On Dit Edition 82.12

82.12

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contents

VOLUME EIGHTY-TWO, EDITION TWELVE.

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CO MI N

CORRESPONDENCE PRESIDENT SPIELS VOX POP

WHAT’S ON POLITICS

NATIVE LAND TITLE INTERVIEW: CLEM FORD CENTREFOLD ART FEE DEREGULATION AUU PROBLEMS REVIEW: INVERBRACKIE COURT CASE SCIENCE BAR MAP

18 21 24 26 29 31 32 33 36

CREATIVE WRITING COLUMNS REVIEWS DIVERSIONS RECIPE

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Interwebs: auu.org.au/ondit. It’s our very special website. On another note, ever looked up On Dit on Wikipedia? So many interesting facts...

Editors: Sharmonie Cockayne, Daisy Freeburn and Yasmin Martin.

Front and back cover artwork by Madeleine Karutz.

On Dit is a publication of the Adelaide University Union.

On Dit is produced and printed on the traditional country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land.

Published 21/10/2014

editorial

3. Men’s toilets are really gross.

4. There are some really damn talented little cookies at this university, and they produce so much beautiful, non-gimmicky art. Hey my artists, I love you all, but the 2015 editors called your work gimmicky. That’s a bit sad!

Just remember that without art, Earth would just be ‘eh’. I love you.

Seriously.

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daisy: Well, this is awkward. I have to go first, and set the bar for the other two.

GOOD NEWS GUYS, IT’S 3AM SO THE BAR IS PRETTY LOW. Here are a few things I have learnt as in my time as On Dit editor this year.

1. Sleep and time are both valuable commodities, and the less time you spend sleeping the more time you have to complete a magazine and all the assignments you have due on Monday. Honestly, what is sleep anyway? You just lie down, in the dark, for hours. Don’t move. Highly unproductive. Sleep when you’re dead, my lecturers and tutors tell me before deadlines. And hey, sleep deprivation is the next best thing to drugs. They tell me that too.

2. You can quickly become an alcoholic when you have a bottle of wine glaring at you from the corner of your desk every day, and it’s whispering to you, it’s saying ‘hey Daisy, I can help you out, we can create beautiful things together you know’, but you should really ignore it because last time you decided to drink to help your creativity you went to the computer room and connected your CAD sink to your CAD toilet so the sink was constantly supplied with sewerage instead of clean water. Yeah. Good move.

5. People are awful. They do horrible things like shoot planes out of the sky and behead innocent people and use systematic oppression against you because yolo, and you wish they wouldn’t because it fills you with despair.

6. People are wonderful. They will forgive you when you send them an email in the middle of the night asking for some illustrations to be done by the following afternoon, and they will produce something that is so far beyond your expectations that you end up crying with gratitude. They will forgive you for curling up in a ball on the couch with a big tub of fried rice and crying because you haven’t slept for 40 hours and made some really bad decisions during those 40 hours.

They will feed you, and they will hug you, and they will love you, because that’s what humans are genetically wired to do, and I mean where would we be if we didn’t love?

Yes, my parents are hippies.

7. Writing is important, and art is important, and discussing ideas is important, and I like to think that On Dit is important in its own little way because we facilitate those things. Thanks to all our fantastic contributors, we couldn’t have filled 576 pages without you. Something something feelings, something something.

Get some sleep, kiddos.

Yasmin: In my very first year at this university, on my very first day, I picked up my first ever edition of On Dit, and it was love at first sight. I was besotted. I knew I wanted to write for it, I knew I wanted to be part of it, and I suppose that if I’m honest, I knew I wanted to edit it.

But, being a lowly first-year, I didn’t entertain these grandiose fancies.

Much.

Then something strange happened last year. I suddenly wasn’t just pitching articles to the editors and hoping not to get slammed too hard. I was pitching me. I met two other amazing people that felt the same way about this magazine.

They saw what it was, what it is, and what it could be. They knew On Dit, and they knew it well.

We did something crazy. We ran in some crazy student elections, and we became Editors. And then we somehow made Volume 82 of the second oldest student publication in Australia. Volume 82. That’s us.

Of course it isn’t just us. It isn’t even mostly us.

It’s you. You, the person reading this editorial right now. You, the person that picks up On Dit and tucks it into your bag. You, the person that reads it on the bus, or between lectures, or on the toilet.

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You, the person that may or may not be one of our amazing artists or writers. You, who eats this magazine up. You, who laughs or nods or shakes your head vehemently. You, who writes us letters and tells us when you think we’re wrong or right.

This magazine is for you, and it has been my great privilege to help bring it to you.

To Daisy, this magazine would be ugly without you. You know it, I know it. You make everything beautiful, and not just on the page.

You’re talented and you’re silly.

Don’t ever change.

To Sharmonie, this magazine wouldn’t have me without you.

I’m not convinced this magazine would’ve even gone to print without you. You’ve been my rock.

You’re talented and you’re silly.

Don’t ever change.

To my long-suffering housemates, thank you. To my even longer-suffering brother, you are not only a great brother, but a great friend too. There, it’s in print. Show all your friends. I won’t take this one back.

To everyone that’s contributed to Volume 82, wow. I love you all so much that I painstakingly put all of your names in alphabetical order so we could say thank you and goodbye to every single person that has shared their work with us (check out the inside-back cover!).

We’ve drunk a lot of coffee, we’ve listened to a LOT of traditional gamelan music. We’ve shared a communal bottle of red wine, and all the while we’ve cuddled a little slice of On Dit’s rich history.

Good night, On Dit.

sharmonie: Well this is awkward. Daisy and Yasmin wrote all of the things and their words were beautiful, and now I have to stand beside them and write words equally beautiful, words that set the tone for the end of this year’s magazine.

GOOD NEWS GUYS, IT’S 4AM SO I’M PROBABLY GOING TO TALK ABOUT FOOD AGAIN. In my first editorial, I spoke about my love for editorials because they provide space for readers get to learn a bit about the editors of the magazine, and I still stand by that.

In Edition 82.3, I told you that Daisy is an architecture student who loves pretty buildings and Tim Tams. Not much has changed in that regard, but I’ve also learned a few other things about her. Daisy is a feta cheese fanatic, a surfer, a blossoming writer and a pulley-system-construction-builder-extraordinaire. If you want an object sent Over There, she’ll make it happen.

I told you that Yasmin is an enigma.

She still is. But she’s also a strong, passionate, independant woman who has a talent for thinking up parodies on the fly and a strange anxiety about her office plant, Agatha Trannie Martin. She still eats Pringles.

I told you that I love salt and vinegar chips, and I still do. But On Dit has also taught me a few things about myself that I couldn’t have known at the start of the year: Swag cheese is gross; eating meals at 4am in the morning is fantastic; winning ‘Is It A Cheese Or Is It A Game Of Thrones Reference?’ at a National Young Writer’s Festival event is an achievement that rivals winning the right to change ‘Talk to us. Please.’ in What’s On to ‘You had me at hello.’

You want to know the best thing about this gig though? The thing that I and probably all editors ever cherish the most about making magazines?

Getting to know the contributors. Working so closely with people you’ve not met, learning their stories, being a part of their creative, professional and personal growth, being entrusted to help shape their experiences with words and lines, to give people the opportunity to publish their voice.

That’s what is truly beautiful about this role.

It’s a great honour to be an editor of this established magazine, with all of its tradition and history (82 years of history in fact), and it is one we have not taken lightly. Sure, we’ve got a Harry Potter/Auspol parody on our front cover, but it’s the intention and heart that an editorial team puts into the magazine that makes all the difference. This bundle of paper and ink must be a hard thing to make without a whole lot of love.

To everyone who has put their heart into On Dit this year, whether you be a contributor or a reader, thank you. This magazine is yours, and with you it shall belong.

All of my love, Sharmonie

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correspondence

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Dear On Dit, I was impressed with the article ‘Bicycle Wars. Adelaide: The City of Cyclist Haters.’ In this week’s issue of On Dit. As a cyclist I often see motorists, bus drivers and pedestrians (don’t even get me started on dog walkers) behaving in a dangerous manner towards me while I’m riding. This article was terrific in pointing out that a large source of this anger towards us comes from Australia’s dangerous attitudes towards cyclists, which is often encouraged by bullying shock jocks on talk back radio and journalists from the evil Murdoch press. However this sort of behaviour is not exclusive to right-wing rags, but can be found in your own (allegedly) not left-wing-biased publication.

In issue 82.1 of On Dit recreational cyclists are described as ‘40-something Parkside dads’ ... ‘with fake sponsors plastered across their intentionally unzipped lycra unitards’ who ‘sip soy frappacinos with honey and discuss deep burns in their hairless limbs’ and for whom ‘cycling exists as an avenue to bolster their clean eating image’ before asking whether there exists ‘cyclists that weren’t even a little bit wanky, but decent people doing amazing things?’

This is the sort of baseless anti-cyclist propaganda that drives people to have such an unhealthy attitude towards people on bikes. The article in this week’s issue was completely correct that Australia has this attitude problem, but unfortunately you at On Dit are not exempt from it either.

Patrick Swanson Dear Daisy, Yasmin and Sharmonie, Thank you so much for making my first year of university’s experience with On Dit such a positive one.

Every time I saw the new On Dit edition in the hub it would brighten my day! Thank you for providing so many enjoyable hours reading the creative, diverse and funny contributions.

I was so impressed with the way you handled the elections, so dignified and fair.

Thank you so much again and best of luck for the future, Lucy Adams {Eds: Lucy, you just made the heart of this magazine explode.

Yes, it’s a sentient being. Yes, it feels your love deeply. It has eyes like Nick Cave, and it’s using them to stare longingly into yours.} Dear Editors, As a long-time contributor to this magazine, I must say that I’m really disappointed with the general lack of left-wing bias in this magazine. Considering all of the accusations that have been tossed around about you and all of the 2014 contributors by the incoming editors and various ‘right-wing’ students who have never bothered to contribute/contact you/participate in On Dit in any concrete or meaningful way over the last few years except for running for editor without any experience or knowledge of the publication in an attempt to gain an all-encompassing political control of the paper, I expected more.

But, searching through the mag (and my contributions), I couldn’t find a substantial amount of outward left-wing bias. I mean, people have discussed women’s rights, feminism and their experiences in the LGBTQ community but these aren’t really left-wing issues at all.

Which is disappointing, because as a contributor and homosexual, communist scum like me need to get our lefty-propaganda fix from somewhere. I didn’t know writing about ones gender or sexual identity was determinative of their political leanings. But, according to the 2015 editors, they are.

So, in order to rectify the situation, I thought I’d make the following art-piece for you to install and/ or put in the magazine to even out the scale. {Eds: we put it on page 24}

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NOTE: it’s not an illustration as the 2015 editors have deemed all of the illustrations ‘gimmicky’ and want to rid On Dit of them next year, I’d thought I’d help get their voices and ideas into the magazine, too! Just because someone has never bothered to so much as send an email to the editors or get to know the publication they want to run, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get a say or a stake in it!

That’s what the world is about, clearly. That’s how it works.

I think you’ve all done a fabulous job this year, but in

my opinion you’ve been too even. There hasn’t been enough bias. So I thought I’d justify the ‘right-wing’ student’s belief that this magazine is out to get them.

Thanks for your hard work this year, but in the words of queen Beyoncè; To the left, To the left with this final edition of On Dit. With much love and leftism, Anthony Nocera.

thank you so much guiz To Kim, Dianne, Sam, Kearin, Danielle, Graham and all of the marvelous AUU staff whose money and love we simply couldn’t make this magazine without; to our printers whose patience and genuine care makes for happy magazining; to our wonderful cleaners whose night time chats we will treasure forever, to the friendly security staff who are so kind and lovely; to Jenny and Anthony and Sam who fed us in our (many) times of need; to Angus for your priceless distribution skillz; to Alex for your entertaining drop ins and occasional errand running skillz; to Jack for being a ridiculously lovable and reliable artist; to Idris for being such a supporter; to our parents, friends, flatmates and family who put up with our stressed and sleep-deprived antics; to the brilliant friends we begged to write and illustrate even though you didn’t really want to; to Maddie for pulling our magical cover out of the depths of your fantastical, creative brain on the spot; to the people who supported us at election week last year whose handing out skillz got us here; to the crickets who sung to us so softly; to past eds for their support; to each and every contributor who spent their time writing, illustrating, photographing and copyediting this old thing, you are irreplacable; to every single person who has ever picked up this little magazine, thank you.

Outstanding quality printers for all your business needs.

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glorious leaders

state of the union Sam Davis, auu president

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half done, and although I wish I could see more of them out, they present some real challenges for the incoming president. We still have a government bent on deregulating the higher education sector, and seeing access to education limited to the most well off members of society. The University is going through their redevelopment of Union House (with plans coming out for comment soon), so make sure you check check them out and put in your two cents about what you want Union House to look like.

So the year is pretty much over and everyone is busy cramming for their exams or otherwise getting ready for the holidays. I am now writing my last column before my time has President of the AUU comes to a close. It has been a really fantastic year, and I have enjoyed every moment of it.

The AUU has been a fantastic organisation to work in, and I hope it keeps going from strength to strength. This year we were successful in putting on the Breakfast Club for the first time (partnered with the SRC and Student Care), which means that more and more students are getting breakfast. We have put on new events, like At The Cloisters, which were fantastic events that had fantastic turnouts. We have helped hundreds of students find work whilst studying and have had a significant increase in the number of clubs on campus, and those clubs are doing so much more.

It’s been a really rewarding year.

However, there are some things that have only been

So with my last column there are probably some people I should thank. Firstly, to Dianne, the Union’s General manager, who has been my go-to person for all problems, both at work and in life and love. She has also lead an amazing team of staff that were always there to help me, and are 110 per cent dedicated to delivering for students. I also have to thank Deanna Taylor, my predecessor and now our national leader (NUS). Despite her being so invested in trying to take down the government and to achieve a fairer deal for students, as President of the National Union of Students, she has always taken my calls when I find myself huddled under the desk in the foetal position. All of my board directors have been amazing this year, but a special thanks has to go out to Amelia Briggs, who was the board director in my office questioning what I was doing and making sure I was delivering the best for students. Amelia has also taken on the role of growing clubs after the AUU took over running them, and she has done an amazing job. I would also like to thank long time ally of students, Gary Martin, who runs the office of Pascale Quester. He was constantly checking up to see how I and the Union were going, and really got that the university is at its strongest when its students are well represented. Finally I would like to thank the Uni Bar and the fine purveyors of wine at Vinomofo – I would not have been able to be President without you.

So I wish all of the best to next year’s president, and hope that it can be another amazing year for the AUU.

glorious leaders

student representative column sophie wyk, SRC president

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We’re coming to the end of what has been fantastic, energetic and encouraging year for the future of higher education and for the future of students. As we all know and agree, there’s nothing better for students than enormous cuts to wasteful state spending in higher education, so that the free market can bring light to another aspect of our lives. As we have seen from countless examples in the past, nothing helps the common person like privatisation!

So with the Student Representative Council for next year’s newly elected, many of you will be thrilled and incredibly pleased to know that many of the students on council embody this forward thinking and love for students. I for one welcome our new masters and I’m sure that as many people are involved purely for selfinterest and job seeking this year, we will truly see a real life example of the joys that neoliberal theory in action can bring to the SRC. I’m certain that they will work tirelessly on fixing many of the current issues facing students, like bringing more parties to campus, lack of togas, alcohol, and, most importantly, expensive balls that they are able to charge large amounts for in order to make a profit.

But more importantly, they will have rid the Council from the lazy, dirty, communist hippies who have inhabited it in the past and who work within realms of delusional idealism and have no understanding of how The Economy works. And after all, if people don’t even have a basic grasp of that wonderful enigmatic, removed-from-all-humanity phenomenon that is The Market, well, can we really trust them to know anything?

And it is also the end to all the ridiculous propaganda that these miscreants have spread about the Liberal government putting higher education into ‘a state of emergency’, only pointing to crazy commie lefty bullshit “studies” from “academics” that agree with them!

But of course there are other people who have to be thanked for this amazing outcome, who have all worked perfectly together in a true show of solidarity, but were sadly not elected to Council. Others from all over the world should truly look on in awe at the unity shown by salt of the earth groups in this election, it was truly a great show of putting egos to the side and working to the common good of all students, void of political game-playing and fights for power. After all, this outcome could have never been achieved without the stupid communist hippies suddenly realizing the True Way: that is, that the only good outcome can come from intense selfish individualist competition, as opposed to collectively working together.

So I hope that all students who have been watching this joyful time in student politics have been truly inspired by its current state and will be inspired to join in on this amazing, altruistic and truly worldchanging form of political organising.

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jay // 2nd year biotech

bsc (adv)

griff // 1st year

ellen // 1st year

1. Umm...

1. More than Tony Abbott.

2. Getting four new watches.

2. Happiness is being able to exist just in the now. Don’t overcomplicate things.

1. Yes – women should have equal rights.

3. Stock market.

4. The latter.

5. If I get an unlimited supply of beer, yes.

6. Getting cloned.

3. Mexican tapas. Adelaide needs tapas.

bsc (adv)

2. First boyfriend :) 3. Ice/frozen.

4. One person of all illness.

4. Cure one person.

5. No.

5. No, I hear Mars is populated by robots.

6. He got a new haircut but it looks horrible so he’s hiding.

6. Usurped by Jay’s Dad.

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On Dit popped these students’ voxes and asked: 1. Would you consider yourself to be a feminist? Why? 2. Best thing that’s happened to you this year?

3. If you opened a bar, what theme would it be?

4. Would you rather have the power to bring someone back from the dead, or cure one person of all illness?

5. If you had the skill, would you volunteer for the no-return fly to Mars mission?

6. Where is Kim Jong-un (the North Korean leader who hasn’t been seen for over 40 days.

Apparently it’s because of a pulled tendon, but we suspect that might be a lie)?

jane // 1st year

ylk //1st year english

english

1. No, I think I can do whatever men can do.

1. No, because I think men and women should be equal.

1. No, because men and women should be treated in the same way.

2. Came to Adelaide Uni.

2. Study in Australia.

2. I moved from Brazil to Australia.

3. A book bar that serves cookies.

3. A Brazilian bar.

4. Bring a person back to life, because I have many things to say to them.

4. The power to cure one person of all illness.

3. It would be a Samba bar (Brazilian theme).

Masters

5. No. 6. Probably. We don’t believe any politicians (USA, UK, as well as North Korea).

brona // 1st year

4. The second one.

5. No.

5. No.

6. I have no idea.

6. Maybe in Europe.

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what’s on

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hey there, FRIEND. On this page you’ll find all of the events, info, strange things people say sometimes, news, bake sales, pub crawls, tarp-surfing competitions and anything else you could possibly want to know about the University of Adelaide. Did we miss anything? Let us know at ondit@adelaide.edu.au.

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l u n c h t i me s at

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What: The Student Co-op Bookshop When: 10am - 4pm Tuesdays and Thursdays Where: Level 4, 230 North Terrace

Beta Sigma Phi Classical Music Awards What: Four Rising Stars from the Elder Conservatorium of Music vie for $2,400 in prizes When: November 7th, 1.10pm

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e x h i b i t i o n s EDEN by Emma Hack When: Sept 18th - Nov 14th Where: Adelaide Town Hall Technicolour Dreaming byAmy McNamara When: Oct 16th - Nov 11th Where: Carclew Foyer Gallery Our Mob 2014: Art by South Australian Aboriginal Artists When: October 25 - November 7th Where: Artspace Gallery, Adelaide Festival Centre

free brekky What: Weekly free breakfasts to keep our keen eyed students healthy and happy on campus.

When: Every Tuesday (excluding holidays), 8.30am – 10am Where: The Fix Lounge (next to Unibooks) Brought to you

by Student Care and the SRC.

Reclaim the Night is a march for women in all their diversity and welcomes everyone who has lived or experienced oppression as a woman.

When: October 31st 6:30pm: RALLY at Tarndanyangga 7pm: MARCH down King William and Hindley Street 7:30pm: Post-March Celebrations at West Bar at UniSA

film festivals Transitions Film Festival - Australia’s largest sustainability film festival.

When: Oct 24th - Nov 16th Where: Mercury Cinema Feast Film Festival - South Australia’s largest LGBTIQ curated cultural festival When: Nov 15th -30th Where: CBD Metro and SA Regions

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E x a m R e s c u e s t a t i o n What: Stocking the small but crucial items that are often lost or forgotten. They’ll also help with general exam inquiries.

When: November 8th - 22nd Where: Wayville Showgrounds

ADL

m a r k e t s Rostrevor College Spring When: November 1st Where: Rostrevor College, main oval Flinders Street Market When: Weekends, 9am- 3.30pm Where: 230 Flinders Street Gilles Street Market When: November 2nd, 10am - 4pm Where: 91 Gilles Street Round She Goes When: November 15th, 10am - 3pm Where: German Club Hall, Adelaide

fa s h i o n Fashion Icons Where: Art Gallery of South Australia When: October 25th - February 15th Cost: $25 Adult, $20 Conc

Pop Up B o o k S h a r e Pop by for a preloved book and a chat.

When: October 20th -24th, 9am - 5pm.

Where: Sturt Street, Adelaide

A d e l a i d e

Brett Gooden

Over 30 fashion, home ware, textile and accessory businesses from around Australia under the one roof. Also an array of workshops & daily fashion parades.

When: October 25th & 6th, 10am - 5pm Where: Norwood Concert Hall

The Friends of the University of Adelaide Library invite you to an event with Brett Gooden, titled The Development of the Spacesuit.

When: October 30th, 6pm Where: Ira Raymond Exhibition Room Cost: $5 More: www.adelaide.edu.au/library/ friends/Gooden.html

Vintage Expo

u n i b a r stress less day Kingswood When: October 24th & 25th, 8pm

The Delta Riggs When: November 27th, 8pm

Don’t let uni stress get you down!

Come down to the lawns and enjoy a petting zoo, bouncey castle, massages, manicure stalls, ice tea and much more!

And there’s no need to stress the wallet - it’s all completely free!

When: October 29th, 11am - 3pm Where: Barr Smith Lawns

Husky When: November 28th, 8.30pm

G r a d u a t i o n

Ne Obliviscaris When: November 22nd, 8pm

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus When: December 18th, 7.30pm Gyroscope When: December 19th

Vegan Festival

Over 70 stalls, free face-painting, morning yoga and live music all day, plus a talk with Robert Cheeke.

When: November 16th, 10am - 5pm Where: Victoria Square, Adelaide

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Adelaide University Educations Students Graduation Dinner When: November 21, 6pm Where: National Wine Center

cheese fest Australias biggest Cheese Festival.Q When: October 25th and 26th Where: Rymill Park, Adelaide Cost: $15 More: http://cheesefest.com.au/

M e g H a l e you had me at GOODBYE. Friends of the University of Adelaide Library invite you to an event with Meg Hale: Mothers in ARMS: An Amazing Bunch of Women When: Nov 16th, 6pm Where: Ira Raymond Exhibition Room Cost: $5

Email: ondit@adelaide.edu.au Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/onditmagazine Twitter: @onditmagazine Instagram: @onditmag Snail Mail: On Dit, c/o Adelaide University Union, Level 4 Union House, University of Adelaide, 5005 In Real Life: Pop into our office on the West side of the Barr Smith Lawns. Yep, you’ll have to walk down those gloomy looking stairs. Sorry.

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reportage

a fairly current affair Elliot Hoskin sums up 2014’s political shenanigans

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S

eeing as the last issue of On Dit is about as close as you’re going to get to a yearbook, I figured I’d write you a handy list of the top 10 things that have been defining moments in Australian politics in 2014, so when you’re an old rich white guy in 30 years you can be like, ‘Hey, I did use to care about thing like that!’

So without further ado, here they are presented with handy Seinfeld-inspired titles.

10: The Security Measures

I honestly can’t remember a time in my life when I heard the word (acronym I guess) ASIO. The rise of the Islamic State, and Australia’s subsequent involvement in military action against, has allowed for a greater climate of fear in regards to ‘home-grown’ terrorism.

Consequently the government has put in efforts to give ASIO unprecedented powers in Australia, such as the power to use 800 federal police to seize a single plastic, decorative machete. Not even print media will be safe from their all-seeing eyes, #HeyASIO.

9: The NBN

Well I still don’t have it; neither does our uni as far as I’m aware. But don’t panic, it’s coming sooner, cheaper and providing far less of the service than any moment prior to you reading this, so there’s always that. Expect to never hear the end of it, and for it to feature in the On Dits of 2015, 16, 17, 18…

8: The Cigars

Ah, the humble cigar. Thanks to Monopoly, it has become one of the greatest symbols of opulence the world over. Someone smoking a cigar is really doing well

for themselves, they worked hard and probably earned it. However, if you are, say, the federal treasurer and you’re in charge of helping to allocate wealth within the country, it’s sure a poor look to be seen smoking one just days after announcing a budget that has been shown to affect those with the least the most…

7: The Sovereign Borders

The other key military action by Australia this year you sure didn’t hear about. Or at least you sure weren’t meant to. Or they sure weren’t going to tell you. You might tell the people smugglers. It’s bizarre that the government talks a bunch about what they’re doing in Iraq but don’t say anything about the waters just outside of Australia under the guise of operational security.

What they sure have told us though is the boats have been stopped, so I guess Abbott’s a man of his word in that regard.

6: The Death in Custody

Reza Berati, an asylum seeker under duty of care of the Australian government died from head injuries at the Nauru detention centre. The Government’s response was slow, muddled and had a lot of back-tracked facts.

This was a very dark day and sadly the Government has still failed to show a response that sees the conditions for asylum seeker detainees improve.

5: The Opposition

Shhhhh. If you listen very closely you may hear the tiny scratching of Australia’s federal opposition party.

Apart from standing firmly in opposition to the budget, Bill Shorten and the Australian Labor Party have sure

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been pretty quiet this year, showing bipartisan support on a range of controversial issues. Maybe they are just nervous, I know loud noises startle a lot of native Australian wildlife, but chopefully they get a bit braver in 2015…

4: The Clive

The man that brought you Titanic 2.0 and Jurassic Park 2.0 has not failed in living up to the hype that preceded his election. A true cultural chameleon, the millionaire-mining magnate has disguised himself expertly as both the people’s champion and the voice of the Aussie battler. He’s arguably made more noise than the whole opposition combined, and his yo-yoing political stance is sure keeping things pretty interesting. This year has proven that Hell hath no fury than a Clive Palmer scorned, so expect the future to be equally as tumultuous.

3: The Wink

Abbott has always been on pretty shaky ground re: women, so you think he’d be pretty careful to not do anything too disrespectful and attempt to alleviate the stigma he has. However, whilst live on the air this year Tony was phoned by en elderly phone-sex worker, informing Abbott as to how the budget would affect her. Upon hearing her career Abbott shot his host a very cheeky wink, sending a message that Abbott has sent many times before, he knows, understands and is fit to represent women’s interests. Wink wink.

2: The Visit

In very local news Adelaide University was lucky enough

to play host to Abbott himself. His visit brought an entourage of 50 or so policemen and enough fencing to recreate the Rabbott-Proof Fence. Afraid of facing students that held ill will towards his policies, especially in regards to university education funding, Abbott entered on the sly and left in the same manner. It was sure an exciting day on campus though, it felt like we were about 2 people willing to be arrested away from an all-out riot. Feels good to be in a democracy where you can’t physically access the people elected to represent you.

1: The Budget

Ahhhhhhhh, the illustrious number one spot. This year’s budget is unforgettable – hell, if you are reading this as a rich 50 year old man you’re probably still feeling the effects of it, whether that be through wading to work due to a lack of action on global climate change or reaping the benefits of knowing that Australia’s class divide has been guaranteed. This budget was really an all-star achievement in pissing people off, no one was safe: families, elderly, students, people on the dole, people with disabilities, people who visit doctors and people who exist in Australia. Oh, great if you are in the military though, well done those people. The fact I’m writing this article in the October after the budget was released with the majority of it still up for debate shows just how contentious it’s been, and that’s why it gets the prestigious honour of being the most pivotal moment in Australian politics in 2014.

Thanks for being willing to read me all year, hopefully I kept you informed enough. Stay active, keep reading, express your opinion and question everything.

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& words by Anthony Nocera

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art by Carly Harvy

I recently came out to my family.

I remember the day that it happened. My mum and I were driving to my brother’s house. Out of the blue she said, without a hint of irony, ‘Now, Anthony, when you have sex with someone, make sure you wear a condom.

I don’t want you to die.’

It’s important because, firstly, it’s probably the single funniest thing anyone has ever said to me. Secondly, because it was the first time I realised that everything was going to be okay.

Unfortunately there has been a lot of rhetoric regarding the type of content that is/has been published in On Dit for the last few years. It has been held that the issues of gender, homosexuality and feminism being expressed in On Dit have been ‘too left’ politically for those on ‘the right’ to deal with, and that they don’t consider it relevant to their lives.

But do you know what’s more irrelevant to the student population than reading about being the experiences of gay people?

Bigotry.

More specifically: your bigotry.

Idiots.

The weird thing about coming out is that it makes you take stock of everything. Re-assess. Rebuild. Those protective structures that you’ve built around yourself have been smashed and dismantled, and as you stand in the rubble wondering what the fuck everything is going to be like now, you can’t help but remember when you

were 14, completely alone and sympathising with New Moon era Bella because she too was hurt by what she couldn’t control. You realise two things: how funny it all is, and how, despite the fact that you’re laughing, there are parts of it that really fucking hurt still (my love for Twilight being the sharpest blow the past could’ve dealt me but fuck you, this is a moment and I was 14, okay?)

I wanted to talk about some of my experiences here.

Partly because I wanted to landmark this, partly because I think stories like this are important and partly as a big fuck you to every single person who is against hearing/ reading the voices of minorities in student media.

I hope you enjoy this, asshole.

Doggy-Style

I’m not a religious person, but I do believe that life has ways of making things happen; literary, serendipitous ways of creating these crystallising moments that, when reflected upon, foreshadow something major about you.

This happened with being gay for me. You see, I’ve always had a rather tenuous relationship with vaginas.

And, I’ve realised now — taking an objective assessment of my life — that whatever divine force that makes the world work has been telling me all my life that the vagina and I were never meant for each other.

Example: A dog had its period on my leg when I was 10.

I was sleeping over at my nonna’s house, and we were dog-sitting my aunty’s new puppy, Molly. I remember

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sitting on my nonna’s couch, and Molly jumped up to join me. It was cold, so she snuggled up to me and jumped on my lap. I let her. After about five minutes she waddled away but my leg still felt really warm.

I looked down and saw this dark red stain, around the size of a 50 cent piece on my beige cargo shorts (shut-up, I was 10 and it was the early 2000’s, shut up). I didn’t know what it was. ‘Curious,’ I thought to myself, and then I reached down and poked at it. It felt hot, slimy. I rubbed it between the pads of my fingers before it hit me.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, shit he’s the real Superbad. And yeah, you bet your fucking ass I am. I want that shit written on my tombstone. But you’re also thinking, wow I hope he threw out those shorts. I did.

Now, I don’t want to sound crass here, but I really don’t think anything says ‘gay’ more than being the sanitary product of a lesser species. Nothing says that you weren’t meant for the vagina more than a dog using you as it’s own personal napkin. And what’s worse is that Molly, whenever I see her, glares at me like she knows.

Like she saying, shower all you want, you’re always gonna be my tampon.

And I am. And I’m proud.

I’m here! I’m queer! Menstruate on me!

Bound and Gagged

One thing that you should know about me is that I’m very uncomfortable with touching. Literally, any form of touching is not okay, unless you’re one of the select few people that I’m comfortable enough to be that close with. A few weekends ago I went out with my friends, and while we were in a bar a guy came up to me and said, ‘I think you’re really cute,’ and touched me on the arm. I got so uncomfortable that I made hand-guns, pointed at him, and yelled, ‘GREAT’ and ran away.

few years to work out since I started university, where I’ve been educated about this stuff for the first time ever, that it may be because I was assaulted in school. A lot. And no one did anything about it.

The funny thing about being bullied when you’re closeted in school, especially in a Catholic one (thanks for everything, Jesus, really!), is that you think you deserve what’s happening to you. You can’t protest, you sure as hell can’t admit anything, and you can’t accept what’s happening. You just have to sit and deal with it.

Silently.

But when straight guys bully a gay guy, they do this thing where they act incredibly gay. I remember these guys used to do this thing where they’d walk up to me and grope me and rub their dicks on me. They’d say things like, ‘you wanna fuck me?’ and ‘do you love it?’

All these people would laugh, and they’d have this really great time, and I’d be there feeling humiliated and ashamed of myself. I remember in class a guy bent over in front of me and asked if I wanted to (and I quote) ‘rim [his] hairy asshole?’ in front of everyone and the teacher said nothing. The teachers very often said nothing. I get the feeling that they probably thought I was enjoying myself. I wasn’t, and every time someone touches me now there is a very big part of me that feels like it’s wrong. Like it’s humiliating, and that I’m defective in some way.

And I get all choked up, and not in the fun way like they do during that festival in San Francisco.

Spank me

Christ.

Once you’ve come out, you’re going to get a lot of backhanded compliments and tolerance in relation to your sexuality. This happened to me a lot. Earlier in the year I had a friend tell me that their boyfriend liked me because, despite the fact that I was gay, I wasn’t (AND I QUOTE) ‘too gay’. And when they said that, I smiled and laughed along, and acted super complimented and even went so far as to say, ‘Thanks.’ I think I said it because I didn’t know that there were levels of homosexuality. How much is too much? How much is too little? Where was I on the scale?

But it’s only lately that I’ve realised that maybe the fact that I don’t like people (I DO NOT) isn’t the entire source of my discomfort with touching. It’s taken me a

‘On a scale of George Takei to George Michael, how gay are you?’

‘OH, I’m one of Lady Gaga’s back up dancers.’

Hand-guns.

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‘Cool! We can be friends but I’m never bending down in front of you.’

‘Good move, because we all now that I can’t control myself.’

What in the fuck is that supposed to mean?

Thanks. I said, ‘Thanks.’ I don’t usually thank people for being intolerant, but I said thank you because I wanted to be nice and not start a fight and make anyone uncomfortable. I didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. I didn’t want to make the homophobe uncomfortable. I didn’t want to make the person who had systematised their discrimination and general dislike for an entire group of people uncomfortable. Because accepting that metaphorical backhander is better than potentially getting a real one.

What a slap in the face.

Getting Fisted

The wafer thin silver lining on the dark cloud that is discrimination is that you get these little victories that aid in wading through all of the hate. You learn to be resilient and take whatever good that you can get. And, slowly, they become your favourite things that you’ve ever done.

My favourite thing I’ve ever done happened while serving a customer at the supermarket that I work at.

Whenever I’d serve him, he’d always stand really far away from me and clench his fists, like he was afraid of catching whatever disease that me, Siegfried and Roy and Elton John all shared (because I got the distinct feeling that he thought we all knew each other).

Anyways, despite almost suffocating from holding his breath and not wanting to breathe the same air as me, he kept coming through my register. Every week, at least once, he’d be there. Clenching his fists and making me put the money on the counter so that I wouldn’t come into contact with him.

‘Excuse me?’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, faggot,’ he shot back.

And his girlfriend muttered, just loud enough for me to hear, ‘probably has AIDS or something.’

And, in that moment, I took a stand and looked them right in their beady eyes and said, ‘yeah, yeah I do.’

They froze. I then proceeded to fake a coughing fit all over their apples and onto their groceries and, when I finished the transaction, I put the money is his hand and I watched him walk out with clenched fists.

Now, I bet you’re all super impressed that I pulled the dick out of my mouth long enough to write this. I know.

It’s a marvel that faggots like me have anything to say.

But in all honesty, I don’t want to seem like I’m whining.

I’m not. I’m genuinely okay with everything that has happened to me. It could’ve been a lot worse, and it has undeniably shaped me into the person I am today.

I’m not sure it’s a good thing, but it’s what I’ve got. But what I’m not okay with is the fact that voices like mine, stories like the ones I’ve just written, are going to be eradicated from this magazine next year.

What compounded all of the distress and the pain I felt growing up was being alone: not having these stories.

People that could empathise, people that could understand and, most importantly, people who made it out alive (except for Bella, although technically she didn’t make it out alive either. Damn.)

So next time you whine about left-wing bias in this magazine, be sure to remember that you’re in a position so privileged that you’re able to reduce my identity to something as trivial as factional politics. Be sure to remember that you’re so self-centred that you think a magazine designed for student voices should be all about people like you. And be sure to remember that voices like this one matter. They’re in print.

And they better stay that way.

One time he brought his girlfriend in, and as I was scanning the apples, I reached in the bag to check the code I had to type in so that I could scan it, and the lady said, ‘oh, babe, he’s touching the food.’

‘Yeah I know, love. We’ll just have to wash it when we get home.’

Anthony’s primary sources of sexual attraction are Chicken McNuggets and Salt and Vinegar Chips. But there’s not a name for that. So he chose this instead because he thought it would be easier to get married. Anthony is a fool.

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Disclaimer & Trigger: I do not identify as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person. The research I have conducted was thorough and I have attempted to convey the truth to the best of my ability, however I welcome all criticism. This story also contains a name of a person who has died.

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boriginal and Torres Strait Islander (TSI) struggles and rights are not a popular media topic as of late. However, it is one that deserves great attention – with all the recent focus on our cultural identity, a little bit of reflection on our history and our current treatment of Australia’s true first inhabitants could go a long way.

the dark side of Native Title words by Alyona Haines image by daisy freeburn

Terra Nullius

Australia was established on a lie. We must all remember this.

We must remember that once upon a time, a government established our country based on the ideas of white superiority and social Darwinism. And for generations and generations, we were lied to about it.

The first fleet landed in Australia in 1788. The first settlers had a number of options for deciding the legal basis for the extension of the British legal system to Australia, and they chose terra nullius.

This meant that they considered Australia to be unsettled, without a social and legal structure, and

without a sufficiently intelligent population.

As a result of this precedent, Aboriginal and TSI people of Australia were methodically and consistently exterminated. Their rights were abolished, their lands were confiscated, and eventually their children were taken as well.

Stolen Generation

Another lie that the people of Australia were spoon fed for decades was that taking Aboriginal and TSI children away from their parents was for their own good. It was based on the same beliefs as above – that Aboriginal and TSI

people are somehow less evolved, less bright, and less capable of raising their offspring. It was also based on the integration policies and the dream of ‘White Australia’ which were popular at the time.

While there might have been a sliver of well intent, the consequences were heartbreaking. A generation of lives ruined, a generation of unimaginable pain for parents being separated from their children.

Take, for example, the case of Bruce Trevorrow, who in 2007 was awarded over half a million dollars in damages, for the pain and suffering he endured as a child

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after being removed from his mother as a 13 month old baby. He was admitted to hospital (which his parents weren’t allowed to visit due to the lack of a permit to enter the city) with gastroenteritis. After a few days, he got better, and he was promptly resettled with a white Australian family. He did not see his family for over a decade despite numerous attempts by his parents to get him back. As a result of this separation, his ability to trust and to create stable social relations was damaged forever, and he spent a large amount of his time in institutions.

He died only 5 months after winning his case, and even then the government wanted to appeal.

This case was as recent as 2007. Just think about that.

Connection to the Land

The injustices suffered by Aboriginal and TSI people all stem from the fear of the unknown and foreign. British settlers refused to try and understand the social and legal systems of the indigenous population. It is ironic that an allegedly superior race could not comprehend that different societal structures exist.

The Aboriginal and TSI ways of life are complex, and I truly cannot give it justice, but the basics are not impossible to grasp. In Aboriginal and TSI culture, the land, the animals, the trees, the law and the stories are part of one holistic ecosystem. Everything is connected, and there are consequences for all actions. They do not separate land from person, or law from land.

They are one and they live in harmony.

The imposition of British colonialism destroyed what Aboriginal and TSI people held most sacred – their connection to the land. It was not until 1992 when this connection was recognised.

Mabo

The case of Mabo in 1992 brought a lot of joy in regards to recognition

of Aboriginal and TSI way of life, including land rights. Judge Brennan expressly said that terra nullius was wrong, and that prior to British settlement, a society with a coherent and comprehensive social and legal structure existed in Australia. It is important to understand the significance of this decision.

But it was too late. English law was already so entrenched into Australia that it was not possible to give back all of Aboriginal and TSI lands.

In fact, it wasn’t even possible to prioritise them in such a way that Aboriginal and TSI people actually derived substantial benefit from the recognition of Native Title.

Proof of ‘Nativeness’

As part of any Native Title claim, the claimants have to prove that their connection to the land survived the slaughter that they’ve endured. They have to prove that the practises that they held prior to 1788 are still held to this day in exactly the same manner and form.

This conception of connection to the land is completely misguided, both in terms of cultural evolution and in terms of history. No culture stands still for over 200 years, especially not when it was deliberately targeted for extermination.

When it comes to this threshold, one of two things happen. Aboriginal and TSI people either admit that their culture has changed and lose their ability to claim, or they deny that the suffering which was laid upon them for generations had any effect on their way of life.

Extinguishment

Extinguishment is the cherry on top. It is the genius of the white supremacy system we live in today.

Extinguishment is the concept that Native Title can be claimed only

in those areas where there is no conflict between Aboriginal and TSI land rights and other people’s land rights. This is true for past, present, and future. If, at any point in time, a Native Title right conflicts with a land right of someone else, Native Title loses.

Extinguishment also applies to individual rights. If someone else is using a piece of Native Title land for a particular purpose, for example fishing, Native Title rights holders may not fish in this area. This applies to every single Native Title right, if someone else comes along and wants to do something on that particular land, the Native Title right to do that exact thing gets extinguished.

Worse yet, there is no safeguard from having every piece of land and every right from being extinguished. And with an expanding population and corporate greed, there may not be any Native Title left at all in centuries to come.

So while a lot of the outrage about Aboriginal and TSI rights has died down (at least in the media), the reality is still rather grim. Not only is it grim, it seems that the system we’ve installed under a guise of well intent is a system of legal destruction of what is left of Aboriginal land rights.

Native Title is an attempt at reconciliation of something that cannot be mended. The concept of ‘giving’ Native Title rights is based on a lie that those rights were someone’s to take away in the first place.

Australia’s history is based on a series of lies. These lies must be remembered next time the government decides, because their inability to comprehend differences comes across as a solid belief that one group of people is less deserving of equality than the rest of us.

Alyona is an avid advocate for social justice.

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clementine ford an interview with australia’s leading feminist voice

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You’re an alumnus of the University of Adelaide. Tell us a little about what you studied at the university and when you graduated.

I technically graduated in 2005, but I never attended my ceremony. I have a slight suspicion that I might still owe them some money and so maybe technically they never allowed me to graduate. I’m not really sure. I’ve never been that good with following up paperwork. Regardless, I’ve never been asked for evidence of a degree so I guess it doesn’t matter all that much. I did a double major in English Literature and Gender Studies, but whenever people ask I tell them my real major was five years of hanging around in the dingy On Dit basement and getting used to the lingering musk of the men’s urinals.

You also happened to be an On Dit editor! How and why did you get involved with On Dit? I started really caring about On Dit in 2000, when my friends ran as a team in the student elections. It was a bit of an upset, because there was a different dynasty operating at the time. My friends were not the assumed successors, but they won and thus began a glorious half decade of not getting enough sun, smoking too much and finding the humour in reviewing various root vegetables. I became editor in 2005, but most of my cohort had left by then so it wasn’t quite the same.

What was your time like as an On Dit editor? What are your fondest memories of editing the mag?

To be honest, I had a much better time in that very first year. We felt like we were doing something really exciting and grown up. There was a real sense of camaraderie about the whole thing. By the time my turn came around, everyone I’d most loved working with had left. The office was very guy heavy in my year as editor, and I struggled with that a little bit. I’m sure I wasn’t totally blameless - I was working two other jobs and I didn’t care as much about the design side of things as they did - but I felt like the boys really did subconsciously band together and freeze me out a little bit. Having said that, it was exciting to see the finished product at the start of each week. And of course, I enjoyed the intoxicating sense of power that came from being able to make fun of all the student politicians.

Where did your degree and your extracurricular activities lead you beyond tertiary life?

My degree led me basically nowhere. I’ve never been asked to show it and I don’t even know what it looks like. But I have fond memories of some of my lectures, and a couple of my lecturers really inspired me to understand more about feminism and the history of gender inequality. I have particularly fond memories of Chilla Bulbeck and Joy McEntee. Are they still around? I’ve often felt that if I went to university now, I’d really embrace the academic side of things a lot more enthusiastically. When I was studying in my early twenties, I was more interested in nerding out to student media and having drunken adventures.

Having said that, my time in student media has been pivotal in terms of my career. If I hadn’t involved myself in On Dit, I honestly don’t know what I’d be doing right now. Still getting fired from temping jobs, I imagine. Or worse, maybe a Liberal voter.

You’ve gone on to become a prominent feminist voice within Australia. Can you tell us about how feminism became such a large part of your life?

Look, it just made sense. When I started studying gender studies with some of my girlfriends, we had a lot of fun sitting around and dissecting the world. Some people might think I’m dogmatic now, but it’s nothing

compared to when I was at uni. I had very fixed ideas about what was and wasn’t feminist, and I actually think I’m a lot more circumspect now. Of course, my ideas have become more radical in other areas, most notably in regards to the false premise of ‘accessible’ feminism and engaging men through niceties and coaxing. But people should want to be learning all the time, and constantly developing their ideas. Perhaps I’ll think differently again in another ten years time. Either way, feminism has been hugely important to my development as a person and my understanding of the world. What has been seen cannot be unseen. I am so grateful for whatever moments were put in motion to get me to this point.

In the last few weeks, On Dit has been criticized as having a “left-wing bias” for our coverage of social issues. We’ve run a few articles relating to feminism, including one that was anti-feminist. Unfortunately, some people consider topics like feminism to be irrelevant to the broader student community. Do you think feminism is only a “left-wing” issue, and does the media talk about it too much?

I don’t want to be offensive, but I almost think this question is beneath you to ask and beneath me to try to answer. Of course feminism is relevant to everyone, because it addresses the fundamental inequalities of a world governed by patriarchal structures of power. As far as I’m concerned, the media doesn’t talk about it enough - but that’s

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undoubtedly because the media is overwhelmingly dominated by men, with women only accounting for 30% of contributors and only 20% of sought out expert opinions. As for students who find it irrelevant to their experiences - I’d say the still-too-significant statistics of sexual assault on campus stand as evidence against that. And with all due respect, many of your academic peers might think differently when they enter the workforce and realise that their gender alone is considered a determining factor in whether or not their paid a good $5k-$10k less than a male colleague of identical qualifications who’s starting at the same time.

Much is made of the fact that women attend university and graduate in higher numbers than men - but those percentages are not replicated in the workforce by any means.

But sure, it’s easy for people to talk about feminism being irrelevant because their privilege either makes it so or because they’re too scared to rock the boat.

We assume that there have always been haters. What kind of mud was slung at you when you were an editor of On Dit? As far as I can recall, most of it came from the Unity politicians!

On the internet in particular, the ‘I Don’t Need Feminism Because’ and ‘#WomenAgainstFeminism’ memes have gone viral. Why do you think so many women are against feminism, and how do you think feminists should react to these women?

Patriarchy is very difficult to challenge. Women are punished - mostly verbally, but sometimes physically - when they assert themselves against a system which relies on their subjugation in order to thrive. It’s great that individual women feel so powerful in their own lives that they don’t need a movement which has tirelessly worked to take that power back for them, but it’s selfish of them to be derisive of it when they have no idea how horrendous their lives might be now were it not for feminists.

Similarly, just because your life is great, why should that stop you from arguing for the rights of other women?

Primarily, I think women believe they’re against feminism because they’re afraid of what the backlash might be if they embrace it. And I know this because I was once one of those women, and I have since been told this by countless others. But trust me, almost all of those women still feel marginalised and silenced. They still feel judged and belittled, and they feel like they have to be careful around men in case they put them offside. That kind of constant self doubt and self recrimination builds up. Feminism isn’t always easy, and it certainly doesn’t inspire people to always be kind - but I would choose this course a million times over before I’d go back to the unidentifiable fear and anxiety that came from being a woman without a voice.

Ultimately, there will always be women somewhere who say they’re against feminism. But while I don’t understand them, I’m still going to fight for them and their liberation.

What would you say has been your biggest success in your career so far?

I don’t really think in terms of successes I suppose, because I feel grateful for every opportunity I’ve ever been given or fought for. I hope to continue growing and developing as a writer and speaker for many years to come. The things that reward me the most - the things I feel absolutely the most privileged to have experienced - are the transformations made by the women and men who write to tell me how my work has fundamentally changed some aspect of their thinking or their lives. That’s incredibly special, and it is such a gift to be able to know that you’re making a difference.

What would you say has been your biggest challenge?

Changing the world, one mind at a time!

Are you living the life you envisioned for yourself 10 years ago?

No. I had no idea what life I envisioned, but it wasn’t this. This is so, so, so much better.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

World domination, obviously.

What can we expect next from you?

I’m in the very early stages of working on a book. So hopefully, all things going to plan, that’s what you can expect next.

The University of Adelaide introduced Journalism major in 2013. What advice would you give to aspiring young journalists?

Spend some serious time figuring out your voice and your passions.

There’s nothing worse than writing about things you don’t care about, or writing to agendas that aren’t your own. Have faith in yourselves. Read.

Listen. Challenge yourself. Feel uncomfortable at least once a day. Prepare for disagreements. Never read Andrew Bolt.

RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS Favourite food?

Anything you can eat with your hands.

Favourite film?

All About Eve. Favourite TV show?

Broad City. Parks & Rec. Masters of Sex. I hate-watch Once Upon A Time.

Best and worst bars in Adelaide?

It’s been so long since I’ve lived in Adelaide that I don’t even know half of them anymore! In my day, we always drank $11 carafes of cask wine at the Exeter. Avoid any bars where you can’t hear other people speak or where you have to line up. Never line up for anything.

Burqas. Ban or allow?

The answer to ending oppression will never be found in dictating what women can and can’t wear.

Currently reading?

Lena Dunham’s ‘Not That Kind Of Girl’, Roxane Gay’s ‘Bad Feminist’ and ‘The Girl With All The Gifts’.

Currently listening to?

Taylor Swift.

Your go-to news source?

Twitter. Seriously, if you’re following the right people, it’s the best aggregate site you’ll find.

Last holiday you had?

Cook Islands, August 2014.

Favourite place in the world?

A porch on a muggy summer afternoon, just as a rainstorm’s rolling in.

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fee Dereg

And other bed words by

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f you’re a former, current, or prospective university student and you haven’t heard the term ‘fee deregulation’ twice a week for the last five months, then you’re doing a very good job of locating food at the bottom of the well you’ve been living in.

Fee deregulation. These two words have dominated the tertiary education sector since the Federal Budget was released in May, and are likely to continue doing so for some time. The face of higher education as we know it may change drastically in the not too distant future, but what will it look like?

The reaction to the government’s federal budget in May was mixed to say the least. Many were shocked at the harsh cuts, whilst others heralded the tough measures as the medicine Australia is well overdue. Among the proposed changes were several radical reforms to the higher education sector, and Education Minister Christopher Pyne is working hard to get these proposals turned into law with his Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014, which passed the House of Representatives on September 4th.

The bill would remove the maximum student contribution cap for commonwealth-supported students (fee deregulation, in other words, as universities will be able to charge what they want); cut government subsidies by 20 per cent; and increase the indexation of student loans up to a cap of six per cent per year.

slow race to the top of the world university rankings. The Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, affiliated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, is widely viewed as the best university ranking system, and is usually referenced when discussing Australian universities’ position in the global education market.

Yikes

Pyne claims that without these measures, Australian universities will ‘be overtaken by our Asian competitors.’ He told Parliament that ‘universities in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore are rising strongly through the ranks.’

‘The situation in Australia is such that we cannot have no reform to our universities or they will slide into mediocrity, be overtaken by our Asian competitors,’ Pyne told Network Ten’s The Bolt Report on August 24th.

In the most recent 2014 rankings, Australia had four universities in the top 100, and this has remained relatively constant since 2011. This is a slight improvement on the situation in 2004, when Australia only had two universities in the top 100.

Meanwhile, there are still no Chinese or Singaporean universities in the top 100, although they have experienced some growth in the top 500.

At first glance this all looks pretty terrible: students paying more for their degrees, universities receiving less funding. What’s the upside here? Why would anyone think this is a good thing?

‘Our international education market will dry up. Our university students will go overseas thinking that they have first-class degrees only to find they come eighth out of eight in every race.’

The race Pyne is referring to is the

A Group of Eight report attributes the growth of these Asian universities to the ‘substantial increases’ in government investment in higher education and university research.

feature

0 degrees

gulation

dtime stories yasmin martin

‘The rate of growth in academic publications output from Asia is far outstripping that of Australia and the quality of Asia’s research outputs is rapidly improving,’ the report said.

rankings are principally based on research performance, and research policy reforms are only a small part of Pyne’s bill, ‘none of which should have any material effect on global rankings.’

So whilst Pyne’s claims in Parliament may not have been factually correct (and possibly slightly exaggerated), he is not wrong that Asian universities are overtaking Australia in the quality of their research output.

‘There is a widespread suspicion that if fees are deregulated, much of the money will go to fund research.’ He says if that is the case ‘then fee deregulation could help improve the relative position of Australian universities.’

It’s All In The Research

‘However, it is not clear that it is sensible for students to pay for research.’

If it is indeed true that Australian universities are at serious risk of sliding into mediocrity, then is fee deregulation the answer to improving our global competitiveness?

In his explanatory memorandum for his education reform bill, Pyne says his reforms will ‘ensure that Australia is not left behind at a time of rising performance by universities around the world.’

However, Andrew Norton, higher education program director at the Grattan Institute, says the

At the moment, postgraduate research degrees are funded on a tuition free basis, to encourage the specialisation and advancement of knowledge. The public benefit of having highly educated Australians is hard to measure.

That Star Spangled Banner of Education

Professor Ian Young, chair of the Group of Eight, argues that deregulation will enable Australian universities to be brilliant, allowing them

to differentiate. This will in turn give students more choice, similar to the US, where they can choose from small liberal arts colleges to Ivy League colleges.

Our own Vice Chancellor Professor Warren Bebbington has been very vocal about his support for the Americanisation of Australian universities. He told Radio Adelaide’s breakfast program shortly after the release of the federal budget that he believes that fee deregulation will create a ‘two-tiered’ education system, increasing quality and providing more choice. Students will no longer just ‘go where they get a place.’

‘In the new environment, they’ll also go where they can afford.’

Others, however, argue that the Americanisation of Australian universities would be our downfall. Certainly, enabling universities to differentiate will create more choice, but is this really a fair ‘choice’? If there are elite universities, will all Australians seeking to attend university really have the same choice to make? Will the

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‘choice’ be made for many of these students out of financial necessity?

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$100,000 Degrees?

The question of whether university courses will become exorbitant if universities are allowed to charge whatever they want is a contentious one. On the one hand, universities like the University of New South Wales insist that whilst fees will need to rise by 24 per cent to compensate for cuts in government funding, they will keep fees down as much as possible to remain competitive.

On the other hand, the original architect of HECS, Bruce Chapman, said fee deregulation would lead to ‘price gouging’, as universities raise fees to fund research and infrastructure developments that would previously have been paid for by the government.

Chapman believes it would be fair to increase the existing caps on student fees, but full fee deregulation would be going too far.

‘It is not responsible to allow universities to charge whatever they want,’ he said. ‘Why should students be paying for research and other areas beyond teaching? It is an ethical question.’

The University of Western Australia (UWA), recently revealed that it would charge a flat rate of $48,000 for a three-year undergraduate degree. This is a sharp rise in what students currently pay. The university released its provisional pricing structure to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee as it conducts its inquiry into the education reforms.

Pyne has said that UWA’s proposed fees lay to rest the ‘scare campaign’ mounted by opponents of his fee

deregulation package, many of whom claim that $100,000 degrees will become prevalent. However, it will likely cost over $100,000 to study medicine under UWA’s proposed pricing structure, which the university insists is ‘commensurate’ with its sandstone status in Australia, and its position in the top 100 on the world rankings. UWA insists that medicine is a ‘special case’, because the demand for medicine courses far exceeds the number of available places. So where does this leave poorer students?

A Fair Go

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill spoke to us about his concerns about fee deregulation. He believes that education is ‘the great social project for social mobility for people that may have started with a disadvantaged background.

Education allows them to free themselves from their demographic history and become successful.’

But he fears that fee deregulation will result in higher fees and larger student debts, diminishing equality of opportunity.

The advantages in life for those born to wealth aren’t difficult to imagine. A person from a wealthier background will most likely not experience the same aversion to debt that a person from a disadvantaged background might. Families who can afford to pay university fees upfront will certainly benefit over those that need to incur a HECS debt with a growing interest in order to develop their skills.

There has been an explosion of participation in higher education in Australia in the last few decades, which has created opportunities for personal, social, and economic transformation.

Australian society is certainly more diverse and affluent as a result.

Weatherill (along with other Labor, Greens, and Palmer United Party opponents) is concerned that people from disadvantaged backgrounds will say “I don’t want a debt like this,” and higher fees will serve as a genuine disincentive.

‘We’ve got a student loan scheme which is no doubt still a barrier to entry for some students, but it hasn’t been a dramatic one because the loan scheme does allow you to pay it back over time when you can afford to. But here we’re talking about people with massive debts for an extended period, and they’re going to look at that and say that’s something I can’t afford to take on.

I want to have a family, I want to have a house, and people who have already got those commitments are going to find it very difficult to add this burden to their family debt.’

Prepare Thyselves

At the time of writing, the Senate is in the midst of an inquiry into Pyne’s bill. The bill passed the House of Representatives, and is due to be voted on in the Senate in coming weeks.

‘The Committee’s report is due by the end of the month,’ said National Union of Students President Deanna Taylor. ‘The Palmer United Senators and Senator Ricky Muir have all declared their opposition to the legislation. The legislation would be defeated in the Senate as things currently stand, but the vote is still a bit less than two months away.’

A lot can happen in two months.

Yasmin Martin cannot fathom a world without On Dit. She’ll miss it. A lot.

opinion

the fundamental

deficiencies

auu

of the

by robert katsambis

Most students at the moment are cringing at the post-student election hostilities carried out over social and student media.

Ordinary students see it as a petty fight between students who treat student governance as a sandbox parliament in which to pursue some deluded, albeit grandiose political agenda.

And the ordinary student would be right. Believe it or not, most student politicians believe this is the role and purpose they must serve at University.

The post-election debate is an unproductive debate not worth having. Among the bitterness and gloating, the contradictions and hypocrisy of both sides is endemic. I for one choose not to get involved in it because it does not achieve anything.

It distracts us from the real problems facing the Adelaide University Union and student governance as a whole. It is these issues the debate should be fought around. Some of those issues I wish to address in this article.

I have been a Board Director of the AUU since September 2012 and my term expires at the end of next year. During my time as a Director I have observed the following indicators which point to the membership crisis the Union currently faces.

this sharp decline in members obstructs the Union any further in what has become a battle for importance which it is losing.

I am not a lone voice on this. Many of my fellow directors, past and present, from left, right and centre, have been of this view.

During my time on Board no discussion on the Union’s structure has taken place. However, big ideas and new thinking are often dismissed on Board without debate as being radical and unnecessary.

To the contrary, we need to be tackling these problems head on with a new focus which necessarily involves a complete overhaul of the Union’s old way of doing things.

The propositions that follow are not novel. I have throughout my entire tenure pushed for the Union to act on these deficiencies, as have others. In this article I seek to bring them to the attention of the student population.

The AUU is irrelevant I am aware that the blunt subheading above will probably spark controversy within student political circles.

In 2011 our membership exceeded 3,300 students by March alone1.

In 2012 it was approaching 4,0002. Just two years later we now struggle to get 2,000 members from a student population of over 26,0003.

However I should pre-emptively attempt to dispel any proposition to the contrary by saying that if the AUU was relevant, its membership would comprise much more than 7.5 per cent of students, as it currently does6. If the AUU was relevant, why do only half of our current members want to renew their membership next year?7

It is especially concerning that AUU membership has declined by about a half since 2012 when University enrolment has increased by more than 32 per cent4.

The AUU’s irrelevance is a product of its obsession with performing functions and delivering services that could hardly be said to appeal a broad mass of students.

Less than 10 per cent of students actually vote in student elections5. This is a sad indictment on the ability of the AUU to be relevant to students. It is reflective largely of the fact that the Union does not cater to the needs of students generally.

In fact, when I speak to students the most common reason for not joining the Union is that it does nothing for them. In fact, when surveyed earlier this year, one of the main reasons cited by non-members for not joining the Union was the membership offered a lack of value8.

These statistics point to the urgent need to reform the AUU before

The only time students really see the Union doing anything is in O’Week when it wants their money, when they go to UniBooks to buy a $200 textbook they know they won’t read, and during Student Elections where it’s being such an annoying inconvenience that by Wednesday you just want to punch Democracy Panda in its head.

1 Dianne Janes, ‘General Manager’s Report to the Board of Directors’, Adelaide University Union, March 2013, pg 4 2 AUU Board Meeting Minutes, Adelaide University Union, 16 May 2012, pg 2 3 2013 Pocket Statistics, University of Adelaide, July 2014 http://www.adelaide. edu.au/planning/statistics/pocket-stats/2013pocket_stats.pdf 4 Ibid 5 Casey Briggs, On Dit Magazine Twitter account, Adelaide University Union, 5 September 2014, https://twitter.com/OnDitMagazine, (election results data)

The Union has for some time put on events which largely centre around the fringe political philosophies of its Directors which, as I must announce as a surprising reality check, nobody actually cares about! These include a variety of events such as the Fair Trade and Social Justice Expo which less than 15 per cent of students attend.9

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There is also a free Breakfast Club you might have heard about. It caters to less than one per cent of students10.

It’s no wonder that less than one tenth of students vote in AUU elections. The Union has barely anything to do with their lives and doesn’t do anything they want. Why then, would students want to have a say in its governance, or even join it for that matter?

My advice is that if you want to run a good event for students, all you have to do is look to the Engie BBQs which provide massive value for their members. The AUU is better funded and better equipped to put on large events like this, and would be much more respected and appreciated if it did so more frequently.

When reading this I feel people will be asking themselves how can the Union survive if it doesn’t give students value?

The Union is financially dependent on funding from the University which is essentially guaranteed, regardless of whether students get value from our services. In other words, our survival doesn’t depend on whether you like us, so why should we do anything you want us to do?

In fact, a large portion of our operations are paid for by the SSAF money that you are forced to pay us anyway. Whether you like it or not, you’re paying for things you don’t want or won’t use. It does not matter if you sign up to the Union or not.

In essence, whilst it remains dependent on financial support from the University, the AUU must on its own volition overcome this incentive problem.

Being a member of the AUU is only valuable in the sense that it gives you discounts to businesses around Adelaide and some AUU services. But even in comparison to other student organisations, these discounts simply can’t compete.

Join the Engineering Society for $5 and you get unlimited BBQ and beer at four parties on the Barr Smith Lawns each year. Join the AUU for $25 and you can get a free upgrade at Grass Roots and 20 per cent off laminating. These, of course, are things you otherwise could not get.

According to the latest survey, only about half of our members think that these discounts give them value12. Given that the discounts are the main selling point of the Union membership as well as the fact that 80 per cent of members join the Union specifically to access its discounts13, it is clear that the current membership structure of the AUU is failing.

If members of an organisation can’t get value from their membership, they are less likely to renew. This is why only half of our current members want to renew their membership next year14.

But can we blame them? Why would anyone sign up to the Union to use employment services or join clubs, or get tax and legal advice when they can access them for free anyway?

If students had to join the Union to use these services, Union membership would be more relevant and valuable. The Union would also be able to get a better idea of what students wanted based on the demand for memberships.

It would be able to improve these services by tailoring them to those who use them in a demand-driven, user-pay system.

The AUU is set up so that anyone can benefit from it

This idea would not apply to revenue-raising ventures like UniBooks and The General, however better deals for members with these companies should be negotiated.

The AUU’s Constitution says that it must provide amenities and services to both its members AND students generally.

What is needed for change?

By making the benefits of the Union available to the entire student population, the value of your Union membership is significantly diminished. This is quite simply because you don’t have to be a member to use our services11.

Over the last two years of being a director of the AUU I have learned that its structure and intended purpose are its biggest impediments to properly serving the student community.

This is something that the Union’s marketing team has pointed out and lamented for many years.

Before my term expires at the end of next year I make it my commitment to overhaul the Union’s structure and force it to live and die on its ability to meet the desires of students. After all, it’s your Union and it should be doing what you want it to do.

6 ‘2013 Pocket Statistics’, University of Adelaide, July 2014 http://www.adelaide.edu.au/ planning/statistics/pocket-stats/2013pocket_stats.pdf 7 Keiran Hausler, ‘2013 Annual Student Survey Data Analysis’, Adelaide University Union, May 2014, p 5 8 Ibid, pg 6 9 Ibid, pg 5 10 Dianne Janes, ‘General Manager’s Report to the Board of Directors’, Adelaide 11 Adelaide University Union Constitution as at 10 September 2012, clause 1.2 12 Keiran Hausler, ‘2013 Annual Student Survey Data Analysis’, Adelaide University Union, May 2014, pg 2 13 Ibid, pg 5 14 Ibid

This is a big change which requires a referendum of students to change the AUU’s Constitution as well as tedious discussions and negotiations with the University. Nevertheless I believe it is a worthwhile change and I am quite happy to take the necessary steps. If we are not prepared to make the big decisions now it will only further prejudice the interests of the students.

Robert Katsambis is the President of the Adelaide University Liberal Club and a Board Director of the Adelaide University Union.

review

inverbrackie detention centre A review

words by Alyona Haines

I

nverbrackie Detention Centre is set in a stunning location in the midst of the Adelaide Hills. To get there, take the Hahndorf exit off the freeway and zig zag through idyllic valleys and farmland. It would have been a sigh of relief for those coming from offshore, or other harsh onshore detention centres.

Usually people are not sent to Inverbrackie straight away – only if a serious reason such as physical or mental illness develops. It is the only centre in Australia with reasonable living conditions, and I say so very generously. Often when people recover, they are sent back to Wickham point in Darwin, or worse – Manus and Nauru. Pregnant women come to give birth in Inverbrackie, only to be promptly sent back a few days later.

Inverbrackie does not have menacing fences or big gates, and it is a reassuring sight. It is surrounded by beautiful scenery. However, the physical appearance of the centre is only a very small part of the experience.

Visitors are not allowed to bring many things, including personal hygiene items, children’s nappies, certain foods and so on. One of the regular visitors told me she was forbidden from bringing shampoo and conditioner because one of the ingredients was alcohol. When food is brought, it is supposed to be eaten during the visit and not taken back to residents’ houses. This rule is not always enforced, and depends on the mood of SERCO officers on that particular day.

Sometimes children’s toys are ripped open to check for ‘contraband’, and then promptly handed to the children with the stuffing hanging out. This is such a pitiful exercise, and intentional torment is the only way I can describe it. The children in Inverbrackie are already suffering from lack of stimulation, they are very limited in their activities and are starved of attention. It is one thing for an adult to be able to comprehend their suffering and limitations imposed on them by others; it is an entirely different situation with children. Children cannot easily comprehend and accept that they are behind bars for no reason other than that they arrived in Australia by boat.

The area where the visitors go is a little caravan that fits a couple of tables with a fridge and some storage place.

The family we met cooked us lunch, which was an incredibly generous gesture considering the circumstances.

We talked about many things, but the topic always kept slipping into rumours of new tough laws on refugees.

There was a clear sense of fear, a sense of urgency to get out before those laws come into effect.

On my second visit, a SERCO officer came in and sat down next to us, listening to our every word. We asked him why he was supervising our visit, and he simply told us to ‘go about our business’. After lunch we went outside to get some privacy, and yet again we were followed and watched from a distance. Asylum seekers are not prisoners, and these kinds of measures seemed completely unnecessary.

Perhaps they did not want the family I was visiting to tell me that SERCO have been waking them up at night for head counts, anywhere from 11pm to 3am, and often at 6am. This is knowing full well that many of the asylum seekers there suffer from anxiety and insomnia. Perhaps they did not want me to hear about the constant surveillance and verbal torment which they subject their residents to. Perhaps they did not want me to hear about the slow, bureaucratic process of assessing applications, which they often lose, or forget for 6 months at a time.

While Inverbrackie is set in a breathtaking location, people inside are subjected to ongoing torment. Many have developed anxiety and insomnia as a result of being locked up indefinitely. When people get shipped back, they are told about it on the day. No one knows who is next or when. Their case managers promise results regarding their visa applications, but nothing happens for weeks and months on end.

People live in a sense of constant uncertainty.

Inverbrackie is set to close in the next few months. It is Australia’s least cruel detention centre, and is relatively safe in comparison to others. But the government’s current asylum seeker policy is one of punishment. We reopen offshore centres in which people die from entirely preventable infections, in which children attempt suicide and self-harm, in which there is not enough space for babies to learn how to crawl, in which people sew their lips shut as a sign of utter desperation. Yet we close those centres in which people can have at least a small sense of normality. We’re backwards, Australia.

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After the second blow, he was silent. words by Adam Osborn

H

e claimed only to have done cocaine three times – on his 18th, on his 21st, and on the day they say he swung the hammer into Edward’s head. But today he was silent, looking out through the perspex dock with an indifferent guard at his side. He seemed unmoved by the relatives who, one by one, stood and listed the ways their lives had been ruined: the sister lying awake at 3am, the old father bickering with his wife instead of comforting her, the nephew who wants to cry but can only feel anger. But after two years of waiting in remand, he’d probably learned to live without emotion.

I was sitting in the gallery, with two dozen relatives and junior counsel. I had visited the Magistrates Court a few times before, to see weary judges listen to the petty excuses of people whose ten cannabis plants had been found, or who had run a red light or been caught texting while driving. But today I had a few hours to spare, and decided to visit the city court with the fancy stairs.

Behind the front desk sat a grey-haired lady who looked eager to help. On the wall there was a 9:30 listing for ‘Charge: Murder’ in Court Room 2.

It sounded interesting, but hearing variants of the phrase ‘bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer’ and comparisons of heads and watermelons quickly sobered up any feelings I had of thrill or intrigue. They say he planned it for weeks. They say he convinced another man to drive with him to a market garden north of Adelaide, telling him that Edward was a child molester who needed a serious talking-to. He said that he just watched, while the others closed in and Edward ‘just dropped’.

When Edward’s sister stood to read her Victim Impact Statement, she spat her accusations at him. After Edward went missing, he told them that Edward was in Queensland, or Thailand, or that he had seen him at a café from a distance. He said he was looking for Edward, and they had given him money to help. He had been to their house, he had sympathised with them and eaten dinner with them, they had shared their grief with him and kissed him goodbye. Now she cried at work.

She took anti-depressants, and (most embarrassing of all) had to see a psychiatrist. He had broken the jigsaw puzzle of her family, removing her brother’s piece, ‘the cool one, with never a hair out of place’.

Edward’s parents were in the row in front of me. Their statements were read by the Associate; perhaps their strength was gone, or their English too faltering. In the courtroom, they seemed overwhelmed. Afterwards, when we shuffled out, she clenched her fist and called him a Motherfucker through her tears.

After the five statements were read, the prosecution and defence counsel stood, in turn, to persuade the court on the length of sentence1. The mood seamlessly changed to one of calculation and procedure, as the two white-wigged counsel articulated their differing arguments for justice. Leave to appeal had already been granted; he maintained his innocence from the start. Once the sentence was delivered, the prisoner was whisked away and the red-robed Justice made a rather hasty exit. Perhaps he wanted to avoid a rabble. Perhaps he was tired.

Outside the court room, the family stood around, hugging, sobbing. But it was strangely quiet: it was over, but there was no relief. They left together, to a waiting news crew who asked them, ‘Is twenty-two years enough?’ I didn’t want to intrude on their grief any further, so I left them to questioning reporters, who were pressing but not impolite. As I walked away a group of air hostesses, with matching uniforms and luggage, were filing out of the Hilton and into a mini bus. A dishevelled man loped past carrying a 1-litre bottle of sunscreen. I looked back; the family had gone, and the news people had resumed their waiting position outside the doors of the court.

1. Or rather, the length of the non-parole period. A defendant convicted of murder ‘shall be imprisoned for life’ (Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935 (SA) s 11) and faces a mandatory minimum non-parole period of 20 years (Criminal Law (Sentencing) Act 1988 (SA) s 32(5)(ab)).

The unsuccessful appeal to this matter is R v Papalia [2014] SASCFC 18 (7 March 2014).

science

pigeons are not

responsible for the

big bang Lauren Fuge explores serendipity in astronomy art by laura gentgall

I

n 1781, a musician called William Herschel was doing a spot of amateur astronomy in his back garden in Bath. While squinting up through his telescope, he noticed an odd object in the sky. At first he thought it was a comet, but when Russian astronomer Anders Lexell calculated its orbit, they came to the conclusion that it was actually a new planet: Uranus.

And so, Herschel became the first person since prehistoric times to discover a planet.

In the following years, astronomers realised that there were disturbances in Uranus’s orbit, and suggested that they were caused by the gravitational pull of another planet, further out. Sure enough, in 1846 Neptune was officially observed and discovered, exactly where the mathematical predictions said it would be. Yet another massive body was also predicted to be nearby, and hey presto, we found Pluto.

Without the work of a lone comet hunter, happily stumbling across a new planet one night, neither Neptune nor Pluto could have been discovered. This process of acquiring new knowledge seems a little backward – a twist on the ordinary scientific method – but it’s a microcosm for how most of astronomy works.

Normally, scientific knowledge is built on one process: we make predictions based on theory, test them using experiments and observations, then build new theories from the results and repeat the cycle over and over again.

But in astronomy, especially in the field’s early days, how could we make predictions when we had next to no information about the universe? For most of human history, we used nothing but our eyes to study the stars.

Diligent record-keeping and mathematics allowed us to

predict some future events, like solar and lunar eclipses, but we were extremely limited. Only a few thousand stars can be seen with the naked eye, and black holes and other galaxies can’t be discerned at all. When you can only see pricks of light, how can you really know anything about the universe?

Telescopes, of course, were the answer. Astronomy really got going when we had the technology to inspect the sky a little more closely, and to see the universe through the lens of the whole electromagnetic spectrum from gamma rays to radio waves. Instead of seeing the universe through the tiny window of visible light, emerging technology gave us a panoramic view.

Unsurprisingly, this has advanced astronomy in leaps and bounds, yet the field is still largely driven by accidental discoveries. Like children stumbling through a new house in the dark, we’ve banged our shins on some of the most incredible discoveries, from quasars to the movement of galaxies to the echoes of the universe’s birth.

Italian astronomer Galileo was the first person to turn a telescope to the sky, and wondrous things filled his eyes – four moons orbiting Jupiter, the phases of Venus, dark writhing sunspots, and countless new stars and galaxies.

From his observations, Galileo realised that Earth is not the centre of the universe; that our planet orbits around the sun; and that our solar system is but a speck in a sea of stars. No one had predicted any of this, because how could we?

Of course, this all resulted in the Catholic Church placing Galileo under house arrest until his death, but that’s a different story of an infant civilisation terrified by ancient vastness, and is best saved for another day.

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The telescope soon became a standard tool in astronomy. At the start of the nineteenth century, French astronomer Charles Messier, a comet-hunter like Herschel, was trying to observe a comet in the constellation of Taurus when he fixed upon a cloudy object obscuring his view. He moved on, but when he found another, and then another, he became so thoroughly disgruntled that he compiled a list, titled ‘objects to avoid’. Turns out, these distant clouds were actually the remnants of supernovae – stars that ended their lives explosively. They became known as the Messier Objects, and have contributed to our knowledge about star life cycles, galaxies, and the age of the universe.

(Hubble then went on to outdo himself, accidentally discovering that the universe isn’t static, but expanding: every galaxy is rushing away from each other. Extremely big deal in cosmology. No wonder there’s a telescope named after him.)

Even more staggering was the work of Edwin Hubble, an American astronomer who legitimately changed our view of the universe. In 1924, astronomers were cool with a couple of major facts: that the Earth isn’t the centre of the universe, and that neither is the solar system. But, we assured ourselves, surely our galaxy was the only one.

The first instance was in 1932, when American radio engineer Karl Jansky casually founded the field of radio astronomy one autumn day. He was working with a rotating antenna and was trying to identify interference, because every twenty minutes, there were odd peaks in the signal. Eventually, Jansky realised that these unexpected signals were originating from beyond Earth, and peaked at various times because his antenna was rotating through the plane of the galaxy. He accidentally discovered that celestial objects emit radiation.

You can guess where this is going.

While observing spiral nebulae in 1924, Edwin Hubble identified some Cepheid variable stars, which are stars that vary in brightness over time. He used a recognised formula to calculate their distance from Earth – and mind-bogglingly, they were 860,000 light years away.

That’s eight times further than the most distant stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. He realised that the distance was so vast because there must be galaxies other than our own, perhaps hundreds of billions of them.

So far, all these discoveries have been made with telescopes that see visible light. But what humans see is only a fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, which stretches from incredibly small wavelengths like gamma rays right up to the enormity of radio waves. Later in the twentieth century, science wised up, and we began to realise that we could look at the universe through other lenses.

Radio astronomy was born, and astronomers began to “listen” to the stars. This was widely considered an excellent move, because radio waves are able to travel straight through obstacles like dust clouds, and so we now have the ability to study objects invisible to ordinary optical telescopes.

Imagine how this broadened our notion of the universe.

Suddenly, astronomers were responsible for not only celestial objects within our galaxy, but for those in billions of other galaxies too, as well as for the overall structure of the universe.

As a result, radio astronomy has contributed hugely to astronomical knowledge. It’s allowed us to use radiation emitted by gases to map the structure of our galaxy; to observe the sun’s activity by looking at solar radio bursts; to study complex planetary processes; and to discover pulsars, rapidly spinning neutron stars that might help refine the Theory of General Relativity.

No one had predicted this, not even Hubble. It was just stumbled upon one quiet night in the dark of a Californian observatory.

But the most momentous discovery was one that mirrored Karl Jansky’s own. In the sixties, astronomers Penzias and Wilson were experimenting with a

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supersensitive horn antenna at the Bell Labs in New Jersey. They were attempting to study radiation from the space between galaxies, but like Jansky, they were having issues with interference. White noise seemed to be coming from everywhere in the sky, night and day, like the static between TV channels. After ruling out urban interference, extraterrestrial radio sources, nuclear tests, and faulty machinery, Penzias and Wilson turned on the pigeons living in the big, horn-shaped antenna. They shooed them out and scrubbed the antenna clean, but the pigeons kept flying back.

‘To get rid of them, we finally found the most humane thing was to get a shot gun…and at very close range [we] just killed them instantly,’ Penzias said in 2005. ‘It’s not something I’m happy about, but that seemed like the only way out of our dilemma. And so the pigeons left with a smaller bang, but the noise remained, coming from every direction.’

Finally, they learned that Princeton physicist Robert Dicke had predicted this very thing. If the Big Bang had occurred, Dicke thought, then low-level radiation would permeate the entire universe – an afterglow of its birth. He termed it the ‘cosmic microwave background’ and was just about to design an experiment to test his hypothesis when Penzias and Wilson discovered it.

Legend has it that when he found out, Dicke turned to his colleagues and said, ‘Well boys, we’ve been scooped.’

That’s what happens in science, and in astronomy especially. You can predict the most groundbreaking scientific discovery of the twentieth century and never get the chance to find it yourself, or you can stumble across evidence without even trying and collect your Nobel Prize.

The universe is vast, and we are so tiny and limited and lucky.

And now we’re in the age of satellite astronomy, where telescopes are launched into orbit to escape the fuzziness of the Earth’s atmosphere. The first time a satellite was used to detect an astronomical object was – you guessed it – a total accident. In 1963, the US Air Force launched a series of satellites designed to monitor

nuclear radiation in order to enforce a recently signed treaty. But instead of detecting radiation from a nuclear blast, they found gamma radiation unlike any nuclear weapon’s signature. Turns out they discovered gamma ray bursts – one of the most violent explosions in the universe, thought to be caused by the collapse of matter into neutron stars or black holes.

Since then, we’ve moved beyond Earth’s orbit and sent unmanned probes out into the solar system. By directly observing objects that were once untouchable, we discovered things we’d never dreamed of. In the 1970s Voyager I was sent on a grand tour of the planets, and it happened to observe that Io, one of Jupiter’s moons, is volcanically active. Before the Voyager flyby, it was thought to be a dead world, but soon we had images zooming back to us of huge plumes of material being ejected into space. The Mars rovers have made their fair share of adorably accidental discoveries, too: running across chunks of meteorites, accidentally driving up unknown volcanoes, and finding evidence of water after churning up sand while bogged.

The future will undoubtedly be just as riddled with surprises. With breathtaking technology like the Hubble Space Telescope and its successors, there’s no chance we won’t accidentally discover something incredible.

Sometimes it seems like astronomy is just a series of accidents, stacked on top of each other. But really, astronomy is the people at a telescope or a screen who watch and wait, night after night, scrutinising data from the stars. They are the Galileos, the Janksys, the Messiers and the Hubbles. They are the ones who have the background and the passion to know when something groundbreaking appears.

These people, more than anything, will shape the future of astronomy.

Lauren did not write any of her articles by accident. They took a lot of work and she’s thankful that you glance at them, once in a while, when nothing good is on TV.

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1. ROCKET

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Where: 142 Hindley Street.

What: Cats @ Rocket, Rocket Rooftops, plus Electric Circus and Mr Kim’s is downstairs.

Why: Dude, the place has a rooftop bar with $3 sangrias and $5 beers etc until 12pm on Friday nights. And Cats has $4 Cats Cans (beers with weird labels) and hipster Pabst Blue Ribbons. Must I say more?

Vibe: Willow Beats, Basenji, Jackie Onassis. These guys coincidentally have upcoming gigs at Rocket.

2. Bank Street Social

Where: 48 Hindley Street.

What: A bar that transports you to a whole other city - perhaps Melbourne or Sydney.

Why: Their drinks! Local craft beers and ciders and Aussie wines and spirits and all neatly displayed on the biggest drinks list board you’ve ever seen.

Vibe: It’s a bar with a club vibe, so expect club jams.

burger and swell good chippies with unlimited free tom sauce, I don’t see why you wouldn’t go there. I mean seriously, get on down to the Ed and cop yourself some mouth orgasms, cause the Ed is the best.’

Vibe: Grungy guitar bands. The very best in live local music.

condone this type of behaviour).

Also the interior design is just so damn cool.

Vibe: Local and live jazz bands!

6. SoundPond

Where: 260a Rundle Street.

Why: Pizza, Nintendo64, $6 local ciders and beer. They also do art exhibitions.

a l e d a n i Bars

3. Ancient World

Where: 116a Hindley St (between a sausage shop and an adult store in an unnamed alley).

What: Kickass underground drinks.

Why: To sip ethically sourced drinks in a dark, underground location.

There is a small entry fee but some nights you can just walk in.

Vibe: Unpredictable! You can get hip hop/RnB themed nights or grunge bands playing downstairs.

You just never know!

4. The Ed Castle

Where: 233 Currie Street.

What: CheapSkate Fridays.

Why: The beer garden is fantastic and their food is... well, just read this Facebook review by Ben McPherson: ‘$10 for a bloody rippa

JENNY 5. Pirie & Co. Social Club Where: 121 Pirie Street What: Jazz Night Wednesdays, The Society on Thursdays, Pirie Street Party House on Fridays, and touring/live bands on Saturdays.

Why: You can literally touch the musicians in the cosy downstairs space if you want (not that I

Vibe: Local DJs spinning anything electronic from Deep House, trap and down tempo electronica. All DJ sets are streamed LIVE on soundpond.net.

7. The Exeter

Where: 246 Rundle Street.

What: ‘Trot Central’, as the right-wingers have deemed it.

Why: Cheap pints at the best pub in

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Adelaide, amirite? Expect to see live bands every night. Thursday nights are a particular fave with Glass Skies and The Dunes.

Vibe: Dirty dirty pub music.

8. The Producers Bar Where: 235 Grenfell Street.

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9. Sugar

Where: Level 1, 274 Rundle Street.

What: MixedTape on Wednesday nights, and YES BRUV on the last Sunday of each month.

Why: MixedTape, true to its namesake, is a mixtape of all kinds of music. You can also check out artwork and play a game or two of pool. Some weeks, they play host to international and Australian DJs. Vibe: Legends like Troy J Been,

themed Friday night parties with cheap drink offers - $5 Sailor Jerrys!

Vibe: Local DJs spinning alternative music. Sometimes, you get people in bands rocking up to get on behind the decks. You also get DJs playing some damn good international acts.

11. Mylk bar

Where: 57 King Flinders Street What: Wine bar, tapas and restaurant. A little bit fancier than your average uni haunt.

Why: For the best cocktails in Adelaide, made by the best bar staff in Adelaide. Also, their espresso martini is beyond.

Vibe: Milk bar meets upmarket European café meets boutique hotel meets Adelaide.

12. clever little tailor E CITY COVERED.. Where: 19 Peel TH IN S N IO SS SE T YOUR SUMMER Street.

Y NGUYEN has GO What: The bar that Adelaide has What: Sidechains Wednesdays.

Why: Dancing, drinking and drawing – yes, they have crayons for creative/craft activities to keep punters occupied in between sets.

Vibe: Upcoming Adelaide based musicians get together to showcase electronic sounds. It’s just cool.

Driller and Lauren Rose will sort you out with the best in new and old dance tunes.

10. GHOSTSHIPS

Where: 196 Grenfell Street, above the Crown and Anchor.

What: Ghostships Fridays and Saturdays, and comedy nights on Thursdays.

Why: Weird, wacky and wonderful

been obsessed with for so damn long.

Why: The tiny little hipster haven ticks every box. Which boxes?

Service, taste, ambiance, design, location, music and crowd. Kanye would approve.

Vibe: Warm, cosy, trendy and friendly.

Jenny believes in leftDIT bias and giving students a voice via community media.

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creative

T

he frayed blue blanket lies there, a faint splash of colour amidst the grey concrete. It blocks half the footpath. People walk around it, pressed for space on the narrow walkway. Strangers brush against one another, a half twisted murmur of apology hovering on their lips before they stride away.

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It’s as though an electric fence stands around the blanket. If people get too close, they may be jolted into reality — or may just stumble away, blind eyes focused on their phones.

A tired brown hat sits in the middle of the blanket.

Worn brown melds with faint blue; but a few shiny, silver coins disrupt the melody.

The man slinks towards the blanket, close to the cream-coloured walls. His eyes are downcast. The electric fence expands and envelops the man; now, they cannot see him, nor hear him.

He reaches the blanket, and sits down with a heavy sigh. Straight away, hands reach for the hat, fingers slide through the coins. A metallic smell lingers on his hands. Yet there is something new here; a new face amidst the coins.

The edges are sharp to the touch. The man carefully runs his fingers over the stiff rectangle. This does not taste of a mix of pity and revulsion and did not just fall out of someone’s pocket. This — this was planned.

butterfly

words by karolinka Dawidziak-Pacek art by jack lowe

His breath quickens as the electric fence peels back ever so slightly. For a moment, there is a glimpse of concrete, suits, loud chatter and fast food. The hole is small — only a slender hand could fit through it.

The man refocuses his eyes on the card.

Ciao Coffee Bar, Adelaide Arcade, Rundle Mall.

Come in and see our delectable array of pasties and freshly brewed coffee!

Scrawled below the printed text are two words, written in blue ink. Suspended coffee.

The noise of the world beyond the fence disappears — all that he can hear now is his heart, the way it pounds, the way it pushes away all sound but that of his own existence.

The man looks up to see the electric fence sizzle.

creative

Warmth begins to rise in his chest, expanding like a baby bird fighting to be born from an egg that has lain cold far too long. He takes a deep breath and stands up, edges away from the cream-coloured walls.

In the middle of the crowd, he stands silent and alone. Hands shake slightly, before one curls itself into a ball, fingers burrowing to hide in loose folds of skin.

With a shuffle, he starts to walk. His eyes wander of their own accord; their gaze falls upon a little girl with brown hair in pigtails, who clutches a worn circus streamer in her hand; a business man in a cheap suit that reeks of coffee. Chatter crowds his ears and rises all around him like flames from an empty oil drum, thin and insubstantial, reeking of artificiality.

And then he is next to the arcade. It’s straight in front of the fountain, just as he remembered. Elderly ladies, pearls around their necks, walk with little steps into the halls, their flat shoes gently padding on the tiles. The ceiling rises high above him and white angels dance on the lustrous facade. He eyes the jewellery shops that flank the entrance, gold chains bright under gentle white lights.

‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ the man mutters.

Both hands dive into pockets, into blessed darkness.

Loose items brush his palms — a five cent coin, an old stick of gum now rock hard, a few matches, a used tissue, then something stiff and new and — ‘Excuse me, sir?’ He whips around, hands emerging from his pockets as he appraises the figure. A young woman stands in front of him, curly black hair tied back by a blue scarf. His eyes are drawn to her neck, around which two dozen necklaces vie for supremacy on the milky skin. He knows that just below her cotton shirt lies that tattoo — a swallow with eyes that peer straight through people, into their hearts.

‘Are you lost?’ she asks, light hazel eyes gazing from a porcelain face.

A hand that shakes holds aloft the card. Soft skin brushes his calluses for a moment as the card is taken from his grasp. The bells on her skirt chatter as she shifts on the spot, examines the text. ‘Adelaide Arcade is right in front of you, sir,’ she says and points forward into the hall where the angels waltz.

‘If you just head straight down, Ciao Coffee Bar will be at the end of the Arcade, near Haigh’s Chocolates.’

Eyes wide, the man surveys the girl, who looks back at him with a gentle smile. He burrows around in his pocket for a moment, and eventually withdraws a small wooden butterfly on a leather cord. He cannot look upon her face, upon those cheekbones, so achingly familiar. His eyes focus on the pavement as he holds the butterfly out to their girl. She pushes his hand aside lightly, and he jumps at the warmth, pulls away. Voluntary contact.

‘Keep it,’ she says, and before he can even think, the crowd swallows her, one of the millions of pollens visible for a brief second in a ray of sunlight before being enveloped by the day.

People swarm around Rundle Mall, hands full of shopping bags, children whining for snacks, mobiles ringing. No one notices the man who stands next to the Fountain, something clutched in his hand. They cannot see the tears that slip down his face, that make little imprints on the grooves of dirt on his cheeks.

In the puddle of water near his feet lies a rectangle of white paper, the ink already leaching into the grey water. For a moment, the absurd blue swirls amidst the grey, a spot of colour, a breath of air in a dank tomb… and then it is gone.

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creative

40 PAGE

TRAIN OF THOUGHT by alice bitmead

H

e sat on the window seat on the left hand side of the aisle (strategic choice – sunny without a glare, he was certain the flattering light choice would shave at least eighteen months off his perceived age), directly opposite the buxom young office worker in the short skirt. He could very nearly touch her knee from here without garnering suspicious looks. Excellent.

The swaying and lurching of the train always inspired a desire to contemplate life’s more esoteric mysteries; whether or not the circular email sent around his office by the HR team yesterday warning staff that inappropriate internet usage would be undergoing a rigorous new monitoring and reporting system was an empty threat (porn in the workplace was hardly impacting on his productivity – was it even much different from the posters of that shamelessly leaping blonde on the

vitamins poster by the water cooler? He certainly didn’t think so), how long that iceberg lettuce he bought a fortnight ago would take to liquefy completely in the stagnant depths of his fridge crisper, why he could never catch a break and get to use an off-peak ticket.

Yes, he was a deep man. He regularly dwelt at this intellectual capacity with such an offhand nonchalance; his co-workers certainly had no idea they were in such close proximity to a man who had once been second runner up in a regional Spelling Bee championship (“laissez faire” had been his downfall; he had never wasted much time on the French), and who was informed by his year ten English teacher that his life has ‘all the makings of an intense study in reductio ad absurdum’. But no matter - his was an existence fated to be underappreciated by the world around him, who could never hope to understand

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41 image: flickr.com/rudresh_calls

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the mechanisms of a mind exalted by the contemplation of deeper things.

(That’s good, he thought, seizing an old supermarket receipt – bacon, dishwashing detergent and tube socks - and one of the pilfered IKEA pencils he kept for moments of brilliance such as these, must remember that for my memoirs).

He cast another glance around the carriage, his eye yet more sharply appraising in the light of his moment of sparkling poeticism. He observed the teens with unwashed appearances and insolent demeanors (Get A Haircut); the Hip Young Things whose fingers flew across their selection of tiny digital screens with all the poise and grace of pick-pocketing gypsy children (Pretentious Wankers); the women in her late fifties slowly turning the page of a well-worn Mills and Boon

paperback. The wide-eyed stare of the vacant, heaving heroine depicted in lurid tones on the cover mirrored the slack-jawed gaze of the reader.

Perspiration glittered faintly on her powered brow and he found himself vaguely aroused by her evidently visceral reaction to the soft-core pornographic chapter she was undoubtedly digesting at that moment. He satisfied himself with another well-timed grab at the outer thigh of his anonymous skirted companion (years of experience had taught him the moment of departure from another station concealed such an action masterfully) and continued with his observations.

This book deal is in the bag, he thought. The train rattled on as he sucked his pencil, imaging the mid-range white wine and vintage Playboys that would one day be the markers of his literary triumph.

Alice Bitmead needs to go home and change.

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7

42 PAGE

steps to pissing off a hospo

paige kerin will not give you a drink on the house art by katie hamilton

Ah, Spring. That beautiful time of the year where the days are get longer and hotter, assignments get harder and Christmas gets scarily closer. As a student, uni may soon end, but as a bartender, my work life is about to become a hell of a lot more painful. We hospos (hospitality workers) know only too well that the better the weather is, the worse the customers behave. The following instances of douchebaggery WILL piss off all hospitality workers ever. Do us a favour and not commit these crimes.

1. We’re not stupid. Remarkably, we can remember more than one drink or meal order at a time. Nothing annoys us more than your ‘are you sure you can remember all of this’ tone of absolute condescension. Don’t assume because I work in a bar my IQ is lower than yours- I might even be getting paid more than you are!

2. Don’t ask for a) the cheapest thing, b) a surprise, c) my favourite drink or d) something ‘fun’. Dude, alcohol is always fun. I know you think it’s really cute when you act all carefree like you don’t care what you get, but it’s super annoying and I will judge you. We don’t have some secret recipe for a revolutionary drink that will become the absolute pinnacle of your drinking career. I love the customers who know exactly what they want, and when I see you at the bar, I’ll prioritise you because you’re quick and easy (wink).

3. Bars inadvertently get busier over summer, and the best bars are the busiest. Y’all know this, so please don’t expect everything to happen at the speed of light. We watch what order you came to the bar. Waving money or credit cards at my face (why don’t you just set off a flare instead?), yelling my name as if you know me, or giving me your order while I am clearly still serving someone else are sure-fire ways to give yourself major douchebag status, as well as receive an additional wait while I serve the kinder, more patient patrons and laugh evilly in my head.

4. Please refrain from asking me to take photos of you and your friends with your line of shots or vodka raspberries.

I remember when I had my first beer, but seriously, if you need the

world to know you’ve done Fresh Pussy shots and it was totally awesome, you need to re-assess your priorities.

5. Don’t expect premium service just because you’re somewhat of a regular. Oh you come here all the time?

Oh you spend ‘a lot of money’ here? Well then, please let me lay rose petals at your feet and fan you with a palm leaf because all I seek is to serve your every whim. If you think you’re more important to me than everyone else around you, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself. We all peoples.

6. Remember that we don’t make the prices. ‘THAT’S your CHEAPEST bottle of wine?!?’, ‘You charge THAT MUCH for soft drink?!?’, and ‘That’s a RIDICULOUS price for a cocktail’, are all things you say that I will politely smile and say a simple ‘yes’ to in response.

Meanwhile, I am thinking about what a cheap bastard you are, and that if you don’t want to pay the prices of a nice place you should kindly run off to some dingy hole of a bar where you will not receive nearly as good service, nor enjoy your drinks in such nice surroundings. Amazingly, I don’t make the prices.

7. I know I’ve already told you not to be rude, but it’s also really weird when people practice their pickup lines on me. I’m not a practice run for the real person you’re actually going to hit on. Also, it’s not okay for you to purposely touch my leg/arm/back/ass, ever. Not okay.

And finally, just a few FAQs that I wish would become NAQs (Never Asked Questions. See what I did there?)

- Can I charge my phone behind the bar?

- I just spilled my drink, can I get it replaced?

- Can I get a drink on the house?

- What drinks do you serve here?

- Can you play [insert really shitty Top 40 song]?

- Are you single?

- Come on, just one more round?

To all my fellow hospos out there approaching the Holiday season, Godspeed. To all of my future customers, I’ll see you on the other side!

Paige Kerin will not give you a drink on the house. Unless you’re hot, and male, in which case she’ll reconsider.

columns

Emma’s Dilemmas LIFE ADVICE FROM SOMEONE WHO PROBABLY NEEDS TO SEE A THERAPIST

43 PAGE

Hi Emma,

Randy,

I am going to have to start buying a Vegemite alternative from now on because I just found out that Kraft is halal (I hope that is the right spelling. I get so confused with foreign-sounding things). Anyways, I just found out that Kraft is halal. And everyone knows that buying halal supports the terrorists. So, any recommendations on a Vegemite alternative?

If you had a healthy sexual relationship with your girlfriend I feel like she would already know and be aware of your fetish. And she’d be happy to oblige (???). Maybe give her an ultimatum and tell her that she needs to help you indulge in your fetish or you’re leaving her. I’ve heard that ultimatums are good if you want to foster stable, loving relationships. Say something like ‘Oi. Beb. It’s me and the fetish, or you never get to see this d again.’

-Caroline, 22 Caroline it’s weird that you consider Vegemite a food source and not something that is used to inflict discomfort on captive exchange students.

I’m going to Google search exactly what halal is because I am like 100 percent sure its a set of religious Islamic rules regarding food preparations and that you are one of the legendary “Stupid People of Australia”- you know, the kind that want to keep asylum seeker boats from landing on sacred beaches like Cronulla, and believe Ugg boots are an outside shoe. Before I can correctly label you as the idiot you undoubtedly are though, I need to double check what halal is. Because Caroline, I never make unsubstantiated claims…

I’m sure from this point onwards she’ll be sure to comply with your every fetishy wish and whim. Hope you’re not a necrophiliac.

…Oh hey, Caroline! Just looked up halal food and it totally just means food you’re permitted to eat according to Sharia Islamic law. Wouldn’t it be insane if you used Google to look up things rather than harass and harangue me with your ignorant queries. Guess what, Caroline. Turns out there are such things as a stupid question.

-Anonymous (sent at 4.37 a.m.)

Also potentially you could try Marmite.

Regards,

Emma, How do I tell my girlfriend of two years about my secret sexual fetish? And how do I get her to go along with it? ;) -Randy, 24.

Emmmmmm, I need your hellp! So theres this skanky bithc asnd I hate her face she’s litraly slep with evryenone ands snhe is sucjh a big fjuckin slut and I hate her whhat do I doi?

Also l’m tiried and I wangt someone to brign me maccas I love you so myuch no seriouslhuy I jmean I relay llove you dont eber change srouslhy dont ok bhyeeeeeeeeeeeee.

P.s. I lolbve you

Well. Somebody’s going to be hungover in the morning. Unless you have a cast-iron liver hardened by years of excess in which case, my friend, I salute you. I feel it’s more likely you’re a drunk 17 year old girl, though.

Emma

reviews

music

restaurant

horses

mylk bar flinders st, adelaide Reviewed by sharmonie cockayne

44 PAGE

patti smith Reviewed by Michael Koenig The best must always be saved for first. Stop, prepare.

The year is 1975 and the disco is drab. CBGB in the Bowels… I mean… Bowery of New York city is alive and from its pit spawned Patti Smith. This lady meant business.

Her fusion of spoken word poetry and powerful rock and roll melodies was encapsulated in the groundbreaking debut album ‘Horses’.

On the record sleeve, she is a sober Keith Richards doppelgänger in trousers, a white shirt and suspenders. Gender boundaries are diminished from the get-go.

Her lyric ‘Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine’ stamps authority as she bursts into the opening track, a reworking of the now iconic ‘Them’ classic Gloria…G-L-OR-I-A. Standout songs, Birdland and Land, exemplify her hybrid style of spoken word/ sprechgesang interspersed with melodic ecstacy. Weighing at over nine minutes each, the songs demonstrate her disregard for conventional time restrictions. The end of the album comes with the haunting Elegie, a beautifully poetic ballad paying homage to lost loved ones.

She set the bar. Flip the record, lift the needle, repeat as needed.

You’re hungry, you’ve got 15 bucks and you have an hour or so to kill between classes.

You’re looking for something different, something new, something a bit classier than the usual (But not too much class. You are a uni student after all).

My suggestion: The Mylk Bar. The food is generous and, whilst not as cheap Dumpling King or Hungry’s (what is?), it’s kind of affordable for the average uni student on pay day. The ceasar salad wrap (a staff pick) is decent sized and comes with a large serving of chunky chips ($13.90), and the pork thing is also exceptionally good value for money ($15). Your money will also buy you service that goes way beyond what is usually expected in hospitality these days.

It feels like the staff actually care about our dining experience, which is both weird and delightful. And on the bar are huge tumblers of icey fruit-infused water (for free, of course), which is a big draw card for me.

You’ll get your healthy daily dose of hipster in this place, drinking out of jars (real ones, not those dodgy makeshift mason jars that lame cafes are using), and eating off of chopping boards.

Pro tip: Order an Espresso Martini with G’s Special Sauce or an off-the-menu Espresso Milkshake for the ultimate Mylk Bar experience.

reviews

telly

film

45 PAGE

american horror story: freakshow

The Keeper of Lost Causes

FX Reviewed by max cooper

Mikkel Nørgaard reviewed by katya beketova

The premiere episode of the latest AHS season was one of the show’s stronger moments. It introduced the town of Jupiter, Florida; the freaks of Fraulein Elsa’s Cabinet of Curiosities

Carl Mørck is a pretty grim guy. A former detective who critically messed up an operation, his family is now falling apart and, naturally, now he must spend a lot of time smoking and looking dejected, like the rugged cliché mess that he is.

Removed from active duty, Mørck finds himself sorting through cold cases with his upbeat side-kick, Assad. Assad is basically the highlight of the film, and the film would have been infinitely better if it were told from his perspective, but no matter.

(including its proprietor Elsa Mars, played by AHS allstar Jessica Lange); and Twisty, a clown who is malevolent even for those not already afraid of them.

Set in the past, the show has a darker, more melancholic tone similar to that of Asylum. But Elsa’s astounding cover of “Life on Mars”, like Asylum’s “The Name Game” did, shows that the show has not completely forsaken the ridiculous and camp elements of horror.

It’s hard to tell from just the pilot, and I could be wrong, but it appears Freak Show could be the first season to have story arcs firing on all cylinders. Right now, Freak Show has multiple threads, but none of them are tangled messes on the level of Asylum’s aliens or Coven’s corporate witch hunters. Notably, Sarah Paulson’s conjoined twins Bette and Dot seem as central as any character in AHS is likely to be, and it looks like they’ll complicate Elsa’s ambition for stardom and possibly serve as a rallying point for lobster boy Jimmy Darling’s (Evan Peters) freak freedom cause.

What ensues is a predictable plot of attempting to solve a missing persons casean apparent race against time, which aims for “thriller” but just ends up feeling flat.

Sure, the film itself was shot in a striking, stylised manner, but that’s not enough to salvage the generic narrative. Find the woman! Save the woman!

Basically, there are two possible ways of looking at the film: Either it is a generic detective film steeped in overwhelming cliché, or it is a self decrepitating, ironic attempt at a buddy cop film.

The problem is trying to identify which it is.

Image by: Christian Geisnaes

regulars

diversions 46 PAGE

CROSSWORD

ALL SIGNS POINT TO THE UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE Horizontal

1. The lecture theatre that Abbott visited 3. Price of parking on Victoria Drive for 3 hours 5. The home of all students 8. Legendary lecturer 11. Name of On Dit’s creative writing edition 12. Name of our uni 13. The main lawns 15. Another legendary lecturer 17. Name of dirty river next to uni 18. The name of our Vice Chancellor

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2. The huge musical event that the Union put on this year 4. The library 6. The building where On Dit lives 7. A very evil wizard 9. Name of On Dit’s women’s edition 10. The place that sells us our beer 14. Law students’ home 16. Art students’ home

regulars

Fauxdiacs

one of every single pair of socks that you own has disappeared. Not daring enough to embrace the mismatched sock aesthetic, you will be forced into a life of perpetual sandal wearing.

with Mystic Marge Aries After being startled by an air-steward in the plane toilet mid-poo aboard your budget holiday flight during the uni break, you’ll become haunted by the possibility of others watching you defecate. You will develop a suspicion of all public toilets and subsequently develop a UTI. Taurus You will awake on Sunday morning thinking you’d just had the most confusing dream involving a wine tour, a pair of galoshes and a stranger from the pub. Horror will ensue when you turn over and see the stranger lying next to you, prone, drooling and definitely less good looking than in the dream.

Gemini You will start hearing Stevie Nicks singing ‘Rhiannon’ every time you go to the bathroom or check the mail. This will be inexplicable and no one else will be able to hear her haunting vocals. As the chorus continues to swirl around your head, so to does the inevitable madness.

Cancer You will wake up next Thursday morning to discover that

targedoku Find as many words as you can using the letters on the Sudoku grid. Words must be four letters or more and include the highlighted letter. Use the letters to solve the Sudoku (normal Sudoku rules apply). There are no repeated letters.

Clue: It sounds like something that would come out of your nose, it’s the colour of something that would come out of your nose, and hey, something that comes out of your nose might make you feel this way. Maybe talk to someone about that.

N

C

T

G I

S

G

C

C

O T

S

A

O

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A

T A

S

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S

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N A

Virgo After failing to receive your latest Centrelink payment (which you desperately need to pay for the twenty five blocks of discount Lindt chocolate you plan to buy from Coles), you will be forced to journey to HQ where you will wait in line with all the other departed souls seeking welfare for the rest of eternity. Oh, cruel humanity!

Libra You will become obsessed by the belief that somebody has been breaking into your house and eating your blueberry yogurt. Your housemates all vehemently deny responsibility, so it can surely only be the ghost of bad architectural decisions that haunts your 1970s semi-detached doing it!

Scorpio You will turn the TV on for a casual evening SBS softcore arthouse porn only to discover that somehow the only channels with reception are the four different Infomercial ones. You will learn much about the Roomba and the Brazilian Booty Workout, but you will also lose a part of yourself.

Sagittarius As you begin lathering the conditioner into your hair and singing a stunning rendition of ‘Hollaback Girl’ in the shower, the hot water will suddenly be cut off and you will be left standing naked, cold and horribly under-rinsed.

Beached for many minutes until your housemate stops using the sink downstairs, you will descend into a weeping pile of soap and hair. Fear factor 12.

Capricorn You will accidently send your Dad the text you meant to sent to the random you met on Tindr last week (heyy watcha doin 2nite? I’m lonely ;)), complete with saucy pic. IN SPACE AND IN AWKWARD FAMILY SITUATIONS, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOUR SCREAMS.

S

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Leo As you stir the saucepan of the ‘student surprise’ pasta sauce you are making, you will notice the face of Tracey Grimshaw form out of bits of garlic and assorted decaying vegetable.

This is a bad omen about your neighbours finally dobbing you in about your ‘tomato plants’ behind the shed at the back of the house – be afraid, be very afraid.

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Aquarius The mother of all terrors will be revealed when, desperate for some glutinous beige goodness, you buy a dozen takeaway steamed dumplings from Dumpling King.

Pisces You will spend the next week being constantly confronted by longhaired teenage girls and their longhaired boyfriends wearing his-and-hers knock-off Birkenstocks. Yes, it IS time to panic, run screaming, and begin your own colony (with strict dress code) in the centre of Australia.

47 PAGE

gastronomies

recipes

now with extra alcohol!

48 muesli PAGE

by eleanor ludington

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ay back in year nine science I remember my teacher emphasising to the class how essential a healthy breakfast is for kick-starting our metabolism and brain activity for the day. Amazingly, his words really hit home. At the time, I wasn’t really into breakfast, but I was a zealous student and always on the look-out for anything that might help keep my brain going through the day, so - just like that - I became a ‘breakfast person’. These days, I honestly believe that having a good breakfast sets you up well for the day ahead. It also hopefully gives you a few moments of tranquillity before embarking on the daily rat race that is the modern way of life.

So, as we approach the most stressful part of the academic year, I felt it was important to share a very easy ‘recipe’ for a delicious and nutritious first meal of the day – muesli. I know it probably sounds boring, and by now you’re probably ready to close On Dit, but seriously, it’s a filling meal that’s good for you, and tastes good too!

Ingredients These are all approximate quantities. I never measure my muesli ingredients, and you’ll probably find that if you make some for yourself you’ll adjust the measurements and ingredients to suit your tastes.

• 1 bag of rolled oats (not ‘quick’ oats).

• A generous handful of dried, diced mixed fruit (pick anything you like, I fluctuate between good old ‘fruit medley’ and berry mixes including wanky ingredients like ‘goji berries, cranberries, and inca berries’).

• A smaller handful of roughly chopped raw, unsalted nuts of your choice (I like almonds or walnuts).

• A smattering of seeds– sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, etc.

• Dried coconut flakes.

Method 1. Mix all ingredients in an airtight cereal container.

2. Adjust quantities as required.

3. Serve each morning with milk, and any other condiments of your choosing – I love mine with natural yoghurt and fruit.

seedy sangria on dit style

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ant to know what the On Dit office tastes like? Well, it’s a little bit smelly, quite dirty, not very fresh and most definitely cheap, but my god, is it delicious. The gastronomic equivalent of the office is this sangria recipe, specially devised and tested by your editors: Sharmonie (the chef), Daisy and Yasmin (the food critics). If only you test this recipe once, never again will you enjoy such a refreshing and economically conservative drink. Both perfect for parties and long nights in front of the computer, this concoction is guaranteed fun.

Ingredients • The hella cheap red wine you were gifted last Christmas. Or the one you were gifted at Christmas 2002. Either is good.

• A litre of 99c lemonade . If you find a cheaper one, buy that.

• A litre of that orange juice you can buy that isn’t really orange juice. If, when you read the fine print, you discover it’s actually a watered down cordial thing, BINGO. Buy that shit.

• The old oranges and apples at the bottom of your ageing fruit bowl.

• 2 cups of ice cubes.

Method • Grab a huge salad bowl or mixing bowl and pour in that dirty, dirty wine.

• This is a tricky one: Pour in the entire bottle of lemonade into the bowl.

• This is trickier: You only need to pour half of the orange juice stuff in. Leave the rest to accompany your hangover brunch tomorrow.

• Pour in the ice and mix with a soup ladle.

• Slice your fruit into neat circles. Place neatly on top of the murky concoction for maximum aesthetic.

• TA DAAA SANGRIA! • Ladle into fancy wine glasses and you’re basically classy.

(On Dit contributors will get to taste this amazing concoction at the End Of Year Student Media Party, the lucky buggers. Bet you regret not contributing now, suckers.)

2014 ss Of C la

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THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO MADE ON DIT VOL 82. SHOWER THEM WITH GLITTER , ETC.

49 PAGE

Adam Colquhoun Adriana Sturman Adrien Descours Aisyah Ibrahim Alex Cockayne Alex Weiland Alice Bitmead Alicia Abell Alicia Strous Alison Barrett Alistair Ludington Alistair Sage Alyona Haines Alyse Jansons Amanda Li Amelia Howell Amirah Abdul Rahman Andy Bui Angus Dickson Anthony Nocera Athanasios Lazarou Belinda Quick Ben Drogemuller Blair Williams Bobbie Kavanagh Brooke Meakin Carina Stathis Carly Harvy Carlos Danger Casey Briggs Casey Tonkins Charlie Campbell Chih-Yi Hsiao Claudio-Rose Ienco Clinton Phosavanh Cody Clementi D. Tippet Damiano Fritz Dave David Ellis Dhania Sarahtika Eleanor Ludington Elizabeth Galanis Elliot Hoskin Emily Palmer Emma Doherty

Ethan Wake Fletcher O’Leary Gabriel Evangelista Grace Connell Hayley Schumack Henrietta Byrne Holly Ritson Idris Martin Ineke Mules Jack Lowe Jacqueline Edwards Jacqueline McAllister Jenna Barrott Jenny Nguyen Jezabel Hawke Jodie Guidolin Joseph Mayers June Glasgow Justin Boden Justin McArthur Justin Wenham Karolinka Dawidziak-Pacek Kassie McKenzie Katherine Ahern Katie Hamilton Kat Sakoulas Katya Beketova Kendra Pratt Kenneth Koh Laura Gentgall Lauren Copland Lauren Fuge Lauren Reid Lauren Varo Lawrence Ben Lewis Laurence Lindy Hop Luca Ricci Lucy Regter Lucy Small-Pearce Lur Alghurabi Madeleine Karutz Malwinka Wyra Mara Thach Mary Pickford Matthew Wellings

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50 PAGE