The Big Issue Australia #612 - After The Fires

Ed.

612

17 15OCT MAY 012020 NOV 2019

p26.

MIRIAM MARGOLYES p30.

AFTER the FIRES

A story of community, hope and a koala called Grumpy

CULTURAL CARE PACKAGES p40.

CHOCOLATE BAVARIAN PIE $4.50 of the cover price goes to your vendor

$4.50 of the cover price goes to vendors

HELPING PEOPLE THEMSELVES HELPING PEOPLE HELPHELP THEMSELVES

$9 $9

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Contents

EDITION

612 26 LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF

Great Expectations Harry Potter actor and new Australian Miriam Margolyes on her fabulousness, her fortress family and playing around.

30 FILM

Art in Your Inbox

12.

Out of the Ashes

by Anastasia Safioleas

It’s a long road to recovery for fire-ravaged communities like South Australia’s Kangaroo Island. In Part One of our report from the frontline, we meet the good people in charge of rescuing and rehabilitating the island’s unique wildlife – including koalas like our cover-star Grumpy.

Going to an art gallery or cinema is impossible at the moment, but you can still get your arthouse video hit at home, care of Prototype.

40 TASTES LIKE HOME

THE REGULARS

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

28 Ricky 29 Fiona 36 Film Reviews 37 Small Screen Reviews 38 Music Reviews 39 Book Reviews

43 Public Service Announcement 44 Puzzles 45 Crossword 46 Click

BEHIND THE COVER

“Considered an ecological wonderland, Kangaroo Island’s unique wildlife – the abundant koala, kangaroo, wallaby, wombat, possum, glossy black cockatoo, tiny pointy-nosed dunnart, green carpenter bee and even the world’s last purebred Ligurian bee colony – suffered greatly.” photo by Christina Simons christinasimons.com

Chocolate Bavarian Pie Growing up in the 80s, the Sara Lee Chocolate Bavarian was a culinary highlight for Natalie Paull. Now she’s developed a tricked-up homemade version. Yum!

Ed’s Letter

Your Say

Island Fortress

E FO RT NI GH T LE TT ER OF TH

by Anastasia Safioleas Contributing Editor @anast

W

hen we arrived at South Australia’s Kangaroo Island in early March, it had been nine weeks since bushfires had torn through, devastating the community and leaving behind charred swathes of land.

Driving through Flinders Chase National Park – once rugged and beautiful and teeming with wildlife, now sparse and blackened – was particularly sobering.

Photographer Christina Simons and I were struck by how desolate the island now was.

We were there to try to understand the fire and its impact. What we found were stories of community, kindness and generosity – and of the ways people come together in the aftermath of tragedy. We met locals who had lost everything, yet still found a way to help others. And we spent time with volunteers, many from interstate and overseas, who had come to assist with the rebuild of the island.

There were people rebuilding fences on

fire-damaged properties with BlazeAid, others making new kennels for farm dogs at Kingscote Men’s Shed, and many working to rescue and rehabilitate the island’s unique wildlife. At Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park, they’ve worked tirelessly to save countless orphaned and injured animals that have come through their doors – including our cover-star koala, Grumpy.

By the time we met him, Grumpy had spent weeks in recovery, and had been given the green light to return home to the bush. I had the honour of releasing the latch on his crate, setting him free. Watching him high up in his gum tree, happy and healthy thanks to a raft of carers, vets and keepers, I marvelled at what can happen when people work together.

You can read all about Grumpy and Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park in this edition. And in the next edition, we focus on the people of Kangaroo Island as they rebuild their community.

The Big Issue has been on my radar since the 1990s when it was first launched in the UK and Ireland, where I am from. I started buying it regularly in Sydney in the late 90s from vendors around the QVB. It was always good to have “the chat� with the guys – they’d tell me how their day was going, often very upbeat because usually they had just about sold out. I switched to buying through subscription to support the Women’s Subscription Enterprise. Although I miss the chats, receiving The Big Issue in the post is a huge highlight, and now, even more so. Let’s just say I am a huge fan. ‘Streetsheet’ lifted my spirits in the recent Ed#609, especially Rachel T’s ‘Tuesday to Thursday’.

So nice to hear from the vendors.

PETRA SUTTLE BALMAINÂ IÂ NSW

I hope you’re all safe and managing to get by financially. I am reading The Big Issue online, but it’s not the same as buying a mag from a vendor.

I’m looking forward to seeing you all when we resume. Best wishes from Alan (Coffee Man)

đ&#x;˜Š

04

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The Big Issue Story The Big Issue is an independent, not-for-profit magazine sold on the streets around Australia. It was created as a social enterprise 23 years ago to provide both a voice and a work opportunity for people experiencing homelessness and disadvantage. Your purchase of this magazine has directly benefited the person who sold it to you. Big Issue vendors buy each copy for $4.50 and sell it to you for $9, keeping the profits. But The Big Issue is more than a fortnightly magazine.

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• Our Women’s Subscription Enterprise provides employment and training for women through the sale of magazine subscriptions as well as social procurement work. • The Community Street Soccer Program promotes social inclusion and good health at weekly soccer games at 19 locations around the country. • The Big Issue Classroom educates school groups about homelessness. • And The Big Idea challenges university students to develop a new social enterprise.

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As winner of Letter of the Fortnight, Petra wins a copy of Natalie Paull’s cookbook Beatrix Bakes. Check out her Chocolate Bavarian Pie on p40.

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YOUR SAY SUBMISSIONS MAY BE EDITED FOR CLARITY AND SPACE.

Meet Your Vendor

PROUD UNIFORM PARTNER OF THE BIG ISSUE VENDORS.

SELLS THE BIG ISSUE IN PYRMONT, SYDNEY

15 MAY 2020

interview by Melissa Fulton photo by George Fetting

Rachel T

05

The cycle of homelessness is real. I used to call myself a clever homeless person, because I had to be with my four little ones – in 10 years we had 25 different types of accommodation.

Before I joined The Big Issue I gave up on life; I gave up on community. When I was really running on the streets, music helped me a lot. I listen to all kinds of music: Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, Nick Cave, Tommy Emmanuel. For me, music is empathy – you’re walking in someone else’s sight. So when I was really lonely, it was a friend.

The Big Issue taught me that unique people can work together with their flaws. It wasn’t just one thing, but the community behind The Big Issue as a whole. It’s a foundation for me to build upon – it was up to me to do what I did from there. And walking in that door and getting asked your first name and do you want to work? The power in that one sentence did so much for me. It got me to uni. I enrolled in a music management course and completed the first year.

This is the hard part. A couple of years ago I was diagnosed with a brain injury, and I got epilepsy. So in the year that I was supposed to be flying overseas for Street Soccer and representing Australia at the Homeless World Cup, in the year I was supposed to be continuing with uni, I was having bad epileptic fits. But I was still a part of the community.

I was still doing my talks with The Big Issue Classroom. I was still trying to finish university and I was still trying to do soccer here and there if the doctors said it was okay.

I started to get better – then, out of the blue, the doctors found a fast-growing aneurysm at the base of my skull. I was so glad that they found it. They said they couldn’t guarantee what would happen, but that without an operation the aneurysm could explode within five years. And for the first time in my life, I actually chose to live. Like, not just survive – really live. And six months later I had the operation.

Since then I’ve had to rebuild myself again, but I wouldn’t have been able to do that without community – I’ve realised I’m not me without a community. I even had customers sending me presents in hospital. That’s the power of my work.

Even though I haven’t been able to go back to uni yet; even though I haven’t been able to drive yet, the brain injury is going to get better. I know that.

You have to balance fear with love, I think. I’ve learned that life isn’t always about the good times – it’s about how you creatively try and fix conflict. You know, I’ve had all those things happen to my brain and look at me – I’m talking to you! – and I shouldn’t be able to! I’ve done so much.

I still sometimes let words from the past get into my head, but then I get someone walk by and say hello, or smile, and that just makes me think that I’m selling a really good magazine, and that I’m alright. I’m just being me, and it’s okay to be me.

Streetsheet

Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends

I Had a Bad Fall

VENDOR SPOTLIGHT

I was dunked in a pool till I gave up, BLISS

JACK

I had a bad fall Don’t know why I am scared of the kids’ game, hangman Hang on = poor colloquial English Hint hint, how bizarre, then I am a bit quirky.

Wedding Bells

06

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

A

lesya and I got married at Lavender Bay in April! We had the view of the Harbour Bridge and the city in the background. I spoke about our plans in Ed#609. It was pretty different with the coronavirus happening – we had the pastor, a couple of friends from church to be witnesses, and our son Levi was there, too. We dressed up a little bit. It was elegant.

I woke up on the day and was like, It’s finally here – today is the day. I think we were both a bit nervous. It was exciting. We both had vows that we designed. Alesya and I are really strong in faith and we wanted to be right before the Lord – it was something that was on our minds. But really, it’s about the love that we share. And we wanted our son to see us as a married couple – the value that it will hold for him as he grows up and becomes a man.

After the ceremony we celebrated together. I cooked a dinner we both like – you couldn’t go out because the restaurants and everything have closed – so I made a pasta marinara with lemon and herbs. Later in the evening I pulled the guitar out and played. Levi’s my biggest fan.

We felt married beforehand, you know? The commitment and everything was there, so married life doesn’t feel that different.

I’m most looking forward to just enjoying life continuously with Alesya, without end.

JACK OUTSIDE CHANNEL 7, MARTIN PLACE I SYDNEY

Made mistakes all through my life, not so many; now I am wiser I had a bad fall Got my second wind when I was 11 or 12. Often I feel ready, for what?

I had a bad fall Took the world on my shoulders at the age of 13.

Dumb or bizarre?

I had a bad fall Got into drugs, had a bad knock. I got out, nervous breakdown, cold turkey. Battle between head and heart. Hospitalisation six times. Homeless for 21 years.

I had a bad fall Drugs again. Reconciliation with myself with regard to drugs is working. Many good moments too.

I had a bad fall.

I’m happy sometimes when I am stony cold sober.

I came through back to my natural self with a few flaws.

Thank you for reading this.

I love all my customers.

Bless your hearts.

FRANCINE TOWN HALL I PERTH

PHOTO BY GEORGE FETTING

JACK, A MARRIED MAN

I had a bad fall

Brave New World Everybody should stay safe and relax. You now have the opportunity to do things you wouldn’t do normally. I’m using it to reorganise my house and living conditions. I think it’s an interesting time, because people are supporting each other. Like it or not, there’s a camaraderie out there. People can lend a hand, take an extra breath because they’re not running around – see things in a different light. I’d like to thank everybody who has supported The Big Issue. I would like to thank those people who reached out to me after seeing me on Channel 10. And Kristina, the network’s reporter who helped support me. It’s a time of extreme disruption, and with this disruption, perhaps society – if it’s brave enough – will reorganise itself with a more generous and inclusive heart. I hope that people forward these positive feelings into the future. I pray for the immigrants who have shaped this country and have lost their jobs. We can’t forget them. Hopefully people will get their jobs back. Hopefully people aren’t evicted from their homes.

Hopefully society gets back on track. Even the animal kingdom will be needing therapy after this!

They’ll be wondering, “What

Safe and Well Thank you to the lovely people who think of me and send their best wishes during this difficult time.

Special wishes to Linda who sent in a lovely message for me and buys The Big Issue from me, and Steven who gave me such wonderful gifts

TERESA H&M I BOURKE ST MALL I MELBOURNE

Trees of Life We take nature for granted with climate change. Mangroves near the river give us oxygen. I am devastated about the state of the Amazon. We are lucky to live in Australia and that we don’t have so much pollution here. Trees provide us with shade and give pleasure to people in parks.

TED QUEENS PLAZA I BRISBANE

State of the Art I have been doing my artwork for years. I have done more recently since I haven’t worked due to this virus. My designs are handmade with canvas and wool, and made into wall hangings. I do my own designs. People are always interested in what I do – my customers ask how my artwork is going, so I decided to take some photos and let everyone see what my passion is outside of The Big Issue.

GLENN F NEAR CENTRAL STATION, CNR ELIZABETH & FOVEAUX STS I SYDNEY

ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.

15 MAY 2020

RONNIE FOOTSCRAY STATION I MELBOURNE

LOUIS SOUTHERN CROSS STATION I DEGRAVES ST I CENTREWAY I MELBOURNE

and keeps in touch with me all the way from Tasmania. I am happy and well and keeping safe.

07

I am really looking forward to being back at work selling The Big Issue magazine again. My customers are very polite and friendly. When I tell them to have a nice day, they always say “same to you”. I have been keeping busy by cleaning up the house, sorting cupboards and watching the news and Home and Away. I really miss selling The Big Issue, and I can’t wait to start back.

happened to the humans?” I’m thinking of starting up a new job as an animal psychiatrist! Hopefully no-one gets left behind.

GLENN’S CANVAS AND WOOL WALL HANGINGS

Keeping Busy

Hearsay

Richard Castles Writer Andrew Weldon Cartoonist

“

We can’t have any kissing scenes or hand holding for the time being.

But longing looks are fine.

Jason Herbison, an executive producer on Neighbours, on production resuming on the long-running TV show after lockdown. That’s when good neighbours become good socially distancing friends.

08

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

THE AGE

more conversation and to have more complex conversation.”

Michelle Fournet, a marine acoustician at Cornell University, on expecting to hear a bit more nautical conversation from whales during the corona pandemic, as the downturn in freight and cruise liner traffic makes the oceans a bit damn quieter.

THE GUARDIAN I UK

“It became a hit pretty much everywhere in the world. I went with her around the world because each of the territories wanted her to turn up and do TV shows and such, and it was just incredible how she handled it. She was such a really sweet person.”

Island Records co-founder Chris Blackwell on singer Millie Small, who died 5 May, aged 72. Millie’s most famous song ‘My Boy Lollipop’ was a worldwide hit in 1964. Now try to get the song out of your head.

NME I UK

Esther Perel (Mating in Captivity) on relationships in a time of quarantine.

“It does change how you watch movies now. If a film was shot quite recently you can’t help thinking how oblivious they all are. And you look enviously at people doing the most pedestrian things. You see someone having a beer in a pub and go: Wow! Look at that guy! You don’t have to escape to the Star Wars universe for it to seem exotic and weird – it’s just someone in a cafe having an omelette.”

TV writer and prodcuer Stephen Merchant (The Office) on watching movies during lockdown.

“WFP estimates that an additional 20 million people could struggle to feed themselves due to the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 in the next six months, doubling the number of food-insecure to 43 million in this region.”

Spokesperson for World Food Programme, Elisabeth Byrs, on the threat that the COVID-19 pandemic poses to people in west Africa.

THE GUARDIAN I UK

AFRICA NEWS I CONGO

“I think, in general, when people live in acute stress, either the cracks in their relationship will be amplified or the light that shines through the cracks will be amplified. You get an amplification of the best and of the worst.”

Belgian psychotherapist and author

“We have a generation of humpbacks that have never known a quiet ocean. What we know about whales in southeast Alaska is that when it gets noisy they call less, and when boats go by they call less. I expect what we might see is an opportunity for whales to have

THE NEW YORKER I US

“We were lucky because this cliff was exposed in the right way. To form these 200m-thick deposits we needed conditions that would have required an environment capable of maintaining significant volumes of liquid water.”

Geologist Francesco Salese of Utrecht University on the discovery of a high rocky cliff on Mars, which evidence suggests could have been formed by a river that may have flowed for 100,000 Earth years.

NEW SCIENTIST I UK

“NASA is excited to work with Tom Cruise on a film aboard the Space Station! We need popular media to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists to make NASA’s ambitious plans a reality.”

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine via Twitter on talk of the first feature film to be shot in space (yes, really – those other ones were shot in studios).

Though unconfirmed, it is rumoured

20 Questions

by Little Red

01 Which soldier is said to have run the

42.195 kilometres from the Battle of Marathon to Athens to deliver news of victory?

02 What does the winter solstice

signify?

03 What are the names of the three

bears in ABC kids show Bananas in Pyjamas?

04 In what year was SARS (SARS-CoV-1)

declared contained by the World Health Organisation?

05 Which camel has two humps, the

bactrian or the dromedary?

06 Which book starts with the line:

“Mr and Mrs Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much”?

07 What is the Spanish word for devil?

A young girl to her brother, overheard by Alina of St Ives, NSW.

routine, even though he no longer does as many comedy ones. His 23 Hours to Kill is streaming on Netflix.

THE GUARDIAN I UK

“I like them [Kraftwerk] as people very much, Florian in particular.

Very dry. When I go to Düsseldorf they take me to cake shops, and we have huge pastries. They wear their suits. A bit like Gilbert and George, actually. God, whatever happened to those two?... When I came over to Europe – it was the first tour I ever did of Europe (1976) – I got myself a Mercedes to drive myself around in, cause I still wasn’t flying at that time, and Florian saw it...

He said, ‘What a wonderful car’, and I said, ‘Yes, it used to belong to some Iranian prince, and he was assassinated and the car went on the market, and I got it for the tour.’

And Florian said, ‘Ja, car always lasts longer.’”

David Bowie, in 1978, on Florian Schneider, co-founder of Kraftwerk, who has died of cancer, aged 73.

“When I play that kind of character, I want to give it everything I can so when the hero kills me or thwarts me in the end, it’s more satisfying for the audience. You really want that guy to get it.”

Actor Alec Baldwin, well known for his impersonations of US President Donald Trump, on playing bad-boy Joshua Rush in 80s TV soap Knots Landing, a break he sees as “one of the five most important times of my life”.

PEOPLE I US

“I’m not OCD, but I love routine.

I get less depressed with routine.

You’re just a trained animal in a circus. I like that feeling: now we’re going to do this trick, now we’re going to do that trick. That makes me feel better.”

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld on liking

THE NEW YORK TIMES I US

DAVIDBOWIE.COM

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

08 What is the job title of Mike

Pompeo?

09 In which state would you find

Wallaman Falls, the tallest singledrop waterfall in Australia at 268m?

10 Who plays Eve Polastri in the hit TV

spy-drama Killing Eve? 11 What are the five living Romance

languages?

12 What does a konometer measure?

13 How many seasons of The Simpsons

have been aired?

14 Who was the first woman to win the

Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1962?

15 How many mammals are capable of

continuous flight? (Bonus point if you can name them.)

16 What is equal to mass times

acceleration?

17 Who has been cast to play infamous

zookeeper Joe Exotic in a scripted mini-series based on the Netflix doco Tiger King?

18 When was the first Tour de France

staged: in 1903, 1919 or 1934?

19 What does the acronym AIDS

stand for?

20 Which well-known couple have

announced they’ve named their newborn son X Æ A-12?

ANSWERS ON PAGE 44

15 MAY 2020

“Dad invests in hedgehogs.”

the film will star Tom Cruise and be produced with the help of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

09

EAR2GROUND

My Word

by Kerri Sackville @kerrisackville

A

round the second week of lockdown, I started to panic. Would I get sick? Would my parents get sick? Would my kids cope with home schooling? Was the world falling apart? Did we have enough toilet paper?

But behind all these fears lurked another, darker fear.

Would I ever date again?

I’ve been divorced for a while, and though I’ve had relationships, I have been single for the past three years.

And I’ve been fine with that! At least, I thought I was. I mean, it’s still rough walking into a party alone, particularly when everyone else is coupled up. It’s still demoralising being asked constantly why I am single, or (with a wink) “So how’s the dating thing going?”

But I have three great kids and a great circle of friends, and I’m reasonably content on my own. I occasionally dip into dating apps to keep my options open, but I’ve never been especially fussed about the outcome.

Until, that is, I found myself isolated in a pandemic.

Suddenly, I felt a gripping sense of urgency. It’s one thing to be relaxed about dating when you can do it; it’s quite another when the option is shut down. There was no possibility of me finding love – or even a dinner date – when I wasn’t allowed within 1.5 metres of another adult.

I was also keenly aware that most of my friends were locked down with their significant others and were experiencing the pandemic very differently to me. They were going through this crisis with a partner by their side, and I was going through it with three children and a cat.

Perhaps it’s over for me, I thought with despair. I was already 51, and after a couple of weeks in iso I felt and looked about 103. Who knew how long we would all be locked down for? Would I even remember how to behave on a date when this ends? Would my flirting skills dry up like my over-washed hands? Would I even have anything interesting left to say?

It might sound irrational, but scarcity feeds desperation, and isolation does strange things to your brain. I’d never worried about toilet paper before, and suddenly I was counting rolls and panicking about going without. Well, I hadn’t been worried about my love life before either, but suddenly I was counting my previous relationships and panicking about never having another.

Now, I wasn’t proud of having such selfish thoughts when the world was in dire straits. On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, “finding a nice boyfriend” is far less important than having food and shelter and staying corona-free. But I could not shake the panic of never having another first kiss, or the existential fear of being alone forevermore.

It seemed pointless to try dating apps when there was no possibility of meeting in person. More significantly, I didn’t feel confident in my ability to be fascinating when all I was doing was surviving the pandemic.

How’s your day going? the man would ask.

Well, so far, I’ve just stayed home.

Big plans for the weekend?

Um, I think I might stay home.

But then, unexpectedly, I received a message from a man I’d connected with pre-lockdown. He had still been living with his ex, which is why I’d declined to meet him, but now, apparently, he was properly separated.

Oooh! my brain whispered. Could this be destiny?

We arranged a “virtual date”, which sounded postapocalyptically romantic. I envisioned fancy clothes, mood lighting, an atmospheric playlist and a flirtatious chat over a nice bottle of wine.

Instead, I was in my tracksuit pants. I’m not sure what he was wearing; all I could see was his head. My son was yelling over a video game upstairs. My youngest daughter came in to ask for a snack. I felt self-conscious trying to flirt in a house full of kids. We had a bit of a chat and then I cooked dinner for the family.

Turns out, it was just another awkward date. The man wasn’t my destiny.

I’m going to die alone, I thought afterwards.

But then my friends started to complain about how their husbands were driving them mad in lockdown, while I lay in my queen-sized bed and binged Netflix without having to share the remote. Friends asked me how I was doing, and not whether I was dating – and I realised how wonderfully freeing that was. I decided that it was okay not to think about dating for a while.

And I realised, too, that life is unpredictable. I never saw this pandemic coming, so maybe I won’t see my next romance coming, either. Maybe I will be single forever.

Or maybe the next great love of my life awaits, when this pandemic ends, and we all stumble out into the light.

Kerri Sackville is a Sydney-based author and columnist.

Her latest book is Out There: A Survival Guide for Dating in Midlife.

11

With three kids and a cat for company, Kerri Sackville contemplates romantic isolation in a pandemic.

15 MAY 2020

Love Virtually

OUT of the ASHES As bushfires devastated much of the country over summer, Kangaroo Island was hit hard – almost half the island burned.

Anastasia Safioleas and photographer Christina Simons visited the island to document its recovery. Part One of our series focuses on the rescue and rehabilitation of the island’s wildlife.

by Anastasia Safioleas Contributing Editor @anast

12

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

W

e stand at the base of a gum tree looking up into its leafy canopy. Plastic laundry baskets, the type found in most homes, at our feet. It’s early March, and we’re on South Australia’s Kangaroo Island nine weeks after bushfires devastated the community, killing two people, destroying dozens of homes and decimating wildlife.

At 150 kilometres long and with more than 500 kilometres of coastline, it’s a large island – and almost half was burned. Flinders Chase National Park, epicentre of the fires, is reduced to a charred landscape of ash and mud. Even the metal signs by the side of the road droop, overcome.

We’re deep in a gum tree plantation off the main highway. Except for the occasional rustle of leaves, it’s quiet. Every now and again we offer words of encouragement to a young man in a harness clinging to the gum’s spindly branches, determination etched across his sunburned face.

He’s trying to reach a koala. The animal is no doubt wondering why he’s in her tree, but it’s important to get her down. The tree she calls home might be healthy, but it’s surrounded by a thin cluster of greenery that quickly peters out into barren landscape levelled by bushfire. Left to her own devices, she’ll eventually run out of food and starve.

This type of animal rescue has become the norm since fires swept through the island in late

December. Considered an ecological wonderland, Kangaroo Island’s unique wildlife – the abundant koala, kangaroo, wallaby, wombat, possum, glossy black cockatoo, tiny pointy-nosed dunnart, green carpenter bee and even the world’s last purebred Ligurian bee colony – suffered greatly. Staggering numbers of animals perished from burns, just as many from smoke inhalation. Before the fires, close to 50,000 koalas called the island home – today an estimated 5000 to 10,000 remain. Eighty per cent of their habitat has been wiped out. Nearly three months on, those animals that survived are facing a very real lack of food.

But Kangaroo Island is slowly rebuilding. Fences are being mended, surviving livestock tended to, razed homes cleared. The landscape is beginning to show some signs of regrowth. Blackened branches sport the occasional green shoot, some of the grass is growing back, farmers are talking about cropping again. Mental health is also in the forefront; there is much talk among locals about the first signs of PTSD. The coronavirus lockdown, however, has forced a temporary pause in the island’s rehabilitation. For the island, like other bushfire-affected areas that rely on tourism, the lockdown is another cruel blow.

Standing with me at the base of the gum tree are members of Humane Society International (HSI).

The animal welfare charity has maintained a steady presence on the island since the fires, playing a part in wildlife rescue efforts. Kai Wild (his real name) is the young man in the tree, his arms riddled with

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GRUMPY BY NAME, CUTE BY NATURE

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KAI WILD DROPPED EVERYTHING TO GET TO KANGAROO ISLAND, WHERE HE HAS RESCUED MORE THAN 100 KOALAS VETS AND KEEPERS TEND TO AN INJURED KOALA THIS FURRY FELLOW ENJOYS SOME RESPITE AND A FEED AT KANGAROO ISLAND WILDLIFE PARK

koala scratches. The Sydney-based arborist with a wildlife rescue background was so keen to help out during the fires that he dropped everything and drove his ute 19 hours to get here in late January.

As soon as he stepped off the ferry, he set to work rescuing koalas – usually alone – working 10- to 12hour days, scaling trees with the help of his climbing gear to get to the stranded animals. Other times, it’s as simple as finding a hunched koala on the ground.

He estimates he’s rescued more than 100 koalas – but he’s lost count of the number of dead wildlife he has found along the way. For Wild, his time on Kangaroo Island has been arduous, mentally and physically tough, and fraught with emotion. His social media posts from those early days often mention having a cry at the end of the day.

It takes much manoeuvring from tree limb to limb, but eventually Wild gets close enough to grab the koala by the scruff. He lowers himself with his precious charge to the ground and hands her over to HSI. They soon have her settled in the laundry basket – one placed over the other to form a makeshift hutch. Our next stop is Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park, just outside the small town of Parndana, located in the middle of the island. Here vets will give the koala the once-over.

Until recently, Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park was mostly a tourist destination, with only a few enclosures for the handful of injured wildlife that came in each year. But since the fires it has become a makeshift animal hospital, taking in more than 600 koalas in need of medical attention. Today, rows of newly built enclosures house numerous recuperating koalas. Keepers and vets – many volunteers from across the country – mill about, tending to patients.

We hand over our rescued koala to a keeper from Queensland’s Australia Zoo and a vet from Adelaide Zoo. They give her the once-over – and name her Colette. It’s common practice, naming the injured koalas that come in. Out in the enclosures you’ll find Noisy and Nosey, Chuck Norris and Big Guy, Fat Boy, Smash Face and Feisty. There’s also Grumpy, but more on him later.

Colette is checked for the usual signs of injury, including burned paws and singed fur. Out in the enclosure, I come across a keeper gently combing the fur of another koala, who continues to quietly munch on gum leaves. Singed fur prevents a koala from self-grooming – by running its claws through its fur – essential for keeping themselves waterproof. Left ungroomed, they are vulnerable to hypothermia. Thankfully Colette is given a clean bill of health and placed in an enclosure stocked with food. There’s talk of releasing her the next day.

December’s bushfires became January’s bushfires, which turned the park into ground zero for many of the island’s injured wildlife.

ferocity of the fire was not like anything I had seen.

“Locals were bringing in animals they had found, firefighters and military personnel who had found animals, people who had found animals as they were driving along,” he continues. This also includes the many brought in by HSI and Wild, together with RSPCA volunteers. “We were quite literally operating on koalas and other animals in our cafe. The park was closed, which during the busiest part of the year is a massive, massive deal.”

Soon, every available building and shed was taken up with row upon row of baskets nursing injured koalas. It wasn’t until South Australia Veterinary Emergency Management (SAVEM), the official first responders, donated a large tent that the park was finally able to set up a designated triage area. A steady stream of donations in the past few months has also allowed them to upgrade their facilities.

Evan Quartermain and Kelly Donithan, two of Colette’s rescuers who are both from HIS, approach to check on her progress. Quartermain can usually be found working behind his desk at HSI’s headquarters in Sydney, but since January has made numerous trips to Kangaroo Island. Massachusettsbased Donithan joined him for many of these visits, flying back and forth from her US home, the endless loop of long flights testament to her commitment.

It’s the first time HSI has deployed in Australia for a disaster. Their work is mostly in less-developed countries during the messy aftermath of hurricanes and earthquakes. As soon as they arrived on Kangaroo Island they were rescuing koalas, often

KELLY DONITHAN, OF HUMANE SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL, WITH COLETTE

plucking them from burning trees or finding them huddled on the ground for protection.

“It was the most traumatic time of my life,” Quartermain says quietly. “You can’t prepare for the amount of death we saw. We were seeing thousands of dead animal bodies a day. It was a lot to see. It was…overwhelming.”

Softly spoken Donithan, her arms marked by koala scratches, also speaks of the devastation.

The first time she ventured out onto a plantation, smoke from still-raging fires was thick in the air.

On one particular day spent dodging fast-moving blazes to get to injured animals, she remembers scooping up a possum she found huddled on the ground. “As soon as I picked him up, I could feel the heat on him. He was burning from the intense

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They were so inundated with animals needing medical attention that they were forced to house injured wildlife in the modest house of park owners Sam and Dana Mitchell.

According to park manager Billy Dunlop, it was chaos. Tall and with a youthful enthusiasm tempered somewhat by fatigue, Dunlop has worked tirelessly since December – both as a volunteer with the Country Fire Service and tending to the injured animals coming into the park. The volunteer firefighting effort on the island was massive, an unprecedented event for most of the nearly 5000-strong community.

“The island genuinely felt like a war zone,” Dunlop recalls. “It was eerie. The roads were deserted, things were burning, smoking… The

15 MAY 2020

The island felt like a war zone.

It was eerie. The roads were deserted, things were burning, smoking…

The next day Colette is approved for release.

With Dunlop, Quartermain and Donithan, we drive to a flourishing plantation full of koala food.

The mood is cheerful – the release of a recovered koala is cause for celebration.

“I got to the point where I would say ‘Here’s a koala – if it makes it, tell me, otherwise I’m not going to ask’,” says Dunlop. “We were expecting a 12 per cent survival rate [at the park] and we’ve done a lot better than that; it’s around 30 per cent.”

For koalas, recovery can be problematic. Dunlop outlines the many ailments and conditions that can continue to affect their health, even when they are looking well.

“It was so sad at the start to get a carload of 30 koalas and potentially lose half of them straight away,” he says. “But our ability to track them has evolved and the facilities are in place so we can treat those more severe injuries. We’ve seen the success rate come back up.”

This is why Dunlop never goes alone on a release, giving the likes of Quartermain and Donithan, as well as park staff – some who have lost homes – the opportunity to enjoy a hard-earned moment.

Gingerly we climb over a barbed wire fence and head for a towering gum tree, placing the crate at

its base. Colette doesn’t waste any time, shooting out of the crate and up the trunk. Smiles break out among the group. Looking up at her as she settles in for a feed, Dunlop remarks that she’s the healthiest, most robust koala he’s seen in a while. It’s a rare glimmer of hope.

Our next stop is a little further down. Grumpy, his nose scarred by fire, has spent considerable time recuperating at the wildlife park. Lately he’s been showing signs of restlessness. He’s attempted at least one escape from his enclosure, and has started taking the occasional swipe at the keepers with his long claws. Dunlop jokingly calls him “angry man”.

Happily, he’s now been given a clean bill of health.

As with Colette, we locate a healthy gum full of food and place the crate at its base. This time I’m given the privilege of opening the crate’s door. But when I release the latch, Grumpy is a no-show. We sit and wait. Eventually, he peers out at us, then tentatively takes a few steps. He quietly sits at the base of the tree and stares at us. We stare back.

A few minutes pass. Quartermain wonders out loud if this is a bad sign. We wait some more.

Grumpy finally takes one last look at us and begins his slow ascent up the gum tree. He finds a branch to his liking, takes a seat, reaches out for a handful of leaves and slowly begins to munch.

He’s back home.

IN OUR NEXT EDITION, WE VISIT THE PEOPLE OF KANGAROO ISLAND AS THEY REBUILD THEIR COMMUNITY.

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@christinasimons

photos by Christina Simons

heat,” she recounts. “I tried pouring water over him, but I knew what the fate for these animals would be… We tried to get to them soon and provide relief, even if it was euthanasia.”

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COLETTE IS READY TO RETURN TO THE BUSH – AND JUST CAN’T WAIT!

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illustration by Kate Banazi

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Still Life in Landscapes Amid the blackened trees and scorched brown earth, colour returns for a writer in recovery.

by Hayley Katzen @hayleykatzen

Hayley Katzen’s debut memoir Untethered is out now from Ventura Press.

S

even months since the fire, and the bay tree just a metre from our house is two-toned, with a balloon of crunchy brown leaves and wands of deep green new growth sprouting from the base. Along with so much else, on 8 October 2019 it was burned in the bushfire that hammered our small community in northern New South Wales.

It’s an all-too-familiar Australian story after this past bushfire season: the people and animals that died, the homes and infrastructure and treasures incinerated.

But also the extraordinary stories of survival, the acts of kindness and generosity, the dedication of firefighters, the awakening to the fact of climate change, the galvanising and rising of small communities – ours mounted a three-day music festival to raise funds and spirits. Natural disasters are complex and layered.

Unexpected losses, unexpected gains.

For years I’ve been walking a circuit through the paddocks with the cattle dogs, and the habit persists even now. One day I start at the back gate and end

at the front gate; the next day I do it the other way round. Just eight months ago we were in drought: the paddocks were mustard brown stubble, the roos came in closer to the house, the cattle bellowed “feed me, feed me” as we unwound hay from large round bales and draped it over the fences.

Then the fires came, the paddocks burned to black, the 52 large round bales burned in the shed and my partner Jen had little choice but to sell all bar six of the calves. And now? The grass waves and flows like the wheatfields of a Van Gogh painting. Three months ago a flood settled the dust and soot we were living in.

The white tip of Bluey’s tail surges and then vanishes into the long grass. The other old dogs, Rex and Tim, are invisible amid the green sea. There’s no point watching my footing for wet cow pats or snakes or charcoaled logs, because the grass is too thick and too high: my jeans are wet to mid-thigh. I attempt a knees-high walk so my runners don’t tangle in the grass and send me tumbling.

I trust I know my way, but the path ahead has gone.

I whistle in the dogs and Tim appears, gnawing on a bone. He’s protective, proud, happy. I’m saddened: most likely the bone’s from one of the roos. In the months since the fire I’ve seen solitary kangaroos, camouflaging themselves in the grass, but not the usual mobs that used to live here.

On the eastern side of the property I crunch through a mound of crisped leaves, step over charred logs and look up at the grand old spotty gums, their trunks shedding burned bark in a motley fashion. So many

wetting down the house. For the last decade Terry has laboured over a home built from railway sleepers. It was all but finished. I’ve always admired his tenacity, thinking there was a similarity between my attempt at writing a novel and Terry building his “something different” kind of house: a house you can’t buy, a house to outlive generations, a house to withstand storms, cyclones, summer heat and bushfires.

As we stood together amid the charred remains of his grand design, the sheets of tin askew over those steel uprights, Terry wryly said, “You’ll have to write another book now.”

I wiped away those tears that come too much at such times. Like a few other neighbours, Terry wasn’t insured. What, I wondered, would he do now? Would he rebuild or sell? Would this devastating loss weigh him down or might it free him and transform his life?

This time, Jen and I were lucky: the fire came at us on a Tuesday when we were at home and able to save our house. One day later and we would have been 120 kilometres away in Lismore for my weekly chemotherapy.

Last time, 17 years ago, back when I lived near the coast, Jen was not so lucky. That night we sat around my dining table with friends, oblivious to the freak firestorm that had just wiped out all Jen had built over 21 years.

In the days and months after the fire Jen didn’t know what to do next, and I certainly didn’t imagine that the process of recovery would lead to me living with Jen in this middle-of-nowhere place.

Seven months since this last fire, with the country in shutdown over COVID-19, Jen and I sit on the front verandah.

“Can we keep those burned bits on the bay tree,” I ask. “For just a bit longer?”

Jen laughs. “What? There’s not enough of it around?”

I shrug. Although burned fence posts still circle the yard, the mulberry and mandarin trees have recovered, the lawns need to be mowed twice a week, the mound of weeds we’ve pulled is monumental and the pink, yellow and orange wild zinnias are waist-high. Everywhere and all at once, there’s burn and blooming.

“I like seeing the two tones,” I say running my hand through the new hair that’s grown since I finished chemotherapy. “They comfort me, remind me that things will change and transform. Slowly. Eventually.”

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layers. In today’s light their nakedness is creamy; soon it’ll change to grey, then to pink, and then to a washed-clean green. Like our bay tree, the ironbarks and mahoganies are still charred black, but posies of green flare up and down their trunks.

And then I’m at the boundary fence. One half is a patch-up job of new barbed wire joined to some that is decades old, with steel posts tied to old wooden ones that had bites burned out of them. The other half glints shiny and new and sports a little sign: “This fence was built by volunteers from BlazeAid.” In the distance I can just glimpse the steel uprights at my neighbour Terry’s place. He was away working the day of the fire. He got the “too late to leave” message on his mobile phone and rang while I was dragging verandah furniture inside and Jen was

15 MAY 2020

In the months since the fire I’ve seen solitary kangaroos, camouflaging themselves in the grass, but not the usual mobs that used to live here.

The Big Picture series by Series

by Gabriele Galimberti

Through the Looking Glass As the world retreats into lockdown, photographer Gabriele Galimberti captures our new lives on the inside.

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

by Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor

Rebecca Casale is a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher. She misses the noise and buzz of her neighbourhood, known for its nightlife.

“I suffer a lot from loneliness: there is always a lot going on here; silence and empty streets make everything surreal,” she says.

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GABRIELE GALIMBERTI’S WORKS CAN BE VIEWED AT GABRIELEGALIMBERTI.COM.

15 MAY 2020

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t the beginning of March, Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti was at home in Milan, packing his bags for a photography project in the Philippines for National Geographic. The project never happened. A few hours before he was due to board, his flight was cancelled, and Milan, like the rest of the world has since, went into pandemic lockdown.

“I called National Geographic and told them, you know, I’m here in Milano and it’s the first city in the Western world that is hit by the virus. Would you like me to stay here and report something?” he recalls. They told him yes – so he went out and tried to capture the moment the world went quiet and small. “But nothing was happening,” says Galimberti, who acknowledges that at first, like many, he didn’t take the virus seriously. Frustrated, days later Galimberti called a photographer friend.

“I said, ‘Can we have dinner together? I need to talk’ – because I didn’t know what to do – and my friend told me, ‘Of course not! You cannot come to my place. I will not let you in. Are you crazy? You have been outside for five days and now you want to come to my place and meet me? It’s impossible!’”

It wasn’t until that moment that Galimberti really took stock of the shutdown, and the realities of the virus that has now claimed more than 30,000 lives in Italy alone.

“Even my best friends didn’t want to meet me,” he reflects. “I called this friend again and said, ‘You know, I understand you don’t want me inside your house, but can I come outside of your window?’”

When Galimberti got to his friend’s place, he took his photo through the window and they talked a bit – candidly, as friends do – about this new normal. They talked about their fears and anxieties, about frustrations with work, about the tedium of life indoors, about their families and their health, and about how long this might go on. They talked about how they’re filling up the time.

That first portrait marked the birth of this project.

From there, over 10 days or so, Galimberti visited several other friends (and friends of friends). He followed social distancing protocols and placed disinfected lighting equipment on their doorsteps. He called them with instructions on how to rig up the lighting, took their photos and checked in with them. Some friends were thriving in isolation; others were suffocating. Some were using the time to try new things; for others, it was enough just to get through the day.

It’s an honest and direct snapshot of the early stages of life in isolation in Milan, which you might notice is categorically more glamorous than isolation elsewhere.

“You know, in Italy we like to take care of our appearance,” explains Galimberti of the startling lack of greasy hair and mismatched isolation pyjamas in the series. “I was shooting in Milano, the centre of the fashion industry… The photos were going to be published in a magazine, so maybe that’s why they prepared.”

Greta Tanini, 30, and Cristoforo Lippi, 27, are students who usually live in separate houses, with flatmates, but have found themselves in lockdown together at Greta’s house. They’re making the most of quarantine by testing their compatibility.

Artists and set designers Daniele Veronesi, 38, and Anna Mostosi, 33, are passing the time in quarantine by working on their converted warehouse. They worry for Anna’s parents, who live in Bergamo, one of Italy’s most affected areas.

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Giulio and Giacomo Marini are 17-year-old twins who are used to spending most of their time together. They pass the time with school lessons, video calls and sessions on the exercise bike, which has replaced training with their football team.

15 MAY 2020

Luca Volta, 45, and Michaela Croci, 37, live in a very green area of Milan, and their young children are used to spending a lot of time outside. Since the lockdown, however, “our only outlet is the courtyard in front of the house,” says Michaela, “and spending all your time at home with the kids is hell”.

The Pandemic and I In the throes of lockdown, Big Issue vendor Mariann B sets out on her Do Good Campaign to encourage us all to stay safe.

by Mariann B Mariann B is a Melbourne-based writer and Big Issue vendor.

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

I

’m on the number 12 tram trundling down Clarendon Street towards City Road. It’s the pointy end of Melbourne that never gets into the tourist guides because of the neglected, ugly buildings.

There is a Rent-a-Bomb, White Lady Funerals and Cutthroat Barbers Co, which is threatening to open soon. But this is not depressing today because I’m on a mission.

Others are wearing masks and plastic gloves. I wear several in different colours over each other. My motorcycle helmet has a transparent visor that covers my face.

People stare at me with horror, visibly thinking, Yep, she’s definitely got it! Probably on her way to a fever clinic.

They act as if I’ve gone nuclear, emitting killer rays.

And that’s the image I’m after, trying to scare the living daylights out of everybody. It might just save lives.

We have to fight this thing. The coronavirus is not just messing with our peace of mind, it robs us of physical closeness. Is there anything more comforting than a bear hug? I need one right now!

I thought I was bulletproof. Having beaten typhoid fever and polio at the age of four, I expected to remain a survivor and live forever. Now at 75, I feel sorry for young people at risk from the coronavirus. I’ve lived my life already; theirs should be ahead of them.

Since late March we’ve seen the devastation in China, Italy and the UK on the TV news as it threatened to become catastrophic here, too. People are shellshocked. Mothers with barely concealed panic in their eyes hold their toddlers’ hands tighter than usual when taking them outside. Pedestrians even walk differently, slowly with caution, almost on tiptoes, as if they could pass by the virus undetected. Only the runners are defiant, daring it to catch up.

The virus is sneaky, playing Russian roulette with our lives. Our role is to keep it at a distance. Why put ourselves and others in harm’s way? Yes, self-isolation is a pain, but no pandemic lasts forever. Hopefully soon, there will be a vaccine.

My neighbours see the virus everywhere. They drop a month’s supply of face masks on my doorstep and then sanitise them. Ditto my doormat and letterbox.

I even caught one spraying Alfie, my cat. The nerve!

Alfie is doing it tough. He’s been walking sideways since his last stroke and I make him wear a modified face mask because of the tiger in the Bronx Zoo that tested positive for coronavirus – tigers are just oversized pussycats and you can’t be too careful. Predictably, the neighbours think I’m nuts.

I decided to help one neighbour, Grumpy Old Man, by leaving three toilet rolls by his door. He slipped me a note reading “Ta. It’s not the brand I usually buy – I prefer three-ply. Whatever. Can you spare some more?”

Poor Grumpy has no social skills but helps me to pay off a cosmic debt for my trespasses, so no hard feelings.

People in isolation develop cabin fever; they become antsy and stir crazy. They assert themselves with noise to prove they really exist. There is a metal-head in the flat on my left and a classical music fan (mostly Beethoven) on my right. They compete to see who will make me deaf first.

So how do you like being in lockdown? Me neither.

The missing tiles, the dripping tap, the wind whistling through the loose window frames. Now that we have the time to fix things, we don’t have the money.

The newspapers give you a lot of advice, but not all of it is practical. We need to stay connected, they urge.

So I phone everyone I know and ask the same question: “What is new in your world?” and I get the same reply: “Absolutely nothing! We’re all going to die!” I know what to answer: “Hey, lighten up for goodness’ sake. There are worse things than death!”

Shock and fear force us all to act out of character. My formerly hostile neighbours are starting to rally around me. Grumpy is passing on his Herald-Sun each day (minus the racing guide), and one lady who said Alfie cracked her up with his face mask keeps bringing him tuna loins. They ask what I need, how they can help.

More perks. At the supermarket customers insist I go straight to the head of the queue. When I went to be immunised for the old-fashioned flu at the local chemist, I got the first jab.

I press on with my Do Good Campaign and get no thanks. Last time I was multi-masked and gloved-up, a passing woman smirked in my face and hissed, “Very impressive.” Poor thing is in denial. She believes if she doesn’t acknowledge the need for protection, it might all go away. As if. Instead, I’m doing my duty as a responsible citizen to spread the word: Nothing to see here, go home!

Kitten Around

@elizabethflux

Elizabeth Flux is an award-winning writer and editor based in Melbourne.

E

ven though I’ve lived here for over a year, I don’t know anyone’s name. But here we all are, standing one-and-a-half metres apart, trying to get a glimpse inside a car engine. I barely have time to feel self-conscious about my daggy pyjamas before there’s a plaintive mew, and then a streak of brown and white as the kitten leaps out and sprints away.

In hindsight, every conversation I’ve had with my neighbours has had something to do with cats. The first weekend after I moved in, a collarless tabby showed up in my backyard. I looked at him. He looked at Asimov, my indoor-only shelter rescue. Asimov looked bored. I took a picture and then headed next door to check if he was a neighbourhood fixture or a stray I’d need to catch. She squinted at my phone and then smiled.

“Ah he’s fine. He’s in our yard a lot too. I think he lives over the road.”

About a month later, there was a knock at the door. It was the neighbour from over the road. She’d spotted what turned out to be Asimov’s doppelganger running around the building site nearby and was just checking that my cat hadn’t gotten out.

In the earliest days of the pandemic, as everything began to shut down and COVID-19 started dominating the news, the wave of fear, for me, had a shape. Specific anxieties about work, about friends watching their plans crumble around them, about the borders slamming shut between me and my scattered family. But as weeks passed, somehow both slowly and quickly, the fear lost its form – there are only so many times you can run a worstcase scenario – and life settled into an odd new normal with a vague, constant hum of dread in the background.

The fear is now a soundtrack of sorts – it sets the mood, but is barely noticeable unless you concentrate.

As we settled into isolation, I’ve been seeing my neighbours more and more. As someone who already did a lot of work from home, it’s been strange seeing

I’ve just finished making dinner when there is a knock at the door, and my meal goes cold as I sit in the laundry playing with the tiny fluffy bundle with engine grease in her ears. My neighbour has brought round a supply of kitten food and anti-flea stuff and it feels wrong that I can’t invite her in for a cup of tea.

The next few days are spent googling how to care for a kitten and ways to stop Asimov from turning into a hissing sulkbeast. Friends offer advice (“Give the kitten a towel to nap on for a few days, then give that to your other cat so they can get used to the kitten smell”). There’s quite a bit of trial and error (Okay, don’t leave coffee unattended because the kitten will sneeze into it and squeak).

It’s when, two weeks later, I walk in on Asimov happily grooming the kitten that I realise the soundtrack of dread, while still present, has dropped a few decibels.

Now I know my neighbours’ names, and our conversations are familiar rather than polite. Now I can’t eat a sandwich without fending off a tiny ravenous pinknosed critter while her brother watches on unimpressed.

Now, the background music is just a tiny bit quieter.

15 MAY 2020

by Elizabeth Flux

the changes happen. The cars that are usually absent between eight and six have sat idle in driveways. Foot traffic and the murmur of laughs and conversation have increased as more people have been going for walks or bike rides. I now know that if I pass a certain house at a certain hour I will hear them playing ping-pong.

There’s beauty that pokes through our shared anxiety.

A quiet sense of community. More smiles and nods than before. Drawings and teddy bears stuck up in windows.

But I guess it’s not surprising that the big breakthrough for our street was a cat.

I didn’t recognise the woman at the door but she lives around the corner. Her small son had heard a cat mewing from a car engine – did the car belong to me? It didn’t, but I put on outdoor shoes for the first time in what felt like ages and joined the growing but socially distanced crowd.

As the doorknocking effort continued we pooled information. The kitten, who had been seen weaving in and out of the building site, who had been spotted in a robust set of hedges, looked pretty young. The car’s owner was quickly found, and she was in such a rush to help she didn’t change out of her dressing gown. Still, as soon as the car hood opened the kitten scurried away.

I left out water and a plate of cat biscuits. The neighbour opposite placed strategic tins of kitten food around. Next-door were keeping an ear out for any rustles in the hedges. Our efforts were separate at first, but, as we realised what we each were doing, we discussed plans for what to do if we actually managed to catch her.

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Sometimes the tiniest member of the community can unite a socially distanced neighbourhood.

Letter to My Younger Self

Great Expectations Fabulous new Australian and star of stage and screen Miriam Margolyes talks coming out, playing up and reading Dickens.

by Jane Graham The Big Issue UK @janeannie

W

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

hen I was 16 I wanted to be popular. I was popular with girls but not with boys because I was fat. And I was quite angry inside that they couldn’t see how fabulous I was. Because I knew I was fabulous, but I also knew that they didn’t. I wasn’t academic; I wish I had been. I was lazy and naughty. I had a hothouse relationship with my parents – I call my family the fortress family. It was like an impregnable fortress that only Daddy and Mummy and I were allowed in.

It was a while before I realised that other children didn’t have that. I used to get a bit fed up that I wasn’t allowed to have a bicycle because my parents were afraid I’d get killed.

TOP: AS PROFESSOR SPROUT IN THE HARRY POTTER SERIES BOTTOM: AS AUNT PRUDENCE, IN MISS FISHER'S MURDER MYSTERIES

MIRIAM MARGOLYES ALMOST AUSTRALIAN AIRS FROM TUESDAY 19 MAY ON ABC AND IVIEW.

15 MAY 2020

My father made me swear on the Bible that I’d never sleep with a woman again

the words I wouldn’t be able to keep them.

Because you know, sex is a powerful thing.

If I could go back, I wouldn’t play around so much. I was not faithful to my partner. We didn’t live together so a lot of the time she was not physically there. And because I was never confident of being attractive, the fact that someone was prepared to go to bed with me was such a fabulous surprise that I went along with it. And I think that’s just not on. And now of course I’m old and I’m not able to play around. Nobody wants to fuck me now.

The younger me would be surprised that I didn’t get married. Or maybe not.

Maybe deep down she knew she’d never get married. I always knew I’d never have children. I think she’d be very disappointed to know she was still fat. If there’s one thing I would change about my life it would be my shape. I have been lazy and greedy and that’s why I’m fat. And it’s absolutely disgraceful.

I’m quite healthy but I have gallstones and kidney stones – I have to drink masses of water. So I keep pissing all day, which is a real nuisance. If I was trying to impress my teenage self I’d tell her I toured my own show which I wrote myself. Dickens’ Women toured on and off for almost 25 years around the world. The teenage Miriam read a lot of Dickens – Great Expectations was her favourite, though now it’s Little Dorrit.

She would be impressed that I’d been invited to Sandringham for the weekend.

She’d be impressed that I got the OBE. And the BAFTA. I hear the voices of my parents in my head every day, they’re always with me. Sometimes that’s a bit irksome, always wondering what they would think of me.

If I could go back in time, it would be to when my headmistress told me that I had been awarded a place at Cambridge. We were all called to the headmistress’ study, and she read out the telegram which my mother, with enormous kindness, had sent to the school. She could have waited until I got home and she could have had the pleasure of telling me. But she knew I would get an incredible buzz from hearing it from the headmistress in front of all my compatriots. I think that shows what an utterly amazing woman she was. I knew right then that my life would change forever. I would join the company of the exalted. And I did.

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PHOTO BY ALEX CRAIG. THIS INTERVIEW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF, A BOOK BY THE BIG ISSUE UK.

I was a performer from the minute I danced out of the womb. No question about it. If I didn’t have an audience I’d go and find one. I didn’t know I’d be an actress though – I don’t think I knew how good I was until after I left university. I deliberately went to Cambridge to move away from my parents, which was very distressing to them. But I’m glad I did it.

I didn’t think I was like my mother but now I see I’m very like her. When soldiers march, I cry. When I hear an opera singer singing, I cry. She was just like that, very emotional. My dad was the complete opposite of her. She was an extrovert; he was an introvert. She was confident and loud; he was rather shy and nervous in all social encounters except in his surgery. He was a GP, a very good one and in his surgery he was paramount. But outside of it, he just sort of...dwindled. I think he hid behind her, rather naughtily. Whenever there was a problem and he had to speak to someone on the telephone he used to say, you speak, Ruth. And I was furious about that. He should have stood up to things.

I would advise my younger self not to tell my mother I was gay. Some people can handle that kind of information and some can’t and she couldn’t handle it. It was too much for her. I think it’s an indulgence of people who are gay to think that everyone’s got to put up with their gayness. If it’s a burden, we should be privileged to carry it and not insist that we have to vomit over everybody else.

I’ve always felt a kind of guilt over my mother’s stroke. She had it soon after I told her I was gay. People tell me that’s silly and I shouldn’t think like that, but I do. We never lost our closeness but when I met my partner I never told my mother she was my partner. I’m glad I didn’t because she liked my partner, even though she couldn’t speak to her. It’s a funny thing though, I just feel that if my mother hadn’t had the stroke she would have stopped me being with my partner.

And that would have destroyed my life. So maybe it worked as it was meant to be. But my mother was the victim – my mother had to suffer, and that doesn’t make me feel good.

My father made me swear on the Bible that I would never sleep with a woman again. He took me into the lounge, a room we only ever used for solemn and social occasions and I held the Bible and swore on it. And I suppose I meant it, but I also knew as I was saying

Ricky

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Panda always keeps a stash of fireworks around the house for special occasions, in kind of the same way you might keep candles in a kitchen drawer for birthday cakes.

by Ricky French @frenchricky

Rebel Without a Pause

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ecause rebels rarely clean up after themselves, I can deduce that fireworks blazed across the sky at the local footy oval last night. What a sight it must have been. What a sight it was this morning, come to think of it. A gorgeous autumnal day, sun on my face, sun on the dog’s back as we skipped through the familiar neighbourhood on a regular morning’s walkies. How incredible the grass on the footy oval looked; I think my heart skipped a beat. Summer rain, autumn rain – it’s the closest south-east Australia gets to being New Zealand, and the grass has grown the thick mane of a Waikato dairy farm. With no footy teams training and tearing up the ground, it’s an unbroken ocean of green, and this morning every blade of grass was dipped in dew and winking back at me. But what’s that in the goal square?

Surely it’s not old fireworks?

It was. I’d know those expired canisters anywhere – cardboard cylinders floating on the green ocean, their blackened craters to the sky like volcanic islands. Anyone who grew up in New Zealand can recognise spent fireworks at a thousand paces. They are as Kiwi as feijoas; I’m sure if the country had a constitution there would be a right (maybe even a duty) to bear fireworks, just below the right to not enunciate vowels. Getting your hand blasted and burned at least once is as inevitable as going through puberty. It usually happens around the same time, as kids are awakened to the awesome potential of sky rockets, Roman candles, Catherine wheels and, for a time, double happy firecrackers, before they were banned due to their tendency to blow up in your hand like a grenade – but hey, that’s half the fun, isn’t it?

There are periodic attempts from wowsers to ban all fireworks from sale in New Zealand, but thankfully it’s never happened. More than anything I fear it would send my uncle Panda into a deep depression from which he would never recover. Panda always keeps

a stash of fireworks around the house for special occasions, in kind of the same way you might keep candles in a kitchen drawer for birthday cakes – except his candles pack a little more oomph.

As New Zealand entered stage 4 lockdown on 25 March, Panda hosted a celebratory lockdown party at his house, broadcasting the festivities on social media. It was just him and his daughter, plus a bunch of fireworks on the deck. As the clock struck midnight he set off a huge rocket, which boomed round the neighbourhood, lighting up the sky in celebration. “Happy lockdown!” he shouted.

“New Zealand’s first lockdown! Go New Zealand!” That’s the thing about fireworks, they put a positive spin on everything.

So I smiled when I saw the spent cartridges on the footy oval this morning. Someone must have defied restrictions and sat right there on the thick rug of grass last night and lit up the sky with colour. Good on ’em, I thought, but I wish they’d clean up their mess. We’re not quite the community that cares around here. Rubbish is dumped in the bushes, old beds tossed into the creek. If you can find any snippet of nature or grass, it generally functions as a bin. The council doesn’t really lead by example, either. Once there was a dead rabbit in the middle of the park and when the guy came to mow the grass, he just mowed around it. The dead rabbit stayed there for months, a patch of wild grass growing around its rotting corpse.

But really this morning’s walk was about fulfilling a challenge given by Uncle Panda himself, during a family Zoom meeting.

“Why don’t you go out and look around the neighbourhood?” he said. “You might find something interesting.”

I told him I doubted that very much.

But I’d give it a go.

Ricky is a musician, writer and bright spark.

by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND

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fancied, when corona isolation began, back in the Palaeolithic era, that I would be doing one of the millions of yoga courses pushing their product online. “What a great opportunity to open up my hips,” I mused, rising stiffly from my dining chair – the one with a thinly stuffed seat – fresh from sitting, hunched, scrolling the internet for six hours straight. “It is a mystery why my body’s been so inflexible lately.”

This is what we’re all in together, of course.

Ich bin ein Covider. Stuck in our homes, shoulders up to our ears, rolling news of pandemic death and the world’s economy tanking. Home schooling. Shouting at your screen because you’re supposed to be in a Zoom meeting but you’re sharing bandwidth with your kids, your partner and every other fucker in the neighbourhood – and the NBN is a trickle. It’s an excellent metaphor for the Murray-Darling, but no way to live your life.

Stress is up to pussy’s bow, we’re all comforteating carbs as though we are endurance athletes instead of as-one-with-the-sofa, and our bodies are like “Are you serious?” There are 20-year-olds right now making Grandpa Simpson look lithe and supple.

Yoga teachers, sensing that this is their moment, have responded in their thousands, swarming social media like so many bats echolocating a peach tree hung with over-ripe fruit. Never have I had so many opportunities to embark on a life-changing 21-day corestrength holistic stretch challenge. Haven’t signed up, of course, because I am too busy watching the top-notch TV show LEGO Masters, which is my kind of challenge, requiring stressed soft-bodied nerds to hunch for hours over non-ergonomic tables.

It’s not that I’m blind to the benefits of yoga – comedian and Eastern discipline enthusiast Judith Lucy has the flexibility of Gumby and I am in awe – but I’m currently engaged in a regimen which is even less likely than my knees hitting the floor during Baddha

Konasana. It’s called “regularly swimming in the bay”, which will impress you more when you understand that I live in Melbourne, and even in mid-summer the water is cold enough to astonish your extremities. I’ve swum along Queensland’s coastline over the last couple of summers, and colour me shocked, the water was warm. “What devilry is this?” I pondered, as I splashed around without my heart going into spasm.

By now, in Melbourne, there would usually be zero chance of me hitting the open water. The season is over. The waters of Port Phillip Bay have shifted from chilly, through frigid, to downright hostile, and I can’t wear a wetsuit because it brings on latent claustrophobia and shallow breathing.

By now I’d be swimming in a heated pool, wouldn’t I? Like a normal person. Except that the pools are closed, aren’t they? Due to corona. So if I want to swim, which I do, I have to swim in the bay, which is turning out to be the most hardcore thing I’ve done since I was shot out of my mother’s birth canal.

My theory’s been that if I hit the bay every few days, I’ll stay acclimatised, lalala, even as the thermometer drops. I’ve now, I think, passed the point where I can stop.

It turns out that swimming in stupidly cold water is addictive; it’s such a rush that I’ve begun craving the cold. Once you’re past the first shock, you see, your body goes into first-stage hypothermia.

The physiological response is “save the organs!”, so your capillaries snap shut, your skin stops registering pain, blood rushes to the heart, and you feel toasty warm for quite some time. Pretty alluring, right? Hello?

Is this thing on?

Totally worth it. Because if I can do this, I can do anything. You never know. Maybe even sign up for that yoga challenge.

Fiona is a super-chilled writer and comedian.

15 MAY 2020

Not Drowning…Freezing

We’re all comforteating carbs as though we are endurance athletes instead of as-one-withthe-sofa.

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Fiona

Cultural care packages

Film THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Art in Your Inbox You can’t go to the gallery or cinema – but you can have a cultural care package delivered directly to you, thanks to Prototype.

by Olivia Bennett

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@cybergirl_x0x

Olivia Bennett is a Naarm/Melbourne-based arts writer and critic.

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iss going to the gallery and seeing shorts vids and video installations? Prototype is here to help fulfil that yearning for cultural content.

“Audiences need ways to see new art, safely, at home, now,” says Prototype curator Lauren Carroll Harris.

Described as a “way of seeing screen culture beyond cinemas and galleries”, the innovative Australian platform has just launched its second season, Care Package. Breaking out of the white box, it delivers a free, curated selection of artworks to subscriber inboxes every Friday morning, for 10 weeks.

“Prototype Care Package is all about works that are made for the digital realm, made for small screens and responsive to the present moment,” explains Carroll Harris. “We’re already seeing artists changing the way they work and think through states of emergency, and this program reflects that. It includes artists making some of the first works I’ve seen that directly respond to the COVID-19 crisis.”

Created by Australian and international artists, the 10 works encompass “short experimental films, moving image art and the uncategorisable”. The series launched last month with Canberra artist James Nguyen’s lyrical exploration of a forgotten architecture – Nissen Huts.

Curious audiences are not only welcomed, but also wholeheartedly supported by Prototype to engage with such boundary-pushing work, in the comfort of their own home.

competitive sport of pigeon racing in the Javanese city of Yogyakarta, and how this humble bird was once a popular method for delivering correspondence.

Wanting to “give some space for thinking whilst looking”, Stevens’ work wanders through trade workshops, abandoned buildings and idyllic landscapes – soothing pastoral scenes that allow you to “get lost in them”.

The Sydney-based artist was inspired by seeing bygone practices rediscovered under lockdown; Stevens watched those around her return to pleasures such as gardening and revisiting family photo albums.

To create the piece, she drew upon a decades-old personal archive that includes mesmerising Super-8 footage of her parents in front of a waterfall in 1970s Bali.

Stevens reveals the process felt intimate and confessional – a feeling palpable in the work itself.

“There is so much stress involved in putting on an [exhibition],” she says. “It is a much quieter spectacle releasing something online, but I was surprised it was still this very vulnerable exchange.”

Much like Prototype’s platform, Scenes of Solace reveals the delivery of a message to be just as affecting as its contents.

When the series wraps in July, the 10 works will continue to live on the Prototype website – where you can also access works from last year’s series. It includes video essays by rising Australian talents: the mythical short film Mercury, by Alena Lodkin, director of Strange

Colours (2017); video artist Tiyan Baker’s gripping investigation of the cult following of David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), Hard As You Can; and Conor Bateman’s Runtime, a splashy dive into the horror film trope, which plays Escher-like with audiences watching horror films who in turn become the subject. It was named one of 2019’s best video essays by Sight & Sound magazine.

“Artistic production is changing and that is what is exciting,” says Carroll Harris. As we spend more time on our own with our screens, people are increasingly ready to engage with art in new ways, and to be sucked into both the bizarre and banal.

“Audiences are much more receptive to being challenged, troubled and surprised,” she says. She finds it weird that “the internet has made cats and radio famous, but not video art”.

Or, not yet.

“I feel like this is a new chapter in experimentation,” she says optimistically. If Prototype’s offerings so far are anything to go by, the future is full of promise. Watch this space.

SIGN UP TO RECEIVE YOUR FREE PROTOTYPE CARE PACKAGE AT YOUARETHEPROTOTYPE.ART.

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Although the digital format might initially appear daunting for art-lovers used to strolling the halls of large galleries with audio-guides and exhibition catalogues at hand, the series is encouragingly focused on “works that are able to be felt through instead of deciphered,” says Carroll Harris.

This statement rings true all the way through to the delivery of the works, which are easy to access thanks to curator’s notes that are clear and emphatic.

“I don’t know exactly who you are,” Carroll Harris writes in the text accompanying the first instalment of Care Package, “but I think of you as someone sharing a few minutes of solace, connection, surprise and intellectual discovery through the art in these emails.”

Born as a swift response to current circumstances, Care Package “aims to provide audiences with creative encounters, community and solace during home isolation”, as well as to ensure artists can work and get paid in these precarious times. The result? A poignant collection of screen works – a gift and an opportunity to “watch honest reporting on the world around you”.

One highlight of the series is Australian-Balinese artist Leyla Stevens’ dreamy Scenes of Solace, which premieres 22 May. The eight-minute video essay ruminates on the

15 MAY 2020

Audiences need ways to see new art, safely, at home, now.

THAO NGUYEN’S FEELING FREE

Thao & the Get Down Stay Down

Music

Inner Temple After 17 years of fronting her folk-rock band, Thao Nguyen is finally free to write love songs.

by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

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Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen is a Vietnamese-Australian writer based in Melbourne.

line is to not do anything to bring attention.

“When you grow up with parents who are refugees and you witness how hard they work and the ways they are dehumanised, you never want to be a source of trouble, discord or unrest. You just want to be good, and you want to repay them, but at a certain point you also have to consider what that does to you.”

Vietnamese people don’t often share personal details with family, let alone strangers, so this tendency for privacy also applied to Nguyen’s public image. A shift finally came when she bought a home with, and then married, her girlfriend. “Writing a song was a step closer to me getting married, and it was sort of like I was preparing to make that kind of separation too, and preparing for the same fallout,” she says. “That is a really public gesture.”

These milestones were the catalyst for Nguyen to become more open about who she really is. The band’s new album Temple brings her separate existences together: a bold statement of personal truth in the face of familial and social expectation.

“A lot of it is the idea of creating the space where

TEMPLE IS OUT NOW.

15 MAY 2020

PHOTO BY SHANE MCCAULEY

I’m a lot lighter now because I’m not hiding the way I was.

you can be your entire self. Each song is a different portion of that,” she says. “The freedom to really write a love song is not something that I’d ever had.

Before, I couldn’t explore such a basic gift of life in really frank, direct terms. It was really freeing.”

Nguyen is not a complete stranger to sharing parts of her life through creative work, though.

Her last record, A Man Alive (2016), was about her troubled relationship with her father, and in 2017 she visited Vietnam for the first time with her mother, captured in the documentary Nobody Ever Dies. It was the first time Nguyen’s mother had returned since fleeing as a refugee decades earlier, and this emotional experience was a major influence on Temple.

“That trip was so remarkably intense that it took me a long time to even want to revisit it after we got back,” Nguyen reflects. “Being back there, my mum discussed notions of freedom in ways that she never had throughout my life. ‘Temple’, the lead single off the record, is her talking to me about freedom, and me understanding that I have to pursue my own freedom even if it’s going against her wishes or what she’s asking of me.”

During the trip, Nguyen met many relatives for the first time, with whom she could not share the truth of her identity. “Part of the germination of the record was that I wasn’t out there, and it was really hard to navigate,” she says. “I knew that I couldn’t be, and that I can’t go back there with my partner. So much of it is the lack of language for it at every level – I don’t know the Vietnamese words to say queer or gay that are not derogatory.”

Temple is a defiant statement of self not only in terms of sexuality, but also cultural identity. “When I say this is my whole self, I also mean that I’m embracing my heritage way more than I have in the past,” Nguyen says. “Looking back at the time I came up, there was just not a lot of space – you had to be really sure of yourself to assert your cultural identity.

“There was way more racism happening on every level…you would be reduced, and I’m not proud of how I interacted with that, which is that I basically just tried to ignore it, and I tried to remove my ethnicity from my work.”

For Nguyen, the album is, in many ways, a personal emancipation and becoming – to shed the skin she has worn for so long and reveal what was always waiting underneath. “I think I’m becoming more comfortable,” she says. “I’m a lot lighter now because I’m not hiding the way I was.”

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hao Nguyen wasn’t sure she’d ever make another album. The American musician, who’s fronted indie folk-rock group Thao & the Get Down Stay Down since 2003, had reached a point where she knew she had to express her queer identity in her work. She was worried, though, about the potential fallout with her traditional Vietnamese family.

“I knew what I had to address was too painful, in that I had to mentally prepare myself for being excommunicated,” she says. “I have a really deep love for my family, so to wrap my mind around getting to the point where I would defy them for the sake of my own life took a really long time.”

For years, the 36-year-old lived what she describes as a “bifurcated, divided life”. She was “out” to her mother and brother, but not the extended family or the public, due to the conservative nature and fierce sense of filial duty in Vietnamese culture. “My mum always was like: ‘Don’t let your aunts know’,” she explains. “You don’t want to be the source of gossip. The bottom

Play on Words assistant and begins to understand the slippery nature of words, and the consequences of working with “welleducated, middle-class, Victorian-era men defining the English language”.

As Da explains: “Some words don’t make it in because they are not solid enough.” Not enough people have written them down, or there’s not enough information

by Thuy On Books Editor about them. So the words are discarded, forgotten and excluded from the dictionary. Before she even @thuy_on understands the significance of what she’s doing, Esme starts to pocket words that have been put aside, depositing he Scriptorium sounds much grander than it them into a small wooden suitcase. It’s her own dictionary actually was. It was really just a shed at the back of lost words – slang like knackered, which she discovers of a house in Oxford, but instead of gardening when she goes to market with Murray housemaid, Lizzie. tools, it stored words.

The book took Williams two years to research and Purportedly every word in the English language, write and included serious fossicking in the archives of with accompanying usage quotations, was written on the Oxford University Press and the Oxfordshire History slips of paper and sent to the “Scrippy” from volunteers Centre. The author calls her novel “a plait – a fictional worldwide. Presiding over the collation of the Oxford and factual strand”. Esme, Da and Lizzie are made up, English Dictionary (OED) was James “Engine Driver” but the OED men are real. Esme’s godmother, Ditte, was Murray, the chief editor. also based on a real woman, named Edith Thompson.

It is in this very real place that The Dictionary of Lost “She was involved in the OED from letters A to Z, and Words, the second book from Pip Williams, begins. In her yet so little is written about her in the official history,” version, beneath the long sorting table where a group of says Williams, who decided to include her as a tribute. lexicographers push slips back and forth, sits a little girl Aside from being a love letter to the OED, The named Esme, whose Da is one of the editors there.

Dictionary of Lost Words is a celebration of female Williams’ book is, as Esme says of the shed, like the friendships and an account of the suffragette movement. “inside of a genie’s lamp”. Ordinary on the outside but “The women in this book come from diverse “full of wonder inside”. It’s a riveting read that will backgrounds and they have very different appeal to word nerds and lovers of historical and personalities, but each has a strength that literary fiction alike. helps Esme navigate the world. She learns “It was born out of curiosity,” says from, and is challenged by, all of them.”

Williams. The London born, Adelaide-based The book also reflects what the author author had been reading the non-fiction describes as her “love-hate relationship with book The Surgeon of Crowthorne, by words”, which came from being a bookish Simon Winchester, which chronicles the child who was also dyslexic.

Olde words that Pip relationship between James Murray and “I loved to write as a little girl, though Williams would like Dr William C Minor, one of the dictionary’s my spelling was awful – still is – and my to bring back into most prolific volunteer contributors – and contemporary use: handwriting unintelligible – still is. Esme has who turned out to be a prisoner at the none of these issues, and her comprehension Anywhen Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. of words and their meanings is probably far instead of anytime “It was an interesting story, but I noticed better than mine ever was,” she says. it was also about a whole lot of men defining Most importantly, Esme gradually Anythingarian the English language – the editors, the realises that there’s a sovereignty of written someone with no particular belief lexicographers and most of the literature used words over spoken ones. Even if a word is to define the words were written by men, and commonly used in conversation, if it is not Breel the people paying for the whole project were written down, it is not included in the OED. a worthless, goodalso men,” Williams says. “It made me wonder As she says in the book: “Some words are for-nothing fellow if maybe the OED was a little bit gendered.” more important than others. I learned this, Teen Beginning in 1887 and moving across growing up in the Scriptorium. But it took to vex, irritate, decades, The Dictionary of Lost Words takes me a long time to understand why.” annoy or anger (“In a in the nascent suffragette movement, as well roundabout way, that as WWI and its aftermath. It also tracks Esme word may have already THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS IS OUT NOW. found its way back into as she grows up, becomes an OED editorial the vocabulary!”)

Books 15 MAY 2020

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Pip Williams

Based on the history of the Oxford English Dictionary, Pip Williams’ new novel breathes meaning into lost words and the women between the lines.

Film Reviews

Annabel Brady-Brown Film Editor @annnabelbb

O

ne of the films I was most looking forward to seeing in a cinema this year is Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks, which stars Bill Murray and Rashida Jones, and will drop from the heavens, sometime, possibly only on Apple+. In the meantime, we have Coppola’s lush feature debut The Virgin Suicides, based on Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel, which hit theatres 20 years ago and is on Stan. Told through the reveries of the teenage boys who tumbled under the spell of the five Lisbon sisters (notably Kirsten Dunst as Lux), the film is a fiction of 1970s Detroit that feels both dream-like and real.

Youthful memories have served filmmakers well over time. One of my retro-leaning favourites is Federico Fellini’s Amarcord (1973), which some readers can stream on Kanopy. Another gem, influenced by Amarcord, is Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A Time to Live and a Time to Die (1985) – a self-portrait of his own adolescence, filmed in the Taiwanese village where he grew up.

It repurposes hushed and delicate memories of his family life – picking roadside guavas with his grandmother, gasping at the sight of his father coughing blood – while evoking the turbulent years that followed the Communist victory in mainland China, using a softly-softly approach that builds to the point of devastation. This milestone title of the Taiwanese New Cinema is a gentle entry point for anyone wanting to brave Hou’s vast oeuvre.

Next stop: his mesmerising 2015 wuxia The Assassin, on SBS. ABB

VIRGIN SUICIDES: FEELS DREAM-LIKE YET REAL

THE HALF OF IT  | NETFLIX

In this contemporary, queer take on Cyrano de Bergerac, Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis) – a well-read, grumpy but charming young girl – is hired to help her sweet but dopey classmate Paul (Daniel Diemer) romance his crush. Ellie pens letters to Aster (Alexxis Lemire) under Paul’s name – and falls for Aster herself. The film is filled with classic teen-film tropes, from English-teacher-as-mentor to books and films that relate to the characters’ situations. While the story is familiar, the perspective of a queer Chinese-American teenager makes it feel fresh, and themes of small-town religious repression and racism add complexity. Most strikingly, the story is more concerned with the development of platonic love than with romance. However, it falters in its second half. For all its self-awareness, the narrative is marred by a few trite moments and rushed character development – though nothing a diehard rom-com fan wouldn’t forgive. Balancing sentimentality and restraint, Alice Wu’s film is a welcome addition to Netflix’s comfort-food slate. IVANA BREHAS SPACESHIP EARTH

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 | DOCPLAY

Documentary-maker Matt Wolf has shown his Midas touch in digging through the archive to resurrect compelling stories, with festival highlight Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project (2019) and Wild Combination, his sublime 2008 portrait of musician Arthur Russell. Here again he exhumes home movies, news footage and talking-heads interviews to reconstruct the strangerthan-fiction story of Biosphere 2. Created by a globetrotting theatre troupe with a charismatic (cult?) leader, the 1.3 hectare research facility in the Arizona desert caught the attention – and suspicion – of the world’s media in 1991, when eight scientists locked themselves inside for two years. Born out of the techno-utopian spirit of 60s counterculture and one rebel billionaire’s cash, Biosphere 2 was a miniature replica of Earth meant to create a blueprint for sustainable living that could be adopted to colonise other planets, and help us take better care of our own. It’s a fascinating tale of eco-activism that puts life to the test. ANNABEL BRADY-BROWN

THE ORPHANAGE  | MUBI

Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat’s The Orphanage parallels the tumultuous adolescence of a Bollywood-obsessed teen with the political upheaval of 1989 Kabul. As Soviet power wanes and the Mujahideen advance, Qodrat (Qodratollah Qadiri) also undergoes a transition: picked up on the streets for hawking keychains and cinema tickets, he is sent to an orphanage. A standalone sequel to Wolf and Sheep (2016), this film, too, is based on the life of one of Sadat’s friends. The film balances institutional horrors with childhood silliness. Events such as a boy being sent to a psych ward exist alongside dream sequences where the kids lip-sync Bollywood songs, don flashy costumes and become action superstars, mirroring Qodrat’s beloved movies. Typical events – bullying, adolescent crushes and quirky friends – are represented. But the slippage between reality and fantasy makes for an energetic celebration of youthful mischief, and of the ways art can bring vibrancy to the traumatic and monotonous drudgery of reality. CLAIRE CAO

Small Screen Reviews

Aimee Knight Small Screens Editor @siraimeeknight

DEAD TO ME  | NETFLIX

THE EDDY

A GOOD WOMAN IS HARD TO FIND

 | NETFLIX

 | DVD + VOD

“Spiralling abstract jazz piece” reads the closed caption during one of the many fatiguing jam sessions in The Eddy. The description sums up this musical miniseries about a struggling club in Paris whose owner (André Holland, Moonlight) must deal with a lethargic house band, a renegade teenage daughter (Amandla Stenberg, The Hunger Games), impatient loan sharks and a police investigation. All this for jazz?

Yes. The Eddy comes from co-director and executive producer Damien Chazelle (Whiplash, La La Land), who has made an award-winning career of exploring the selfdestructive tendencies of jazz daddy-oes.

Writer Jack Thorne (Skins, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) squeezes dialogue in between the 12-minute jam sessions while – motion sickness warning – the handheld camera work underscores the chaos, adding lo-fi authenticity to the series. There are touching, intimate moments, and Holland is an astonishing performer, but like any jazz odyssey there’s a lot of indulgent bloat to endure. CAMERON WILLIAMS

“When the status quo is threatened, the ends justify the means,” a mob character intones ominously halfway through A Good Woman Is Hard to Find. The line becomes the cornerstone of this crime thriller, set largely in a working-class neighbourhood in Belfast. Recently widowed mother Sarah (Sarah Bolger, Mayans M.C.) is haunted by her husband’s murder. It was ruled a petty dispute among thieves and remains unsolved, presumably because of the victim’s class and his criminal associations. When an intruder, Tito (Andrew Simpson, Rebellion), violently crashes into her home while on the run from a drug cartel, Sarah becomes an unwilling abettor of his crime, driving her down some gruesome paths. Despite its classic thrillerisms, A Good Woman… juxtaposes its suspenseful turns with the protagonist’s surprise at herself, at the lengths she goes to while driven by grief to protect her children. A compelling watch, it posits the question: how far will a woman go to unshackle herself from patriarchy’s vice, for a shot at normalcy in life? CHER TAN

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ome are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them. The irrepressible Catherine the Great is three for three in this dark, satirical lark.

Catherine (Elle Fanning, The Neon Demon) arrives at the Winter Palace a naive, romantic consort. It’s not long before her garish and inept new husband, Peter III (Nicholas Hoult, Mad Max: Fury Road), shatters her illusions of a happily ever after. Longing for a humane, progressive Russia, Catherine hatches a plan to steal the throne, and the rest, as they say, is history…or something like it.

A revisionist take on Romanov politics, The Great is written by Australian Tony McNamara, and it’s a worthy successor to his lauded work on Oscar darling The Favourite (2018). Again, his dialogue pops with cultural and temporal anomalies (Peter loves to shout Briticisms like “Huzzah!” and “What a romp!”), while toffy accents across the board draw attention to just how ludicrous a ruling class is – anytime, anywhere. The luxe production design is lovely to look at, but there’s an “eat the rich” vibe between the masters and servants that’s so much tastier.

You’ll love to hate Peter III as this depraved poster boy for the Dunning-Kruger effect.

By turns blasé and brutal, he gets his comeuppance from a long-suffering partner whose death stare is breathtaking. And Fanning ascends as this droll monarch, sick of sexist double-standards and being told to smile.

Be not afraid. The Great premieres 16 May on Stan. AK

15 MAY 2020

AIMEE KNIGHT

CATHERINE IS GREAT. HER HUSBAND? NOT SO MUCH…

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The first season of this mordant look at grief and forgiveness ended on a visceral cliffhanger. In season two, the ties that bind are stronger than ever, as our co-dependent heroines traipse further into ethical grey areas to shocking but comic effect. Caustic Jen (Christina Applegate, Samantha Who? ) is still processing her husband’s death when fate brings sweet Judy (Linda Cardellini, Freaks and Geeks) back to the family home. Keen eyes will spot nods to key moments from season one; little gestures that say, “Look out! History repeating!” They intensify this taut study of bad habits and vicious cycles. Delightfully, season two brings queer subtext to the forefront (though not in the way return viewers might expect) with plenty of moreish reveals along the way. It’s no surprise, though, that Cardellini and Applegate brew these perfectly flawed women with wit and warmth. Some scenes could be accused of fan service, but if that reminds Netflix there’s a devout audience rooting for this criminally underrated show, that’s no bad thing.

Music Reviews

T

Sarah Smith Music Editor

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

here are so many things people are missing, but I think intimacy, above all else, is a universal loss right now.

I don’t just mean the simple act of reaching out and holding a friend’s hand, or hugging them, or even standing closer than 1.5 metres away. I mean also the kind of intimacy you get from being together en masse, like watching the footy or a band. That feeling you get standing side-by-side with strangers, locking into and sharing something that is invisibly connecting you.

I recently celebrated my first (and hopefully only) iso birthday, and thought wistfully back to when, two years ago, I had squished in, shoulder-to-shoulder, with a horde of sweaty humans to watch Angel Olsen perform at The Tote in inner Melbourne. It was a hot night and the room was moving in a symbiotic clump to Olsen, with only her guitar in hand, making us all feel connected.

I was shocked, then, to have a similar feeling while watching a performance on Instagram. The set was part of the Isol-Aid! festival, which has run every weekend since mid-March. Organised by a community of music lovers, it has featured hundreds of artists streaming live on Insta from their bedrooms, kitchens and sheds, encouraging donations to Support Act, a charity helping Australian music workers at this time.

Despite the physical distance between audience members, Isol-Aid! has provided a kind of intimacy and connection I didn’t think possible right now. And I’m more than a little bit grateful. SS

GIG ECONOMY: HUNTLY’S ELSPETH SCRINE PERFORMS FOR ISO-AID!

@sarah_smithie

SONG FOR OUR DAUGHTER LAURA MARLING 

Laura Marling is acutely aware of the context in which she releases her seventh album, not only earlier than planned but also offering it as something that might create unity in these precarious times. Even so, the English singer-songwriter’s album is more attuned to the current climate than seems intended. ‘Only the Strong’ is about survival and love. ‘Hope We Meet Again’ captures a longing for someone lost, not fully appreciated while the time and space were ample. These songs are what Marling does best: delicate folk on which her voice dances, carrying lyrics of great depth and reflection.

The album is also a mapping of Marling’s influences. They shine in songs like ‘Blow By Blow’, which nods to Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides, Now’; while ‘Alexandra’ is a direct response to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Alexandra Leaving’. The album closes with ‘For You’, a pledge of adoration and gratitude to another. Ending on a high, the album shows Marling as a songwriter unafraid to let you in, providing comfort in these dark times. IZZY TOLHURST

SOGNI PRIMO!

BABY BABY DIANAS

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

Melbourne quartet Primo! bridge spiky postpunk and slack guitar-pop on their winsome second album, topped with echoes of worldwise 60s girl groups like The Shangri-Las. For all the solidarity conveyed in the dual lead vocals of guitarists Violetta DelConte Race and Xanthe Waite – along with harmonies from bassist Amy Hill and drummer Suzanne Walker – there’s an exciting volatility lurking behind even the most melodic moments.

‘Best and Fairest’ is made especially wobbly with distortion, while ‘Love Days’ leans into bristling jangle and off-kilter ephemera, and ‘Rolling Stone’ applies xylophone against a droning buzz of horns. That these short, home-recorded songs are so catchy despite such unhinged turns speaks to the band’s sinewy cohesion (see the bouncy standout ‘Machine’). If anything, that dogged brevity feels like channel-surfing from one bubblegum dust-up to the next. Sogni means “dreams” in Italian, but the album is more immediate and tangible than detached or abstract. It’s the kind of record that makes you want to start a band. DOUG WALLEN

Dianas return with their most ambitious and realised work to date on Baby Baby, which perfects the band’s dramatic, crackling sound while plumbing the depths of their anxieties. The intricate, whirling guitar and bass work of the Perth/Melbourne band remains at the core of their music, whether circling like a threat in the background of ‘Easy’, or enveloping the very front of your brain on ‘Did Ya’. However, it’s track ‘Jewels’ that marks true evolution as it fully unfurls, rich in feelings of nostalgia: piano floats in, bells shimmer in the distance and an overheard conversation between friends is an understated yet powerful reminder of the importance of human connection.

Also commanding is closer ‘Learn/Unlearn’, with its repeated mantra: “You were a baby, baby.” While rich in gripping peaks and valleys like their prior output, it’s the marriage of Dianas’ riotous, tempestuous core with themes of anxiety and selfawareness that make Baby Baby their finest work yet. NICHOLAS KENNEDY

Book Reviews

Thuy On Books Editor @thuy_on

M

THE ADVERSARY RONNIE SCOTT

FUCK HAPPINESS ARIEL GORE

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

Ronnie Scott’s debut novel follows a formative summer in the life of a modern young man. He is in the long, tedious holiday between uni years, existing mainly in the light of his phone screen, untouched and un-touching, living as a social captive to his housemate, Dan. On the last day before summer, he is compelled by Dan and Dan’s boyfriend, Lachlan, to leave the house and attend a queer party, where they can orchestrate a meeting with Lachlan’s housemate. That party is where he meets Vivian, a fascinating, mysterious and uncatchable American. What unfolds from that night on is a comingof-age exploration of the possibilities of sexuality and sociability between a friendship group over one intense summer, where the distance between the inner suburbs of Brunswick and Richmond is so vast and emotional they may as well be different countries. Scott’s rendering of place and character is absorbing; this story, these people, couldn’t be anywhere but Melbourne.

“We are told what will make us happy as if we are all the same woman,” writes American author Ariel Gore in Fuck Happiness, a balanced antidote to so many glib self-help books. It’s actually the renamed and expanded second edition of her 2010 book Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness, but Gore’s thorough examination of the routine sidelining of women’s voices and experiences in the wider study of happiness is more relevant now than ever. She unpacks the cheerfulness, smiles and sacrifice expected of women, as well as the gender bias in psychiatry and the gender gap in the booming business of positive psychology. With 18 years between her two children, Gore also offers lucid insights on motherhood from two very different points in her life. But what really grounds the book are quotes from Gore’s “council of experts”, a panel of friends and peers who answer questions she poses about happiness. For all its complicated study of the many nuances between desperation and joy, Fuck Happiness culminates in hopefulness without pulling any punches in its criticism of the patriarchy. DOUG WALLEN

JEMIMAH HALBERT BREWSTER

GHOST SPECIES JAMES BRADLEY 

James Bradley’s latest book is a braided narrative that deals with a futuristic planet Earth ravaged by climate change (ice melting, fire burning and civil chaos), and an earnest attempt to re-engineer the world by reversing extinction rates and recreating specimens lost decades or even centuries ago.

Scientists Jay and Kate are invited to be part of a secret program in Tasmania that will bring back a Neanderthal. Through the process and outcome of this genetic engineering feat, Bradley explores the ethics of exhuming “the history of life from the deep past” and the perennial nature-versus-nurture debate.

How viable is it to resurrect flora, fauna and entire ecosystems, as well as one of Homo sapiens’ historical relatives? Bradley’s use of scientific possibility never overwhelms his attention to human emotion in this fascinating book.

The title haunts the reader by the final pages, as it asks us to consider who is actually the ghost species here. THUY ON

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THERE’S A CHAIR IN THERE

15 MAY 2020

any of us are feeling a bit anxious and unsure about the world right now.

This uncertainty extends to the book world. There was an initial spike in book sales as lots of people panic-bought to ensure they had sufficient reading material during isolation. But there’s a fear these figures will decline as the months roll on, with most brick-and-mortar bookshops closed for lockdown, and a raft of writers’ festivals and literary events also cancelled. The future for the publishing industry looks a bit bleak at the moment, with publication dates for several titles pushed back till later in the year, or even into 2021. So what to do?

As readers we need to continue to support our writers – a lot of bookshops still deliver. Your local library might also be offering home delivery, as well as online workshops and webinars (check out alia.org.au). Or look out for your favourite authors’ online book launches, and attend online book clubs. For instance, the free 15-week webinar series Wednesday Night Book Club, collated by journalist Tracey Spicer, will showcase 15 authors with newly released books in conversation with well-known interviewers. From 20 May, featured authors include Mirandi Riwoe with Benjamin Law; Indigo Perry with Caroline Overington; Andrew Kwong with Yumi Stynes; and on 27 May yours truly! I’ll be talking with Dee Madigan about my own poetry collection, Turbulence. Stream through Zoom or Facebook Live (@wedsnightbookclub). TO

Natalie Paull

Ingredients Makes one pie for 8-12 people Keeps for 3 days, chilled

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Cocoa Cookie Crumb cooking oil spray 100g plain flour 70g caster sugar 40g Dutch (unsweetened) cocoa powder ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt 90g unsalted butter

Filling

Topping

370ml full-fat milk 80g dark chocolate (60–70% cocoa), chopped 90g caster sugar 10g Dutch (unsweetened) cocoa powder 4g gelatine powder 1 teaspoon cornflour ½ teaspoon vanilla paste ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt 80g egg yolk (from approx 4 eggs) 300ml cream (35-45% milk fat)

250g crème fraîche ½ teaspoon vanilla paste Chocolate Rubble: break up 50g dark chocolate with a mortar and pestle (or food processor) into small gravelly pieces

Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas

PHOTOS BY EMILY WEAVING

Tastes Like Home

Chocolate Bavarian Pie

Method

Natalie Paull says…

NATALIE PAULL’S COOKBOOK BEATRIX BAKES IS FULL OF DELICIOUS CAKEHOUSE FAVOURITES – AND IS OUT NOW.

15 MAY 2020

I

grew up in a household that cooked from scratch with fresh vegetables every night. Meats lovingly braised, crumbed or grilled. It was nothing fancy – just simple and hearty meat-and-three-veg suburban 80s cooking.

A sweet treat and strong cup of tea to bring the day to a close were also part of our family’s everyday food ritual. On Mondays, Mum would make plain pound cakes for after dinner or school lunch boxes. On Thursdays, I accompanied Dad to choose a cake from a local bakery to have after dinner – a Neapolitan cake, date loaf or ginger fluff sponge. And there was Dad’s secret stash of Tim Tams or Old Gold chocolate hidden in the pantry. The cocoa waft that hit my nostrils when the tin lid was popped was intoxicating!

Sometimes we had proper desserts – Grandma’s golden syrup dumplings or a fruit pie and ice cream. These extraglorious moments were unforgettable, but the recipe that is my home in cake form was the Sara Lee Chocolate Bavarian.

It brought the thrill of a rare fancy dessert when it came to our table.

We always had one at the casual parties and barbecues Mum and Dad would often host. On those days, I waited the interminable wait as lunch moved through the savoury food – crudité and French onion dip, tooth-picked cabanossi and cheddar cubes, grilled chops and sausages and classic iceberg lettuce salad (with spring onion batons curled in ice water – so swanky!).

Finally, the dessert table was set with pavlovas and that beloved Chocolate Bavarian. If the adults weren’t too tipsy, the Bavarian was defrosted according to the packet instructions.

Sometimes the white Lambrusco blurred the process and it was cleft into slices, still frozen. But, no matter how the adults served it, it made me feel grown up, elegant and special.

The Bavarian remained a favourite with me through my teen years. When I started earning pocket money, I could buy my own and used spoonfuls of it as a chocolatey salve for angst-filled growing pains. It was technically medicine.

Recreating this most meaningful dessert from scratch was always on my baking to-do list. I “adulted” it a smidge so the crumb has dark cocoa and the topping has some crème fraîche to add tangy magic. The filling is the same pudding-like texture, just made with better quality chocolate (sorry Sara).

A slice of this is childhood cake dreams come true.

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Preheat the oven to 150°C. Lightly spray a baking tray with cooking oil and line with baking paper.

To make the Cocoa Cookie Crumb, put the flour, sugar, cocoa powder and salt in a bowl. Melt the butter and pour it into the dry ingredients, then mix with your fingers to make what feels like cocoa sand. Scatter the crumb over the tray and bake for 25-30 minutes until dry, crumbly and fragrant. Chocolate doughs and crumbs are tricky to cook, as they won’t show any signs of burning. They are done when the dough turns from shiny raw to matt dry.

Around halfway through the Cocoa Cookie Crumb baking, start the filling. Bring the milk to the boil in a small saucepan until there is a small ring of bubbles around the edge. Turn off the heat.

Put the chocolate in a heatproof bowl and set aside.

You will pour the hot custard into this bowl to melt the chocolate, so choose a bowl large enough.

In a small bowl, mix the sugar, cocoa, gelatine, cornflour, vanilla and salt. Then weigh in the egg yolks, whisk until smooth. Pour in half the hot milk and whisk well to combine, then whisk in the remainder. Return the mix to the pan and whisk constantly over a medium-high heat for about 2 minutes, until the custard is thick and just starts to bubble. (Although the rules about gelatine state that it should never be boiled, it can be for this brief time.)

Swiftly scrape the custard mix into the chocolate bowl and whisk well to release the steam and melt the chocolate. Set aside at room temperature to cool (40-60 minutes). Whisk occasionally and scrape down the side of the bowl from time to time. It will look mottled but that won’t be noticeable when it has set. Meanwhile, whip the cream into semi-stiff peaks and keep chilled, to fold in later. Crush the Cocoa Cookie Crumb in a food processor or mortar and pestle.

Lightly spray a fluted 24cm, 4cm deep, loose-based tart tin with cooking oil. Line the base with a circle of baking paper. Rest the tin on a heavy baking tray (to slide in and out of the fridge without disrupting the loose bottom). Lightly press the crumb into the base only. Don’t compact the crumb too much – it needs to be “break-apart-able” when cold.

To complete the filling, fold half of the whipped cream into the cool custard until almost fully incorporated.

Fold in the remaining cream until the mix is a uniform chocolate brown colour.

Scrape onto the prepared crumb base – the filling should come to just under the top of the tin. Smooth the top lightly and spray with a bare mist of cooking oil.

Lightly press a piece of plastic wrap on top of the filling, to prevent a rubbery skin forming. Chill to set overnight.

To make the topping, whip the crème fraîche and vanilla to floppy peaks. Remove the plastic wrap and smooth the crème fraîche on top to completely fill the tin.

Sprinkle with the Chocolate Rubble. Remove from the tin and serve chilled, with fond memories of the 80s.

Public Service Announcement

by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus

Did you know you can search through digital photograph libraries in museum and library catalogues online? You can do this with an intention (for example, to find an Important Moment) or you can, to use an old-style bookshop word, browse. Browsing old photos is kind of wonderful, because, even without a narrator, a narrative starts to form. You see flashes of personality, little bits of story, none of it studied in school but all of it kind of familiar and yet distant. Like they can almost see you back. A little girl with a dirty face using a stick as a shotgun, decades before you were born. Long gone, and yet there she is, suspended mid mouth-noise: Pew! Pew! And you feel like you could know her, if you only made the effort to peel back the years.

History is full of people watching caterpillars.

People throughout history have stopped, frozen, in the middle of nature, thinking they heard something, muttering half-words to themselves in quiet reassurance.

There are, in history, literally billions of forgotten or abandoned cups of tea, cooling in the background while humans argue and play.

The sea, historically, has done a lot of glistening.

Wind has been busy, too. The history of wind is complex and impressive. It has invented, alongside humans, many significant things, generated lots of power, assisted in the migration of several peoples, been an accessory to murder, and flown a bunch of flags.

Many people, from many cultures, across many eras, have held the hands of history’s main players, made them breakfast, sung them to sleep, loved even the

worst of them and rolled their eyes quietly as even the best of them leave their dishes in the sink or whistle too loudly or forget to bring in the rubbish bins.

Nature has, wherever it is, managed, throughout human history, to sneak up through the bits we have tried to evict it from. Grown between the cracks, climbed up the walls, smashed through the boundaries.

It has watched us, across generations, attempt to shape the world around our ideas – ideas we only have our tiny lifetimes to develop – and it has grown around us, trees climbing slowly to the sky, water wearing down rocks, mountains exploding, lava cooling, all while societies come and go.

People have been late, missed countless trains, turned up to find nobody waiting at the agreed place, felt their hearts sink low, and pretended everything was okay.

History has had some bad guys, but it could have had more. Some of them were nudged gently in the right direction, loved in just the right way, shown a way of applying themselves properly. Or, less lovely, others have been managed by unthanked loved ones, absorbing their bad behaviour and allowing the world to believe they are good citizens by bearing their badguy unkindness alone.

History is full of people writing novels and being heroes and doing great things, or triggering moments of enormous import. It is, though, presumably, also full of insignificance. Lovely or slight or quiet little moments of insignificance, without which things would be a lot different. Maybe.

Abandoned cups of tea, quietly growing trees, loud annoying whistling – all of it is history, happening all around you. Public Service Announcement: just because there’s one story doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of stories. Some of them are terrible and some of them are lovely – and some of them aren’t about very much at all. Even during the greatest naval battles in history, the sea quietly glistened. Here’s to the glistening, and the tea and the people staring out of windows. And to all of us together, watched by the trees.

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

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L

ike me, you have probably been reminded recently about history. Someone maybe told you about the Spanish flu for instance, and how people wrote novels during it. Or other times in history – world wars, for example, you may have been reminded, were much more trying than what we’re enduring now. This is, of course, true, and sometimes it’s wonderful to gain a sense of perspective from the worst times in history. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to think of the times in history we don’t know much about.

The unrecorded times. The times when people thought, “Well, that wasn’t much of anything.”

Public Service Announcement: not everything is significant, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important.

Confused? Same. Let’s sort this out.

15 MAY 2020

Time After Time

Puzzles

By Lingo!

by Lauren Gawne lingthusiasm.com CYNIC

CLUES 5 letters Before time Roof cover Tasting of the sea Thieve Yarns

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

6 letters Animal lead Gusto Impetuously Sell in a shop Simply 7 letters In an angry way Move along on the belly Rapidly Truth, facts Worldly 8 letters Sincerely

S

I

Y

H

L

A

R

T

E

Sudoku

by websudoku.com

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

8 1 6

1 3

9 4 4 2

3 6 7 8 9

3 1 6 2 5 7 4 8 7 8

4 8 6

Puzzle by websudoku.com

Solutions CROSSWORD DOWN 1 Frangipani 2 Indulges 3 Ambivalent 4 Idol 5 Glum 6 Seared 7 Espy 14 Throb 15 Bird of prey 16 Evanescent 19 Up in arms 21 Keaton 24 Arts 25 Oops 26 Bred

Using all nine letters provided, can you answer these clues?

Every answer must include the central letter.

Plus, which word uses all nine letters?

by puzzler.com

ACROSS 8 Wren 9 Middle East 10 Incubi 11 Lampreys 12 Ring 13 Antibodies 17 Cats 18 Error 19 Utah 20 Tickety-boo 22 Item 23 Catacomb 27 Plaice 28 Atmosphere 29 Monk

Word Builder

The original Cynics were a school of Greek philosophers who rejected social conventions and embraced simple lives free of possessions.

Cynic is the Latin form, the Greek is kynikos, and literally means “dog-like”. Antisthenes taught this philosophy at a gymnasium called Kynosarge “The Grey Dog”. Referring to these people who wanted simple lives as “dog-like” was probably a hilarious put-down 2400 years ago.

Diogenes, one of the bestknown Cynics, showed them up by actually living with a pack of dogs. The sense of a cynic we have today, a person who finds fault and expresses it through sarcasm, is first attested in the late 1500s. The original sense is still referred to in philosophical literature, maintaining 24 centuries of trash-talking.

20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9 1 Pheidippides (or Philippides) 2 The shortest day of the year 3 Amy, Lulu and Morgan 4 2003 5 Bactrian 6 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone 7 Diablo 8 US Secretary of State 9 Queensland 10 Sandra Oh 11 French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian 12 The amount of dust in the air 13 31 14 Judy Garland, for Judy at Carnegie Hall 15 One, the bat 16 Force 17 Nicolas Cage 18 1903 19 Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome 20 Elon Musk and Grimes

Crossword

by Siobhan Linde

THE ANSWERS FOR THE CRYPTIC AND QUICK CLUES ARE THE SAME. 1

1

2

2

3

3

4

4

5

5

6

6

7

7

8

Quick Clues ACROSS

9

9

10

10

11

11

1 13 15 18

1

16

18

19

17

DOWN

1 21

22 1 25

27

27

28

29

28

29

Cryptic Clues

Solutions 1 Plant faring poorly, knocked over in a park (10) 2 No male cares about developing glue for

for immunity (10)

17 Animals around hollow trees (4) 18 Fear The Leader overlooked mistake (5) 19 State university initially turned against Harvard (4) 20 Fine booty stirred heart, mostly at the

beginning (7-3) 22 Couple wasted time (4) 23 Two things needed for pet-grooming found in underground cemetery? (8) 27 Utterly rank fish (6) 28 Sheep and ram to get strange feeling (10) 29 Brother tucked into salmon kebab (4)

babies (8)

3 Batman : live broadcast is doubtful (10) 4 Élodie’s upset about fetish (4) 5 Blue tree chopped up (4) 6 Demolished, erased, burned (6) 7 See hotel affectionately (4) 14 Beat, half-throttle and bash head (5) 15 Raptor or pterodactyl originally fried by

bomb (4,2,4)

16 Brief episode involving terrible acne across

bottom (10)

19 Where a baby is often angry (2,2,4) 21 Parrot on set finally accepted actress (6) 24 Creative activities are cut by heads of

trade school (4) 25 My bad spelling starts balls-up? (4) 26 Multiplied money, reportedly (4)

SUDOKU

WORD BUILDER

15 MAY 2020

8 Pull chain off bird (4) 9 As in transcontinental region? (6,4) 10 Demons wearing club uniform said farewell (6) 11 Fish in lake ruined my spear (8) 12 Call round (4) 13 Harry is on a diet, eating vitamin and proteins

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DOWN

5 Early Slate Salty Steal Tales 6 Halter Relish Rashly Retail Easily 7 Irately Slither Hastily Reality Earthly 8 Heartily 9 Hairstyle

ACROSS

1 3 7 9 5 4 8 6 2

26

4 2 6 8 1 7 3 9 5

26

25

9 5 8 3 6 2 4 7 1

24

24

3 7 4 2 9 8 1 5 6

22

Puzzle by websudoku.com

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1 American flowering plant (10) 2 Spoils (8) 3 In two minds (10) 4 Icon (4) 5 Sad (4) 6 Scorched (6) 7 Catch sight of (4) 14 Pulse (5) 15 Raptor (4,2,4) 16 Fleeting (10) 19 Angry (2,2,4) 21 Annie Hall star (6) 24 Creative activities (4) 25 Oh dear (4) 26 Reproduced (4)

6 1 2 7 3 5 9 8 4

19

16

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8 Small bird (4) 9 Transcontinental region (6,4) 10 Demons (6) 11 Eel-like fish (8) 12 Circle (4) 13 Proteins used by immune system (10) 17 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical (4) 18 Mistake (5) 19 American state (4) 20 In good order (7-3) 22 Thing (4) 23 Underground cemetery (8) 27 Flatfish (6) 28 Mood (10) 29 Friar (4)

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Click 1958

Little Richard

words by Michael Epis photo by Getty

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o gauge the impact of Little Richard – who has passed away, aged 87 – consider the following.

After touring together in England, a wide-eyed Paul McCartney later sat with the pompadoured prince for hours in his Hamburg dressing-room learning how to do the falsetto (and head shake) in ‘Long Tall Sally’.

Of his second tour of England, the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards has said that “the most exciting moment of my life was appearing on the same stage as Little Richard”.

The high school yearbook of one Bob Dylan reports that his ambition was “to join Little Richard”. Ditto David Bowie, who learned sax so he could be in Little Richard’s band. And if you believe Little Richard, Elvis Presley said to him: “You’re the greatest.” Thereafter he’d say: “Elvis may be the king of rock’n’roll, but I am the queen.”

And to think that it all came to an end – for a few years – one strange night in Sydney, in 1957.

Little Richard was the headline act on an international bill. Australia had seen nothing like him. At Melbourne’s Festival Hall he wore a bejewelled green turban, a crimson cloak and a canary yellow suit – which he disrobed, piece by piece, throwing the garments to the crowd.

He had been spooked on the flight to Australia, the furthest he had ever been from Macon, Georgia. Looking out the window, he saw the engines’ red glow – and thought they were on fire.

And he was spooked again. In his memoir, Little Richard says the gig in Sydney was 40,000 people outdoors (although other documents suggest otherwise).

He is right when he says that on that night, 4 October, Russia launched Sputnik, the first satellite, into space.

“It looked as though the big ball of fire came directly over the stadium about two or three hundred feet above our heads. It shook my mind. It really shook my mind.

I got up from the piano and said ‘This is it. I am through.

I am leaving show business to go back to God.’” The next day, on a ferry, his band disbelieved him.

“Would you believe it if I throw this ring in the water?” he asked – and he did.

On returning to the US, Little Richard did a preaching course, recorded a gospel album, got married – and then the church discovered he was gay. He left. He divorced. And went on tour to England…but he never stopped preaching.