tell stories of the
past, interpret the present and understand the narrative
of our lives. One cause of this is the inherent modesty
of goodness. Recently I had a brief chat with a woman
in her mid-eighties who every Monday cooks, with a
woman in her late seventies, a three-course meal for
whoever would like a feed. Their table is an open one:
no one is paid, no program funding is received, no one is
defined as client or customer. I asked how it was going.
Sixty people had come to lunch the previous week.
Other folk cook from Tuesday to Friday ensuring a hidden banquet for the homeless. This hospitality proceeds
without notice and with almost no external recognition.
It is part of an underground of caring that finds expression even in the most forlorn refugee camp.
Even less visible is the daily grind of love that goes
on behind closed doors. I know of an Italian historian
who spent years trying to write a history of humanity
from the perspective of the pervasiveness of loving selfsacrifice. It proved to be an impossible task because all
the countless acts of caring, without which no child
could be raised nor human community sustained, have
left such a movingly small documentary record.
I myself spent three years writing a history about how
Western culture has understood what it means to be a
human being, but such were the constraints I faced, and
the limits of my ability to transcend them, that I am not
sure that I even managed to clarify the most important
question of all: how has our culture understood the
essence of humanity? To believe that human beings are,
at our deepest core, good, is not to deny the destructiveness of other dimensions of being, but to affirm that
what is destructive can be defeated because it is not the
ultimate reality. Marx held this position as rigorously
as St John.
A dissenting stream of Christianity (which predominated in the Eastern or Orthodox tradition) and most
liberal secular thought have long emphasised the innate

It is the tradition of unlimited

hope, secular and spiritual,
that we need to draw on to
address climate change.

goodness of human beings. At their best, these traditions

have not ignored humanitys capacity for cruelty but
sought to face this directly through exposing injustice,
acknowledging mistakes and confronting the selfserving structures of power. They have held passionately
to the hope that the hidden goodness of human beings
remains ready to be revealed. The problem is that no
scientist, philosopher or historian can define this core.
If only faith was that simple.
The fact is that there has never been only one Western story of what it means to be human; never just one
understanding of the true reality of our nature. It is the
tradition of unlimited hope, secular and spiritual, that we
need to draw on to address climate change. This does not
mean ignoring the power of vested interests or the limits
of being human, but means fiercely upholding our right
to define ourselves. We need to make it clear to those
who purport to represent us that we are not the innately
selfish creatures most of them are currently assuming
us to be. Our capacity to influence the political debate
over the future of the planet rests on a foundation that
can never be taken away. Neither Cabinet nor coal-mine
owners have the power to decide what we human beings
really are.

James Boyce is the author of Born Bad (Black Inc., 2014),

1835 (Black Inc., 2011) and Van Diemens Land (Black Inc., 2008).
He lives in Tasmania.
Image: Two Mercenaries and a Woman with Death in a Tree,
Urs Graf, 1524, woodcut

67

ISLAND

Stupid Idiots
Damon Young argues for more artful political insults

f all the disappointments falling from

the low-hanging piata of Australian
politics, the most banal are the insults.
From the snarling sexism of ditch the
witch it rhymes, so it must be true and
clever to the clumsy class analysis of spiv, we are making
a graveyard of slurs. Mark Latham offered the occasional
zinger-like conga line of suckholes, but his recent
diatribes are less like witty ripostes and more like midnight texts from a jilted lover after major surgery.
Putting aside the political professionals and pundits,
more disillusioning are the oh-so-average fusillades from
social media and casual conversation. Not sad because
they are mean (see what I did there), but because their
standards are so low. Wanker, moron, fuckwit, loser the
epithets often express contempt and little else.
The point is not that contempt is inappropriate it
takes a cruel bastard, for example, to endorse indefinite
detention of children but that it is inarticulate. It turns
political debate into a stalemated contest of equally
intense and unpersuasive smears. Perhaps this is apt,
working well with a democracy that is becoming, as
philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis put it, a society of
lobbies and hobbies: competing special interest consortiums, and privative individuals.
Nonetheless, the misery of things is no mandate
for giving up. My humble contribution here is to offer
a couple of choice political insults, together with an
explanation of their worth. If not for immediate circulation as slights, then at least as a small investment in an
ongoing debate among people who are not manic ideologues or venal parasites.
Idiot is an insult with a long history, arising in classical
Greece. It comes from , or idiotes. The idiot was a
man withdrawn from the polis, the political community,
and had a chiefly private agenda. When praising Athens,
the statesman Pericles said: Even those who are mostly
occupied with their own business are extremely well
-informed on general politics. But those who were
altogether aloof from affairs of state were alien to him.
We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics
is a man who minds his own business, he continued, we
say that he has no business here at all.
This partly involved free Athenians disdain for the

uneducated, still called idiotis in Wycliffes early bible

some 18 centuries later. But it could also be a rightful suspicion of apolitical flight. Not blaming the marginalised
for their exclusion, but criticising those who forsook their
liberty for hedonism or wealth. In this sense, to choose
idiocy is not necessarily to lack intelligence, but to give
up on political maturity. Idiots resist the very basic recognition that politics involves negotiation with antagonistic
others, about some common concern.
It is reasonable and illuminating to describe policies
as idiotic that promote privative individualism; and
citizens as idiots who view politics in selfish terms.
In fact, it would even be idiotic to focus solely on these
citizens, without recognising the forces that encourage
their withdrawal. This is because idiocy is not confined
to a mercenary few. It is a permanent feature of all animal
existence. To live is to be susceptible to egotism; to protect
oneself like a wounded or starving creature. The ideal is to
resist this tendency, without giving up on individuation:
becoming adults, who deploy their agency with due
concern for others.
Another common insult is stupid. Again, this usually
suggests cognitive slackness. But the words Latin origins
are richer, from stupere, meaning literally to stun with a
blow think of a stupor. The stupidus was, in Roman
mime, the fall-down guy who was beaten for laughter. In
English, stupidity has connoted numbness, paralysis, lack
of vitality and animation, as well as intellectual feebleness.
Alexander Pope, in his translation of Ovids Sappho to
Phaon, wrote of Sapphos grief: No sigh to rise, no tear
had powr to flow; Fixd in a stupid lethargy of woe.
What attracts me to this insult is the intimation of
torpor; of once-vital things succumbing to inertia.
What makes someone stupid, in this sense, is not their
lack of knowledge, but the way knowledge becomes sluggish, stubborn and dangerous in their care. They ossify
the living; they turn what was flowing into toxic sludge.
If beliefs are, as David Hume pointed out, merely ideas
we feel strongly about, then stupidity is when this feeling
is enough.
The point is not that we can radically question every
idea at once even to do this, certain ideas have to be
assumed (like questioning, ideas, and so on). As Ludwig
Wittgenstein put it in On Certainty, if I want the door to
68

turn, the hinges must stay put. The point is that stupidity
is when we have a chance to reflect, analyse, criticise and
fail due to laziness, distraction or rabid-dog passion.
Imagine, then, these two tendencies coming together.
Elected representatives hauling around the stuffed
baggage of prejudice, while electors look the other way.
Problem-solving becomes impossible, since the problems
dont exist, or are always someone elses.
Witness debates about Australian housing, in which
poor and marginalised renters are often invisible.
The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute
reports that more than 60 per cent of all long-term,
low-income private renters are in so-called rental stress,
which is demonstrably harmful: health and wellbeing
drop with consistently inadequate, insecure shelter.
Yet when treasurer Scott Morrison discusses negative
gearing reform, the mum and dad investors are his
sympathetic battlers. Those without the capital to afford

a mortgage simply do not exist in the conversation or

they are seen as what his predecessor called leaners.
Meanwhile, property investors complain that Labors
proposals will leave them out of pocket, as if the national
consequences of their welfare are neither here nor there.
This logic sows dismal crops for climate change, immigration, gender equality, Indigenous health. Democracy
fails its most vulnerable when idiotic citizens reward
leaders for stupidity and vice versa.
Damon Young is a philosopher and writer. He is the author of Distraction
(2008), Philosophy in the Garden (2012), How to Think about Exercise
(2014) and The Art of Reading (2016). He writes for newspapers, and is
a frequent radio guest on the ABC. Damon has also published poetry,
short fiction and the popular childrens picture books My Nanna Is a Ninja
(2014), My Pop Is a Pirate (2015) and My Sister is a Superhero (2016).
damonyoung.com.au
Image: The Orator (Der Redner), Ferdinand Hodler, 1912

69

Francis X McVeigh (19001948?)

Ryan ONeill
We must take the billy off the boil. We must put a bullet
through the head of The Loaded Dog. The Snowy River
must be dammed, and the Overflow liquidated.
From McVeighs 1931 speech to the
Conference of Australian Communist Writers

rancis Xavier McVeigh union leader, Communist Party member, pamphleteer, and novelist was born on 31 December 1900 at his
parents farm on the outskirts of Toowoomba,
Queensland. He was a month premature, and
was not expected to survive more than a day or two, but
Francis continued to live, though not thrive. He was
later to write that he had come early so as not to be born
an Australian, as the country became a commonwealth
the day after his birth. Francis was the fourth child, and
only son, of Ambrose and Catherine McVeigh, who had
emigrated from Scotland in 1895. Ambrose had been a
schoolteacher in Hawick, and having lost his job because
of his radical politics, had come to Australia in the hope
it would prove a more egalitarian society than Great Britain. Catherine was an illiterate farmers daughter from
Aberdeen who Ambrose married after she fell pregnant.
For all his socialist principles, Ambrose felt his wife to be
beneath him, and theirs was not a happy union.
Francis was a sickly child, and therefore exempt from
the strenuous work of running a farm. He was bedridden for months at a time, and he spent his days reading
and rereading the books his father owned: the novels of
Emile Zola, the collected works of John Stuart Mill, and
The Communist Manifesto. In a speech to the Union of
Australian Printers in 1935, McVeigh claimed that he
had memorised Marx and Engelss pamphlet by the time
he was six. But in a letter to Katharine Susannah Prichard in 1932 he confessed:

The McVeigh farm was not a success. Though Ambrose

worked hard, he had little knowledge of farming outside
of that drawn from some old textbooks on animal husbandry he had bought in Toowoomba, and he refused
to listen to his wife, who had grown up on a property.
Catherine worshipped her young son; he resembled
her in his bright red hair and quiet ways. The friendless
woman could not help confiding in him how miserable
she was, and how Ambrose McVeigh mistreated her,
all confidences Francis secretly reported to his father.
By the outbreak of the Great War the family had lost their
farm and had moved to Spring Hill, a suburb of Brisbane.
Ambrose was unable to find employment, and they were
reduced to living off the charity of the Catholic Church.
Ambroses radical beliefs did not extend to religion, and
in November 1914, encouraged by the parish priest, he
enlisted in the army, telling his son that he could not
allow his family to starve. The money Ambrose McVeigh
sent home after enlisting was sufficient, barely, for his
family to keep body and soul together. Franciss mother
and three sisters found employment in factories, and
Francis became a telegram boy. His health flourished
with the exercise and fresh air, though in the first months
of the job he was haunted by the faces of the women to
whom he delivered pink telegrams, signalling the death
of a loved one. After a year he was hardened enough that
he lingered on the doorsteps of the devastated families,
waiting patiently for his tip.
One day in May 1917, the last of the telegrams Francis
had to carry was addressed to his mother; Ambrose had
been killed in France. Instead of delivering the telegram,
Francis McVeigh rode his bicycle to the local Catholic
church, and smashed every window. He was arrested
and jailed for two weeks, and his first act upon release
was to join the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical
union calling for an end to the war. He took part in many

Would you believe I never read the manifesto till I

was 15? The first time I tried, I was five, and the opening
line A spectre is haunting Europe the spectre of Communism terrified me so much I had nightmares for the
next six months. Every night I would wake up sobbing,
Its coming to get me! The comnism [sic] is coming!
71

ISLAND

anti-war demonstrations organised by the IWW or the

Wobblies as they were known. The earliest known photograph of McVeigh is of a protest that appeared on the
front page of the Brisbane Echo of 14 August 1917. Francis McVeigh, thin and bespectacled, can just be made
out on the far left of the crowd holding up a cardboard
sign on which was printed, War Profiteers Killed My
Da. McVeigh held to this belief throughout his life, even
on hearing after the war from a soldier in his fathers
brigade that Ambrose McVeigh had died from syphilis
contracted from a prostitute in Cairo, for which he had
been too ashamed to seek treatment.
In late 1917 McVeigh volunteered to deliver copies of
the IWWs newspaper, The Clarion, which he would study
from front to back each night before he went to sleep.
He submitted articles to the newspaper, and after a
few false starts his first published work appeared on
14 December 1917. The article was a celebration of the
recent October Revolution in Russia, concluding with
an open invitation to Comrade Trotsky, hero of the
proletariat to visit Australia. McVeigh wrote hundreds
of thousands of words for the union newspaper over the
next three years, calling for higher wages, better conditions for workers, and a general strike. When he submitted a column advocating armed insurrection against the
NSW government, The Clarion refused to print it, fearing reprisals from the authorities. Disgusted, McVeigh
resigned from the IWW in 1920 and later that year
became one of the founding members of the Australian
Communist Party, at the same time being appointed its
Director of Literature. In his new station McVeigh grew
ashamed of his mother and sisters, who he thought of
privately as peasants. After sending them a one-off sum
of ten pounds, he disowned them.
Over the next two decades as the Communist
Partys Director of Literature, McVeigh was instrumental
in bringing dozens of Australian writers into the fold,
including John Morrison, Judah Waten, Frank Hardy
and Sydney Steele. Such was his influence that some
writers would only publish their work after McVeigh,
and by extension the party, had approved it. McVeighs
condemnation of Sydney Steeles unfinished novel
English Eucalyptus as bourgeois filth in 1924 led to the
writer destroying the only known manuscript of the
book that Steeles friend, Irish writer James Joyce, had
considered even in its incomplete state a masterpiece.
As well as encouraging others to toe the party line,
McVeigh himself wrote over 250 pamphlets criticising
various aspects of Australian literature, cultivating a
reputation as a controversialist. Among his most incendiary works are The Kulaks Wife: On the Class Traitor
Henry Lawson, The Forgetting of Wisdom: The Bourgeois Australian Education System, and the utopian Pa
and Pete On Our Collective Farm (all published 1926).
McVeighs position was secured in a purge of the party
by the Communist International (Comintern) in 1927.
The purge had been initiated a year earlier, when
McVeigh sent to Moscow the detailed files he had compiled on his comrades. McVeigh further consolidated his

importance to the party with the publication of a short

story collection, The Red Flag (1928), which envisages an
Australia that has been collectivised and industrialised
along the Soviet model. The stories feature plain-speaking, proletarian heroes who spend pages discussing
Marxist dialectics, even when in the throes of a passionate affair with a member of the intelligentsia:
Make love to me, the propertied woman begged Jones.
Give me your child!
The mechanic sneered at her. Pah! You and your husband are bourgeois. You produce nothing. You live on the
sweat of others. Even your name is decadent. Vivian!
Yes, I am bourgeois, I am decadent. Liquidate me!
He kissed her violently, and threw her onto his cot.
You are ignorant! he said.
Then teach me.
As Marx said, relations of personal dependence
are the first social forms in which human productive
capacity develops only to a slight extent and at isolated
points. Personal independence founded on objective
dependence is the second great form, in which a system
of general social metabolism, of universal relations, of
all-round needs and universal capacities is formed for
the first time. Free individuality, based on the universal
development of individuals and on their subordination
of their communal, social productivity as their social
wealth, is the third stage.
Im yours! she cried, drawing him down to her.

The success of the collection, which spawned a host

of similar works by Australian left-wing writers, was
assured by a sycophantic review in Pravda. Conservative
critics in McVeighs own country predictably dismissed
The Red Flag as being an almost unreadable instance of
the Soviet Boy Meets Tractor, Tractor Breaks Down, Boy
Repairs Tractor school of fiction.
In 1929 the Russian translation of The Red Flag came
to the attention of Maxim Gorky, who had been personally tasked by Stalin to promote the budding literary
form of socialist realism. Gorky recognised McVeighs
work as a shining example of this new form, and invited
the writer to visit Moscow. McVeigh left Australia for
Russia in April 1930, and spent the rest of the year there.
During his visit he met notable Soviet writers including
Mikhail Sholokhov, Fyodor Gladkov and Andrei Platonov, few of whom would survive the terror of the next
few years. McVeigh was also present at Gorkys house,
along with 40 other writers from Russia, Germany, Great
Britain and France, in September 1930 when Stalin
paid a visit. The General Secretary of the Communist
Party toasted the assembled authors as engineers of
the soul, and instructed them to only write stories that
would encourage world revolution. Each of the Russian
writers in turn toasted Stalin, as did McVeigh, though he
didnt speak the language, and his translator had a great
deal of trouble understanding his Australian accent.
A photograph taken at the party, which shows McVeigh
raising his glass to a mystified Stalin as Gorky looks on
72

FRANCIS X McVEIGH

realism to Australia was reprinted in full in The Australian Worker, but condemned in other national newspapers. McVeighs opening words deriding Australias
literary tradition resulted in Iain Harkaway, the federal
Member of Parliament for Lyne, NSW calling for him to
be charged with treason. Taking advantage of the controversy, the Comintern made unlimited funds available to
McVeigh to advance the cause of Communist literature
in Australia. With this money, McVeigh established
Steelman Press in July 1933, leasing a large office in
Kings Cross and hiring dozens of staff, including several
pretty, young secretaries.
McVeigh had been galvanised by the successful
implementation of five-year plans in the Soviet economy,
and saw no reason why such a plan could not be used
for literature. He set a target of one million words to be
published by the Press in five years, and the target was
exceeded by over 300 per cent. Steelman Press brought
out hundreds of socialist-realist novels, as well as providing generous grants to Communist writers including Eleanor Dark and Katharine Susannah Prichard.
Though always well reviewed by McVeigh in his regular
column in The Australian Worker, the novels were boycotted by most other reviewers and literary critics, and
all were published at a loss. Rumours circulated that a
sizable slice of the Comintern funding was being used by

with a nervous smile, was published in the 1930 Soviet

Literature Yearbook and later reprinted on the front page
of The Australian Worker on McVeighs return from
Moscow in 1931.
During his stay in Russia, McVeigh was shown
the wonders of Communism, including a tour of the
White Sea Baltic Canal, then under construction,
which depended on the forced labour of nearly 100,000
enemies of the people. The experience made a strong
impression on the Australian. On returning to Moscow
he wrote a detailed memorandum for his hosts suggesting numerous ways the efficiency of the prisoners might
be increased. McVeigh included the formal letter of
thanks from the Committee for Patriotic Works in his
memoir of the trip, Home is the Worker (1933), which
categorically refuted the reports of horrific cruelty and
death in the USSR. His long essay in praise of the project

(On the Rehabilitation of Counterrevolutionaries Through Hard Yakka) appeared in
Stalin White Sea Baltic Canal (1934) alongside work by
Gorky, Aleksey Tolstoy and others.
Upon arriving back in Sydney in June 1931, McVeigh
called a general meeting of the Australian Communist Writers, a sub-branch of the party. His five-hour
harangue on the urgent necessity of bringing socialist
73

ISLAND

McVeigh to buy the silence of secretaries, whom he was

in the habit of seducing and then sacking.
In the years before the outbreak of the Second World
War, McVeighs rhetoric was primarily directed towards
attacking Adolf Hitler, and defending the Moscow Trials
of 1936 to 1938. In his columns he also condemned the
right-wing science fiction writer Rand Washingtons
short stories and novels as exemplifying the Nazification of Australian literature. McVeigh continued to
denounce Washington, and his bestial overlord, Hitler
in speeches at Communist Party rallies throughout 1937
and 1938 and in a book of anti-Nazi essays, The Black
and the Red, in which he argued the most implacable
enemy of fascism was not capitalism, but Communism.
The Black and the Red went to press on 22 August 1939,
the day before the signing of the MolotovRibbentrop
pact which guaranteed non-aggression between Germany and the USSR. When McVeigh heard the news,
he commandeered a car and raced round Sydneys
bookshops buying every copy of The Black and the Red
he could lay his hands on. By late afternoon he had
accounted for the last copy of the book, which he added to
the others and burned along with the printing plates. His
article for The Australian Worker the next day included a
denunciation of the actions of Great Britain and France
which had drawn Australia into an imperialist war, and
a review of Rand Washingtons new novel, Jackboots on
Cor, which McVeigh called a magnum opus of science
fiction. Steelman Press later commissioned a novel by
Washington, Whiteman of Mars (1940), in which Washingtons hero, Buck Whiteman, and the Shevikibol, the
intrepid ant-like inhabitants of the red planet, agree to
respect each others cosmic borders after almost being
tricked into war by the dastardly Argobolin.
In the early months of the Second World War, McVeigh
returned to pamphleteering, writing a number of inflammatory works encouraging the members of trade unions
such as the Miners Federation and the Organisation of
Waterfront Workers to go on strike. After the invasion
of Russia by Germany on 22 June 1941, McVeighs
newspaper column advocated the arrest and execution
of these same union members as fascist stooges who
had deliberately sabotaged the war effort against the
Nazis. In January 1944, the Comintern, dissatisfied with
Steelman Press and perturbed by gossip about McVeighs
sexual improprieties, withdrew funding and the company was allowed to fold. A brief, blunt article in Pravda
hinted darkly that sabotage was to blame. McVeigh was
quick to respond, denouncing the wreckers by name.
Sydney Steele and Irene Young, the daughter of poet
Matilda Young, were among the dozen party members
employed by the Press who were expelled for counterrevolutionary activities, which included a conspiracy to
destroy McVeigh himself by spreading base, unfounded
rumours about his private life.
Throughout the remainder of the war years, McVeigh
sought to repair the damage the failure of Steelman
Press had caused to his standing in the party by using
his column in The Australian Worker to extol the gallant

victories of the Russian armed forces, and the almost

supernatural genius of Stalins military leadership. In
1945 McVeigh saw an opportunity to curry favour with
the Comintern when Berkeley and Hunt announced
their plans to publish George Orwells anti-communist
fable Animal Farm in November of that year. Using his
influence with the Union of Printers, McVeigh threatened
the publishers with a strike if they went ahead. Thanks
to McVeighs efforts, Berkeley and Hunt capitulated, and
Animal Farm did not appear in Australia until August
1946, when national feeling had begun to turn against
the Communist Party. McVeigh reviewed the book in
his newspaper column, calling it a monstrous slander
on the greatest of all nations, and the greatest of all men.
McVeighs only novel, Return to Animal Farm, appeared
in print a week after Orwells book, suggesting McVeigh
had written it much earlier. Despite its title, Return to
Animal Farm is not a sequel but a retelling of the events
of Orwells fable from the point of view of Squealer the
pig, and follows the courageous Comrade Napoleon as he
creates a socialist utopia after the Manor Farm uprising,
which then spreads to all the other farms in the country.
Though McVeigh reported that the print run of 10,000
copies sold out in two days, in all likelihood Return
to Animal Farm sold only a fraction of that number.
Its one lasting consequence was that the conservative
press seized on the nickname Squealer for McVeigh.
On 12 January 1947, McVeighs column in The
Australian Worker informed his readers that he had
been invited to return to the USSR. There he was to
be personally honoured by Comrade Stalin with the
International Workers Award of Literary Glory, for his
Stakhanovite efforts at promoting the cause of socialist realism. McVeigh flew first-class to Indonesia, then
Beijing, and Vladivostok, where he took a luxury cabin
on the Trans-Siberian express, arriving in Moscow on
11 July. He was welcomed at Yaroslavsky rail terminal in
Moscow by three stocky men dressed in dark suits, and
driven away in a black limousine. McVeigh was never
seen again. That same month, foreign subscribers to the
Soviet Encyclopaedia were sent a slip of paper describing
the mean cell volume (MCV) of red blood cells, which
they were ordered to paste over the entry for McVeigh,
Francis X.
The final fate of McVeigh remains an enigma, despite
the opening of the NKVD archives after the collapse
of the Soviet Union in 1989. No official record of what
became of the Australian writer has surfaced, except
for one suggestive entry in a partially shredded ledger
recovered from the secret police archives, dated January
1947: File received Sydney Embassy 1 November 1946,
and forwarded to Comintern. FX McVeigh anonymously
denounced as Trotskyite saboteur. Proof attached. To be
actioned. The proof of McVeighs crimes, whatever it
was, has been lost. Though it is unlikely that the circumstances of McVeighs downfall will ever be known with
any certainty, a number of literary historians, including Rachel Deverall and Stephen Pennington, have
maintained that the foreign zek (inmate) described in
74

FRANCIS X McVEIGH

chapter four of the first volume of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyns The Gulag Archipelago (1974) is the Australian
writer. In this chapter Solzhenitsyn reproduces the
account of a political prisoner who was held at a transit
camp in Vorkuta in 1948:
There is one zek in particular who stays with me.
He was red haired, and very thin (as we all were, of course)
and utterly lost. He was from Austria or Australia. I forget
which. He spoke English and had no Russian, and his
hands shook as he offered half his meagre bread ration
to anyone who would write a letter for him to Comrade
Stalin telling him that there had been a mistake. One of
the thieves took him up on his proposal, and the foreigner wept with gratitude when he was handed back his
precious scrap of paper with some Russian words written
on it. I peered down from my bunk and saw that the thief
had written Stalin is a goatfucker five times. When the
foreign zek handed the note to the guards he was dragged
away, screaming, as the thieves roared with laughter.
I dont know what happened to him after that.

McVeighs successor as the Australian Communist

Partys Director of Literature cleared out his office and
destroyed all of his papers, including McVeighs prized
copy of the 1930 Soviet Literature Yearbook which contained the photograph of him toasting Comrade Stalin.
A replacement copy of the Yearbook was despatched
from Moscow which included the same photograph of
Stalin and Gorky, but with McVeigh airbrushed from it.
Yet the censors were careless; if examined closely, the
faint image of McVeighs raised right arm can still be
seen on the edge of the picture, a ghostly glass of vodka
in his hand.

Ryan ONeill teaches at the University of Newcastle. He has published

an anthology of short stories, The Weight of a Human Heart, and stories
in The Best Australian Stories, The Sleepers Almanac, Meanjin, New
Australian Stories, Wet Ink, Etchings and Westerly. This story is from
his forthcoming book Their Brilliant Careers: The Lives of Sixteen
Remarkable Australian Writers (Black Inc., 2016).
Images: Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria
Photograph on p. 73 by Albert Tucker, May Day March, Melbourne 1942

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FICTION

The Dutch Fountain

David Owen

ello. Pufferfish here. Occasionally a crime

in the making seems so clumsy and telegraphed, so simple, its a no-brainer to anticipate and squash. I like that. Relief from
whats generally the hard grind of the job.
Pufferfish. Aka Detective Inspector Franz Heineken,
seasoned investigator of major crime for the Tasmanian
Police Force. This big, geographically remote islands
criminality is my bread and butter, my sweetmeats. Who
am I? Once-Dutch, but does that now make me 100 per
cent Taswegian? Oh, no.
Tassies criminal classes loathe me. Can live with that,
even a bit of a badge, eh. As for my colleagues, they
respect my work but not my innate gruffness. Have lived
and continue to live with that too.
Then there is Walter, and now we come to the point.
Two points, actually, Rafe being the other. Chief Superintendent Walter DHayt is my immediate boss. Detective
Rafe Tredway is my immediate offsider. Where Walter is
a desk-bound goody-two-shoes angling calculatedly to
become Chief Commissioner, Rafe has the street smarts
of a hardened detective.
So, which of them do I trust more?
Walters office, him, me, some way into listening to the
audio of Rafes interview yesterday with Zeke Dawler, an
outer northern suburbs crim and all-round shocking
piece of work.
Tell me again, Zeke what happened with you and
the girl?
Nuffink.
Nuffink. No, Zeke, not nothing. Tell me.
Got nuffink to say to ya.
So here we are, you and me alone in this room and
what youre persuading me trying to is that despite
what happened, nothing happened?
Yeh nuffink, got fuckin ears have ya? Hope so, koz Im
tellin ya now, so go eat a shit sandwich, pig fucker
Walter pauses the tape. You know what happens next,
dont you, Franz?
I shrug.
He taps the Play button. Theres an indistinct sort of
sound, then a harsh clunk!, then Rafes excited voice
further from the microphone: And you just ate a table
sandwich, sunshine!

Walter switches off the tape, stands, automatically tugging his fine copper-blue uniform should it have creased
in the tiniest bit while we listened.
Well, Franz? Thats an offence warranting instant
dismissal.
No. What Zekes done is give the table edge a
Liverpool kiss to buy himself a few days in the Royal
and time to sort something out with a Legal Aid person.
For him a splintered tooth and mashed lip are well worth
trading for another five inside.
Dont defend the indefensible. Rafe deliberately chose
to wait until there was nothing but an audio-only interview room available, and no second officer. So that he
could assault the suspect.
And because he objected to being called a pig fucker
by a rapist?
Alleged rapist.
Sorry, alleged. Vaginal bruising and anal tearing
doesnt cut it for you, Walter?
Franz! Walter smacks his desk so hard things on
it jump, including the framed photograph of himself
surrounded by his inanely grinning family members.
The integrity of police behaviour comes first and if you
insist on backing Rafes appalling recklessness on this, be
prepared to suffer the consequences.
I questioned him. He denies it. He says when Dawler
called him a pig fucker he, Rafe, sat back and aimed his
finger like a gun at him. Seeing and processing that,
Dawler elected to self-harm.
Walter, seething, knows he has to tread with care.
This is going to play out as the word of an experienced
detective against the word of an experienced villain.
Stand Rafe down from whatever cases hes on until
further notice.
Youre suspending him?
Restrict him to desk work while I investigate Dawlers
complaint.
Fair enough.
But hes on notice, Franz. And in that sense, so
are you.
TPF HQ overlooks the CBDs asymmetrically sloped
St Davids Park, which is nice and green and treed and
itself a stones throw from the Supreme Court although
77

ISLAND

you probably wouldnt want to throw stones there

alongside which we have Salamanca Place, where I have
some murky surveillance business coming up early on
Sunday morning and, speaking of Hobart parks, Ive
got related business near Sandy Bays Parliament Street
Reserve. This is the crime thats the no-brainer, on
which Rafe had been working for some time before his
suspension. Which does mean that young Faye Addison,
my junior detective offsider, first day back from annual
leave, has stepped in hurriedly to take it over.
Fayes a super-modern mid-twenties brainbox and
youd never pick her as a cop. Until its too late. I ease
the unmarked Falcon XR8 out of HQs steep subterranean car park and hurry the light on amber into Davey.
Were going on a recce, Faye and me, this sunny but
thanks to a breeze direct from Wilkes Land bitingly
cold midwinter afternoon.
Tell you what, boss, shes saying, a week in Cairns is
great, but two ruins it.
We live and learn, Faye. As will Rafe.
Yeah, poor sooks sulking.
Schools out, Collegiate maroon everywhere. Anglesea
Barracks got the Bearcat just going in the main gate
and I wonder why. Let him sulk. Im taking you first to
where old Mr Fergus Fagan lives, near Parliament Street
Reserve. And his neighbour opposite him, Jane Fontaine,
who intends to kill him.
Left-turn-only lane at Hungry Jacks and the Globe
Hotel, past the white-blue Greek Ortho Church and
down the slope, Regent Park Apartments looming
ahead in their grey ordinariness. Fergus Fagan, Faye, is
an elderly recluse. Hes lived in his big old house, alone
but for god-knows-how-many cats, for years and years.
Jane Fontaine is a divorced ex-public servant and shes
Mr Fagans de facto carer. Hes a cranky, cantankerous
old coot, by all accounts. Fact is, and again this is years
and years ago, he allegedly tormented his wife Sylvia into
committing suicide, as a result of which their two young
adult children, Janet and John, disowned him.
Into Princes Street near the Caltex garage, narrowish roads, got myself not exactly lost but meandering.
No matter. Well get there.
Tormented her how?
Sylvia wrote a long, rambling suicide note accusing
Fergus of sustained psychological torture and abuse.
In the coronial hearing Fergus is recorded as having
laughed at the note. The son, whod a promising ADF
career ahead of him, went to pieces, was discharged for
alcohol-related issues and ended up dying in a drunken
knife fight in Darwin. Whereas the horrified daughter
altered her name and fled overseas to start a new life.
Okay, so I get that hes a rank bastard. But why does
Fontaine want to murder him?
Money. Pure and simple.
Reversing back down one-way Digney.
Heres where Rafe had got to in the saga Ive found
their street, I park discreetly in good view of both properties, Mr Fagan, to use the old terminology, is filthy
rich. Shares, cash, and of course that place.

We absorb the imposing double-storey Federation

edifice, well safe behind its unscaleable yew hedge
boundaries in A-list Sandy Bay. The place is Grandeur
with a capital G, in the way that the Dawlers are one
of Tasmanias capital-B Bad families. But in a flash you
worry about the unkemptness of what parts of the front
garden you can see. And the sandstone pillars of the
driveway gate, a carved seated cat atop each, lean sadly.
This is a homeowner who needs help, not hostility.
Place could do with some TLC, boss.
Read my mind, Faye. The question is, how caring
has Jane actually been? Circling vulture, more like.
Wonder if shes home?
In the parked Falcon, which is cold because Im not
applying heating, because that would send an exterior
signal that the vehicles occupied, we now discern and
dissect the off-white, smallish weatherboard opposite
Mr Fagans place, with, unusually to me, a double garage.
Not much to look at, Faye says. I mean, when you
consider the place across the road.
Youve seen, from Rafes case file, pics of Fergus?
Oh yep, and seems good for his age. Ninety-one but
tall, still, so thats really late onset osteo.
Except that Janes been trying to persuade Ferguss
doctor that the old blokes demented and sick. And not
only that. Shes also been holding off a carers association
from going near him. And on the one occasion they did
get to see him, they told us the old man was clearly lying
to them, pretending to be unwell. As if Jane has some
sort of psychological hold over him.
Doesnt sound good.
Given were discussing potential murder its not supposed to sound good. And there is this. Lately, Fergus has
changed his last will and testament. Where, previously, a
cats home was to have benefitted exclusively from the
will, now Jane gets it all when Fergus dies. Multiple millions.
Yikes. Big motive
Precisely. The doctor first came to us with his concerns. Then the carer people. Why make out that the old
mans sick when hes not? So we sniffed around, found
out about the changed will, and that was enough for us.
Hence the warrant to
Boss, look!
We instinctively shut up. Janes appeared at the front
door of her weatherboard. I recognise her stocky build;
short, raggedly cut greying hair; this day in trackies and
baggy beige woollen jumper.
Were only about 50 metres away, along the street,
but she doesnt look in our direction. She rolls up one of
the garage doors, disappears. We watch exhaust smoke
plume greyly out of the garage, followed by a reversing black Beemer, an older model, but still a Beemer.
She bounces it onto the street. Out she gets, the vehicle
idling, driver door left open as she unceremoniously
shoos a bounding Dalmatian back into the garage then
yanks down the roller door one-handed, hops back into
the car, accelerates away.
Careless driver, but probably quite fit, boss.
78

THE DUTCH FOUNTAIN

And frustrated. From what Rafes also gathered, by

word of mouth primarily, Jane Fontaines a troubled soul
who her ex-work colleagues struggled to fathom. Then
her husband Eugene Fontaine, the well-known rally
driver, that French bloke who settled here, shot through
with his navigator mistress. Jane, according to Rafe,
then wangled early retirement with a substantial stress
payout.
Stress? Well, she doesnt look that fragile. But frustrated? I can understand that. Looking after sour old Mr
Fagan. And maybe, you know, thinking, I dont want to
be like you one day.
Got it in one, Faye. Jane has, for example, recently
been googling upmarket property prices in Sydney
and LA. Lets go and have a cup of coffee and do some
thawing and thinking.

I get out of the vehicle, stretch vaguely, have a sip

of whats a decent-enough brew. Walk onto the grass.
Big suck of crisp winter air, full of sea tang and
nothing like it. And its free. Fayes put on her knitted green beanie and pulled it well down over her
dainty ears.
Theyre kind of amateurish, arent they?
Our luck. Ferguss luck. Both desperate, in their own
sordid ways. Sutcliffes wife, Isabelle, isnt a party to it, by
the way. Rafe tells me from what hes gleaned she seems
to be aware her Paul has been communicating with his
old ex in Hobart, and sos thinking: affair. Which is just
adding to the rockiness of the marriage.
Faye drinks, cupping her wax paper cup with both
hands. Reflected water glitters like a million hashtags off
a huge yachts white hull. The many dozens of tall yacht
masts are branchless winter trees. Far beyond them,
across 5 ks of slate-grey estuary, weak sunlight illuminates the low grey-green hills of Tranmere and Droughty
Point. The yacht clubs flags droop motionless.
So thats why weve got to be up at the crack of dawn
on Sunday, boss?
Yes. Theyre rendezvousing at the Dutch Fountain.
Salamanca here we come.
Salamanca here we come, Detective Addison.

So we have our motive. A new, glamorous lifestyle

for Jane, far from here. Now, how?
Im driving slowly along narrow Queen Street, mindful that Fayes got a hot long black and skinny latte in
her hands, courtesy of Dome cafe, which is adjacent to
the Sandy Bay Flight Centre; wondering if Jane may have
popped into the latter lately.
Shes got good upper body and thigh strength. Pillow
over Ferguss face while he sleeps?
Good try but no. Years and years ago when Jane
was studying artslaw here at uni she had a boyfriend,
and it was serious, a Paul Sutcliffe. He was studying
pharmacy.
Hey, drugs.
Paul Sutcliffe runs a chemist in Launceston. He and
his wife Isabelle have a rocky marriage and big debts.
Once Rafe got the warrant to tap into Janes activities, he
found the message traffic between Jane and Paul that has
brought us to this point.
I ease right, into and along Marieville Esplanade.
Winds dropped. The rowing clubs deserted, ditto
the orange-yellow-green childrens climbing bars and
swings. But a blokes exercising his black-brown Doberman on the grass and three irked plovers are none too
happy about that.
Which is, boss?
Ta. She hands me my long black as I switch off the
Falcon, off the road in the parking bays facing the lawns.
That in response to Janes queries Paul has messaged
her that if a person is allergic to a medication, penicillin
antibiotics, say, delete that allergy information, get him
sick, give him the antibiotic, he has a fatal anaphylactic
reaction.
Bitch.
Mr Sutcliffe also recommends adding sufficient
potassium or adrenaline to a drip bag to induce a heart
attack. What he doesnt perhaps know is who Jane wants
the information for, or why, but that wont save him.
Hes agreed to supply doses of all three substances in
return for a down payment of $25 000 cash and the
balance of $125k when the proceeds of the will eventually land in Janes bank.

My South Hobart home, on a narrow, steep, rocky

block, normally has a glorious view of the peoples tip.
But not on this Sunday morning, it being still dark and
a monster sea fogs muting and pixilating the citys lights
below. Such fog was once unknown. No longer, in the
way we await budgie flocks in the celery-tops, clown fish
in the Tamar. I stand on my deck, munching a crisp red
Sturmer Pippin. Im wearing my trusty old knee-length
faecal-brown coat, for the cold and because it enhances
my status as ugly, impenetrable outsider, and because it
goes with the battered safari hat.
Pure and simple. Thats what I said to Faye about the
JaneFergus case. Really, eh? Somethings been nagging
away at me. Why, for example, would he lie to the carers,
to the doctor? Then again, Ive been in this caper long
enough to know that the elderly can be, and are, cunningly and wickedly manipulated for their possessions,
by unscrupulous family members and indeed so-called
carers. Even so whats her hold over him?
I shouldnt have said that to Faye. Nothing in our
business is pure and simple. Thats the real no-brainer
in this mystery.
Cruising down profoundly deserted Macquarie,
I ponder again their time and choice of meeting place.
True, Paul Sutcliffe is staying at the Salamanca Inn in
Gladstone Street because hes been attending a chemists conference, and the Dutch Fountains that veritable
stones throw away. And true, they will be meeting at a
time when its light but barely so and the likelihood of
persons about is low. But why not just go to her place?
Perhaps theyre getting off somewhat on the thrill. Might
they fear were onto them?
79

ISLAND

Faye and I arent together but were miked and from

our respective vantage points weve a good line of sight
to the fountain, despite dawns smudginess. Big bronze
Abel Tasman, clutching his globe like hes pregnant with
it, looms over the multi-level water feature on its raised
grassy knoll. Theres a breeze off the invisible sea; the
lanyard swivels of the Dutch and Australian flags clack
wetly against their metal poles.
Do surprises usually come in twos? If not, they do
right now. A vehicle creeps into the car-parking zone
where the Hmong sell their vegies at the Saturday market, reverses into a far corner park, more or less but not
actually facing the fountain. I bring up my binocs, watch
astonished as Colin Sleaze Bagg, a Launceston-based
private investigator, emerges corpulently from the drivers door and looks around.
I dont like him, never have. If theres a bit of a lions
hyenas thing about cops and PIs, he and me are it, and
Im definitely the one with the mane.
Faye in my earhole. Whats with the dickhead in the
cheap suit, boss?
I tell her who he is.
Want me to shoo him away?
No, stay put.
Roger that.
I watch Sleaze squeeze himself back into his vehicle and
close the door, just as an older model station wagon, almost
qualifying for Tassie banger status, brings itself to a halt
near Zum cafe. A tall, youthful, ponytailed figure emerges
from the vehicle. He walks briskly across to the fountain,
holds up his expensive-looking cameras light meter, aimed
directly at the edifice. Then he walks back to the station
wagon, gets in, executes a kind of three-point so that the
drivers windows facing the fountain, kills the engine.
Jesus Christ, boss!
Or one of his disciples Get a rego check, quick,
thank you.
Too late to do anything much about these downright
weird developments. A figures approaching the fountain, a stocky, tracksuited figure, excitable Dalmatian
straining on its lead.
Arrived beneath the fountains obelisk-like central
structure with its Southern Cross stars, Janes now stockstill but edgy, if her yanking the dogs lead is anything
to go by. The quelled animal lies down on the no-doubt
freezing cement. Jane seems to be staring at Sleaze Baggs
car. I use the binocs, glass him. The fat buggers got his
head angled down against the drivers window, hand
groping chin, faking sleeping off a big one, fat sly bastard.
Thats what Jane must think, because she now and if
you werent watching intently you wouldnt pick it leans
over as if closely appreciating the sculpted bronze waryacht Heemskerck and its companion the fluyt Zeehaen,
both listing timelessly to port in their shallow golden
waters. She slips a slim, hand-sized dark-green packet
out of her trackie pocket and, with some care, wedges it
into the pointy rigging of the Heemskerck. Then with a
flick of the studded lead she and her white-black hound
dematerialise in the fog.

Not what we So theyre not going to meet, boss?

Keep watching, it may be
But weve no more time to speculate, because a joggers
emerged as if on cue from the Irish Murphys pub corner.
Glasses up. Thats him, Faye, thats Sutcliffe.
On it.
Hes got all the right gear for jogging, thats to say for
the pursuit of running to keep fit, and he is jogging, but
unconvincingly so. Why, for instance, look back over
your shoulder? At the fountain, on the grass, he jogs on
the spot for a bit. Then he plants one leg in front of the
other and seems to be trying to push Abel Tasman over.
Flexing the hammy, eh. That done, he sticks an Adidas
up on the lip of the fountain, as if tying the lace, so that
it is a small matter for him to reach into the rigging and
retrieve Janes packet.
Certain priorities kick in now, the first being that because
weve gone a step further in our evidence-gathering that
the pair are up to no good, and that Fergus Fagan is their
likely target, he requires protection. Secondly, time for a
formal chat with the pair. And thirdly, whats the interest
of daggy Sleaze Bagg and the trendy young photographer in the station wagon?
So it is that Faye and a fellow female plain-clotheser
in an unmarked car have gone to check up on Mr Fagan,
not to spook him, but on a pretext of your caring TPF
doing the rounds of the elderly as a gratis community
service.
Sutcliffe has checked out of his hotel. Presumably hes
on the Midland Highway, returning to Launceston.
Faye reported no sign of Jane or her Beemer.
Thats fine. Shell be somewhere.
As for the photographer in the banged-up station
wagon, hes not at the raggedy little West Hobart weatherboard to which address the vehicles rego is assigned.
His website says hes a freelance photographer currently working for a Hobart-based outfit called Island
magazine.
And as for me, I make a call. Answered at once.
Col Bagg; whos this?
Franz Heineken.
Longish pause. He knows all about the lionshyenas
thing.
Gday, mate. How are ya?
Good, thank you, Col. How are you?
Right as.
Excellent. Then youll happily tell me why you were at
the Dutch Fountain.
Ah Thinking, thinking, how does the prickly
bastard know this? Thats, ah, client-in-confidence,
Franz.
Dont client-in-confidence me, Col.
Okay, fuck it. Look, my clients a respectable Invermay lady and shes sure her husbands having an affair.
That jogger bloke?
An affair with who?
The sheila with the Dalmatian.
Didnt look too romantic.
80

THE DUTCH FOUNTAIN

Not my concern. I got the pics of them together

almost together.
And the young photographer with the ponytail? I
watched you drive after him. Follow him.
Mate, he wasnt game to talk. He told me to speak to
his boss.
Did you?
Yep.
On a Sunday?
Yep, in her office she was. Shes edits this magazine
this kind of literature journal, poems and stuff.
And?
She didnt want to talk either, and wasnt best pleased
with what I said to her
Incoming call. Faye. Ive got enough out of Sleaze for
the time being. I disconnect. Call her back.
Hey, boss, were just with Mr Fagan. Hes keen to meet
you.
He say why?
Yeah kind of
You cant talk?
Hang on ... Okay, Im out on the verandah now. Be
good if you could get here, boss, try to work him out.
Jeez, what a disgusting cat stink in there!
Look on the bright side. No rats. On my way.

Mr Fagan, why would we do that?

First the doctor, now you people. Its a conspiracy.
The doctor?
Yes, the doctor. Hes suspiciously reluctant to accept
that Im sick, as if he wants me dead. In this whole horrible world, only Jane truly cares for me.
Nutter. But all I say is, Perhaps you should explain in
detail, Mr Fagan.
He already has, Faye says, and her expression wants
to spare me the pain.
You keep quiet, girl, Mr Fagan says to her.
Oi. I point mildly at him. No need to address my
colleague like that.
By way of answer and with surprising speed he swings
the stick at my hand, which I instinctively hold up.
The stick stings my hand and its scarred rubber tip clips
my right cheekbone. The cat hisses and flees as I smell
instant blood.
You shouldnt have done that, Mr Fagan.
A high-pitched weirdo growl, some kind of demented
laugh, is his reply.
In my business, sometimes, when you want information, its useful not to identify yourself first up as
a cop. Unethical though that may be. But I try to justify
this by remembering that were almost always dealing
with individuals for whom unethical behaviour is
the norm.
Monday mid-morning. I stand outside the CBD
premises of Island magazine. Ping a bell. I ask for the
editor. Am shown somewhere, a basic room. Wait no
time at all. An appearing woman says, Hello, can I help
you? Her attention straight to my nonstick cheekbone
crepe bandage, covering its three stitches.
If youre the editor, yes. Did a Colin Bagg contact you
yesterday?
Only asking because somethings awry in all of this
and I am not about to show my hand of weakish cards.
Did he ? She glares at me. You and him are ?
And she lets fly, screaming Get the fuck out of here or Ill
call the police!
Its remarkable. I pop my ID. I am the police.
Oh Sorry Just that I found that man to be a vile,
obnoxious, incredibly sleazy individual.
Hes not quite my cup of tea either. But I do need to
ask about the relationship between your magazine and
Mr Bagg.
There is none. He came here and insinuated that
we were planning to extort money from his client by
photographing her husbands affair. He said he had
done his homework and that Island magazine is
obviously trying to make up for cuts to its arts funding.
Creep!
And for further emphasis she points to a small table
on which is his business card, dog-eared and with what
looks like a dried fluid stain down one side. Look at that.
Yuck. And it says he has a private practise. I wouldnt
ask anyone who cant tell the difference between a noun
and a verb to sort out my problems.

But first I fill the doorway of Faye and Rafes office. Seat
tilted back, one boot propped against his desk, hes nursing a Cascade apple juice and reading his phone.
Hey boss, whats up?
Got a job for you.
Fire away.
Your case file on Fagan doesnt say enough about his
past. Find out more.
DHayt pulled me off it, remember?
And while youre at it, I want more too on her, Jane
Fontaine. Murders a big step for a retired public servant.
And Walter can get stuffed.
He shoots forward, chair legs clunking heavily on the
parquet.
If you say so.
I say so, Rafe. Get busy.
Like his imposing old red-brick house, tall Fergus Fagan
is ancient but not about to cark it. He has a halo of powdery snow-white hair; long arms; bony lavender-purple
hands, one of which grasps the carved sphinx-head of a
heavy walking stick; large, far-apart pale blue eyes; and
in his deep armchair hes swathed in a tartan dressing
gown. Above his head on a greasy antimacassar a plump
black cat stares at me. His place smells poorly indeed,
of old food, unwashed body parts and animal urine. He
looks at me in my faeces-hued coat and deadpan face
and scowls.
Detective Inspector, he says, the quavery voice sneerish. Your two little colleagues here have been oh so kind
in enquiring after my health, but this is not normally
what the police do, and I said so. Are you trying to run
me off my property?
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ISLAND

Okay. I accept what youre saying. But I do need to

ask why your photographer was at the Dutch Fountain
yesterday morning.
Shes clearly reluctant to spill the beans. But Im a cop,
so she has to, and does. Her explanation intrigues me,
and I file it away for future reference.

soft suspension. Ill be interested to know what spooked

Jane into doing a runner, and how long before Faye cracks
her open. Watching briefly through the one-way glass,
I see a raw-eyed, exhausted, but seemingly combative
Jane Fontaine. As for Rafe, sitting there like an innocent
P-plate detective, couldnt help himself before Faye activated the recording gear, remarking conversationally to
Jane that the last time he was in a TPF interview room
there was mouth blood all over the table.

Developments. Paul Sutcliffe has been pulled over near

the Breadalbane Roundabout for driving erratically.
He told the Kevlar-clad lads he was tired after the long
journey from Hobart to Lonnie but they didnt buy that
and were planning to do some drug tests and, in preliminary respect of that, were taking a sticky, as you do, in
the glove compartment where, in an olive-green ziplock
bag, they found $25 000 in cash. Paul Sutcliffe is, by all
accounts, a poor liar and he soon broke down and confessed to his facilitative role in a scheme to euthanase
an elderly, chronically ill Hobart man. Nice try, Paul.
Still, hell know that if he sticks to that story his jail time
will be considerably less than if hes found guilty of being
a willing accomplice to murder for profit.
His confessions the clincher, at any rate. Time, therefore, to now formally arrest Jane Fontaine.

In a long career of villain-busting Ive only once had the

annoying experience of being assaulted by a 91-year-old,
and so it is with a degree of grim Pufferfish pleasure
that Im now standing closely over him, in his smelly
house, Faye and two uniforms and a registered carer in
tow. Fayes keenly anticipating that the old bugger might
have another go at me, and shes ready for him. But, even
with the stick, in his deep armchair, he now looks frail
and uncertain, as if he knows whos really the boss in his
castle this morning and its not him.
Mr Fagan, the last time my colleagues were here was
to ensure your safety. You scorned that. Correct?
What is it you want with me?
The mobile. Rafe. Not now.
Im coming to that. Do you regret your rudeness to
them? And this? I touch my bandaged pinkie to my
bandaged cheekbone.
He smiles, sort of. Dont be weak, son. Just a scratch.
Youll get over it.
Mr Fagan. Your carer, Jane Fontaine, of whom you are
so fond and who is the sole inheritor of your will guess
where she is?
He looks momentarily alarmed, but then flaps a feeble
hand at a grimy window. Mobile pings. Rafe message.
No, not across the road. In remand. Charged with
intent to murder. You.
And I point at him again, just like I did the last time.
Daring him to use that stick.
He seems perplexed, registering it. Then he emits a
little gasp, like an infant cry, his baby blue eyes close and
wince in pain, the sphinx-head stick slipping from its
lavender grasp.
No, he whispers, no I want to die the shame
The feeble voice gives way to shallow breathing. But
hes trying.
Ah she my little girl forgave me forgave
me
He jerks, spasms, grimaces, and we watch a big, big,
stroke coming on.

Shes not at home, but her Beemers in the garage.

Whereas the space alongside its empty. Two-car Janey,
eh. On the floor, directly beneath where the engine
would be, an ancient fuggy oil stain and a shiny recent
one. What can this mean? I look around. Beemers got
a flat tyre. Pick up off an unused workbench a cracked
red tail-light lens. Itd be 60s. To go with the old oil?
Hunch time.
The owner bloke of the nearest service garage hears
me out, says, Yep, cobber, we service Mrs Fontaines cars,
and yep, one of the boys did her 64 Studie not last week.
A you-beaut two-tone she is. And he lovingly goes on to
describe the vehicle until the fact hes talking to a major
crime dick sinks in and he asks, Anything up?
Thank you for your time.
Back in Janes unprepossessing possie. So wheres the
Dalmatian? Looking around me, not the dog. Nothing
jumps out. Then in her bathroom Im curiously attracted
to a bald mannequin head. Why? Better investigate, eh.
Peer closely at it, near it. Down on one ageing Pufferfish
knee. Up again.
In my car I call TPF Radio Room. Instructions to relay.
Go ahead, boss.
Put out an apprehend-on-sight for a 1964 lime-green
and meringue Studebaker, left-hand drive, white-wall
tyres, female driver wearing a long red wig, possibly a
Dalmatian sitting in the passenger seat, rego EUGENE
1.
Well do our best, boss, the uniform says, laughing.

The paramedics are quick, but its going to be touch and

go. I feel disembodied, disconnected from the reality of
things. Rafes message. WTF Boss. Jane maiden name
Fagan, Janet Fagan.

Jane made it as far as the outskirts of Devonport,

Tasmanias maritime gateway to Planet Earth, and nows
tucked in a TPF interview room. Faye will be leading the
interview, Rafe there as the second officer but in more
or less a mute capacity, given hes still theoretically on

Heres how bastardry operates in certain workplaces.

It has come to the attention of Chief Superintendent
Walter DHayt that I may have contributed significantly
to Fergus Fagans stroke. That because he had hit me with
82

THE DUTCH FOUNTAIN

his stick I was aggressive and callous when telling him

about Janes apparent murderous intent and it means that
now I myself am on stress leave, because I told Walter
what I thought of him and we had a major blue heard by
many at TPF HQ.

Back at work, unstressed fortnight done and dusted.

Im in early, as is my wont. In my in-tray, stuff. Including,
in its see-through postal wrap, a new issue of Island magazine, hot off the press, with a handwritten note from the
editor, sort of apologising again for going off at me and
linking me to Sleaze Bagg. I fix a hot short black, ease
into my desk chair, extract a green-black-pink liquorice
allsort from its little brown bag, turn to the mags piece
entitled The Dutch Fountain, keenly aware that my fate
hangs in the balance.

And because I got it so wrong about Jane. That despite

all, she could not bring herself to forever abandon her
father. That he pleaded with her to put him out of his
decades-long self-loathing misery. That he changed his
will as an inducement. That she finally gave in, putting
in place the plans to oblige him. And nearly succeeded,
until we lot came along and fucked it all up.
Stressed? Well, no. Two weeks at my beloved Bruny
Island hideaway, the shack that hardly anyone knows
exists, has nonetheless suited me well. Plenty of winter
flathead, some decent reds of an evening, some reading.
But the shadows there, hovering. Old Fergus Fagan
remains in an induced coma. Will he come out of it?
Potentially; so, paradoxically, my future with the TPF
relies on him.

In addition to the acclaimed Pufferfish detective fiction series set in

Tasmania, David Owen has published literary fiction and nonfiction,
including Bitters End (1993), Thylacine (2003), Tasmanian Devil (2006)
and Shark: in Peril in the Sea (2009). David edited Island for five years
from 2000 to 2005. A new Pufferfish mystery, 13-point Plan for A Perfect
Murder (Fullers Publishing), is due for release later in July 2016.
Image: Courtesy of Warren Boyles

83

ISLAND

84

FICTION

This Sentence is False:

Elizabeth Morton

help help help and hurtled over the veranda to where my

father was raking. He stood with his gumboots in the
reading room, shouting down the landline at a woman
in the emergency call centre. An ambulance hee-hawed
down the dirt road, past the woodstack and past the
dairy cows. Two men in green habiliment crossed the
lawn with their medical trunks, like a couple of ghostbusters in a B-grade movie. The cats scattered.
It is hard to think of something true. In the myth I
shake in a corner by the camphor box. My mother
lies indigo. In her brain she is loping down a tunnel,
with bulbflowers and fantails peppered along its path.
Help help help help, she might hear me say, but her defiance is asystole. Her audacity is to flatline. The medics
pull out a portable defibrillator. They tear at her lemon
dress, splitting it down her chest length, and slap stickers
to her skin. In the myth they bring her back from the
tunnel, kicking and cursing. And her eyes joggle behind
her lids. And the indigo turns to a slow peach. My father,
in his gumboots, does a little yelp. Clay clods in the carpet. The medics wipe their brows and my father gives
them an A-frame hug. We are all very happy.
If you tell the truth, you dont have to remember
anything, once said somebody literary or illustrious.
I have to remember a great deal and it wears me down.
The thing is, the story is a little different. For a start, we
didnt have cats. We had a dog called Muttly who wore
a plastic cone around his head to stop him scratching
his psoriasis. We lived in a Housing New Zealand unit
with a microwave in the living room, and a broken
trampoline in the yard. My mother in her lemon dress.
She read the TV Guide and sank into the couch with a
can of Wild Turkey bourbon and cola. It was summer.
Thats for sure. The ceiling fan whirred sickly round.
My father wasnt in the garden. ROY G BIV spilled
from the glass wind chime and over my mothers face.
My mother had the lick of an angel.
I went to the letterbox for a handhold of bills. Muttly
followed me out, catching his plastic cone on the door
edge. The sky was cloudless and stinging. Barefooted, I
walked on the prickleweed to the trampoline. I slapped
my hands on the black polypropylene. It was hot and
sticky and black rubbed onto my palms. I thought about
Mrs Graham from school. How she played the Purple

t is hard to think of something true. I could start

with buttercups crisping in the heat, the woodstack
blowing smoke rings, dairy cows that move like
ghostships through the grass. I could say I was nine
and barefooted and tippy-toeing the prickleweed.
I could tell you all summer we lay listening to the lumber
trucks pass in the valley. You might even believe me.
It was summer. Thats for sure. My mother stood at
the countertop with a snapper, slivering scales with the
back of a breadknife. She wiped her nose with her apron
and a scale lay like a sequin on the cleft of a nostril.
Things I remember. My father raking soil in the vegetable garden while the cats brayed for fish-ends. Intestines
in the grass. Salt and animal.
It is hard to think of something true. I catch her face
in fragments. The corner of a lip, the smear of chin.
She had something otherworldly, a lick of an angel about
her. Afternoons, she would lounge on an easy-chair with
a Home and Garden magazine and a gin. It was summer, remember that. White flooded the reading room,
collided with the coffee table and spilled into rainbows.
My mothers ankles were ROY G BIV.
It is hard to think of something true. Heres what
didnt happen. My mother was sipping her gin and my
father was raking soil. A lumber truck clomped by and
I made a tally mark in my Secret Diary. The cats brayed
for fish-ends. I threw some mackerel gut to them on the
lawn. I walked into the house and the sun was still in my
eye juice, making it tricky to see. It all was too grainy and
electric.
Say anything a dozen times and it starts to sound
unreal. Tongue twisters do it, but so do the words help
help help help. They twist into strange animal noises and
curdle when they hit the air.
When I speak this story it becomes myth. I swallow
the words back to make them real. I swallow the trucks,
the snapper, the prickleweed and the cats. I swallow my
mother slivering scales with a breadknife. Her face in
fragments. The nape of a nose, the eggfleck of an eye.
ROY G BIV splintered over her lemon dress. Her gin.
Her Home and Garden. Her indigo skin. She had something, the lick of an angel.
In that moment she was neither dead nor alive. In the
myth I tapped at her elbow for an inkling. I said help
85

ISLAND

People Eater song on the guitar, and we all stomped and

did hand movements. I thought about how Mrs Graham
was the ugliest lady Id ever seen, but how she was really
nice too. I thought that if a tidal wave came and bulldozered the whole neighbourhood, I might just save Mrs
Graham before Id save Muttly or my mother or anybody
else. And Mrs Graham would say oh-you-poor-dear and
play me the Purple People Eater on guitar to cheer me
up. And we would all be very happy.
Stepping inside the house the sun was still in my eye
juice, making it tricky to see. It was all too grainy and
electric. Her face is in fragments. ROY G BIV caught
her face but it was indigo which stuck in my mind.
In your imagination, you can do anything you fancy and
get off scot-free. So I inserted a tidal wave so gargantuan
that it swallowed up the playing fields at my school. And
I put me and Mrs Graham on a blow-up mattress and
we floated away, past the dairy and past the bus station,
along the motorway overpass.
There is another story. It is hard to think of something
true, but Ill give it a shot. Say anything a dozen times
and it starts to sound unreal. Tongue twisters do it,
but so do the words help help help help. They twist into
strange animal noises and curdle when they hit the air.
When my mother went all asystole and flatlined
I said nothing. My father wasnt in the garden and Mrs
Graham was in her beautiful house, slivering the scales
off a snapper with a breadknife, or drinking gin in the
reading room. Her husband might be raking the vegetable garden.
With the TV Guide at her hip, and her cheeks indigo,
my mother was angelic. I tapped her elbow. I shook her
shoulders. And I screamed but it only made a wheezing
in the throat. Help, I wanted to say, help help help. Muttly
licked at her ankles. The wind chime tinkled mockingly.
I could say it was summer. I could say I was nine.
In the myth she is loping down a tunnel, with bulbflowers and fantails peppered along its path. Look back, I beg.
Come on, look back. But the white light swallows her up.
There is a story I like to tell. It has cats and dairy
cows and sea-smells. And theres my mother and me
on this blow-up mattress. And were rising above it all.
We are happy.

Elizabeth Morton is from Auckland, New Zealand. In her free time

she collects obscure words in supermarket bags. Her poetry has been
published in Poetry NZ, Takahe, JAAM, Blackmail Press, Meniscus and
Shot Glass Journal, PRISM: International and Cordite (upcoming),
among other places. Her prose has been published in Flash Frontier
and Smokelong Quarterly.
Image: The Wind is Perfect, Katherine Perrott, 2015 (Colville Gallery)
katherineperrott.com

86

PAGE/ARTICLE TITLE

ARTIST TO ARTIST
Four artists, curated by four
artists, over four weeks

Artist: PAul ZikA

Curator: JACob leAry
oPeNiNG: 12 AuGuST 2016
13 21 AuGuST 2016
Artist: PeTer WAller
Curator: MiChAelA GleAve
oPeNiNG: 19 AuGuST 2016
20 28 AuGuST 2016
Artist: AMANdA dAvieS
Curator: PAT brASSiNGToN
oPeNiNG: 26 AuGuST 2016
27 AuGuST 11 SePTeMber 2016
Artist: MeGAN WAlCh
Curator: JuSTeNe WilliAMS
oPeNiNG: 2 SePTeMber 2016
3 11 SePTeMber 2016
Project Curator: kylie JohNSoN

Contemporary
art tasmania
www.contemporaryarttasmania.org

87

Image: Megan Walch, The Spill (detail), 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

Image: Autumn, John Lendis, 2014 (Handmark Gallery)

johnlendis.com

88

FICTION

We Are All Stories

Rachel Watts

he bus stinks of sweat and sunscreen.

The shaft of sun through the window
burns the colour out of the seats and I
grip the handle thinking about art.
I dont know why but you make me
think about art. You make me think we are all artists.
You make me wonder about the value of the graffiti, the
meaning behind the tinny music leaking out from so
many earbud-blocked ears.
You make me think in the abstract. The five dollar
note I exchanged for the coffee Im sipping, bitter and
overmilked as it is, was worthless until it materialised
into caffeine. Something to carry me over the turbulent
waters of the end. To prop me up in the face of your
mothers polite smile, as she erases our life together,
signing her name on the Next of Kin line.
The bus stops for an old woman; she clambers on,
cramped and bent over. I watch seagulls squabbling
over a discarded bag of chips and think of your family.
A grotesque carnival, a game: who loved you more, who
loved you first. But animals live in the present tense. It
is only us, you and I, who can hold each other close,
and whisper about things that havent been, that never
were, but that are somehow deeply representative of all
of us. We are all storytellers. Im sorry, my love, but our
story will never be told.
I wonder why you didnt write yourself down. Is it
because we live in a world of so many selves? Perhaps to
commit our selves to the page fixes them, makes them
too permanent, in a way our marriage certificate failed
to do. I wonder this, as I leave you propped up on too
many pillows: why so few of us commit the sin of text.
Why, even when we do, at the end it seems too little.
Always too few words.
Youll die tonight. The knowledge has a finality that
seems familiar, as though it was something I had already
known but forgotten. Our forever parting, always just
beyond the curvature of time, suddenly stark and clear
and right in front of us.
You will die. You will be gone.
Your family will find a picture of you, one from years
ago, one from when they knew you. Theyll prop it up
and remember a woman who didnt marry a woman.
The woman they knew. I can see it already, your
rouged cheeks, lipstick from some university formal
event. They will make you into the sad, painted clown

of their carnival. And I will have no part in it.

The bus, the scratched windows, the coast all stark
blues and whites, it still holds part of you. You are still
in it. I cannot imagine a world without you but there
will come a time when you will be nowhere, when no
one will remember you but me and even then I will
grow hazy on the details of your face, your hands.
So know this: there was once a woman who was
adrift in this world and you found her. You found and
held her and you told her that the waves crashing into
the beach made terrifying music. You told her that the
atmosphere was fuel for love, you told her that graffiti
made you think of loneliness. And together the two of
you wrote new stories about loneliness, or happiness,
about art, about carnivals and about seagulls. One time
you fought and even when you fought you both stood
outside yourselves and watched the passion boil over
into anger and condense back into love and afterwards,
after you had made love, you wondered together why
anger and love were held apart as though they were
different things when there is nothing on earth that is
separate from love. You collected feathers and stones
of interesting shapes from the beach and the parks and
brought them home and said they were proto-works.
Objects of intrigue that the right hands would make
into art. Sometimes your hands were the right hands.
And this woman, this woman who was lost and who
you found, your hands were the right hands for her,
they had the right strength and the right care and the
right honesty and she was made into a being of creation
and her soul grew broad and focused at the same time.
And she was me.
And you will die tonight. You will be gone. But I will
know your hands were the right hands. Even as the
world forgets you, even as the world moves on from
your touch, I will not forget your hands.
I blink and look around and realise that a drunk
man, talking to himself quietly, and I are the only passengers left on the bus. The sun has disappeared and I
have missed my stop.
The light is grainy now, the shadows are deep.

Rachel Watts is a writer, editor and avid reader from Perth,

Western Australia. She reviews books and writes miscellaneous
commentary. leatherboundpounds.com

89

Circus

public and private space and its white English facades.

Accompanying the video works, a giant witches hat in
the central park lured us to a womans voice whispering
desires to further upset the order of things to unhinge
the gate, to peel back the lawns, to drive the wrong way
around the circle a resident ghost perhaps, or the suppressed voice of displaced lives and quiet unrest.
In its multi-layered subversions, Spit Polish unpicked
the picketed confines of Arthurs Circus, asking us
to transgress, with Connell, its exterior of restraint
and re-view our own position within its conventions
and histories.


Eliza Burke

n September 2015, Hobart artist-run initiative

Constance ARI presented Circus, its first show
under a new operating model supporting temporary
site-responsive art projects in built environments.
Based in the historic Arthurs Circus in the suburb
of Battery Point, Circus engaged three artists Theia
Connell, Anita Bacic and Julia Drouhin to respond to
its space, form and history.
Engaging with objects of civility and public order
such as witches hats or trimming scissors, and donning
the white gloves of the inspector or ringmaster, Theia
Connell invited viewers to subvert their own practices
and peer through residential windows to witness her
performance in the domestic spaces of others. Connells
Spit Polish was a multi-media work involving two audio
tracks and a series of on-site performances by the artist,
which were recorded on video and played back on TVs
installed in the front rooms of residents houses.
Responding to the colonial histories of the inwardfacing dwellings and the circular formation of Arthurs
Circus, the work took a subversive view on issues of
maintenance and propriety, upsetting the order of

Theia Connell is aHobart-basedvisual artist. Her practice spans

sculpture, video, photography and sound. She holds a Bachelor of Fine
Art (Sculpture and Spatial Practice) and a Bachelor of Arts (Art History
and Anthropology).Theia co-founded and co-directs the Visual Bulk
art space, and hosts the Contemporary Art Tasmania podcast series.
Eliza Burke is an independent writer, curator and researcher based in
Hobart, Tasmania. Her work ranges from art curating, critical writing
and reviewing, to teaching and research in visual arts and sociology.

90

ART

Theia Connell
Spit Polish, 2015
sound and video installation
(4 screens, 2 sound objects),
installation view, Arthurs Circus
Image: Lucy Parakhina

91

Arthurs Circus is an arena in many ways. So, who are the

ringmasters? Who is this space for? The site made me think
a lot about whiteness, and the performing of ideals. Being a
white, privileged woman, I thought that the only way I could
get to those topics was by performing my own whiteness
and this sort of criticality through being critical of myself
Theia Connell
and of my own position.

Theia Connell
Spit Polish, 2015
sound and video installation
(4 screens, 2 sound objects), detail
Images courtesy of the artist

The urban planning of Arthurs Circus has certain morals

instilled within its form. The circular, communal space is
quite democratic and community oriented, yet there is also the
capacity for surveillance the closeness of the front windows
to the street, the intense manicuring it has both utopic and
Theia Connell
dystopic potentials.

David Soler Berini @d_s_be

Holly Leonardson @hollyleonardson

Charlie Harding @chadoner

#hotdate

I love this nugget

Posters from a Bedroom Studio, 2015

#cruiseship

94

Meatwreck @meatwreck

95

Josh Pringle @joshpringle

Jimmy Nuttall @jimmynuttall

Morning! Nothin better than a morning drawing

Looking at Painting @lookingatpainting

#doggyinshell

Lichtenstein in the takeaway

@sawtoothers

Run by Sawtooth ARI, the project is curated to include

artists, writers, designers and creatives internationally
who consider digital engagement and reach through
their practice.
@sawtoothers comes to life each fortnight through
the curation of the project by Brigitte Trobbiani.
Through researching artists, Brigitte develops a
schedule for @sawtoothers that considers practice,
medium, context and aesthetic. The project allows
artists of different styles to be seen side by side,
creating links between those who wouldnt otherwise
be associated. Brigitte considers how artists may

sawtoothers is a curatorial project that

creates a dialogue about the parameters of
exhibiting contemporary art. It challenges
the notion that exhibitions can only be
represented in the physical form, and uses the platform
of Instagram to show artwork in a new context.
96

contrast, connect and challenge one another through

their posts.
@sawtoothers is a project that identifies a change in
the role of viewership in art, the challenges in contemporary art as a result of technology, and how artists may
take control of the representation of their art through
social media. Artists are encouraged to post about their
practice, inspiration, space, thoughts and projects. They
are invited to take control of the @sawtoothers account
and use the platform to engage with other artists and
form connections through the account.

Sawtooth ARI is an artist-run gallery based in Launceston, Tasmania,

showcasing contemporary and experimental art by local, interstate
and international artists at various stages of their careers.
instagram.com/sawtoothers
sawtooth.org.au/-sawtoothers

97

Dexter Rosengrave
Sunny Side Up, Day 1, 2015
Archival Inkjet Print
30 x 30 cm

98

Dexter Rosengrave
Sunny Side Up, Day 2, 2015
Archival Inkjet Print
30 x 30 cm

99

Sunny Side Up

Love the period stained undies. Id like to propose

a show of skid-marked bog catchers5 stars says a
review left on the Facebook page of the gallery where
Rosengrave recently exhibited this work.
Perhaps this gentleman was so moved that it
pushed him to consider embracing all kinds of bodily
output through art, though Id recommend he visit
the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) for shitrelated viewing. On the other hand, he might just be an
asshole. Rather than offending, however, this reviewer
has illustrated very succinctly the importance of works
like Rosengraves.

n her work Sunny Side Up, Dexter Rosengrave uses

high-resolution scans to vividly depict one cycle
of her own discharge and residue, on 28 pairs of
underpants. Unsurprisingly, this is a relatable work
for anyone who has a menstrual cycle, and potentially educational for anyone who doesnt.
100

Menstrual cycles, vaginal discharge, residue and

period stained undies, are so commonplace that they
should be banal. However, ideas around feminine
hygiene are hard to escape, and we arent far past the
era of commercials featuring blue liquid on panty liners.
In allowing us to engage with the reality of her own cycle,
Rosengraves work critiques the sterilisation and phobia
of something that anyone with a vagina experiences
on a daily basis. Sunny Side Up illustrates a kind of
beauty in what is hidden and shamed.


Grace Herbert

101

Dexter Rosengrave aims to create awareness of taboo social issues

that often centre around the subject of shame. She is currently completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Photography Major) at the University
of Tasmania. This work was shown at Visual Bulk in January 2016.
Grace Herbert is an artist, curator and writer residing in Hobart,
Tasmania. She is the co-founder of the Hobart-based project space
Visual Bulk, and sits on the board of Constance ARI. visualbulk.com
Previous page:
Dexter Rosengrave
Sunny Side Up, Day 12, 2015
Archival Inkjet Print
30 x 30 cm

This page:
Dexter Rosengrave
Sunny Side Up, Day 21, 2015
Archival Inkjet Print
30 x 30 cm

Tests
Jill Jones

Testing an idea while the wind blows

may make you shiver, perhaps
at midnight or near a gate
Be careful of little children
they may run far away from ideas or gates
Be careful with your sails, your signs, your saints
your flesh, your fabulous knits, your sports flags
theyll catch on too many ideas, or midnights
The kids are out there laughing
theyre not little pets nor common garden blooms
they have secrets theyve stopped telling
theres no need, you forget, and shiver
Dont thank me, its not as if
I know anything worth knowing
its not as if I heard it through the grapevine
the grapevine is ornamental and a bit dead
Anyway, my hearings shot, I mouth truths
as if theyre jokes, and lies as if theyre news
that seems about right
All those ideas, tested into forgetting
all the signs now at sea, all the saints unravelling
on too many flights through the garden
The kids are cheering, and why wouldnt they
Id be moonstruck if I was less impatient
Id run too, and where Id run
I have no idea, which seems about right
You could come too
to be unsheltered
to swerve like a game
to look up
to cause all that pain

102

Self and Nothingness

Jill Jones

Im running all over the world. Im running

within sight of what might happen.
Im running with a crazy kind of make-do.
The new plants waver in cold evening.
Its cooler than when I left these things, these ideas
in rooms. Is there a knack to it?
If I could shift my head without the world
shifting. It cant be that hard to look up
into the trees. I know theyre there.
Ive argued over silence.
Ive collected nonsense.
I crave nothingness.
I know it doesnt exist. That it does.
I am a source of virtual violence.
What senses are, Im not sure, or how many.
I smell strange but that could be
the way air is.
The craft is the devil, disquiet a relief
jokes become bullet points, and my life
an account explained in columns.
Perhaps the essence has dissolved, become paler.
Whether to drink it, whether to pour it
whether to watch something else drink it.
Perhaps its all a set-up. It doesnt matter
what it is. Everything in my mouth
cracks like a sweet.
I am a project as I scour the streets, for
what its worth, and Im looking for ways
to write back the damage.

Jill Jones has published nine full-length books, most recently Breaking the
Days (Whitmore Press 2015) and The Beautiful Anxiety (Puncher & Wattmann
2014), which won the 2015 Victorian Premiers Literary Award for Poetry.
In 2014 she was poet-in-residence at Stockholm University. She is a member
of the JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at the University of Adelaide.

103

A Confluence of Blues
Susan Fealy
A certain blue penetrates your soul.
Henri Matisse
Isatis tinctoria,
those lemon-yellow flowers,
flakes of snow that didnt melt
somehow absorbed the sun.
Soak its reluctant leaves
in human urine,
immerse the fabric for a day,
peg it out in the sun.
Watch as it converts to blue.
Ai-gami, a fading blue
from the day flower, Commelina.
Indigo, a lasting blue
from leaves stitched to violet flowers.

Blue
the frequency
of light that lies
between violet and green.
Arthur Dove once said
Painting is music of the eyes.
A fleet of blues flute violet,
others oboe green.
Red seems closer to us than blue.
The more away an object,
the more its drenched in blue
observe each mood of mountains.

Blue eyes do not contain blue
they just swallow less
blue light

it travels like bees
into the eyes of another.

Susan Fealy is a Melbourne-based poet, reviewer and clinical

psychologist. Her poems have been published widely in journals
and anthologies including Best Australian Poems 2009, 2010 and 2013.
Her first full-length manuscript, Flute of Milk, is nearing completion.

104

Mongoose and Gantry

Kent MacCarter
after Auden
Summershine, this then is my I and what its done this once
around. Its shunned the gavel, sinned but tried
each breadcrumb deep into the undergrowth
of mathematics brown. Which is a name:
Pacific spume or the pedagogy of a fractal, Hoover Dams
of them and is it not the trick that is the homework of the far
forgotten stream? Its followed law so clear to trust
why ibex skulk the very cuticle of vision,
solve a concave poor decision, and to at last whiz forth and feast
of transmutation. Eat its skin,
it did, and bugled to all the governors
of a speed: listen, then, the emerald hives of chaos chime,
scythe the lion-coloured grains and spell
from letters a pretzelled asp defines. Its font
is innocent. All throughout its midday groove
coast mediums and the fugitive, prime numbers on a stove
and why the multiplicative inverse of
is carapace if a love. So, its My; that household polygon of ice is Kilroy
nosing out the equal plastic compounds of its trough,
it is to drip to death in open blackness, the sinews left of day.

Kent MacCarteris a writer and editor living in Castlemaine, Victoria

with his wife and son. He is the author of In the Hungry Middle of Here
(2009), Sputniks Cousin (2014) and California Sweet (due late 2016).
Hes also Editor ofJoyful Strains: Making Australia Home, a nonfiction
collection of diasporic memoir and Director of Cordite Publishing Inc.

105

Emily Dickinson
Anthony Lawrence
I like to think of her
view over the fields
she saw and imagined
as being coincidental
with the advent
of dry colour plates
so instead of shadows
caulking the headstones
and fine weathering
in the swing-mirror
she consulted
a blue chromatic wash
bled into the emulsion
of her skin, as below
in the dying ash

as a house cat proved

on embroidery psalms
and shutters fell

of a crows descent
the light was spectral
and intermittent

on the ordinary day

that died out slowly
among the sensible

painting the late hours

of the Sabbath, the faultlines of the elegy

layers she wore

as she summoned herself
to the frame to name
the dead, her collar
pinned with a cameo stain
in a sepia print
she would not see, except
in the confinement
her discipline meted out
and where desire kept
counsel with solitude
being elsewhere was like
some trusted companion
the age had consigned to her
posthumously.

106

Listening to Yeats
Anthony Lawrence
On the unswept granary floor of an acetate recording
even the gleam of a monocle
and the signature-loop of its string
are part of his voice, broken as it is
from having been copied across generations
from master to this tape

spooling through the dash
in a thunderstorm so intense, the wipers offer
only brief interludes of clarity
like this recording, where a swan can be heard
above wind sifting through
the skys hard grains, and then the sound
of a fountain pen being filled at a desk well
and tapped three times
becoming worn magnetic tape
turning over with a hiss, like a swan disturbed
like these tires at speed
before another poem intervenes.

Anthony Lawrences most recent book of poems is Headwaters

(Pitt Street Poetry, 2016). Anthony is a lecturer at Griffith University,
Gold Coast, where he teaches Writing Poetry and Creative Writing.
He lives at Kingscliff on the far north coast of NSW.

107

Requiem
Liam Ferney
with thanks to G
a sock falls from the line
like the market
responding to rumours of Grexit
and it strikes him surprising
that death makes the imagined real

in the old-fashioned way.
an expected text
still changes the direction of things,
the way every discarded beer bottle
submerged in sediment

readjusts the rivers current.
when we go beyond the clouds
we feel the collapse of dreams more keenly

and even if all there was to lose
was lost some time ago
and it is the scope of that which wasnt
that clumsily cleaves the heart
like a jihadis dull blade through
an aid workers pale neck.

Liam Ferneys most recent collection is Content (Hunter

Publishing). His last collection, Boom (Grand Parade
Poets), was shortlisted for the NSW Premiers Poetry Prize
and the Queensland Poetry Prize. He is a media manager,
poet and aspiring left back living in Brisbane, Queensland.

108

Pulled Teeth, Age 36

Belinda Rule
How like it was to that other time
Id been made lie still and
let a man hurt me.
The next day, four deep wells
plugged with clotted blood,
tunnel to an unknowable core, exit
to another world.
And the private, inward face
of the next molar along, seen
for the first time: pale and pleasing,
round as a buttock,
the fangy parts piratical,
jagged as a leaf.
At once I was sorry
Id declined to take the teeth
itd seemed obscene. What knowings
might I have had of them?
Their roots, tuber-like, part
of the iceberg below the water,
mother-of-pearl striations of
cream, beige and bone,
their spit, blood and tartar.
The shape of them like two cocked
lizards muzzles, scenting
the air of the silent country within, now
breaking its silence for the first and perhaps
last time, to send me this telegram of

faithful teeth:
near-last friends from middle childhood,
only children I might ever have.

Belinda Rule is a writer of poetry and fiction from Melbourne, Victoria.

She has been a fellow at Squaw Valley Community of Writers, USA;
a resident at Varuna and Bundanon Trust in Australia; and is a past
winner of the John Masefield Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared
extensively in journals and anthologies, including Meanjin, Australian
Book Review, Antipodes, Eureka Street, Westerly, Sleepers Almanac, Cordite
Poetry Review, Hecate, Islet, Best Australian Poems 2012, and elsewhere.

109

Intimacy
Caitlin Maling
During the French film,
I spend my time wondering
how I can put doors and windows into poems.
The director shoots them
always straight on, so they frame
the old man and woman in the film like pictures.
Really Im trying not to think about ageing.
The woman in the film gets dementia,
spends her time on an electric bed.
Fewer people will ever see this film
then saw Briana Loves Jenna,
which is the tenth-bestselling adult DVD of all time.
In it, Briana loves Jenna
orally, mammarily, vaginally and anally
for close to an hour.

hours spent deep-throating brush-handles,

looking for our epiglottises in mirrors
that fogged up like windows.

No one enters or exits the room.

Or maybe they do
and I had left the room where we were showing it.

The old man in the French movie

is changing his wifes diaper,
directly over his shoulder is a window,

By that point, its hard to keep straight

the g-string, porn and cigar parties
we threw for our fifteen-year-old feminism;

you cant tell if she can see out of it.

In her autobiography Jenna Jameson
uses the word wee-wee instead of penis,
like he had a big wee-wee or he took out his wee-wee,
her vagina is a pussy, never a window,
but it often opens doors, so she says.
The man comes back from behind the door,
we see his face for a second.
I hadnt realised how Id missed him.
I forget so many things,
we were so young, I remember.
And so tender.

Caitlin Maling is a West Australian poet whose first

collection, Conversations Ive Never Had, was published in 2015.
A follow-up collection is due out in 2017 with Fremantle Press.

110

Anno Domini 452

Ricardo Pau-Llosa
It is not the fish, their fate inscribed
in glass, nor the shrill of lights on scales
that draw us to the aquarium in Stanley Spencers
Boatbuilders Yard, Cookham (1936).
Two goldfish crypted, staring
out next to a stone that cannot
hide them. Its been left on the tiled patio
before a brick garden wall
and desert succulents among rocks
propped like polite rubble: coral
and travertine chunks anthologising
shells and detritus that annotate
the gladly if unwisely forgotten. Beyond,
like flotsam petals, boats mire
the bank of a river sure to hold
its tongue through the coming war.
Beasts, we are told, presage calamity,
and so these fish might dream
their dim parcel a palace. Legend
has Attila, siege tired, reading
victory in the sudden flight of storks
from Aquileia. Its refugees
would found Venice. The fish
burn against the gravel grey
like flares above a trench.
All is alien to us in the tank,
except that brethren ground.
It is the bottom of the sea which makes it ours.

Ricardo Pau-Llosas seventh book of poetry, MAN, is from Carnegie

Mellon University Press, as were his previous four titles. His work has
appeared in Poetry, PN Review, Stand, American Poetry Review, The
Fiddlehead, Dalhousie Review, New England Review, Volt, Salmagundi,
Edinburgh Review, and Ambit, among many other magazines.

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