2018 Edition 6

FARRAGO EDITION SIX • 2018

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MAGAZINE

FARRAGOMAGAZINE.COM /FARRAGOMAGAZINE

RADIO RADIOFODDER.COM /RADIO_FODDER

VIDEO

YOUTUBE.COM /FARRAGOMAGAZINE

EDITORS@FARRAGOMAGAZINE.COM ART BY RAKESH GILL

CONTENTS CAMPUS 4 5 7 7 8 9 10 10 11 12 13 16 18 21

COLLECTIVE

News in Brief August/September Calendar Motion of No Confidence in Duff Jesse Paris-Jourdan University Square Being Redeveloped Yan Zhuang and Jasper MacCuspie Students Protest Lockheed Martin Yan Zhuang Rally Against Sexual Violence Troy Cameron Tastings Mary Ntalianis New VCA Student Rep Wing Kuang University Students Go To The Games Dane Heverin and Alain Nguyen The End of History?

Corey McCabe The Students Have Their Say Lucy Williams and Stephanie Zhang Classes for Social Underachievers Ashrita Ramamurthy Office Bearer Reports The Grub James Gordon and Alex Greggery

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CREATIVE 6 17 28 32 35 44 46 48 49

NONFICTION 22 24 26 27 29 30 31 32 34 36 38 39 40 76

A Day in the Life of a Deaf Student Matilda Carnegie Elegeia Daniel Beratis We Know What You’re All About Cam Doig Who Is That Girl I See? Neala Guo Fodder Feature: Radio Fodder Station Managers Trent Vu Ten Things I Wish I’d Learned By Now A’bidah Zaid Shirbeeni Sleepovers and Serial Killers Kaavya Jha The Elephant Is Staying Sarah Peters E.T. Phone Home Veera Ramayah Bad News Bella Ruskin Future Cities Katie Doherty With GMOs, We Reap What We Sow Rohan Byrne Flystrike Rebecca Fowler For and Against: Lockout Lockheed Lockout Lockheed and Louis Devine

Editorial Team

57 60 61 62 63 64 66 68 69 70 71 72 74 75

Seasons / Spring Nellie Seale Bard Times: Part Six James Gordon Art Luke Macaronas Photography Natalia Naa Photography Supassara Tripun Wall-Labels for Dark Imaginings Jocelyn Deane by accident, unasked for and foreign policy Natalie Fong Utmost Virtue Alston Chu Photography Sherlyne Jennifer, Jess Herne, Nikhilesh Chaudhari, Christopher Hon Sum Ling, Derrick Duan, Rakesh Gill, Qaisara Mohamad, Alain Nguyen, Maggy Liu, Rachel Morley, Blake Tang, Zoë Alford, Troy Cameron, Supassara Tripun, Sherry Aine Te, Wen Qiu and Ilsa Harun The Trial Elizabeth Seychell shelling pistachios Charlotte Waters Amber Blindfold Jamisyn Gleeson o Stephanie Kee The Night Train Ruby Adams I am now here Giselle Martin Snake Shouts Alaina Dean Canterbury Road Kate Williams Below the Belt Chris Psycharis Art Bethany Cherry McFuck It Tharidi Walimunige Crazy Steve Rodgers Part Two Jacinta Dowe Flash Fiction: Puzzles and Limericks Expose / India Meg Tully and Ilsa Harun

ART BY HANNA LIU

COLLECTIVE

EDITORIAL

O

ne of the main reasons the media exists, and Farrago exists, is the hope that our writing might change things for the better.

It’s also important that the news media presents a balanced story, and some argue that balanced media doesn’t try to do anything—only disseminate information. But if we’re not trying to change things, or equip people with the knowledge to try to change things, what’s the point?

We’re not always as impartial as we could be. At the end of the day, journalists are just people. Balance means considering and critiquing all sides, but not giving them equal weight if one side is deeply flawed. This doesn’t mean inserting opinion into news articles or cherry-picking quotes from sources you disagree with, but it does mean telling the story in a way which is both factual and honest.

Often when we report on a story it’s because there’s been wrongdoing, or something isn’t right. But we won’t tell you what to think, we’ll give you the information you need to make up your own mind. Our job is to decide what stories to report on, what stories matter. Journalists deciding which stories are important sounds biased, but we can’t cover everything, and people can’t read everything.

We had an article for this edition that we knew would be legally risky, but we believed that it mattered. The article was blocked by the University of Melbourne Student Union, the union which publishes this magazine. We understand why they didn’t want to take the risk, but we’re still disappointed. We had hoped that we could change things through our reporting. I still think that we can, whether it’s with regards to that particular story or other ones. I still think that student voices hold a lot of weight.

So whether you’re a journalist, an activist, or just a student, use your voice to stand up for what you believe in. It’s hard to gauge how much of an impact our voices have, but what else have we got?

Speaking of activism, in the campus section Yan Zhuang reports on the latest endeavours of anti-military campus group Lockout Lockheed (8). In the spirit of good-natured campus debate, Louis Devine goes up against the Lockout Lockheed collective in ‘For and Against: Lockout Lockheed’ (76). Also in the campus section, Lucy Williams and Stephanie Zhang talk to students about how safe they feel safe on campus, and what they think needs to change (13).

In the nonfiction section, Matilda Carnegie runs us through ‘A Day in the Life of a Deaf Student’ (22), and Rebecca Fowler’s sprawling four-page creative nonfiction piece, ‘Flystrike’ (40), tells the story of a vet student who experienced some pretty fucked up shit while on a prac, and was failed by her university when she needed help.

In the creative section, check out the dynamic, chaotic ‘McFuck It’ (71) by Tharidi Walimunige and Jacinta Dowe’s muchanticipated sequel to their original fanfiction: ‘Crazy Steve Rodgers Part 2: Bucky and I are getting married!’ (72).

This is a special edition of Farrago which contains a photography section, featuring fantastic work by Sherlyne Jennifer, Jess Herne, Nikhilesh Chaudhari, Christopher Hon Sum Ling, Derrick Duan, Rakesh Gill, Qaisara Mohamad, Alain Nguyen, Maggy Liu, Rachel Morley, Blake Tang, Zoë Alford, Troy Cameron, Sherry Aine Te, Supassara Tripun, Wen Qiu and Ilsa Harun (49–56).

Enjoy reading this edition of Farrago, and remember to always speak your truth.

Ashleigh, Esther, Jesse, Monique

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ILSA HARUN

COLLECTIVE

THE FARRAGO TEAM EDITORS

Ashleigh Barraclough Esther Le Couteur Monique O’Rafferty Jesse Paris-Jourdan

CONTRIBUTORS

Ruby Adams Daniel Beratis Tessa Campisi Matilda Carnegie Alston Chu Alaina Dean Jocelyn Deane Nitul Deshpande Louis Devine Cam Doig Jacinta Dowe Natalie Fong Jamisyn Gleeson James Gordon Alex Greggery Elizabeth Haigh Dane Heverin Stephanie Kee Wing Kuang Jasper MacCuspie Giselle Martin Corey McCabe Alain Nguyen Mary Ntalianis Jesse Paris-Jourdan Sarah Peters Chris Psycharis Ashrita Ramamurthy Will Ross Bella Ruskin Elizabeth Seychell Lucy Turton Tharidi Walimunige Charlotte Waters Kate Williams Lucy Williams A’bidah Zaid Shirbeeni Stephanie Zhang Yan Zhuang

SUBEDITORS

James Agathos Kyra Agathos Kergen Angel Elle Atack Georgia Atkinson Daniel Beratis Rachael Booth Kasumi Borczyk Jessica Chen David Churack Noni Cole Nicole de Souza Alaina Dean Jocelyn Deane Katie Doherty Emma Ferris Abigail Fisher Belle Gill Jessica Hall Jessica Herne Kangli Hu Jenina Ibañez Esmé James An Jiang Annie Jiang Eleanor Kirk Ruby Kraner-Tucci Angela Le Tessa Marshall Valerie Ng April Nougher-Dayhew Isa Pendragon Ruby Perryman Sarah Peters Lauren Powell Rhiannon Raphael Danielle Scrimshaw Elizabeth Seychell Chiara Situmorang Greer Sutherland Catherine Treloar Sophie Wallace Nina Wang Mark Yin Stephanie Zhang Yan Zhuang

GRAPHICS

Zoë Alford Alexandra Burns Troy Cameron Minnie Chantpakpimon Nikhilesh Chaudhari Cathy Chen Bethany Cherry Renee de Vlugt Nicola Dobinson Derrick Duan Rebecca Fowler Rakesh Gill Lincoln Glasby Ilsa Harun Jess Herne Carolyn Huane Lauren Hunter Ayonti Mahreen Huq Sherlyne Jennifer Winnie Jiao Asher Karahasan Sharon Huang Liang Hanna Liu Maggy Liu Christopher Hon Sum Ling Luke Macaronas Kira Martin Qaisara Mohamad Rachel Morley Natalia Naa Amani Nasarudin Alain Nguyen Monique O’Rafferty Wen Qiu Nellie Seale Poorniima Shanmugam Sophie Sun Blake Tang Sherry Aine Te Supassara Tripun Meg Tully Dinh Vo Yedda Wang David Zeleznikow-Johnston Yan Zhuang

COVER

Bethany Cherry

ART BY MEG TULLY

COLUMNISTS

Rohan Byrne Katie Doherty James Gordon Neala Guo (online) Ilsa Harun Kaavya Jha Ashrita Ramamurthy (online) Veera Ramayah Ailsa Traves (online) Trent Vu

SOCIAL MEDIA

Zoë Alford Alex Epstein Ilsa Harun Nurul Juhria Binte Kamal Jack Langan Angela Le Christopher Hon Sum Ling Lucette Moulang Lara Navarro Lauren Powell Trent Vu

Farrago is the student magazine of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU), produced by the media department. Farrago is published by the general secretary of UMSU, Daniel Beratis. The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of UMSU, the printers or the editors. Farrago is printed by Printgraphics, care of the godfather of print, Nigel Quirk.

All writing and artwork remains the property of the creators. This collection is © Farrago and Farrago reserves the right to republish material in any format.

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CONTENT WARNING: SEXUAL VIOLENCE

NEWS

NEWS IN BRIEF

UMSU ELECTIONS

The University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) elections are approaching, and factional tensions are heating up. By the time Farrago is printed, nominations will have closed and we’ll know which factions are running for which positions—so make sure to check in on our website for more election coverage.

STAFF BOYCOTT OPEN DAY

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) is organising another staff strike for 14 August, 8am–1pm, and a boycott of the University’s open day on 19 August.

While progress has been made on reaching an enterprise bargaining agreement that both the University and the NTEU are happy with, the NTEU still has a number of demands that are yet to be met.

More to come.

NEW UA GUIDELINES

Peak tertiary education body Universities Australia has released new guidelines for universities for responding to students who have experienced sexual assault or sexual harassment. The guidelines are survivor-centric, and focus on points such as equipping staff members with the skills to deal with disclosures, improving residential college procedures, assisting survivors for whom English is not their first language and improving reporting mechanisms. The guidelines are, however, just guidelines, meaning that they are non-binding.

LIFE UPDATE

Farrago editor Ashleigh went to Splendour at the end of July. We are low on content. You can read her review online if you want to know how it went.

INDEPENDENT MEDIA

Independent Media has preselected its candidates to run for the media office (the office which prints this magazine) in the upcoming UMSU elections. The candidates are Katie Doherty, Stephanie Zhang, Ruby Perryman and Carolyn Huane.

RALLY AGAINST SEXUAL VIOLENCE

PROSH IS COMING

The annual Prosh week is occuring in week nine of semester. Prosh, a University tradition, is a week of antics where teams compete for points. Activities include billy kart races through campus, nude runs, team dances and going for a 24-hour drive to an undisclosed location. You can find a team or make your own at proshweek.org

1 August was the anniversary of the national survey into sexual assault and sexual harassment in Australian universities. Students rallied on South Lawn, and listened to speakers including journalist Nina Funnell and Reason Party leader Fiona Patten address university inaction on sexual violence. You can view Troy Cameron’s photo essay on page 9, and you can check out Farrago’s live coverage on our Facebook page.

CRESWICK CAMPUS

Concerns have been raised in the town of Creswick because the University has moved the masters degree that was based there to the Parkville campus. According to an article in The Courier, the reduction of students in the town is detrimentally affecting small businesses and the campus itself, which is still used by some researchers.

ENVIRO WEEK

The UMSU environment department has organised Enviro Week: Beyond Climate Change for week five of semester. The week will contain workshops, forums, skill-sharing, stalls and activities which highlight “the breadth of environmental issues ... their roots in capitalism and the intersections with societal issues ...”

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ART BY DERRICK DUAN

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER CALENDAR

CAMPUS

WEEK FOUR

WEEK FIVE

WEEK SIX

WEEK SEVEN

MONDAY 13 AUGUST

MONDAY 20 AUGUST

MONDAY 27 AUGUST

MONDAY 3 SEPTEMBER

Women in Higher Education Week

Enviro Week: Beyond Climate Change

Anti-Racism Week

UMSU ELECTIONS—POLLS OPEN

TUESDAY 14 AUGUST

TUESDAY 21 AUGUST

TUESDAY 28 AUGUST

TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER

12pm: Women of Colour collective 12pm: enviro collective 1pm: trans collective 4:15: anxiety support group

12pm: Women of Colour collective 12pm: enviro collective 1pm: trans collective 4:15: anxiety support group

12pm: Women of Colour collective 12pm: enviro collective 1pm: trans collective 4:15: anxiety support group

12pm: Women of Colour collective 12pm: enviro collective 1pm: trans collective 4:15: anxiety support group

Women in Higher Education Week—Trivia Night

Enviro Week: Beyond Climate Change

Anti-Racism Week

UMSU ELECTIONS—POLLS OPEN

WEDNESDAY 15 AUGUST

WEDNESDAY 22 AUGUST

WEDNESDAY 29 AUGUST

WEDNESDAY 5 SEPT.

12pm: women’s collective 1pm: lunch with the queer bunch

12pm: women’s collective 12pm: UMSU International— BBQ meet and greet 1pm: lunch with the queer bunch

12pm: women’s collective 12pm: UMSU International— BBQ meet and greet 1pm: lunch with the queer bunch

12pm: women’s collective 12pm: UMSU International— BBQ meet and greet 1pm: lunch with the queer bunch

Enviro Week: Beyond Climate Change Creative arts—TASTINGS 18

Anti-Racism Week

UMSU ELECTIONS—POLLS OPEN

THURSDAY 30 AUGUST

THURSDAY 6 SEPTEMBER

Women in Higher Education Week

THURSDAY 16 AUGUST

THURSDAY 23 AUGUST

12pm: queer People of Colour collective 1pm: disabilities collective 1pm: arts collective

12pm: queer People of Colour collective 1pm: arts collective 1pm: disabilities collective

Women in Higher Education Week

12pm: queer People of Colour collective 1pm: arts collective 1pm: disabilities collective 6pm: creative arts—Pot Luck Open Mic Night Enviro Week: Beyond Climate Change Creative arts—TASTINGS 18

Anti-Racism Week

UMSU ELECTIONS—POLLS OPEN

FRIDAY 17 AUGUST

FRIDAY 24 AUGUST

FRIDAY 31 AUGUST

FRIDAY 7 SEPTEMBER

Women in Higher Education Week

Enviro Week: Beyond Climate Change Creative arts—TASTINGS 18

Anti-Racism Week

UMSU ELECTIONS—POLLS OPEN

ART BY DERRICK DUAN

12pm: queer People of Colour collective 1pm: arts collective 1pm: disabilities collective

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ART BY NELLIE SEALE

MOTION OF NO CONFIDENCE IN DUFF

T

NEWS

JESSE PARIS-JOURDAN TELLS YOU WHAT HAPPENED AT QUEER COLLABORATIONS

here is pressure on Jasmine Duff, one of the two queer/ LGBTI officers at the National Union of Students (NUS), to resign, after a motion of no confidence in her was passed at the Queer Collaborations conference last month.

The motion claimed that Duff had shown “an established pattern of behaviour” that has been “intimidatory, and transphobic in nature”.

The conference, a five-day, annual conference bringing together delegates from universities and TAFEs from across Australia, is the largest annual gathering of queer students in the country.

This is the second year in a row that the conference floor at Queer Collaborations has been critical of a national queer officer. At the conference last year, Chris di Pasquale was the national queer officer who was criticised on the conference floor. Di Pasquale was, like Duff, a member of the Socialist Alternative faction.

The motion at this year’s Queer Collaborations about Duff references her “misgendering, and verbal abuse of a queer student during the proceedings of the 2017 NUS National Conference”.

The student who was misgendered at NatCon last year

spoke to Farrago and confirmed the allegation.

The motion also accuses Duff of a “failure to comply with, or complete a number of her responsibilities as listed under clause B77 of the NUS’ constitution”.

When reached out to for comment, Jasmine Duff said: “This stuff is bizarre—I’ve never heard of these unattributed accusations or had them raised with me by anyone, and I have a history of fighting against transphobia in a very serious way.

“I have made constant efforts to reach out to campus queer and LGBTI officers all year to discuss campaigns.

“I don’t consider the Queer Collaborations conference as being relevant to judging my record on this at all,” she said.

The queer officers at the University of Melbourne Student Union, Milly Reeves and Elinor Mills, talked to Farrago about their experiences with Duff.

“We haven’t had much direct experience with the NUS LGBTI officers this year, unfortunately,” they said.

“We support this motion. We have friends and colleagues who have directly experienced Duff’s behaviour and we wholeheartedly agree that someone who will intimidate and misgender transgender students isn’t suited to represent them on a national level.”

UNIVERSITY SQUARE BEING REDEVELOPED U

YAN ZHUANG AND JASPER MACCUSPIE REPORT

niversity Square, the prominent garden and thoroughfare, located between Grattan Street and the Law School, is currently in the process of being redeveloped in an association between the University, the City of Melbourne, and the Victorian Government.

“The University supports the City [of Melbourne] in its approach to increasing and improving the quality of public open space,” a University spokesperson said. The City of Melbourne has previously described the project as “creating a 21st century park”.

At this stage in the construction, most of University Square has been made inaccessible—causing disruption to surrounding areas. Most recently, pedestrians have had additional difficulty accessing Graduate House and the Melbourne Business School, with Leicester Street seeing significant reductions in usability.

Despite these disruptions, there remains a degree of positivity about the proposed update to the area.

The park, once described by Architecture AU as “hostile and forbidding”, will see a number of changes. These include more accessible park space and increased tree cover in order to “create a new open-space hub that better serves the local community”, according to the master plan document.

This document also considers environmental concerns, mentioning the capture of stormwater for reuse and solar energy generation. The old English elm trees will be replaced

with 250 new, mostly native, trees.

The Law Students’ Society directed us towards a De Minimis article that indicated that while there will be some short-term disruption to convenience, the benefits will outweigh these.

However, there are some who question whether now is the most appropriate time for this redevelopment to take place.

Combined with the ongoing works to establish the Grattan Street underground train station, the southern region of campus has been significantly disrupted.

“The construction there is like the Hogwarts staircases: it rearranges itself all the time,” said Mark Yin, a second-year Arts student.

“I’ve faced huge delays to arriving to class on time, especially having to go around Uni Square or around Alan Gilbert.”

These delays have been exacerbated in recent weeks by the spate of bad weather, with water collecting in many places and drainage impeded to a degree. This, combined with the longer route that many are having to take to class, has caused a number of bedraggled students.

“The City of Melbourne … following extensive consultation with the University, have staged the works to ensure there is still accessibility for students and staff through the precinct,” the University spokesperson stated.

However, those in charge of the project maintain that any inconvenience will be worth it at the conclusion of the project.

ART BY MONIQUE O’RAFFERTY

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NEWS

STUDENTS PROTEST LOCKHEED MARTIN S

YAN ZHUANG ON THE FIGHT TO STOP WEAPONS MANUFACTURING ON CAMPUS

tudent activists successfully secured a meeting with University executive to contest the University’s relationship with weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin, after blockading the entrance to Raymond Priestley building for over 14 hours.

From 7:30am on Wednesday, 11 July, students from the campus-based activist group Lockout Lockheed chained themselves to concrete-filled barrels to prevent staff, including Chancellery, the top tier leadership of the University, from entering their offices in Raymond Priestley. University staff attempted to relocate to another building on Barry Street, but the students also blockaded the entrances to that building.

The action is the latest in a years-long campaign by Lockout Lockheed in response to the research partnership agreement reached between the University and Lockheed Martin in 2016, in which Lockheed Martin would invest $13 million into the opening of a new science and technology research facility.

Concerns were raised over Lockheed Martin’s track record of selling weapons and military assets to repressive governments accused of war crimes.

The student activists called for the University to cancel this agreement. Andie Moore, a spokesperson for Lockout Lockheed, said, “We don’t believe that weapons manufacturers should have any place in the University. To think that we are involved with corporations that actively benefit from the killing of civilians is despicable.”

Speaking about the blockade, Moore said, “We won’t allow the head of this administration to do any of its other tasks because ultimately, when you’re doing filthy dirty work with corporations who wage war you shouldn’t be able to do your other basic work.”

Additionally, the students called for the University to reveal the terms of its agreement with Lockheed Martin, including whether the research produced from the partnership would contribute to weapons manufacturing.

The lock-on is one part of a broader protest against “an economic system of crisis”. Student activists from the Australian Students Environmental Network also simultaneously blockaded energy and mining company BHP and the Australian Border Force office, protesting the organisations’ role in the destruction of climate and Australia’s refugee policy, respectively.

At around 9:30pm that day, the activists ended their lock-on after securing a meeting with the University’s provost

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and acting vice-chancellor, Mark Considine, and the pro vicechancellor (research), Mark Hargreaves.

Will Ross, another spokesperson for Lockout Lockheed, characterised the lock-on as a “tentative success”. While he acknowledges that the campaign’s two official demands have not been met, he hopes that the meeting will allow students to clarify the nature of the University’s partnership agreement with Lockheed Martin.

“The reason we have these two demands is because it’s important to us not only that we don’t have this contract with the weapons manufacturer but that students know what’s going on with the University and with [students’] money.”

Staff have had mixed reactions to the action; while some have been disgruntled, others have seen its value. One University of Melbourne employee, who previously knew little about the issue, expressed support for Lockout Lockheed’s goals after witnessing the lock-on.

He said, “At the end of the day, these sorts of decisions are affecting the whole community. And they’re not being told to the biggest stakeholders, which are students. I think that’s a big problem.”

He believed that the disturbance staff members may feel pales in comparison to the impact Lockheed Martin’s weapons have on people’s lives.

“Disturbance is important to make sure that people are notified and that they are talking about it. You’re talking about people’s lives, and that’s bigger than anything else. The protest is the start of something to save people’s lives.”

A statement released by the University after the demonstration said, “All University of Melbourne collaborations with external partners are extensively reviewed and subject to a rigorous and ongoing assessment of how they advance knowledge and bring benefits for researchers, students and the wider community.”

According to Ross, Lockout Lockheed’s campaign will continue to gain momentum going forward.

“This is a huge turning point for us. We’ve got so many more people interested than we ever had before. We’ve got our visibility out there. The next step is getting the word out there and getting even more people aware.

“If our demands aren’t met and we don’t get to hear about this contract, there will be more. They will be hearing from us again.”

ART BY YAN ZHUANG

On 1 August, students rallied at the University of Melbourne against sexual violence for the first anniversary of the nation-wide survey into sexual assault and sexual harassment at Australian universities. The rally was organised by the National Union of Students and the University of Melbourne Student Union womens’ departments.

ART BY TROY CAMERON

NEWS

NEW VCA STUDENT REP S

TASTINGS

MARY NTALIANIS ON AN UPCOMING SHOWCASE

T

astings, the biennial showcase of original works by University of Melbourne students, will be held 22–25 August in the Guild Theatre. With over a decade of history, Tastings is developed and run by the University of Melbourne Student Union’s (UMSU) creative arts department. This year, the showcase comprises 12 original short works including dance works, short film, devised theatre and scripts for performance.

Freya McGrath, an UMSU creative arts officer, described this year’s program as “quite eclectic in style and content”.

“There are explorations of love, gender, race, climate change, gambling, pop culture and chronic illness. This program is comprised of works that are wholly unique—works that show great potential, vitality and daring.”

Tastings is an important development opportunity for young artists at the University. For many, this will be the first time their work has been performed for an audience. The student artists are also given an opportunity to work with mentors, whom the creative arts officers provide.

“This year we have gathered a phenomenal group of industry professionals, matching them with artists based on mutual areas of interest and style. Each mentorship is … tailored to ensure that the students get the most out of this unique opportunity.”

Luke Macaronas, whose short work about gay desire, Aponea, will be featured in Tastings this year, said he and co-writer Sarah Bostock “pitched more of a process than a performance” to Tastings.

“It’s about developing artistic practice and giving artists a space to experiment and explore. The chance to really play, but also to challenge, is the big appeal for me. I’m looking to take some big steps—to explore my own body and practice— and not all of it will end up in the piece, but I’m really grateful for the space and the chance to let that imagination loose.”

Tastings’ production has dramatically changed since its debut. In 2006, only four works were presented and the number of applications received by the creative arts department has also risen, which McGrath attributes to increased interest in student-written and -devised work in the performance community.

In addition to the program, this year’s showcase will also feature a one-off event, the Tastings Takeover, on the opening night. This event will take place in the Guild foyer and will involve visual artworks, projections, live art and performance art pieces.

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WING KUANG CHATS TO LILY EKINS

ince early July, Lily Ekins has worked as the new University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) VCA campus coordinator. Farrago talked to her about her plans for the new semester, as well as updates on the Southbank campus after the restructure of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I’m a third-year Bachelor of Music student. That’s historically been a Parkville degree, but with the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music moving to Southbank and with lots of our classes at the Southbank campus, I feel very passionate about ... lots of issues we have that are specific to students over there.

What are your responsibilities as the campus coordinator?

I want to represent students both academically and on a student-engagement and -welfare level, making sure their views and their issues are addressed with the academic board, but also making sure that we have sufficient resources, such as counselling and career development facilities, to support students at the Southbank campus. I think that’s my role: to hold the University accountable for the wellbeing of the students and to represent them.

What is the current state of the Southbank campus?

The Conservatorium building will be up and functioning for 2019. That’s exciting and terrifying, because it has involved shutting down a lot of services, such as the library and the main hub building. It’s also negatively impacted a lot of students, especially those who are graduating this year and won’t benefit from the new facilities. The plans for the new building look exciting—there are lots of new performance facilities that we should be excited about—but there’s just not enough communication as to how smooth the transition can be. I’m currently working to get more involved with the discussion on the transition at Southbank campus.

What are your plans for semester two?

I want to increase UMSU’s visibility and hope that each department at the Parkville campus would be running at least one event per semester. I also want to make sure that UMSU is heard on the VCA newsletter—and to make sure that students are constantly up-to-date with UMSU’s initiatives and services, so that they can be accessed from Parkville if necessary.

[For] new students, what I would like to communicate is if you need to come all the way to Parkville to access some services, in the short term, please do. In the long term, talk to me, and I will try to make them as accessible at the Southbank campus as possible.

ART BY RENEE DE VLUGT

CAMPUS

UNIVERSITY STUDENTS GO TO THE GAMES T

ALAIN NGUYEN AND DANE HEVERIN IN CONVERSATION WITH STUDENT ATHLETES

he University of Melbourne is well known for its academic credentials, but fewer people are aware of the athletic prowess it boasts. Earlier this year, University of Melbourne students and alumni won one gold, two silver and one bronze at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Current Students: Physiotherapy student, David McNeill, was a part of the Australian Athletics Team and qualified for the final in the men’s 5,000m. McNeill finished 12th in that race, in a time of 14 minutes, 24 seconds and 51 milliseconds. McNeill had previously finished eighth in the 5,000m at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games, as well as competing at the Olympic Games in London in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Twenty-year-old Science student, Jemima Montag, won gold in the women’s 20km walk, crossing the finish line in one hour, 32 minutes and 50 seconds, just four seconds off the Commonwealth Games record. This was only her third competitive race over 20km.

Montag spoke to Farrago about the challenges of balancing being a student and a professional athlete: “Balancing study and training isn’t always easy. There have been occasions this year where I’ve found myself completely overwhelmed because I’m trying to do both of them to the highest level possible and there just aren’t enough hours in the day. I turn to people like my training partner, Amelia, or my mum for advice, and they work through things with me to set me back on track.

“I’ve found out there is no such thing as balance. It’s just not doable to have everything in perfect harmony all the time.

Realising that was the most freeing feeling.

“I do think that my training is a wonderful release from all the study and simultaneously that sitting down and challenging my brain and learning new things is an awesome contrast to the physical challenges of my sport.”

Arts student, Hayley Baker, was a member of the dominant Australian Dolphins Swim Team, which collected an incredible 73 medals at the Games. Baker is the first graduate of the Australian Institute of Sport National Training Centre program to make the Australian team. At the Games, Baker qualified for the final in both the 100m and 200m backstroke events, finishing sixth in both finals.

Baker also spoke to Farrago about the Games, her training regime and how she handles the student–athlete balance: “It’s a bit of back-and-forth between Melbourne and Canberra. I actually took a leave of absence while the Games were on to lighten the load. Balancing is really just about prioritising, and making the most of your resources.

“We do our heaviest training in season, when we don’t

have any big competitions coming up.

“We’ve already got an aerobic base from season training, but leading into trials, we do a lot of high-intensity speed work so our bodies are conditioned for what we’ll need in the race. By the time we get to the heats at the Games, we’re not training as hard and we do what’s called a taper.”

Montag was thrilled to win gold at the Games: “It felt like I was living out a childhood dream. But unlike a dream, it felt so real, familiar and natural. Before the race I wondered if it was possible. I hoped it was. But as soon as the race began, there was no other option. I was on a mission and nothing was going to stop me.”

Baker and Montag are already looking towards future competitions on the world stage.

“Gwangju 2019 [World Championships] and the Tokyo 2020 Olympics are definitely the goals. I think I’m in a really good place coming off the Games,” commented Baker.

“I would just like to give a shout out to Melbourne Uni Sport and the Faculty of Arts for their support. I couldn’t make this all work without them!”

For Montag, “Tokyo is absolutely the dream. We’ve got two years to work towards it and for my event, the heat and humidity will be the biggest challenge, so the next phase of training will be tailored so I can become as adapted as possible to racing in those conditions.

“Representing Australia in the Olympics would be an incredible honour which I am willing to do anything for, and Japan is such an awesome country so I feel as though this is just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Alumni: Commerce alumnus, Joanna Weston, was a part of the Australian Diamonds netball team, which claimed silver at the Games. Weston plays in defence, predominantly goal defence, and is playing for the Melbourne Vixens in the 2018 Suncorp Super Netball.

Medicine alumnus, Elena Galiabovitch, achieved silver in the women’s 25m pistol and bronze in the women’s 10m pistol. This was her Commonwealth Games debut, after competing at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games. In both events, she was the highest-ranked Australian.

Science alumnus, Joel Baden, finished 17th in the men’s high jump qualifying round. Baden cleared 2.15m, but unfortunately could not clear 2.18m and did not qualify for the final. He also competed in the men’s high jump at the most recent Olympic Games, held in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.

Engineering alumnus, Barak Mizrachi, competed in the table tennis men’s TT6-10 singles. Mizrachi completed the group stage with one win and two losses. He also took part in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

ART BY DINH VO

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CAMPUS

THE END OF HISTORY?

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COREY MCCABE TAKES A STAB AT THE INSITUTE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

he Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) has released a report bemoaning the rise of identity politics in history departments across Australian universities. History, they contend, should be focused on the study of significant historical events and periods that have shaped Western civilisation, rather than limiting history to the reductive analysis of class, race and gender.

The crux of the report is that history departments have become infected with the same insidious pox of identity politics that has taken over universities, especially in the liberal arts faculties. This terrible affliction turns the glorious Pax Britannica into crass colonialism and bright young minds into sensitive snowflakes, unable to face the real world.

If you are familiar with the IPA, the publisher of the report, this should come as no surprise. Per their description, the IPA is a think tank that supports “the free market of ideas, a limited and efficient government and evidence-based public policy”. More often than not, their research focuses on subjects such as why Australia Day shouldn’t be moved, how tax cuts for the rich fix everything and why paying weekend workers penalty rates is a terrible idea.

On this occasion, they take aim at what they perceive to be diminishing attention paid to the history of Western civilisation, which they describe as “essential to understanding our present and shaping our future”. Students are being turned into “snowflakes”, inclined to take offence and restrict the freedom of speech of others to that end.

According to the IPA, this shift toward focusing history on categories of class, race and gender “risks … impoverishing an entire generation of young people, and in turn all of Australian society”.

Professor Trevor Burnard, Head of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, responded to the IPA report, pointing out that in most cases, enrolment and funding drives subject creation, not professorial preferences.

Further, nobody can complete a history major at the University of Melbourne without taking subjects centred on key events in Western civilisation. The four subjects offered at level one are all centred on important events in the Western world: Medieval Plague, War and Heresy, The Great War 1914 to 1918, Age of Empires and The World Since World War II.

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Burnard rejects the idea that history lecturers are creating subjects to inculcate students to their own social and political views. He describes the IPA’s understanding of the teaching process as naïve, saying, “Students are not empty vessels into which teachers pour their prejudices. Students think for themselves.”

Not only do students think for themselves, they enrol in classes for themselves too. There is clearly something drawing students towards subjects focused on discourses around gender, race, class and Indigenous rights. These subjects touch on the same debates that pervade society today. It seems only natural that when Australia held a plebiscite on same-sex marriage last year, students would be inclined to take a subject titled A History of Sexualities. Or, in seeing news stories about the Keystone XL Pipeline in the US, that students became interested in Global Histories of Indigenous Activism.

Moreover, history is more than just the study of great men, great ideas and great events. Race, gender and class are not reductive categories in the study of history, and many of those crucial events they laud the study of cannot be properly understood without these lenses. A history of the French Revolution that ignores the roles gender, race and class played is an incomplete history. The same is true for countless events in Western history.

At the same time, university students are a changing demographic. Of the students at the University of Melbourne, 56 per cent are female, and nearly 40 per cent are international. It is not an unfair request that the scope of history be expanded beyond the acts of important white men.

Nor is it bad history to wonder what was happening outside of the Western world at the same time as these events.

The IPA is right to say that history matters. It provides a rich narrative about how the world became the way it is today.

It helps us to understand and shape it. But not all history fits the narrow mould given by the IPA. The reality is that history is complicated, as is its study.

Students are interested in subjects that reflect their experience in the real world. They find parallels between contemporary controversies about race, gender and class, and historical examples. And that is not an abuse of history, it is the entire point of it.

ART BY MONIQUE O’RAFFERTY

CONTENT WARNING: SEXUAL VIOLENCE, RACIST ATTACKS, MURDER

CAMPUS

THE STUDENTS HAVE THEIR SAY

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LUCY WILLIAMS AND STEPHANIE ZHANG TALK TO STUDENTS ABOUT CAMPUS SAFETY

n the wake of recent local attacks on women, Farrago has spoken to a number of students about how safe they feel on campus.

This survey was undertaken as a response to three recent sexualised attacks on women in the University’s vicinity. All three involved rape, while one involved the alleged abduction of a woman from Lygon Street and one was the highly publicised rape and murder of Melbourne comedian Eurydice Dixon. Evidently, this sexualised violence doesn’t occur in a vacuum and our survey also highlights other communities of students who feel less than safe on campus, including students of colour and LGBTQIA+ students.

Our survey is limited in that there is no way to quantify feelings of safety, particularly when comparing your feelings to those of others, but there are some general themes that we have summarised below. Percentages are from our data, and it should be noted that there were not equal numbers of each community involved in this survey despite reaching out to various groups.

Students surveyed identified mostly (in order from most to least) as: straight white women (just under a third), straight women of colour and straight white men (over a fifth each), white LGBTQIA+ women (a sixth) and then straight men of colour and LGBTQIA+ women of colour (one eighteenth each).

Unsurprisingly, People of Colour, women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community were more likely to feel unsafe on campus. For the most part, people did feel safe during the day, however one student mentioned she felt “least safe when I arrive [at] uni at around 8:30–9am, as I’m usually one of the few people there.”

Over half of students surveyed said they felt safer on the Parkville campus than they did in the broader community, 40 per cent felt equally safe and eight per cent felt less safe.

There were few responses from students based away from Parkville but we’d love to hear your feedback if you would like to offer a perspective from other campuses.

When asked if they felt safe on campus, a third of students surveyed answered yes with few exceptions, with almost half saying they felt safe during the day and unsafe at night.

This led to the most common recommendation suggested by students for increased and improved lighting of the campus at night, when many still have classes, or are using facilities such as the library or gym.

One sixth of students said that they only sometimes felt safe on campus, with one respondent saying that they didn’t ever feel safe as a result of their personal experiences and violence against women in the area.

A different respondent explained that even though they believed it was an isolated incident, knowing that their classmates “got mugged at knife point by three guys outside ERC last semester” meant “at night it can feel a bit dangerous.” The student also referenced the targeting of Asian International students several years ago in Lincoln Square muggings.

When asked if they felt safe on campus, over 75 per cent of male students we surveyed answered “yes” or “yes, very.” This was in contrast to a third of People of Colour (any gender), just under a fifth of women and non-binary participants and less than 15 per cent of LGBTQIA+ (any gender) participants who answered yes to the question.

University statements A spokesperson for the University has advised that security patrols, escorts, and blue help phones are ways students can seek help through campus security.

The spokesperson acknowledged that the demand for security escorts has increased due to worries about “the theft of bicycles and computers and personal safety after hours during the exam period.”

The Safer Community Program currently assists students through the provision of support and referral to specialist support agencies, and also provides educational resources on a range of safety matters. “The Unisafe App continues to be popular with students who want easily accessible information about emergency services and University support services,” the spokesperson said.

When asked about improvements to be made to safety initiatives on campus, the spokesperson emphasised the importance of awareness and availability of information.

Security escort service Some of the trends that became clear through the survey were that certain groups had limited knowledge of security measures on campus, while those that did rarely used these services. One respondent explained that “I’d feel like a bit of a drama queen getting a security escort, I feel like you’re expected to assume a certain risk.”

ART BY MINNIE CHANTPAKPIMON

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CAMPUS

Another student said she was concerned “my anxiety early in the evening would not be considered … I mean, who needs someone to walk with them at 5pm? It’s not 11pm? I don’t know if my anxiety is warranted or not and also, I don’t know the security people and I think that elicits a concern of trust in a stranger over my potential safety”.

The vast majority were vaguely aware of security measures, but couldn’t provide concrete examples or instructions on how to access help with any specificity. Those few who had used the services were positive however. “I was about to walk down Tin Alley—it was very dark and very cold at the time—I don’t know why but I suddenly felt really scared, so I called campus security and they drove me home to my college—it was very reassuring and the person who drove me was lovely.”

“This service was very helpful, it was a really good response in my opinion. I thought maybe he would patronise me, or think I was being silly—but he was just really nice and supportive,” the student said.

Given the significant numbers of students who had limited understanding of security at the University, many respondents recommended making security people more visible, especially at night.

Unsafe locations There were a range of locations in which people felt least safe, particularly alleyways and areas of campus with limited lighting. Monash Drive, Tin Alley, Grattan Street, University Square, Lincoln Square, the path by Carte Crêpes, routes to the law buildings, parts of Bouverie Street, South Lawn, the east side of campus, College Crescent, Swanston Street and Royal Parade were just some of the locations mentioned.

Many students avoided the campus at night, with one student saying this was because “the campus isn’t lit up very well and there aren’t very many people or security around, I usually avoid walking through campus at night and walk around on the main roads instead”.

Few people were aware of the presence of the help phones on the Parkville Campus and some students raised concerns about construction sites on campus. Some students stated they felt uncomfortable “in areas near construction where you have to walk through small spaces on your own” with other students explaining that while they weren’t threatened, they felt uneasy in these locations.

A female student shared an incident where she was walking to class, and collided with a construction worker.

“Although I understand we did hit into each other, he grabbed my back inappropriately and for way too long.”

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Reactions to recent attacks During the survey, many students, particularly women and non-binary members of the community, expressed tremendous sadness, anger and anxiety over recent attacks in Parkville, particularly in response to the rape and murder of Eurydice Dixon at Princes Park in June.

Many talked about how frequently they used Princes Park in the past, with one student explaining, “I have always felt safe there so it was a bit of a wakeup call.” Another said that Princes Park was “my place to unplug from the busy city and now I’m too scared to go back”.

One female student explained that she’d “never really participated in some of the more extreme personal safety things girls talk about,” but has now started to question her safety. Others said they’ve “always lived in high alert” or they’ve “never felt safe”. One student said “it solidified my fears”. This sentiment was echoed by a female student who explained, “I just assumed my fears were fears, now it’s reality.”

One student explained that now that they are completing their Masters course, public transport is no longer affordable for them as they are ineligible for a concession card. As a result, they must cycle through Princes Park to get home after classes that finish at 7pm.

Social attitudes Numerous respondents argued that security measures were not enough. “There’s only so much infrastructure can do when it comes to social attitudes” asserted one student.

The idea of combating social attitudes, particularly misogynistic views held by some men, was brought up countless times. “I would feel safer on campus with more security guards, better lighting at night and if men were compulsorily educated to not attack women,” one woman said.

Another explained, “It seems regardless of campus security, regardless of people messaging friends when they’re nearly home in spaces that are close to the University, nothing is necessarily going to ensure safety.”

A third female student explained her views that “consent should be talked about and indeed taught by the university and the colleges to every student”. Some key topics she recommended were “compulsory education on gender stereotyping, victim blaming, domestic violence statistics and general violence against women”.

She also added, “Sorry guys, I know some of you don’t feel safe, but all women feel this way—let’s deal with the vast majority which in turn will probably help the minority anyway.”

ART BY MINNIE CHANTPAKPIMON

CAMPUS

Yet another female student argued that though “it’s important that the University is providing services to keep students safe, this doesn’t address the greater social and cultural problem that women cannot go home from their classes, extracurricular, jobs and social activities without it being deemed ‘risky behaviour’ and without feeling safe.”

Violence against women often finds roots in more “acceptable” forms of discrimination such as sexist comments.

Students were quick to differentiate the two, explaining, “it wasn’t harassment but it made me feel shit.”

“One small example of sexism” that a female student described was the language used by her tutor. “A tutor made a comment about me being vapid and a typical woman for liking a certain historical period. He was definitely trying to demean me and said something along the lines of, “Of course you like ___. Women always like ___ because it’s vapid and entertaining, whereas men prefer more substantial history such as war history.”

This language forms the foundation of other forms of violence. Many respondents spoke to Farrago about their experiences of being followed, jeered at on campus, cat called, and attacks on people making their way home. One college student explained that following an assault on a girl at college in her first year, “all the girls messaged to let each other know when our classes ended late at night so nobody walked home alone.”

Many recognise that though their safety might not be at risk, other students need support. “While recent events have been tragic and devastating, I haven’t felt any less safe personally but I do worry more about some friends,” one student said.

A male student explained that he didn’t feel unsafe on campus “as I’m a white male and rarely targeted for much”.

He added, “it’s definitely raised my awareness and concern for everyone else around me, especially what I can do to help them feel and be safer.”

There were numerous recommendations made through the survey: • Increased lighting • Education on the services that are available • Making the blue phone boxes more visible by possibly changing their colour • Equalising the services at the various campuses so that all students can be safe regardless of campus • Potential for more student card enabled access areas

• • • •

Clear communication with students about reports and updates on recent attacks via email Class scheduling in daylight hours where possible Educating the community on how to be more respectful More severe consequences for those who assault or harass others

The University website explains that in emergencies that pose a risk to your or someone else’s life, dial 000. However, 03 8344 6666 or 1800 246 066 (free call) are available for nonlife threatening emergencies.

Outside of time-sensitive emergencies, you can also find helpful resources through the University’s Safer Community website.

The Parkville campus is patrolled 24/7 by security officers to escort all students and staff from anywhere on campus to anywhere in the near vicinity of the campus such as public transport or colleges for free. To request a security escort at Parkville, call 03 8344 4674.

Escort services at Southbank are available from 5–11:30pm except for Sundays where they are available until 9pm excluding University holidays and can be organised via an email, including your student number, name, location and mobile number, to southbank-security@unimelb.edu.au before midday or alternatively call 03 9035 9311.

If you’re at our Shepparton campus the security number is 0418 577 383, and the Burnley campus switchboard number is 9035 6800. For all other campuses, it is recommended that you call the free call number 1800 246 066 or alternatively the Parkville number to get forwarded to your desired service.

On the Creswick campus, there are four emergency info cabinets. These can be found in the following locations: one just northeast from Gas Court, one just north of the main entrance, one on the grounds halfway between gates two and three along Water Street and one at the north end of Roger’s Street where it separates into Morrison’s Road and Uni Drive.

On the Parkville campus there are blue help phones that function as emergency contact point, there is an emergency button that will generate CCTV cameras and an alarm in the security control room, there is also an information button regarding security options.

If you or someone you know requires counselling or support, the 1800 Respect national support line is open on 1800 737 732.

ART BY MINNIE CHANTPAKPIMON

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CLASSES FOR SOCIAL UNDERACHIEVERS T

BY ASHRITA RAMAMURTHY

he purpose of class is to learn, but honestly, who can absorb knowledge and participate in class whilst attempting to be a socially functioning human being? (Sorry tutors, but trying to get a room full of students to discuss some far-fetched topic is like me trying to stop procrastinating and finish that essay due in a week, i.e. not going to happen).

Let me give you a breakdown of the social intricacies of classes.

The Seat-Choosing Dilemma Those of you who actually attend lectures instead of watching them online (why do you do this?) have probably experienced the seat-choosing dilemma. No matter what time you arrive, you just can’t win.

If you’re early, you are forced to clamber to the innermost seat lest the lecturer stop talking and tell you to move (this actually happened to me and it was horrendous.) If you’re like me, the idea of being blocked in by students with no escape is suffocating and god forbid you have a class after your lecture, ‘cause you ain’t getting out of there any time soon.

If you are late, well… let’s have a moment of silence for you right now because there is nothing more horrifically awkward than having to do the walk of shame. Walking across the front of a lecture with everyone’s eyes on you is not an experience anyone should go through. Coming in through the back entrance isn’t safe either ‘cause the only seats left will undoubtedly be within breathing distance of the lecturer.

The only thing worse is being called out for trying to avoid embarrassment by sitting on the steps (again, this happened to me and I do not recommend it).

Not to mention that any plans you had to sit with a friend are thrown out the window. So not only do you have to do the walk of shame, you also have to make contact with strangers.

You should have stayed in bed, this isn’t worth it.

My advice: get there right on time, even if this means lurking outside the hall or running across campus (gross, exercise). Wait for a row to fill up and then swoop in and grab an end seat—it works every time.

The Name Game Tutorials should be a chance to make friends, and they probably would be if you could remember a single person’s name. It’s not as if you are purposely forgetting, it’s just that they never stick and you are reduced to using vague gestures

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and terms to get anyone’s attention. Top tip for you guys—ask to add them on Facebook and hand them your phone, (this is an important step, you need them to type their name). Not only do you find out their name but you also make a potential friend.

An even trickier scenario is when someone gets your name wrong. One of the most genuinely uncomfortable moments in my life was when my friend realised they had been saying my name incorrectly for the entire year we had known each other. Long story short, I introduced myself to someone else without thinking about it. I will never forget the painfully stilted conversation that followed in which I very embarrassedly told my friend how to pronounce my name and they very embarrassedly apologised despite it not being their fault (FYI, we are still friends).

As someone with a pretty complicated name this happens to me often enough that I now give a fake name when I order coffee. It’s super awkward when someone gets your name wrong, especially when it’s the tutor and suddenly the entire class knows you by some random collection of syllables. Make sure to correct them the first time.

Audience Participation Forced audience participation is the stuff of nightmares.

Being called upon to answer a complicated question about some complicated subject you know nothing about is literally terrifying. You keep your head down, avert your eyes and do everything short of jumping out the window to avoid it but, inevitably, your time will come. I learnt this the hard way. I will never forget the pity in my tutors eyes as I attempted to string together something resembling a sentence; nor will I forget my friends’ clumsy attempts to sooth my mortification. I advise you to pay your dues early and offer an answer to a question you at least partially understand. This way you can fulfill your participation requirements and avoid embarrassment.

I’d like to end by saying that I genuinely feel bad for tutors who are tasked with making a group of unresponsive, unenthusiastic students participate in class. Really, you have my condolences. But please, stop trying to make me answer questions I don’t understand—my heart can’t take it.

And there you have it—an extensive breakdown. Good luck guys, you’re gonna need it!

ART BY RENEE DE VLUGT

CAMPUS

BARD TIMES: PART SIX

JAMES GORDON PRESENTS: “THE CROWN WILL FIND AN HEIR” It was 1578. William Shakespeare was 14 years old when he left school. Then he disappeared. Between 1578 and 1582, there is no documented evidence linking the bard to any job or location. Nobody knows what Shakespeare did in those years. Until now.

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“Excuse me! Do you have a moment to talk about the upcoming student elections?”

“I doth not intend such an idle matter to pierce my brow.”

“Well we’ve got lots of great policies to discuss. What do you care about most of all?”

“About poetry and taking the fair hand of Anne Hathaway.”

“Pretty sure Adam Shulman beat you to it, mate.”

“Marry, who is this villain?”

“It doesn’t matter. What policies concerning the student union interest you the most?”

“Oh, why didst thou promise such a beauteous day and then let base clouds o’ertake me in my way?” Our bard spun and picked up some speed to his gait.

“Don’t worry, we can walk and talk if you need to get somewhere.”

“Thou dost infect my eyes.”

“Well personal quips aside, are you planning on voting in the student elections?”

“I will be taking no such part in matters concerning idle kings.”

“Well maybe we can have a chat about what we do and perhaps I’ll change your mind?”

“Away, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish!”

The eyesore with flyers crumpled away and fell back to a dark crowd of friendlier folk. Our bard’s face was wrinkled with irritable grout that was evident to others who were handing out flyers and ignoring his gaze. He wore this expression all the way to the Baillieu and found it quite effective for avoiding political confabulation.

the desk, splayed in all directions in front of her and the empty chair by her side. Chloe looked up, spotted him and bunched up her books so he’d have a place to sit down.

“How ya going, mate?”

“I am undone by the fools of this academy who preach their lust for power.”

“Lust is quite a strong word, mate.”

“Marry, that was the intended design of the utterance.”

“So who are you going to vote for?”

“I will not lower my mind to such matters.”

“Yeah, fair enough. Hey, I’m going to a pub quiz night tonight. Do you want to come along?”

“I apologise, Chloe. I understand I am pleasant to the eye, and perhaps other parts too, but I must remain loyal to my country back home.”

“What the fuck?”

“I wish nothing we would discuss more, and I am flattered you would like to be my sheath, but I must keep fighting with my bare bodkin, for that hand of sweet Anne.”

“Dude, seriously! Fuck the fuck off. It’s a pub night. Stop thinking with your fucking dick.”

“Prithee, be more subtle with your talk of ill things.”

“Mate, you weren’t being subtle. You think you were, but you really weren’t. I want to be your sheath? Seriously fuck off.”

Chloe gathered up her books and held them close to her side as she stood up and walked out of the room, quite visibly upset. Our bard didn’t understand the act of going out with a platonic friend of the opposite sex. It just didn’t make sense to him. He was from a time of the past, and the present still spoke in such foreign ways. He tapped his hands on the table and felt a great mass mete his gut. He knew he’d upset Chloe, but he didn’t know why and hadn’t power or skill to make any change. He slowly took off his splayed backwards cap, he felt undeserving of its modern flavour. Once again he felt bound to the societal norms of his childhood.

The gates of the Baillieu magically slid open as Shakespeare approached them, as if welcoming him to its literary realms, free from those wanting talk of student elections. He scanned the room and walked about for a bit, looking for a place he could rest. Most of the seats were taken by academic fiends who were sleeping, stealing the air from the studious. He eventually found Chloe, her books spread completely across

As Shakespeare scurried out from the Baillieu, a deluge of unpleasantness swarmed against him in the form of many knaves carrying flyers, all in colourful dress. He was in a melancholic mood and found their pressing behaviour worsened his state. He learnt a new expression from Chloe that day that he found quite effective. He told them to fuck the fuck off.

hakespeare ambled passed the Sidney Myer Asia Centre and twisted around into Monash Rd. A cheerful-looking woman in a colourful scarf waved with one hand while the other held a collection of flyers.

ART BY BETHANY CHERRY

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OFFICE BEARER REPORTS PRESIDENT | DESIREE CAI Semester is flying by, all the more reason to get involved with your Student Union!

A bit of an update from me: construction and design for the Student Precinct, which will soon be UMSU’s new home, is rolling along due for completion in 2021.

All the construction you’ll have seen from the 1888 building up to Alice Hoy is happening to build this new hub for students. Other regular events and campaigns have been chugging along smoothly here at UMSU. Whether you’re into activism and fighting for workers rights (join Syndicate, the workers rights collective) or volunteering (join the welfare department’s Community Involvement Program) or just chilling out and hanging out (find free food at weekly collectives), get involved!

GENERAL SECRETARY | DANIEL BERATIS There’s a lot going on with UMSU this month, so let’s dive right in! Make sure you come to the Special General Meetings scheduled to take place just before Beers, Bands and BBQs in North Court on Tuesday, the 28th of August. We’ll be voting on a change in independent financial auditor, which will make sure that student funds are continuing to be used appropriately, as well as considering amendments to the Constitution of UMSU. Every student has a vote, so make sure you use yours!

Students’ Council--the board of directors of UMSU, made entirely of students--and Committees--who help run individual departments--are also meeting regularly, so check out the UMSU website for more details!

ACTIVITIES | JORDAN TOCHNER AND ALEX FIELDEN

Thank you so much to everyone who came to Winter Wonderland! The vibes were fab and so were the tacos. We’ll be putting photos up soon of North Court looking GORGEOUS and you guys looking even GORGEOUSER so keep a look out for that.

Coming up next we have our Trivia Night on August 15th. The event for that will be coming up very soon so make sure to start getting together your tables of 10 (there may or may not be Oktoberfest tickets up for grab – BIG). Speaking of, plans are in the works for Oktoberfest (rumour has it the mugs are bigger this time around but honestly who knows at this point). LOVE YOU

BURNLEY | JAMES BARCLAY We are in the home stretch of 2018’s winter months, a season predicted by meteorologists to be the coldest on record. However, as this chapter comes to a close we find ourselves within a fluctuating landscape. For the coldest winter on record there is an abundance of short sleeves and hot pants. Crops are flowering early in anticipation of some of that sweet bee action and I find myself regretting this jacket beanie combo that ultimately weighs down my day.

The elephant in the room told us this would happen but has always been vague on how it will all play out. Are longer flowering seasons better for crops? It is kind of nice having blue skies and short shorts in July but what’s going to be the ultimate impact of an evolving global ecosystem? All we know is that evolution doesn’t occur without casualties, the snow was still pretty good though.

CLUBS AND SOCIETIES | MATTHEW SIMKISS AND NELLIE SEALE

WinterFest is over but winter sure isn’t. What a great time to stay inside and get involved in club activities. Catch up with old friends that you didn’t get to see over the break or join some new clubs and meet new people. We’re keeping busy looking at rolling out some great new changes to the department from an administration perspective to make the lives of those who run those great club events even easier. Alcohol will be more streamlined, room bookings centralized and our information more comprehensive and easy to access.

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OFFICE BEARER REPORTS CREATIVE ARTS | FREYA MCGRATH AND ASHLEIGH MORRIS

TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTE IT! TASTINGS 18 22ND – 25TH AUG GUILD THEATRE

DISABILITIES | JACINTA DOWE AND HIEN NGUYEN

AUSLAN classes!! Starting 22 August, level one and two classes will run every Wednesday, from 3–5pm.

For more details, check out UMSU Disability Department events page on Facebook. #SuckItAbleism: The Straw Ban Controversy and Accessibility in Environmental Activism When: Friday 24 August, 2pm Where: Joe Nap A, level two, Union House Weekly collectives run in training room one, level three, Union House: Anxiety Support Group/Mental Wellness Collective: alternating Tuesdays 4:15-5:15 Disability Collective: Thursdays 1pm-2pm.

(Come nap with us. There will be free food.)

EDUCATION (ACADEMIC) | ALICE SMITH AND TOBY SILCOCK

Hi everyone, hope you’re enjoying semester two. If you’ve realised that your lectures aren’t recorded, tell us! If you’ve had a crap experience at Stop 1, tell us!

If one of your subjects is using the Cadmus program, tell us! You can let us know at our website www.umsu.unimelb.edu.au/support/eduacademic or chuck us a message at www.facebook.com/umsueducation. Make sure you come along to our trivia night for Women in Higher Education Week on 20 August, which is open to everyone and is complete with free food. Also, if you’re a sad final year job hunter like us check out the new digital university transcripts. They are much cheaper than a hard copy and perfect for the endless job applications you’re completing this year (fuck the job market).

EDUCATION (PUBLIC) | CONOR CLEMENTS

Things have been off to a pretty wild start this semester! Our workers’ rights collective, Syndicate, is going to be running workshops semi-regularly in our efforts to encourage workers in the businesses at Union House to join their respective trade unions, but these are open to anyone! Our goal is to educate as many people as we can on what their rights are in the workplace, and find out who they can turn to if things go wrong. Keep an eye on our Facebook page to stay up to date.

Also, as part of Enviro Week, we’ll be running a workshop analysing the way in which universities funnel students towards employment in fields that invariably affect the world around us in negative ways.

ENVIRONMENT | CALLUM SIMPSON AND LUCY TURTON

ENVIRO WEEK! ENVIRO WEEK! WEEK 5! 20TH-24TH AUGUST!! Week-long workshops, lunches, panels, stalls, forums, and discussions, focused on ‘beyond climate change’ and the intersections of climate and social justice. We’ll have workshops from the People of Colour, Disabilities, Queer, Women’s, and Creative Arts Departments, skillshares on dumpster-diving and climate change 101, stalls in North Court where local campaigns and grassroots groups will share their passions and show you how to get involved, as well as a big party at the end of the week.

Expect radical activism, politics, environmentalism, friend-making, and collectivebuilding.

Find the full program online at https://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/studentlife/ environment/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/umsuenviro/.

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CAMPUS

OFFICE BEARER REPORTS INDIGENOUS | ALEXANDRA HOHOI

No OB report submitted.

PEOPLE OF COLOUR | REEM FAIQ AND HIRUNI WALIMUNIGE

The People of Colour department is excited to bring you weekly events and activities to engage you outside your white campus and its white centric curriculums! Our weekly social, Film Screenings and Reading Group collectives are back from week two. We also have plenty of events outside of our weekly collectives, like inter-departmental collaborations, such as the environment department’s Enviro Week in week five, which we are excited to be contributing to! Our events for the week can be found on social media, find us on Facebook at UMSU People of Colour for more details! Lastly, there’s not long now until submissions for Myriad, the PoC department’s publication, close. Check out our social media for submission guidelines and keep an eye out for the launch!

QUEER | MILLY REEVES AND ELINOR MILLS

Your favourite gays have been getting up to all sorts of cool things this semester.

We ran our Indoor Picnic and our Gender-Free Clothing Swap for Winterfest, so we’re all hopefully making it through the cold with full bellies and incredible new looks. We had a beautiful forum down at Southbank to make sure the arty gays know we love and support them. Our regular collectives—Queer Lunch, Trans Collective, QPoC Collective, and Queer Political Action Collective—are chugging along as always! Best of all, we’re gearing up for THE queer event of the year: Pride Ball! Rumours are swirling about a slushie machine, a doughnut wall, even more free glitter, and a ludicrous bar tab...

VCA | LILY EKINS

Hello from the VCA! Semester is in full swing at Southbank Campus. Our weekly events are back, including Wednesday free lunches from 12:30pm behind Red Shed and free yoga and group exercise on Tuesdays and Thursdays respectively, at 1:15pm in the Theatre Performing Arts Building, studio six. We’re also looking forward to queer department coming down on Tuesday to host a Southbank queer students forum! To keep up to date with the southbank department’s activities, throw our page VCA Student Association a follow. To find out about about volunteering opportunities, events or to join our team of mover-shakers, join our group VCA / MCM Collective.

WELFARE | MICHAEL AGUILERA AND CECILIA WIDJOJO

Your welfare officers reporting back to you :D. We had our CIP launch party (aka Welfare volunteering program) which is great! We had around 100 applications and that was amazing! Also, Welfare is back on everyday Breakfast in The Ida except on Thursday (North Court). So please come and say hi. We also have our wellness classes back on and those are Yoga (5pm-6pm on Tuesdays in Training Rooms) and Meditation (4–5pm on Tuesdays in Graham Cornish) and Zumba (4–5pm in Training Rooms). THEY ARE ALL FREE! Also, by this point we would have had our Syndicate launch so watch out for that. Syndicate is our joint campaign with Education department to advocate for workers rights and feel free to participate and chuck us a message!

WOMEN’S | MOLLY WILLMOTT AND KAREENA DHALIWAL

Weekly collectives! Judy’s Punch! ALSO week four is Women in Higher Education week! We’ll be highlighting the achievements of women and non-binary people in academia, as well as the struggles we continue to face. Our friends in the education department are running a trivia night, and we’re working on an event with the National Tertiary Education Union to look at how sexism in education affects both staff and students. Following on from our 1 August rally, we need your continued help to hold universities accountable. Talk to us to find out how you can get involved in the campaign. Lastly, make someone’s dreams come true and go vote in the UMSU elections! We wouldn’t have gotten this amazing job if students hadn’t elected us <3

20

THE GRUB

LECTURER READING OFF SLIDES REPLACED BY ALEXA AND NOBODY NOTICES S

tudents enrolled in UNIB10019 Italian Patisserie were dismayed to discover last week that the soothing voice of their professor was in fact Amazon Alexa in disguise. The virtual assistant spent the lecture reading paragraphs directly off the slides in lieu of Professor Hopkins, who was ill that day.

Nobody noticed until the end of the class. The Grub has since spoken to second-year student Miles Rutherford who attended the lecture.

“It’s hard to stay focused in that class, but I’m still surprised nobody looked up and saw that our lecturer was a black cylinder on a desk”, said Mr Rutherford.

Students became suspicious when Alexa started playing David Bowie songs on shuffle.

“At first we were all so impressed! We were like, damn! She can sing really well. But then she started doing the instruments

as well and we’re like, nah, something’s fishy here”.

Professor Hopkins ostensibly caught a cold last Tuesday and so bought the device to deliver her lecture, believing it would reach her high standards of dictation when presented with a prewritten slab of text. She has since been reprimanded by the University, who have told her she should have bought a Google Echo instead.

“Google Echo is a far more engaging than Alexa, even exceeding some of our best lecturers in liveliness,” said spokesperson from the University of Melbourne, Chloe Henderson.

“It’s disappointing that Ms Hopkins chose a dull medium to deliver her two-hour lecture about bread.”

Ms Henderson declined to comment on the University’s rumoured plans to replace all lecturers with Google Echo.

HOW TO TELL PEOPLE YOU GOT AN H1 WITHOUT ALIENATING THEM I

t’s the question that every uni student dreads: “How did you go on the last assignment?” You search for a humble answer, but all you have to draw on is incontrovertible evidence of your excellence—an H1 (80–100 per cent). Plus, you just heard your classmate say they got an H2B. If you’re like me, this happens allllllll the time. Now, you probably think I’m a prick for saying that. This is because we live in Australia, where it’s against the law to express your self-worth through any channel other than problem drinking or victimising the less fortunate. If you’re big-time raking in H1s left and right (like me), how do you navigate this minefield? Let’s find out together!

1. Own it, humbly but proudly. Psychologically healthy, but highly risky. People who didn’t get H1s will feel bad, and people who did will see you as a threat. Remember, these are your peers.

2. Act like it was a mistake. Play dumb. Pretend like you had no idea what you were doing, what the assignment was, or even what an assignment is. Say that lightning struck your computer, and when it booted up your assignment was done.

3. Tell people you cheated. You may risk expulsion, but you really don’t want people to think you’re a tall poppy. Tell them you got blackout drunk, broke into the faculty office and changed your grade.

4. Say you got hit on the head by the textbook and when you woke up you knew everything. Pretty selfexplanatory.

5. Lie. Of course, this isn’t “telling them,” but it’s probably your safest option. Say you got a civilised H2B. Better yet, tell them you almost got an H1—you just missed out by two per cent! Everyone loves an almost-made-it story, especially when you don’t make it, because then you’re not up yourself!

ART BY CATHY CHEN

21

NONFICTION

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DEAF STUDENT

BY MATILDA CARNEGIE

I

wake up to something vibrating in my bra. There’s a moment of groggy incomprehension before I remember what it is. Pulling the still-buzzing phone out, I glance at the time: 7:00am. At least I managed to sleep through the noise of the garbage trucks, one of the silver linings of being deaf!

I switch the phone off and get out of bed. It’s not the most traditional of alarm clocks, I know. Often I’ll just use my fitbit strapped to my wrist, but it wasn’t working last night, so I had to improvise. Still, these little life hacks make for funny stories and help break the tension when discussing my disability. I was diagnosed as profoundly deaf when I was a baby, which means I can’t hear anything at all. The doctors told my parents I wouldn’t be able to hear a drill boring into concrete, even if it was right next to me. Being deaf makes me feel insecure sometimes, so when I was younger, I would avoid talking about it at all costs. But over time I realised that if I’m not comfortable with my disability, other people won’t be either.

It’s time to face another day. Gym’s the first thing on the agenda, so I quickly throw on my workout gear and switch on my cochlear implant. The implant sits on top of my skin above the ear, nicely camouflaged by my brown curly hair. I like that people don’t see it straight off the bat; it gives me the opportunity to introduce my disability on my own terms. Next, I plug a special chord into my iPhone and attach the other end to my cochlear implant. This allows me to listen to music and works in the same way as headphones. I can’t actually hear the lyrics of songs. When you’re deaf, your ability to differentiate the nuances of sound is reduced, so with instruments playing over the top, all words merge into one overall sound. For that reason, I love songs with a good beat, especially Ministry of Sound. Playing aggressive music gets me up and about for the gym (or that’s what I tell myself).

I head over to the gym from the residential college where I

22

stay during the semester, often with a cigarette in hand (ironic, I know). I took up smoking in high school because being there made me feel dehumanised. I wanted to look cool, and if I could do it while shocking others, all the better. Sometimes, people seem to hold up those with disabilities as some kind of “inspiration”, and smoking was my way of telling them to stuff it. Hopping on the cross trainer, I have to take out my cochlear implant because sweat stops it working. Although this may seem inconvenient, I relish the chance to literally unplug for another forty minutes. Instead, I open up Netflix on my phone and tune in to the most recent episode of Riverdale (I totally ship Cheryl and Toni). Luckily, my 20/20 vision makes reading the small subtitles on my phone easy. I head back to college and get ready for uni, trying to figure out how I’m going to get my tutorial participation mark without having done the readings for the last month.

There’s a preconception out there that cochlear implants or hearing aids miraculously fix a person’s hearing, but this isn’t the case. Essentially, the implant absorbs sound vibrations in the atmosphere and transports them to the brain. Simple in theory, but there’s a lot of sound out there so it’s no surprise that some of it is missed. If I concentrate really hard, I can hear about 60 to 70 per cent of what happens in a tute. Most people don’t realise this, but that level of concentration is exhausting, which often serves as a brutal reminder that being deaf clouds my life with isolation and loneliness. Imagine trying to listen to someone with a heavy accent, who happens to be underwater! Sometimes, it is easier for me to just zone out completely. Of course, this can be awkward, like this one time in a criminal law tute, when the tutor asked me a question after I’d stopped listening. So I had to throw an answer out there in the hope that it was relevant. It wasn’t, and I was left with everyone staring at me.

ART BY NICOLA DOBINSON

NONFICTION

This can be embarrassing but doesn’t prevent me from piping up about a controversial topic from time to time. I once had a development studies tutorial where we were debating how tax should be used to aid developing countries. Let’s just say that I got very passionate—how on earth can developing countries be expected to compete against developed nations without any help?—and everyone, including the tutor, was clapping and laughing!

My next class is an international politics lecture. On the way, I pass someone I know well enough to say “hi” to, but not so well that I’d feel comfortable having a conversation with them, a situation we can all relate to. Luckily, I can pretend I can’t hear them and just walk past! In a big crowded lecture theatre, I can never hear what the lecturer is saying, so the University provides a note taker who takes notes for me.

Usually, it’s a different person for each subject; they’re all very professional and just want to help you get the most out of your education. I realise I’m blessed to be in an environment where I have the support to flourish in my studies, but I do feel concerned for other people with disabilities who haven’t been as lucky as I have. Still, like most students, I definitely prefer the comfort of my bed over a cold lecture theatre, so I usually just watch lectures online using my special chord on double speed.

Yay, it’s finally lunchtime—eating is a rather passionate hobby of mine! I meet up with a friend at Dr Dax and order the tomato, basil and mozzarella sandwich and a coffee.

Once my friend has ordered, we look for a place to sit that is quiet enough for me to hear. If the weather is nice enough, I like to go outside where it’s quieter. Luckily, all my friends are supportive, even when some days are colder than others.

When the food arrives, I take a bite of my sandwich, savouring the freshness of the tomato, the creaminess of the mozzarella and—let’s be real—just the general feel-good sensation we all get from eating carbs. They say that if one sense is missing, the others are heightened and I can absolutely attest to this.

Soon, my friend and I are chatting away. One-on-one social situations have always been easiest for me, as I can hear about

80 per cent of what is said, and lip-reading fills in some of the blanks. Other situations are more difficult. You know that moment where you’ve asked someone to repeat themselves three times and you still can’t understand what they’re saying, so you just awkwardly smile and nod? Yeah, that’s me about 40 times a day. On a good day. Like most people, I enjoy socialising and meeting new people, but the exhaustion does take its toll on me. Some days it converts to grumpiness or even anger at those around me. But today is not one of those days, and my friend and I are soon lost in conversation about how our Tinder love lives are going.

After all this, I head back to college with ambitious plans to be really productive and studious, but in reality, Netflix and Facebook are more appealing options. If the day has been particularly draining, I might even chuck in an unscheduled two-hour nap. Dinner rolls around at 6:30pm and it’s a good chance to catch up with college friends. We’re all chatting about how our days have gone and what costumes we’re wearing for the upcoming college costume party. Even when I’m around great people, group conversations can be isolating.

Missing the joke that has everyone else in hysterics never gets any easier. After dinner, sometimes I’ll study, which really involves tearing my hair out over four 2,500-word essays due within a week of each other (something I think all Arts students can relate to). Usually, I just watch Netflix, vibing shows such as Blacklist or Queer Eye, and calling it a day at 11:00pm.

Society imposes a weird and false dichotomy on people with disabilities (PWD). They’re expected to be either tragically dysfunctional or an inspiration for others (think Paralympians or Stephen Hawking). But as many PWD (myself included) will tell you, these stereotypes are bollocks. We’re people like anyone else, and I hope this insight into my life shows that.

Sometimes I love helping others, yet sometimes I struggle with life and get wrapped up in my own problems. Sometimes I love to socialise; at others I prefer to be alone. Sometimes I take myself seriously, but I also love to take the piss out of myself. No matter what, I am always human.

ART BY NICOLA DOBINSON

23

TRAVEL

ELEGEIA

DANIEL BERATIS ON MAKING A HOME

A

t a younger age, surrounded by those of more means, tales of the snow enraptured me.

I had never seen snow. I knew, roughly, what it was supposed to look like—white, fluffy perhaps, falling from the sky—but I had never seen it, nor touched it, nor even been in the general vicinity of it. People would talk—people do talk— about their trips to the various fields: Bulla, Hotham—I believe Falls Creek is one—and I would be fascinated by that: the ability to up and leave.

It wasn’t the concept of having a holiday. I took my holidays well; I spent weeks in the house; I didn’t do work when I didn’t need to. But I was enchanted—enraptured, as above—by these different worlds so close to home. How, by driving just a couple hours east or west or north, you could forget that this is where you lived, that this was your home. You’d be somewhere else. Somewhere with a plenitude of snow, and not a care in the world—a place entirely new and altogether unfamiliar. A place to be learned.

I desperately did not want to go to an Australian university.

I saw the future stretching out before me—and I had a new contact lens prescription, so I could see it quite well—and there was still so much to learn. If I stayed here, I’d try for Melbourne—sure—but even that felt like settling. It was acknowledging that this would always be my home—that my freedom to build a home elsewhere would be shot. I recoiled at that loss.

I fought with my parents, as a 17-year-old with not much sense of the wider world would. I yelled at them, pleaded with them, and set my own path regardless. I drafted essays into the night, sat the SATs, paid hundreds. The far-off heart of America beckoned—it was a light that drew my desperation, and I demanded to follow it.

We only really see America on the television. You can travel there—of course you can travel there—but the pretext of the television will inform everything you think. And on the

24

television is the flag, and college parties, and snow. In the winter, ploughs driving through the streets. In the summer, tank tops and fireworks. The county fair. The downtown bar.

First kisses in the moonlight.

It was nothing I knew. And you have to learn things you do not know.

Most universities shrugged and said no. I needed financial aid, and no college with the ability chose me. Some considered, told me to wait, put me on a list—but they, too, moved on. It wounded me. I resigned myself. I made a home here.

It was luck, and a last-minute memory, which reopened the wound.

My dreams lay dormant, until I remembered—the day before applications closed—that I could simply just go to America. On exchange. I could just do that.

I was lucky, in that I could now summon the means to go through loans and scholarships. It was an adventure, ostensibly—but in the back of my mind, as I submitted the application, as I prepared my visa and boarded my flight, I was resolving a question from years before. Universities had said no, but now I could say yes. I dreamed, night after night, of leafy campuses, and red Solo cups, and footprints in the snow.

In central Pennsylvania, when the DHC-8 touched down on the single runway, and the 48 of us on board alighted, I had a two-person room all to myself, on the very top floor of Beaver Hall. All around me, the campus stretched. My roommate never showed up, and the space became mine. I pushed two single beds together to make a double. I kept the window open, letting the air blow in as I overlooked Redifer Commons across McKean Road. I bought speakers and played Spotify’s Creativity Boost playlist every day.

I never called my parents much. Once every fortnight, I’d ring and say hello. This was no revenge—they saw an illdirected passion in me years earlier, and I did not begrudge

ART BY SHARON HUANG LIANG

TRAVEL

them that—but I did not need to hear their voice. This place was comfort enough. I knew the best places for food: Big Bowl, on East College; Gumby’s, for late-night pizza. I knew where in town my friends lived, whether Americana or the Meridian. I started telling people that I had class in the morning, and that I had to head home.

I did not ignore Melbourne, or Australia. I did perform them. I broadened my accent, on impulse, in social settings.

I dressed as Australia for Halloweekend. I used Australian experiences in American assessments. I was an item on a club’s end-of-year scavenger hunt-cum-case race: “someone with an Australian accent”. On my wall hung two flags—one, Australian; one, Victorian.

I was invited to parties, and I ventured far from campus into the small college town and into the tinier suburbs thereof.

The winter was unseasonably warm, but the temperatures still dropped. I experienced my first sub-zero day. I bought gloves, boots and a parka in preparation. I saw my first snow.

It was fluffy to the eye, but powdery to the touch and very wet. It fell, but you barely noticed it until it became heavy. It collected on the ground and became a dream. It was certainly white. In February, I threw a snowball at a friend, and I lay outside Old Main under the fluttering flag of Pennsylvania and of these United States, and created an angel with my arms and legs. I always hoped I would do that.

A snowstorm came early in the new year, and the temperature hit negative 18. I dressed up for war against the elements, and I trudged for 20 minutes, feeling warm in the blizzarding cold. I left boot-shaped prints in the piles of snow and kicked over what I could. I left a trail of destruction down South Allen Street; all that natural snow-laid beauty, touched by me. I laughed, audibly, and learned what resolution felt like.

I didn’t stop thinking about it all night.

In my final month, I travelled the east coast. I saw new sights. But it was different. I was fleeting, as I moved through city after city. It felt like a dream. It felt like a fantasy. It didn’t

feel real. And it was only a means to an end—to travel back home.

The general thing about going on exchange is that you never shut up about it afterwards. Everyone’s got at least one friend who “absolutely loved Barca” and shoehorns it into every third or fourth conversation once they’re back. They’ve done the Ryanair flights around Europe, they hit up the east and west coasts—they’ve truly had the time of their lives. And they will not shut up about it.

It has been two years since I boarded a flight out of Los Angeles, with a Qantas livery, and started back to Melbourne.

I landed, and everything had slightly shifted on its axis. Faces I knew were no longer there. New people assumed their place in my life. A year changes a lot—and it had been a long year.

And I never shut up. Every sixth or seventh sentence—“This one time, when I was in America—” and the mocking would resume. I would do the same. It made sense. But there is an unease, because I would do the same, but I should not do it now.

When I landed in America, for the first time, in the sweltering heat of the Pennsylvania summer, Melbourne was still my home. But as I began to learn the intricacies of the future I had finally reached, part of me began to stick. Part of me began to shift. I would wake each day on the eighth floor of Beaver and leave my home. I would go about my business, and return in the evening, and seek comfort in my home. And all around me would be where I made my home. Melbourne is still my home. But I am lucky to have means now—in a very particular way—to create a home.

I should not do the same now. Maybe to people who call it “Barca”, but even then, I would struggle. You don’t leave things behind when you live in one place for that long. But you change, and those changes stick.

And you begin to recognise a home.

ART BY SHARON HUANG LIANG

25

POLITICS

WE KNOW WHAT YOU’RE ALL ABOUT H

CAM DOIG ON HOW TO BUILD A COMMUNITY ON TAX JUSTICE

ere’s the wrong way to govern: listen to what the wealthy and powerful want, then work backwards to an argument for why it’s good for ordinary people.

Here’s the right way to govern: don’t worry about what the power-brokers want. It’s usually bad for the rest of us. Just listen to what ordinary people need, then deliver.

Australians say they need tax justice to combat growing inequality, not tax cuts for Gina Rinehart. So why cut corporate tax by $35 billion dollars?

Australia’s corporate titans say the cuts will create jobs, and boost wages. Garbage. Just ask businesses what they’ll do with the extra cash. In March, a survey by the Business Council of Australia (BCA) found 80 per cent of CEOs would give the money to shareholders, or increase capital expenditure, instead of increasing wages or hiring staff. This reveals the tax cuts for what they are: a handout to the investor class.

Freeing up corporate money doesn’t free it up for workers.

We can see this in the behaviour of small businesses who’ve already received a cut—less than 20 per cent hired new people, barely three per cent increased wages, but over 50 per cent banked the cash. Similarly, Bloomberg reported that Trump’s corporate tax cuts in the US saw “huge, immediate gains for wealthy shareholders combined with tepid increases in business investment and decreases in real wages [which doesn’t] paint a flattering picture of the tax cut’s impact so far”.

In fact, what actually changes pay and conditions is workers fighting for control of their workplaces.

If we ask who’s paying for these cuts, we see it’s not just workers getting conned. There’s three options for who’ll foot the bill. First, the cuts might pay for themselves by stimulating “a significant and sustained increase in business investment” to increase the tax base, and therefore total revenue. But the BCA survey, the conduct of Australia’s small businesses, and the US example indicate that most of the money will disappear into corporate coffers. Second, the government could slap other, less-well-off groups with taxes to make up the revenue shortfall. But the Parliamentary Budget Office has expressed concern that the cuts are not being matched by removing concessions or adding new taxes, putting “downward pressure on company tax receipts as a share of GDP”. Third, we could cut social spending.

This third outcome would be the most serious. Slashing tax guts the government’s ability to support essential services: Centrelink, health, transport, and education. People rely on these services every day, and would rather keep them than give the yacht-club class a tax holiday. A national poll by the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) this year found that reducing corporate tax was one of the least important issues for Australians. But high-quality public hospitals, aged care, and increasing the pension were Australians’ top priorities.

CEDA observed that corporate tax giveaways are harder to sell when “the community feels removed from the benefits or have lost trust that the benefits from growth will be broadly shared.” The Australian body politic is responding accordingly, trying to vomit back up the tax cuts like the rotten offering they are.

People are locked out of growth, and they’re angry— especially since the banking royal commission exposed corporate Australia’s culture of criminality and lawlessness.

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The shameless pursuit of tax cuts for the banks despite the commission’s findings recalls Warren Buffett’s famous reflection on class war: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

It’s not just banks preying on the community. In 2016, we learned that one third of Australia’s biggest companies paid zero tax in the 2014-15 financial year. Among them was USbased energy giant Esso—who sacked 200 workers through their subcontractor UGL last year. In the same year, Esso pulled in $18 billion in revenue. But they haven’t paid a cent of corporate tax since 2013. Why reward them with a tax cut?

Ordinary people have seen wage growth tracking inflation, while watching a record number of companies profit. It enrages workers on a median wage of $53,000 to see the rentier class trying to cram even more of our wealth into their bulging pockets. These are the multinational predators that hid $4.8 billion of Australia’s revenue in offshore tax havens in 2014. Why give them a birthday present? In fact, why bother giving companies tax cuts, if they’re planning to just dodge the tax anyway? These are not responsible social actors or benevolent wealth creators. They are enemies of the community, parasites, hoarding caverns of wealth away from workers, welfare recipients, patients, and students.

Think of what we could do for our community if we turned these vampires upside-down and really shook them. A recent piece by the ABC—itself a well-loved, tax-funded national treasure—explored why high-taxing Scandinavian states top the UN’s World Happiness Scale. It made the connections between high taxes; a large and well-unionised public sector; genuinely liveable welfare benefits; and free high-quality health, transport, and education. Denmark even provides free childcare.

The Scandinavian model should guide how we satisfy human need. Not by slashing tax, then using budgetary constraints as an excuse to cut and privatise aged care, childcare, hospitals, disability support and TAFE. If we take that path, we know the results: malnourished and abused elderly people, and predatory salesmen offering a substandard education.

Students discussing tax and equality should ask who is best placed to fund our public universities: the money-gorged corporates, or us? Modelling by the Parliamentary Budget Office shows that providing students with three years of free tertiary education would cost $27 billion over the next decade.

This would free our younger siblings from the HECS debt burden. But it would also require the corporate elite giving back to the community whose resources they drain. We can fund high-quality essential services like free higher education, but not if we lob $35 billion to the corporate jackals.

To resurrect the notion of the public good in Australia, we need to define ordinary people’s interests against the interests of the big polluters, layoff artists, and tax-evaders. Regulatory capture is eroding our capacity to provide for the community.

So we have a choice.

We can build a caring society based on mutual aid and solidarity.

Or we can let corporate Australia tighten its chokehold on our community.

It’s up to us.

ART BY YEDDA WANG

FILM

WHO IS THAT GIRL I SEE? W

NEALA GUO ON MULAN

atching Mulan is like finding Pringles in your pantry and then realising they are the budget kind. Underwhelming, but hey, I’ll take budget Pringles over no Pringles any day!

Bad analogies aside, it’s a film that most would view as a revolutionary portrayal of Asian women, and for the most part, it is. There’s plenty to love about soliloquies that are sung whilst staring into one’s reflection in a pond, and lizards named after a Chinese pork dish. Though the film is far from being an anthem for us yellow women, it is, at the very least, an animated trailblazer of its time.

Mulan was the film that broke the long tradition of portraying us as a tragic fetish. Besides the dragon lady trope, Mulan is the first mainstream characterisation of a Chinese woman that hasn’t been a pathetic damsel. We have watched film after film where girls with features like ours cry more than they speak, whose plotlines always seem to involve falling in love with white soldiers and killing themselves after being abandoned. Girls whose characters exist not to advance the plot but to serve as racially exotic porn fantasies: silent, submissive, and most importantly, fuckable. Importantly, Mulan can hardly be called submissive or helpless as she battles a Hun and somehow wins by using a decorative paper fan. Mulan is undoubtedly a refreshing departure from the portrayal of Asian women as weak creatures who easily crumble like the butterfly shells and silk gowns men see when they offer to buy them a drink. Whilst Mulan isn’t necessarily the film which marks an end to this fetishisation, it is definitely a remarkable detour.

The filmmakers’ attempt at accurately depicting Chinese culture was a mixed bag. Mulan is commendable in many aspects, but the cultural elements the film do feel very Americanised. We get an huge visual dump of Chinese lanterns and traditional lion dance and pagodas and the iconic Great Wall, all of which might as well have been ripped from a tacky travel brochure. Comically, all of the breakfast orders sound like they’ve been read off the menu of an Americanised Chinese restaurant, I mean, “sweet and pungent shrimp”? Come

on. There’s a huge difference between authentic Chinese food, and bastardised Chinese food. Undoubtedly, the directors were trying to appeal to a Caucasian audience by making everything seem as exotically Chinese as possible. However, this had the unfortunate side effect of making the film feel like the playing out of Western fantasies of the Far East. Even the storyline has a Westernised feel to it: Mulan is about an individual discovering themselves, whereas Chinese teachings are rooted in community. Yet, for all its cultural flimsiness, I take my hat off to the ending of the film, which carefully reflects the extent to which Chinese culture treasures family.

The visual landscape, also, was fantastic, so mad props to the directors who actually went to China and did their research.

The value of the main character being given an actual Chinese name is immeasurable in its worth. The name Mulan isn’t overwhelmingly significant to the plot, but it is significant to us who have always hated our surnames. Most of this selfhatred is slow and unrecognised, the inevitable result of years of watching films where the names are always white ones. In some ways it’s a warped Shakespearean moment: what’s in a name?, particularly when you realise that girls who look like you always seem to have names that are less “Chang” and more “Dunne”, as if our names are deemed less mellifluous because they aren’t Western ones. Some of our childhood memories include cringing over full name introductions, hearing the syllables of your surname which jarred in your ears like wrong chords. Our tongues have often stumbled over the hot shame of hearing a boy in our class make a joke about our names sounding like a fork dropped down the stairs, in the name of harmless playground fun. The value of a proper Chinese name being used is, fittingly, immeasurable in its worth.

Mulan is an excellent film which does a really good job of preserving some culturally accurate elements, whilst not doing so great a job at others. One last thing though, why is nobody talking about the fact that Mulan’s rice porridge had bacon and two fried eggs in it?!

ART BY SHARON HUANG LIANG

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ART BY LUKE MACARONAS

TRENT VU PRESENTS... FODDER FEATURE:

RADIO FODDER STATION MANAGERS W

hen I first applied to host a show on Radio Fodder in 2016, the station had only been around for a year or so.

At this stage, it was run by the media officers with the help of some dedicated volunteers. Being split between a bunch of different obligations, the Farrago editors didn’t always have the time to help us out. Realising this, this year’s editors created positions for two station managers to help nurture Radio Fodder and its roster of talent.

Over the winter break, I had the chance to catch up with Radio Fodder’s very busy mum Carolyn Huane (Off Beet) and dad Conor Day (The Set List; A Currant, A Fair). I asked what sparked their love for radio, the best and most challenging parts of their roles, and their favourite Radio Fodder shows.

What’s the one song you could play over Radio Fodder for the rest of time, and why?

Carolyn: The one that comes to mind is ‘Green Light’ by Lorde. It makes me cry but also makes me want to dance, and that’s what I want for the listeners of Radio Fodder.

Conor: The natural answer is ‘Graceland’ by Paul Simon. It’s just one of the best songs ever.

Where did your passion for the medium of radio come from?

Conor: When I came over to Australia, I think I was kind of at that age when you get into the music scene. As I got more into music, I got into some American community stations and triple j. It was like the perfect storm.

Carolyn: I was very interested in the music scene in Melbourne; there was so much going on. One way of getting involved was by having a radio show. Through having one, I was like, “Wow! Radio is great!”

What do you think makes the medium of radio so special?

Carolyn: It makes people feel at home and at ease. Having the radio on in the background as an ambient thing can be so comforting. It’s also a great way to access new music or listen to stuff you already like. But you also feel like people are talking to you, and that you’re part of a community.

Conor: Community is a huge part of it. Radio relies on the audience wanting to tune in to shows they feel a part of.

What made you want to apply to manage Radio Fodder?

Carolyn: We both had shows, and having experienced doing that made us take a greater interest in running the station and wanting to help and make it better.

Conor: There were a few ideas I had and wanted to do.

Taking on this position meant that I would be able to do those.

What’s been the biggest challenge in your time as station managers?

Carolyn: I think something I realised was that we’re not going to be able to do everything we wanted to achieve. At the start, we were very ambitious. Obviously, it was great for us to be positive, but with just one year, we had to pick and choose things we were going to be able to do.

And the most rewarding part of your role?

Conor: It’s been lovely being able to help people do their show. Beforehand, while there was some support, there was obviously only so much time the [Farrago] editors could dedicate to Radio Fodder.

Carolyn: Being there and hearing about people’s shows, and how they’re going, and when they make milestones of getting cool guests…

Conor: Yeah, and when you hear someone say to you “I feel so much more confident in the studio”. Just seeing people enjoying themselves in the studio has been great.

If you had to name a favourite show on Radio Fodder, which would it be?

Conor: I really like Off Beet.

Carolyn: The Set List is pretty good, I guess.

Listen to Off Beet at 7pm Mondays on Radio Fodder as Carolyn and co-host Ashleigh talk to some great artists from the Melbourne music scene.

You can also hear Conor and co-host Alana chat to the artists at UMSU’s weekly Bands, Bevs & BBQs by searching for “The Set List” on your favourite podcast-streaming platform.

ART BY AMANI NASARUDIN

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PERSONAL

TEN THINGS I WISH I’D LEARNED BY NOW

BY A’BIDAH ZAID SHIRBEENI

D

ad always told me that life is full of lessons, that life is a journey where you don’t ever stop learning—no matter how old you get. Late last year, I learnt that if you boil your pasta in salted water, the pasta will taste a zillion times better (many thanks to my housemate for that quick tip). Earlier this year I learnt what it meant to do right by yourself—this was something I learnt the hard way. With that, here are ten things I wish I’d learned by now.

1. How to spell disappointment without being autocorrected. I’m a Bachelor of Arts student double majoring in Media and Communications and International Relations. My chosen career path is to be a journalist. Heck, I’m even writing this piece in hopes that Farrago would publish it in their next edition. But I can’t spell dissapointment to save my life, it’s embarassing.

2. How to spell embarrassing right. Refer to point one.

3. Know that not everyone has a heart like mine. Do unto others, as you want others do unto you. I lived by this quote for most of my life. I’m constantly reminding myself to be kind no matter the circumstances and to always treat others with respect. I try my best to keep the ones I love happy and I do not hesitate to go out of the way to help someone in need. But not everyone has a heart like mine. I protected a person’s honour only to have them demonise me behind my back. I loved a partner unconditionally and yet I was made to feel inadequate because I didn’t fit the mould he created for me. I’m learning that not everyone has a heart like mine and that just because I did good for a person, doesn’t mean I should expect a reciprocation at the same degree. That way I’d be less disappointed when a person I care for hurts me.

4. To call my mum consistently. After ghosting on my mum for an article, you’d think I’d learn to call her more frequently. Don’t get me wrong, I do call her. Sometimes I’ll call her three times a week, sometimes I’ll call her once a week and sometimes I don’t call her for three weeks. She doesn’t fuss over it, but I know she deserves better.

5. How to write legibly. I have problems reading my own handwriting. I’d blame it on speedwriting but I have to face the fact that I have a habit of not having a consistent look to my handwriting. Thus, making it a whole lot harder for me to determine what I’m writing. Sometimes the letters are rounded, sometimes they’re connected. Sometimes I dot my Is, sometimes I cross my Zs. Sometimes my Ls are in loops, other times they’re long and slanted. To make it even harder, my handwriting is often cursive.

6. How to stop procrastinating. Some people are lazybones, some people are funny bones. I’m the procrastination bone. This little, yet highly problematic trait,

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runs wild in my blood. I leave assignments to the last minute and I find myself not sleeping for over 24 hours because I’m stressing and crying over finishing two different assignments that are due on the same day. I don’t know why I do it and I really wish that there was an absolutely logical reason and explanation as to why I do. Each time I’m done with submissions, I wallow in self-hate. But when the next round of assignments comes, I don’t hesitate to procrastinate.

7. How to get rid of toxic people. Toxic people create unnecessary drama, are manipulative, controlling and are in all, incredibly damaging to the ones around them. I’ve met a number of people who are toxic and they come in varying forms. Sometimes they’re a close friend I’ve known for 10 years, sometimes they’re an old flame I thought I was destined to wed one day. And even though I know I should let them go, I find it exceptionally hard because I’ve invested an insane amount of time and effort in those relationships. Cutting strings and saying goodbye seemed almost like a waste, although I know that’s completely untrue.

8. To stop being a people pleaser. Dad placed really high standards for me to meet when I was growing up. Whenever I don’t meet those standards, he gets displeased and I, in turn, become disappointed in myself. Pleasing dad has now become a habit, and I shamefully admit that his approval still matters to me now just as much, and maybe even more, than it did then. I’ve grown accustomed to trying to please the people around me, and although it’s not entirely a bad thing to want to take extra care of the feelings of the people around you, it can backfire. People pleasers tend to care way too much about the people around that sometimes they forget to care for themselves. This brings me to my next point.

9. Self-care is important. My heart is too big for my body (and I’m a well-built 5 ft 11 female) and I fill my heart with caring for others. I just need to learn to care for myself the same way I care for others. I consistently have to remind myself that I matter and I’m worthy of that much care, love and attention that I give to others.

10. That it’s okay to not have it all together. Most people think I have my shit together and that I have all my ducks in a row. And truth be told, I’ve gotten being used to living up to that standard. But when life doesn’t go my way, I’d blame myself and point out all the things about me that aren’t that pretty. I’d ponder about what I could have done wrong or what I could have done right instead and it does my head in.

It’s incredibly unhealthy and emotionally draining. I have to learn that not everything has to be under my control, that it isn’t my fault, that I am enough and that it is okay to not have it all together all the time.

ART BY REBECCA FOWLER

FILM

SLEEPOVERS AND SERIAL KILLERS T

KAAVYA JHA ON HOW TO WATCH A HORROR MOVIE

he night sky is overcast and starless. You’re uneasily aware that nobody else is home and curl up inside a blanket in an attempt for comfort and reassurance. You shiver; the air in the shadowy room is ever-so-slightly too cold for your liking.

You draw yourself closer, preparing for the imminent disaster about to occur, and hit the play button on Netflix.

Surely that’s the best way of a watching horror movie, right?

Maybe not. During the winter holidays, I decided to spend a cold and uneventful evening binge-watching whatever latest horror movies just released on the site. Spoiler alert: the whole experience could be summarised by a single word, “meh”. The characters followed the same tired tropes ubiquitous in all major studio horror movies, best deconstructed by satirical The Cabin in the Woods. Stereotypical characters like the “jock” or the “nerd” reenact the same plot-advancing but unrealistic actions. Please, please just stop going into the basement if the lights aren’t working.

But my newfound cynicism for the horror genre surprised me. How come the fear factor just didn’t click? What was missing now that was present in the other films that I’d watched?

Well, it turns out that the missing item had nothing to do with the film itself but was more about what I was missing: my friends.

Horror movies evoke a myriad of emotions for their audiences. They can be disturbing, distressing, disgusting, and so on, but for my friends and me, the genre has become associated with nostalgia.

I definitely prefer it when the eerie synth soundtrack is perforated with hushed apologies of “sorry my hand is so sweaty” and soft pitter-patters of popcorn spilling onto the floor. Slasher films become a reason to nervously laugh as you dare each other not to look away as the screen becomes progressively more occupied by red. Just like those clichés from the movies, my friends and I had our designated hangout space, The Shed. Someone’s dad’s mancave taken over by a group of teenagers, it came with a sofa bed, a few spare mattresses, and a large wall-mounted TV that at one period of time exclusively played horror flicks torrented from the Pirate Bay. The rise in popularity of films and TV shows like Stranger Things and It suggest that I’m not alone in craving the nostalgic

feeling of being able to tackle any problem, no matter how big or scary, due to the strength and resilience of your friendships. Watching a wholesome group of friends beat the bad guys resonates with young people who are starting to face overwhelming expectations and responsibilities in their own realities.

However, gore is something that I absolutely cannot tolerate. I will leave immediately at first sight of a bone sticking out of a leg. But historically, violence has been associated with entertainment with gladiator fights and public executions— maybe partially explaining fans of the genre today.

Horror movies, on their Wikipedia page at least, are categorised under speculative fiction—a genre described as playing out the “what if?” scenarios. While the films’ primary and secondary goals are to create a profit for its studio and frighten the audience respectively, the genre can also reveal the unsettling fears and faults of society at large. Look no further than the phenomenal success of the 2017 Oscarwinning Get Out, an American horror movie that brings out an insidious form of racism that strikes uncomfortably close to home.

While some creations of speculative fiction explore realistic near-future dystopias, many horror films can uncover our anxieties more subtly. Unpleasant matters like drug addictions, unknown illnesses, politics-gone-wrong are shown via metaphor, while other horror films delving into the darker elements of human nature—such as jealousy, greed, or neglect—portrayed via the supernatural.

Horror movies, despite their attempts to petrify their viewers with depictions of the inhumane or supernatural, act as a catalyst for human connection. This can manifest in an assortment of ways depending on the mindset of their audience going into the viewing. The distinctiveness of the horror genre is that a single creation can promote discourse on painful issues while also existing as a way to watch your friends freak out to then laugh about later.

On a Friday afternoon after school had finished, a group of us decided to watch one the Conjuring movies at the local cinema. During one of the relatively creepier scenes, I turned to the friend sitting next to me hoping to share a small, queasy smile for reassurance. The scariest part of the whole movie was in fact nothing that I saw on the big screen, but rather that she was making out with her date. Yikes.

ART BY REBECCA FOWLER

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ART BY NATALIA NAA

CONTENT WARNING: SEXUAL ABUSE, TRAUMA

PERSONAL

THE ELEPHANT IS STAYING I

BY SARAH PETERS

unpack my things slowly from my backpack, pyjamas, pillow, The Elephant. This is the moment where I can feel my fingers trying to hide inside my long-sleeved shirt.

“Oh! He’s cute! What’s his name?”

She doesn’t judge me, but I still panic, knowing I’ll have to answer the question.

Still soft and clean, The Elephant unlike most bed buddies of adults who still sleep with stuffed toys, has not been here that long. It started with Holly, a Christmas-themed bear that I was gifted the December before I was born, her white fur turning grey from all our time spent together. I try not to forget her like I did when I was four, leaving her at a McDonalds party and refusing to sleep without her, as my mother recalls. And after Holly there was Harrod, as well as a range of others, each taking turns so as not to dirty them or damage their fur. But from the age of 15, it has always been The Elephant picked up from a secondhand toy sale at my local primary school’s carnival. There are even photos from the day we first met, hidden behind a private icon on my Facebook profile picture.

The term “transitional object” was coined by Donald Winnicott, a British psychologist, to refer to an object that newborns often develop attachments to within their first year of life. These objects often aid in the movement from one stage or state to another. But adopting one later in life, at the age of fifteen? I haven’t found a study on that yet.

In September 2012 I finally found the courage to break up with the boy I had been dating for two years. What I remember from these years is very little. I even have reason to believe a lot of my difficulty with maths is associated with this and the switching of schools. But what I do remember, is being scared and alone.

Requests that I touch him or he be allowed to touch me under tables in classrooms where we were supposed to be learning, repeatedly attempting to open up his skin so that he could give me his literal heart if I wouldn’t give him my hand, and calling me every conceivable name under the sun—at 14 I didn’t anticipate this. We are taught that abuse is adult, that consent is closer to crooked alley ways than it is to the boy with blue eyes.

I learnt a lot about being lonely with him.

A few days after our first anniversary we were at my local carnival together. He and my other high school friends had

travelled down, knowing it was one of the best in the area. As a prolific op shopper and hoarder, my first two stops are always the book sale and the toy sale. Hidden underneath the piles of brightly coloured toys, I found this bear-sized floppy grey blob. Two small dark eyes and a grey trunk, I met The Elephant that day. Laughing with my friends that I should buy it, as they knew it was my favourite animal, I distinctly remember the boy’s distaste and let him plead with me to not buy it. I put The Elephant back. Hidden, underneath other toys much newer and nicer.

In the last hour of the carnival, all of the stalls dropped their prices, the rides stopped and with no reason for my high school friends to stick around, everyone left. He did. And I returned to the toy stall where I finally took The Elephant home.

Then onto school camps where that the boy followed me to despite our break up weeks earlier. Then onto summer school, a year twelve camp, and university camps where I’d long since left him behind. Every night, The Elephant is there.

Until I start dating again.

I met the next boy on Tinder, obviously. And from the first date, Logan* and I got along perfectly. When things moved along to “Do you want to stay over?” a few months later, I considered my options, agreed and spent the night.

I left The Elephant at home.

I can’t conclusively say that this is the reason that things fell through. The reason that I threw up halfway through that first night, or his quick kiss goodbye the next time I stayed over, or the ghosting before he travelled overseas and came back to date the other girl he’d been seeing at the same time. There isn’t a methodology or research paper that would accept that plausibility.

The Elephant returns to my side, my exclusive bed buddy under my own roof and under my friend’s.

“They don’t really have a name,” I stumble. “They’re kind of a feeling?”

She tells me how poetic this is. I shrug it off, but as she reveals that she sometimes sleeps with her teddy when her boyfriend doesn’t spend the night, I feel a touch of recognition. I clutch The Elephant tighter. Warmth fills me with the ways that we cope with loneliness and security. With trauma. *Names changed for privacy reasons

ART BY BETHANY CHERRY

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COMMENTARY

E.T. PHONE HOME VEERA RAMAYAH ON THE REAL IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE

A

lien. That’s the best way to describe it. Being an immigrant often feels like you’re between a rock and a hard place. But the rock is the place you are now, and the hard place is fitting in. Always in between, always not quite there, mentally or physically. Physically, missing out on schoolies for a family trip back to the home that is spoken of at least once every family meal. Mentally, always worlds away, wrapped up in stories from family about faraway lands, of sights, smells and people that exist on what seems like an entirely different planet.

When people ask me where I call home, I’m always stuck, and it leaves me looking like an idiot. After all, growing up in New Zealand for 18 years should logically tell me that it is my home. But I have no connection to the place. I have no one outside my immediate family there, apart from a scattering of high school friends. My hometown is filled with nostalgia, for days spent down at the beach, faces covered with 50c icecream cones. Perhaps I’m not a person who grows attached to places, or people. As any immigrant will tell you, our families often branch over miles, different postcodes, time zones and borders, forcing us to lose a sense of object permanence.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and if absence is the catalyst to heart growth, we immigrants have abnormal anatomy.

I was born in Singapore, but have never lived there. My connections there are through my extended family, and brief reprises from the harsh New Zealand winter. Singapore feels like an escape, surrounded in a cloud of tropical humidity, but not a home. It’s a place where I feel slightly more at home, among a predominantly Asian society, where running errands in a sari or a salwaar are met with less inquisitive stares. But it is still not where I fit in.

My ancestry is Indian. All my grandparents were born there, and their stories paint vivid pictures about a place filled to the brim with culture and history, life and colour. My imagination is filled with stories from the past, of how things used to be before corruption and colonialism snaked its way through the cracks. But trips back to my homeland have proven that I’m out of place here as well. Too awkward and too foreign to pass as a seasoned local, I stick out like a sore thumb in a pair of converse that are too white amongst the dusty roads.

Being an immigrant is being constantly restless. Cycling between the delicate see-saw of being too foreign for your

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new country, but too assimilated for your old. It’s getting pangs of guilt every-time you adopt a mannerism from your new, non-immigrant friends, as if somehow the more you feel fit in, the more you sever your ties with your heritage. It’s having to explain to your friends why your mum will be picking you up from the party at 10:30pm, even though you’re on school holidays. It’s not being able to explain exactly why telling your parents that “I’m 18 now I can do what I want” would trigger a cataclysmic breakdown.

Being an immigrant is being “too white” for the East, and “too brown” for the West. It’s being in between, the messy middle flavour in a tub of Neapolitan. It’s an exhausting experience, and quite often, a narrative that is left out. When everyone around you is busy figuring themselves out and their various levels of alcohol tolerance, and you’re still staring at a world map wondering where on earth you slot in, it doesn’t make for an easy journey into your 20s.

It’s only after talking to the handful of “third culture kids”, that commonalities in our journeys of fitting in become apparent. The struggles of fitting in that we experience are never something our parents could have anticipated, and something that, unless pulled out of our conscious through somewhat confronting conversations, isn’t something that ever gets talked about. It’s easy to see the relative benefits of being an immigrant, the food, the clothes and the culture, but very rarely do we, or our communities in general, unpack the different levels of emotional trauma we endure.

Among the social movements that we find ourselves in about decolonising fashion, history and food, we need to make more of an effort to create spaces in which we can have these conversations. Relocating our common ground and realising we have a lot more that ties us is maybe the only way we can navigate the xenophobic seas the last 10 years have brought in.

That’s not to say that every experience I’ve had in the last 21 years has been traumatic or has left me deeply troubled.

But it’s easy to see immigrants of all backgrounds represented a certain way in the media, without any honesty about the actualities of our experiences. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change anything about myself, but I’m still wondering how many more years I’ll be orbiting earth in my UFO, feeling like E.T. on a planet where nowhere feels quite like home.

ART BY POORNIIMA SHANMUGAM

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ART BY SUPASSARA TRIPUN

POLITICS

CONTENT WARNING: EUGENICS, HOMOPHOBIA, TERRORISM

BAD NEWS

ISABELLA RUSKIN ON WHY IT’S NOT AS BAD AS IT LOOKS

T

he world didn’t end in 2012, but sometimes it feels like we would be better-off if it had.

Two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef are bleached due to climate change—and the Adani coalmine may soon be its neighbour. The president of the world’s most powerful country has sexually assaulted numerous women. Fascism is on the rise globally, with alt-right groups cropping up all over the world. And maybe none of this will even matter, because North Korea could end everything with nuclear weapons. Any time we go near the internet we are bombarded with news that proves this is the worst time in history and the end is surely near.

This is hardly surprising. The media relies on shock value to generate income and popularity. We are all hooked by appalling headlines, with their provoking language choices and sensationalism. The greater the astonishment or horror on the part of the reader, the more likely they are to follow the link or purchase the newspaper.

The media doesn’t exist to cause havoc—it exists to communicate recent events. But this means unpleasant stories are more likely to surface because terrible events occur quickly, while positive occurrences usually build gradually.

It is also important to note that the media reports what is happening, and not what isn’t happening. While a war is understood as something that is happening, we consider peacetime the baseline, and therefore it is not reported on. In this way, terrible events dominate media space.

Globalisation plays a part, furthering the reach of news.

In one of the most peaceful periods in history, we constantly hear about global conflicts, making them seem more likely to happen when they never would have reached us centuries before. For example, terrorist groups seem incredibly powerful because we hear about incidents all around the

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world, due to quicker communication. Any potential terrorist attack is labelled as such and shown on repeat, making it seem like a constant threat. In truth, ISIS has lost its financial base, administration, training standards and geographical strongholds. The most powerful, organised and wealthy terrorist organisation of recent years is on the decline.

Good news doesn’t sell. Fortunately, Farrago is not-forprofit, so here it is.

We are living in the best time in history. Eighty-four per cent of the population lived in poverty two centuries ago.

Now it’s down to 10 per cent, the same percentage of children who don’t go to school. Fifty years ago, that statistic was 41 per cent. The great killer smallpox is gone, and polio is on the way out. Crime is decreasing, along with malnutrition, child mortality, war casualties and discrimination. As the alt-right, nationalism and men’s rights activists are on the rise with never-ending hatred to share, it is important to remember that this is a small portion of the population. Though we may feel like discrimination has increased, in reality legislation is improving and the bigotry is, at least, less explicit.

The future of science is now. The first synthetic womb has been created for lambs, and its success will aid premature human babies. Genetic editing removed a heart disease gene from a human embryo. However, ethical debates about this technology have already emerged as the idea that disability can be edited out is predicted to add to the prejudice already faced. It is a similar debate to the one around “curing” sexualities, removing uniqueness and enforcing a hierarchy.

Still, it is thrilling to know in cases like heart disease, it can help. Australian scientists successfully brought back an extinct species of frog for a short while, and their work may extend to Tasmanian tigers, woolly mammoths and dodos.

We must consider why we are bringing these species back

ART BY LINCOLN GLASBY

POLITICS

(Entertainment? Guilt?) and how they will exist in a world transformed by human activity. However, humans caused vast extinction and while the priority must be on preventing more, these could be important steps towards returning nature to how it was and should be.

Climate change may not be the end of days we predict, due to tough policies and goals. The UK will stop coal usage by 2025, while Sweden will run purely on renewable energy by 2040. Costa Rica already generates 99 per cent renewable energy, and plan to ban fossil fuels entirely in three years’ time, providing a pioneering example for all countries. China is working towards the world’s largest renewable energy system, and has already reduced green energy costs globally.

The US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, a voluntary agreement where countries set their own goals anyway, did little but further harm Trump’s reputation, and 16 individual states retain their own strict goals. Colorado, America’s tenth biggest coal mining state, has some of the best environmental policies. It may not be the solution, but it’s a start. While the US leaving makes a point, nearly every other country in the world is now working towards lower emissions. Science is investigating radical proposals like geo-engineering. In this case, the aim would be global temperature control, achieved through releasing sulphur dioxide to reflect sunlight. Sulphur injections are politically contentious: a country could seek to manage the temperature or use it as a bargaining tool. It could also damage the ozone layer or cause drought and provides no solution to other issues, like ocean acidification. Repairing harms rather than preventing them is not ideal, but science is proving that we need not live in endless despair. Solutions that have barely been conceived will someday be the possibilities we never imagined. These solutions fight against the constraints of time and denial, but they still represent hope.

Politics is where good ideas go to die (see also: the carbon tax, the welfare state). Yet even in politics there is optimism for the future. Universal basic income is a model where everybody would be provided with enough government income to live off. It’s an alternative to welfare without stigma and a means to address growing inequality in a capitalist world. It is heating up: Finland and Kenya are conducting experiments while globally researchers are exploring potential funding plans, fashioning a genuine prospect. Things are also (gradually) improving for the LGBT community: Pakistan recently introduced internationally progressive and protective transgender and non-binary laws. Problems remain everywhere, but we have proved we can conquer injustices.

Death penalties for homosexuality have existed since 486 BCE, but now same-sex marriage is legal in 25 countries. Politics is not defined by doom but global change, and even within today’s precarious political climate, positive changes transpire.

We are constantly moving towards a better world. While backwards steps feel grave, progress and improvement have always been the story of the human condition due to persistence and arduous work. The issues we face seem abstract and overwhelming, but we must harness the energy of those who came before us to create change. Our cynicism is justified but it must be used to create something better. The media’s silence on good news is not reason to remain silent as well. The instant shock of horrific events cannot be compared to long term peace and good which is occurring all around us, all the time. It is not perfect, but we are living in the best time in history. May we work to ensure the coming years are even better.

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CLIMATE CHANGE

FUTURE CITIES KATIE DOHERTY EXPLAINS HOW CITIES NEED TO ADAPT TO CLIMATE CHANGE

I

n 2008, humans became a majority urban species for the first time. Today, up to 54 per cent of people live in cities, and that number is only set to rise. Climate change will impact the cities and towns we live in—many urban areas will have to change significantly, and rapidly, in order to withstand the pressures of increasing dangerous weather events, heat waves, and other climatic dangers. However, according to the United Nations Human Settlement Programme, urban settlements account for 60–80 per cent of all carbon emissions, meaning that how we live in those cities and towns will also have a significant impact on how climate change progresses, and whether we have any chance of mitigating its impacts.

There are a huge number of factors which will have to be considered in order to green our cities. One of these, of course, will literally be how green they are—not only are green spaces like parks and gardens important for carbon sequestration and biodiversity, but the shade trees provide can significantly reduce the urban heat island effect. This is the effect by which the materials of which cities are built—“dense dark surfaces such as bitumen on roads”—trap heat during the day, and keep the city warmer at night, with the eventual impact that average temperatures in urban areas are three to four degrees higher than surrounding, non-urban areas.

For this reason, The Guardian reports, the Melbourne City Council is aiming to “double the tree canopy cover from 22 to 40 per cent by 2040, by planting about 3,000 new trees a year”—an important policy, given that the higher and higher temperatures projected during Australian summers in coming decades will have serious health impacts, particularly when combined with the urban heat island effect.

Another issue requiring urgent consideration is where growing cities should grow. As more and more of the population moves or is born into cities, the amount of space they take up necessarily increases. Generally it is accepted that there are two ways this can go—out or up. We can embrace urban sprawl and allow cities to spill out into valuable farmland and wild spaces, or we can replace low-density detached houses with skyscrapers, allowing far more people to live in the same amount of ground space.

There are obvious issues with allowing urban sprawl to continue indefinitely—aside from the destruction of wilderness areas, a lot of valuable farmland is located around the city fringe. This is particularly true in Melbourne, where the foodbowl located around the city produces “47 per cent of the vegetables grown in Victoria and around eight per cent of fruit”, according to a Foodprint Melbourne report from 2015.

By 2050, when Melbourne’s population is predicted to reach at least seven million, “Melbourne will require 60 per cent

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more food to meet the population’s needs,” but “around 16 per cent of the farmland in Melbourne’s foodbowl” could be lost to the urban sprawl occurring as a result of this growth.

While currently the area around Melbourne “produces enough food to meet around 41 per cent of the food needs of greater Melbourne’s population,” they say that by 2050 this could be reduced to as little as 18 per cent. Food would then have to travel to the city from further away, likely via fossil-fueled transportation.

Furthermore, outer suburbs tend to be less well-serviced in terms of infrastructure than older inner suburbs—in particular, there tends to be far less public transport than closer to the city centre. As more people are forced further out by the lack of space and affordable housing, there will be a significantly increased reliance on cars, given that most jobs will continue to be located closer to the CBD. Obviously, this will mean far more fossil fuels used, and could also create serious issues for residents of outer suburbs as fossil fuels become more expensive, and people become less able to transport themselves into areas where jobs are more readily available.

However, simply building up instead is by no means a perfect solution. More large concrete buildings will contribute further to the urban heat island effect, and densely populated areas often struggle more with issues of polluted air and water. Many apartment buildings going up at the moment are cheap, pre-fabricated concrete blocks which may only last a handful of decades—obviously a hugely wasteful way to build—and which take the place of better quality houses.

Living in cities in a sustainable way will require holistic planning and massive changes to the way we organise our spaces. There are the obvious elements, such as investment in public transport, and new green spaces—Melbourne City Council’s plan for Southbank Boulevard seems a step in the right direction, with its new bike lanes, green tramway, and focus on biodiversity in the inner city. However, ensuring that housing in the greener inner city and suburbs remains affordable and available will be more difficult, and could require changes to the expectations about how we share space. Having individuals or small families in their own houses no longer seems practical—instead, retrofitting our suburbs to accommodate more people by establishing more housing cooperatives, living in a more communal way, may be necessary.

The expectation that adults, particularly with families, leave sharehouse situations for their own space is a deeply entrenched one, but to avoid cities sprawling out we will have to learn to share space in a new way.

ART BY LINCOLN GLASBY

CONTENT WARNING: EUGENICS

SCIENCE

WITH GMOS, WE REAP WHAT WE SOW R

BY ROHAN BYRNE

oughly 9,000 years ago, somewhere around the Tehuacan Valley of present-day Mexico, a common local wildgrass began an extraordinary transformation.

It probably started by accident: local foragers favouring those plants with larger, looser seeds, and inadvertently spreading them through their waste. But it wasn’t long before humans made art out of chance and began deliberately selecting the best grasses to sow—and unwittingly became the world’s first genetic engineers.

The crop they invented is known to us as maize corn, and compared to its wild ancestors it is grotesquely malformed. A plant that once reached up to the knees at best now towers over the tallest humans. The cob has swollen from one inch to almost a foot long, and each stalk might produce half a dozen of them. A structure that had evolved for millions of years for the sole purpose of spreading seeds now grips its kernels so strongly you need a sharp kitchen knife to remove them.

As a consequence, corn is effectively sterile: without human intervention, the entire species would perish.

Long before labcoats and microscopes, humans became masters of the gene. Today, that power is under scrutiny like never before. The European Union recently resolved to cut red tape on genetically modified crops; nations around the world are debating labelling laws requiring disclosure of GM ingredients; and just last month a UK ethics board provoked outrage when it ruled that the genetic modification of human babies may be permissible.

At the centre of the controversy is an awesome new technology: CRISPR-Cas9. Like artificial selection—humanity’s original gene editing tool—CRISPR-Cas9 is a clever appropriation of nature’s own machinery. When certain bacteria survive an attack by a virus, they take a mugshot of their attacker in the form of snippets of viral DNA. These snippets, stored in a library called CRISPR, can be bundled with some simple molecular machines—the “Cas” part—to create guided missiles that identify viruses by their DNA and slice’n’dice them to death.

About 15 years ago, scientists realised an alternative use for the CRISPR-Cas9 system: as a tool for gene editing, snipping out and even replacing undesirable sequences.

Today, one of nature’s most advanced bioweapons is routinely used to shuttle target genes from one organism to another—for example, programming herbicide-resistant

genes into crops to make weed control easier and cheaper, or engineering super-nutritious rice to combat the sorts of vitamin deficiencies that kill hundreds of thousands of children every year. Human applications have thus far been stymied by the maze of regulations designed to protect us from dodgy medicine, but with GMO issues no longer capturing the public eye, those laws are beginning to change. Clinical trials targeting HIV, hepatitis C, and sickle cell anaemia are already underway, to name just a few.

Science’s aversion to the genetic modification of humans is a direct legacy of one of the 20th century’s darkest episodes.

Though eugenics today is indelibly tied to Nazi ideology, in its heyday it was not only acceptable—it was policy. And its adherents did not need CRISPR-Cas9 to execute their vision: nine thousands years of agricultural history had already shown the way. In the US, the UK, and even here in Australia, governments forcibly sterilised thousands of disabled, poor, and minority citizens in the name of genetic hygiene. For the old eugenicists, as much as for the earliest farmers, control of reproduction was the key.

The recent UK ruling on “designer” babies is not definitive, but it is suggestive. The long shadow of our shame is beginning to recede, even as our powers over the human genome are set to immeasurably increase. Within reach are remedies to some of nature’s most egregious cruelties—and slippery slopes well-greased with good intentions.

One can dimly imagine a future race of humans: willowy and sexually engorged, muscular and ingenious, cheerful and disposable, and, of course, completely incapable of propagating themselves—except with the permission of their masters. Someone’s idea of perfection, grotesque to our eyes; children, as it were, of the corn.

One can dimly imagine a future race of humans: willowy and sexually engorged, muscular and ingenious, cheerful and disposable, and, of course, completely incapable of propagating themselves—except with the permission of their masters. Someone’s idea of perfection, grotesque to our eyes; children, as it were, of the corn.One can dimly imagine a future race of humans: willowy and sexually engorged, muscular and ingenious, cheerful and disposable, and, of course, completely incapable of propagating themselves—except with the permission of their masters. Someone’s idea of perfection, grotesque to our eyes; children, as it were, of the corn.

ART BY LINCOLN GLASBY

39

CONTENT WARNING: ANIMAL CRUELTY, DEATH, PTSD, GORE

FLYSTRIKE WORDS AND IN-TEXT ART BY REBECCA FOWLER Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the identity of those involved.

B

y the end of it, Mary didn’t feel any love toward the sheep. She didn’t want to hold their slimy bodies, cold and wet, abandoned by their mothers. Most didn’t even know how to suckle properly. She had given up trying to help lost lambs.

Mary’s golden retriever Leo is like her son. She often thinks of him as an angel. He is an idiot, and crazy. Not many people see how sweet he is—he is unique, not like any dog she has ever met. Quite untrainable. Mary knew she would always have him. He made it easier for her to leave vet school after her farm placement.

The purpose of discharging a firearm from close quarters at an animal’s head is to kill the animal instantly. The free projectile achieves this by destroying the part of the brain which controls breathing and other vital functions: the medulla oblongata (the brain stem).

Mary was up north. Dry country. Recent rain gave way to cracks of green.

I’m so excited about this year’s clover, Evelyn said.

Evelyn cared a lot about her clovers—probably too much. She was a 70-something-year-old widow. The farmer.

No children. Mary wasn’t studying horticulture but Evelyn grilled her on the scientific names of gums and grasses.

This is a silver gum. You know what this tree is? I told you what it was just before.

They took a tour of the fields. What are all those white things? Mary asked. Decomposing lamb bodies, Evelyn said. Their bodies are cartilage. They dissolve into the grass.

There was a mixture of different sheep. Some cows, a few bulls and chickens. The sheep were Evelyn’s own special blend—mostly inbred. Many of them were mutant. Sheep with five legs. Blind sheep. Sheep with missing eyes. Sheep with one leg longer than the other. Triplets, twin lambs. Evelyn saved one lamb from being put down, for Mary’s sake, supposedly—not because Evelyn wanted to.

Evelyn didn’t like blood. Mary and the farmhand Jack had to deal with the surplus of lambs—they didn’t sell well. Too defected. The most deformed ones Mary took to the shearing shed. She penned them. They were shot between the eyes—at least 20 a day. She watched three get their throats slit.

Good experience for a vet student, they said.

The sheep weren’t stunned. They would twitch fiercely for about ten seconds. Mary still hears their hooves banging on the wooden planks. The one’s whose throats has been slit made sounds. The other lambs could sense that it was their time, only the small, blind or deaf oblivious. Mary could see it in their eyes—they could feel the knife until it hit their spine.

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ART BY WINNIE JIAO

Heart races, breathing accelerates—remind yourself that you’re not there—the flashbacks don’t change but Mary has learned to change her reactions to them. She is a third-party observer, like watching a movie. Sometimes she still cries, still becomes unresponsive, but only for a moment. The images in her head don’t last as long. They seem further away. PTSD episodes and attacks plague her multiple times an hour. Then daily. Then weekly. The flurry of nightmares, bringing with them a phobia of sleep, slowly start to dissipate. The occasional night terror—hooves banging the wooden planks—seeps through the cracks. They are expected but not what they once were. Mary, too, is not what she once was.

To cut the jugular veins, grasp the jaw or ear with one hand and insert the knife behind the jaw while drawing the blade edge outward and out through the pelt. This will sever the jugular veins and carotid arteries.

The farmhand, Jack, was a rough sort of guy. Mid 30s, from up north. Mary didn’t feel safe around him—he asked questions she didn’t want to answer. Did she have a boyfriend? That sort of thing.

He hated Evelyn. He hated the sheep, was cruel to them. To stop his dog barking at the sheep he would beat him with a PVC pipe. Sometimes the dog escaped and went on a killing spree, so he was mostly tied up. Jack told Mary that he put dogs down when they start to smell, usually at around five years old.

Mary and Jack would have to find sheep that had gone lame or had flystrike. Flystrike is when flies lay eggs on soiled wool or open wounds. The sheep who aren’t treated are eaten by the maggots buried under their skin, feeding off their flesh.

They would take the fly-struck sheep to what Mary called the Death Swamp. She was promptly told not to call it that. It smelt horrible. The eyes and skulls of the sheep were empty—eaten out by predators. Their bodies were bloated.

They put the sick sheep on the ute tray and shot them off. Some didn’t die.

When Mary and Jack returned, they had to shoot them again.

Don’t tell Evelyn, Jack said. We’ll get in trouble.

Mary wanted to be a vet because she loved animals. Her family nudged her, just a little—but enough. It was a challenge. Teachers told her it was too hard, she wouldn’t get in. She missed out by one point with an ATAR of 96.

She worked harder—a year of animal science, a HD average and she was accepted into veterinary school. Mary wanted to help people who love their dogs as much as she loves Leo.

The lucky sheep were the ones who got treated for flystrike. They were taken to the shed to be shaven and given a chemical that treated their skin. Some of them didn’t make it. Those ones were called Ringbark because the infection had spread right around like a tree trunk. They weren’t going to live.

The Ringbarks weren’t dealt with straight away. Some were left lame for two or three days—until Jack felt like getting around to it. One ram couldn’t walk well, potential flystrike on the spine. Jack got angry—started to kick him.

The sheep still didn’t walk. Jack screamed at the sheep, beating it. He grabbed it and dragged it on its ringbarked back fifty metres to the paddock entrance. It didn’t move. Breathing deeply.

Is it dead? Mary asked.

I don’t care, he said. We’ll see in the morning if it stands up.

The next morning, the ram stood up. But Mary couldn’t forget what she saw.

The chickens were also Mary’s responsibility. They didn’t lay for a while—she didn’t know they needed to eat egg shells for extra calcium. Evelyn punished her for that.

There were dead crows tied to the fences, warding off larger birds of prey. They smelt like death.

ART BY WINNIE JIAO

41

There were foxes, 28s and galahs on the property. Beautiful birds. Evelyn loved bird watching. But these birds took up too much space, she said. She hated it.

There were hunters. Bird bodies could be found underneath most trees.

Get out of the ute, Evelyn would say to Mary. She’d tell her to sort through whatever mess of a species had been shot through the chest and report back.

Several arteries that run within the bone itself will be cut when removing the horn. Grasp these arteries with a forceps and pull them until they break off inside the bone. The clot that forms will prevent further bleeding. You will have created a hole into the frontal sinus. It is a painful procedure, and is best left to a vet or dehorning professional.

The worst of it was being tricked into dehorning a sheep. An immoral practice. It’s like cutting off a fingernail, they said.

The sprays of blood all over the walls, on Mary’s face and shirt, led her to believe otherwise. The ram screamed, tried to pull away. Blood trickled down its face, dripping into its eyes.

Actually, it’s more like cutting off a finger, they said afterwards.

They winked.

Mary hadn’t been eating all that much; Evelyn barely ate. The neighbours joked about how little Mary must be getting fed—they weren’t wrong. She was always hungry. At one point the water got contaminated with larvae.

The bath is full of wriggly worms, Mary told Evelyn. I think you have a problem with the pipes.

Don’t be a princess, Evelyn said. When I was little we bathed in the dam.

Mary bit her tongue but thought to herself that they also had cholera when Evelyn was little.

Mary went to sleep not long after the sun went down—around 7pm. Sometimes they watched Antiques Roadshow first. She was up again at 4am. She slept in an attached sleep out, dusty and cold. The floors creaked.

She tried to think about her sanity. About the day. Was she doing the right thing? She didn’t have phone reception. She couldn’t call family or friends—would they think she was doing bad things? She thought of leaving but didn’t think she was allowed. She didn’t want to offend the farmer. She didn’t think the university would accept her reason. If she left now she would have to start all over again on another farm. She didn’t want to fail the prac. She was afraid, with no-one to confide in. Her days were filled with silence.

We don’t like talking all that much, Evelyn said. You talk a lot. Unnecessary questions.

Mary didn’t bathe for the last few days. She lasted two days without drinking water. Migraines persisted. As soon as she cleared the dirt track on her way out, Mary took off at 130kph in her beaten up red Yaris. Driving away, she knew she was leaving parts of herself behind. The first thing she bought in town when she left was two litres of water and a litre of milk.

When she got home, nobody was there except for Leo. She kept to herself for two days, the sterile grey sheen of the modern suburban house her haven. When her family returned they could sense that things were bad, but Mary didn’t talk specifics at first.

Contact the school, her parents urged.

She didn’t. It was school break, there weren’t any staff on campus. Maybe she should have emailed. But it was her problem—other students had talked about their farm practicals. Slamming piglets against fences to euthanise, sheep farms where the sheep’s eyes were falling out. It must have just been part of the process and her burden to carry. Maybe she wasn’t strong enough to stomach the reality of farming.

When semester resumed, it became increasingly difficult to study. Mary stopped attending lectures. She increased the time and distance she exercised. She swam 3km a day. Ran 6–8km. An hour of skipping, push-ups and crunches often at 3am or later. Lectures were watched online at double speed. Nothing was sinking into her brain. She felt stupid. Other students must have thought she was. She was the 83rd ranked student out of 86.

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ART BY WINNIE JIAO

Stay, her family and friends persuaded.

Stay, her pride told her. You worked so hard to get here.

Six months later Mary emailed the university to make sure no one went to that farm again. She was told that the partnership was terminated, that Evelyn had resigned from the university program. Maybe even she knew how bad it was. Evelyn had been conducting figures and data on the back of envelopes—she didn’t really know about money. It was just her way of living, a small operation of 5,000 unhappy sheep. Not a normal farm.

Can you relay some specifics? The university asked Mary.

But she has already been burnt by their processes. They had rejected her application for retrospective withdrawal due to her PTSD. She failed four out of five units. Mary wasn’t ready to tell them. Not now. Knowing that no one would return to the farm was enough.

The universe had been talking to her on the farm—and after. Sometimes through bees. She learned later that this was a coping mechanism. Bees were outside her bedroom window on the farm. They symbolised purity.

Life. She identified with them, viewed them as holy. A marker from a higher power. Mary has one tattooed on her bicep now. Thin black lines. Needling pain. A reminder. Sometimes she isn’t sure if she actually saw bees or not, even when she got back to the city. But they were everywhere. If a bee landed on her or if she saw a photo of a bee, it was a good omen—a sign she was on the right path. Once she found eight bees buried in the sand, scattered along the beach. She saved them and put them in a tin, to make sure they were real. When she opened the tin, they were all dead.

The university didn’t prepare her—or anyone. Students who alerted the RSPCA of animal cruelty were ridiculed.

Unnecessary, over the top, their peers would say. Mary was being such a city girl.

Vet school was the first time Mary had seen anything other than a domestic animal—dog, cat, rabbit. This had been her first farm practical—she thought it must just be farm life. She had no prior knowledge or expectations.

She was a sheltered city kid.

The magnitude of death in the classrooms got to her. Labs were white tiled, the fluorescent lights cast a yellow glow onto the floor. Metallic tables and drains were everywhere. Metallic death. Particularly visceral in a reproductive dissection class. Aborted foetuses and uteruses filled the room, most of them fresh. Mary couldn’t comprehend that multiple animals of different species were dying with a womb full of healthy foetuses. She doubted that that many animals had died of natural causes. One girl casually stroked a horse’s genitals. Mary couldn’t focus—couldn’t absorb information. The lights were too bright in the lab. There were some plants outside—Australian flora, gums—but the lights trapped her focus in the lab. The room was crowded with students in white lab coats. Mary talked to the other students instead of dissecting. She was very slow, too precise in her dissection. Couldn’t keep up.

In her grey carpeted room Mary tries not to sleep. Guitars line the walls and a collage made by a friend adorns a grey wall. She can’t sleep. A mixture of a mania and an extreme fear of closing her eyes. She listens to music, exercises—push ups, ab-crunches, planks—well into the early hours of the morning. Eventually she passes out from exhaustion. When she sleeps she falls into terrifying nightmares—she wakes at 6:30am drenched in sweat, sometimes screaming. The nightmares are so real she can’t tell them from reality—hooves banging on the wooden planks—they are violent. Mary starts to be the one mutilated in her dreams. She wakes and rushes to get to hospital—she felt her fingers get cut off.

Actually, it’s more like cutting off a finger, they said afterwards. They winked.

ART BY WINNIE JIAO

43

CREATIVE

WALL-LABELS FOR DARK IMAGININGS PRESS RELEASE FOR THE DARK IMAGININGS EXHIBIT, MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY: “In 18th century Europe a revolutionary shift in literary and artistic expression took place that became known as ‘the Gothic’.

Nightmarish images of barbarity, oppression and the supernatural were abstracted from an earlier medieval age and fused with a Romantic focus on imagination and emotion, resulting in a frightening and thrilling originality. Leading exponents of the gothic set their creative works in dark and claustrophobic spaces or wild, threatening landscapes and infused them with melancholy, gloom and fear.”

1.

A person, flayed, looms over a broken Greek krater. Their gender is indeterminate. Their head is turned to the left, their right hand wrenched around 360 degrees, like the bone has snapped but remains hanging in place like no big deal—like it’s trying to disguise itself and the extent it’s been damaged.

This person hasn’t been traditionally flayed; instead of a simple underside of flesh, simple and/or linear, different parts of the body have been individually peeled, revealing in places a cross-section of the whole, the layers re-arranged perversely.

The chest musculature is gone, exposing the ribs and xyphoid, but the lungs are still covered with skin, as if skin could be taken for granted and swapped for vital organs. The legs are literally skeletal, except for the glutes and calf tendons. The face is uncanniest: a skull at all points except the nose, which is normal; the eyes, lidless, staring, real; and the lips, full and slightly smiling.

Over their right shoulder, a fire burns.

2.

I hadn’t expected to see it. When I was 14, flying back to Australia from the UK and my Grandmother’s village—its houses dating back to the Tudors, their frames brittle, white—we’d had to stop off in Tokyo due to a malfunction. My dad contracted Noro virus and as we waited for him to recover, my mother, sister and I were free to explore. “My mother’s an artist,” I say to people, but not like Jackson Pollack. You could make sacrifices with her art, read them like entrails. This is how, in Tokyo, she directed us to a gallery of western art, vacant on a Monday, to see a Goya exhibit, advertised with the engraving I’m looking at—right now, right now—in the Baillieu Library: A man—possibly Goya himself—unconscious on his desk, though he could be in tears. His legs are crossed. Behind him, bats, owls and a lynx circle and glower, both toward the man himself, and you, contemplating...

“El sueño de la razón produce monstruos”. The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. Equally, perhaps unwittingly: the dream of reason produces monsters. Goya’s motto for the engraving goes: “Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of her wonders.”

Lynxes, in addition to monsters, were imagined as clairvoyants—able to see through solid objects.

“Sleeping and dreaming hold a peculiarly central place in western, enlightenment thought”—you read the wall-label, studying the plate behind glass…

A man is afraid he’s dreaming—that an evil demon dictates his beliefs and rational presuppositions, that he can’t tell the difference between sleep and conscious life. Endless waking up, never fully woken, endlessly dreaming... A fear of the inability

to identify self-evident boundaries: when does a boat, its planks progressively stripped and replaced, become something new?

When does a colour transition into another, an absolute point delimiting the two like a cell membrane? Who is lying when someone admits they’re lying?

The fear reason creates—colonising— its own monsters, of assertion/break-down in the same breath. A split…

You’re may be reaching, you think, tracing Goya’s lines and shades. “Only through the pure contemplation . . . which becomes absorbed entirely in the object, are the Ideas comprehended; (T) his demands a complete forgetting of our own person.”

Someone said this about art. I don’t remember who, but Googled it afterwards.

3.

The spadix resembles a wasp’s stinger, a black tooth, an upsidedown spider’s leg and abdomen, like Shelob from the Lord of the Rings, glistening against the petals’ mauve. There are mountains in the background, but indistinct; the flower takes up the whole image. The petals are soft, undulating like romantic-era curtains, the white-flecked leaves blowing in a presumed gust. According to Wikipedia, farmers first thought it was a little dragon, hiding in the spathe. Comparing it with modern photos, the image has a skin-like quality. If there is a “horror to its form” as its illustrator expressed, it’s this, but more... The website calls it phallic: nature as profligate, indifferent to propriety/ ordering. This doesn’t seem wholly accurate. Nature, here, appropriates as callously as people do: if ‘She’, Thornton genders, full-of-himself, can adopt such traits—as though physical categorisation were arbitrary—what’s in a name/the value of a name?

The fear, you think, is in personification (evil clouds, cruel wind, a black moon), a thing taking on its own life, transcending you, contemplating it self... That what is imbued with significance (a family house, a creepy abbey, Frankenstein’s monster, a plant) looks back into you…

The wall-label calls it the dragon arum: “A print from Robert Thornton’s Temple of flora, which features illustrations of plants in romantic, often dramatic or allegorical settings; another version of this print adds patterns of lightning and an erupting volcano…

Thornton’s description is highly charged: the Arum lily ‘projects a horrid spear of darkest jet… her hundred arms are interspersed with white, as in the garments of the inquisition; and on her swollen trunk are observed the speckles of a mighty dragon’.”

A friend describes her dislike of explaining her work with a quote from the artist Robert Morris’ dream journal, which I ask to reproduce; I find it online in a collection of essays:

WORDS BY JOCELYN DEANE

CREATIVE “The wall-label has disturbed my sleep. I must get a grip on myself, or at least on the label… I must squeeze it back to its true ignoble proportions… But it is elusive as it gleams there in the dark with its Poe-like atmospherics of linguistic threat and verbal iconoclasm.”

Recently you’ve seen trailers for the latest Jurassic Park movie, set around a Reconstruction-era mansion owned by a mysterious, rich, handsome businessman with a dark secret. A scientist who created the dinosaurs in the first movie is one of the antagonists, one who admitted in the previous instalment that:

4.

A pop-up book of Frankenstein in a glass case, open on the night when the Monster is animated. Victor is standing to their left, speechless. They are pallid, face grotesque as the Joker in The Dark Knight, explicitly illustrated as stitched together poorly. If you observe the differences in skin lustre from the head to the torso, you may infer the number of bodies that went into their creation. You’ve never pictured the monster as such a composite being before, nor so much a mirror of Victor, despite the Monster’s famous “I ought to be thy Adam” statement.

There’s not enough skin to cover their whole frame: the arms are taut around the biceps, their abs like crumpled newspaper, or clothes that have shrunk in the wash. The monster lunges out at you, reader and spectator, stitched together as you are...

X: “Nothing that we do in Jurassic World is natural; we have always filled gaps in the genome with the DNA of other animals, […] you didn’t ask for reality.”

Y (owner of Jurassic World): “I never asked for a monster!”

X: “’Monster’ is a relative term.”

But in the book the monster comes to life almost imperceptivity, “by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs...” (you remember putting your dog down, green fluid going into their shaved leg, asking for time alone with the body after, moving the jaw back and forth, their eyes grey with cataracts but otherwise identical… life being just a certain arrangement of atoms and heat at a given time, you think, at that time, mortifying) Here they are howling... They roar out of the page, eyes incandescent, and it almost seems justified Victor should abandon it . The gothic is always self-consciously gothic, you think: sharpedged, medieval castles, unnatural flora and fauna, a fallen sadboy angel. You remember a quote: Fiery the angels fell…

Burning with the fires of Orc. You remember studying Frankenstein back in year 11, the class comprising future roboticists, Elon Musk fans and would-be lawyers. When addressing the author, some refer to Mary Shelley as ‘he’, almost like Victor himself were the true inventor of the text, as if the book itself were another assemblage, limbs that might never fit peacefully together…

H.P. Lovecraft would later write: “some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

Lovecraft would take this and make a religion where God is dethroned by a great border-wall: segregation as a metaphysical need. You know that neo-reactionaries online style themselves as part of a ‘dark enlightenment’, Cthulhu as a metaphor for the horror of modernity…

The recent film has been described as a “gothic horror” departure for the franchise. In it they create a hybrid dinosaur, a combination of all the predatory traits of carnivore dinosaurs introduced. A shot from the trailer shows it slouching toward the protagonists through a dark vent, its outline moving in and out of shadow in time to a warning light. Its movements are irregular. In the dark it seems to have several bodies at once.

5.

Near the exit, two images I’ve seen before: an etching of le Hôtel de la Marine, Paris, by Charles Meryon, once La Ministère de la Marine (“The Admiralty”) during the second French empire in 1865.

The sky is black and white, the needle marks in the left-plate side (at least for the neo-classical façade of the admiralty) are razor fine. On the right-hand, strange, fish-like creatures swim through the air, as if the upper atmosphere were the undercurrents of a lake. The second, a watercolour of Edgar Allen Poe, inserted into the Raven as its narrator. This insertion, possibly experiencing his poem’s claustrophobia/loss first-hand, seems to feed into the image’s sadness. Researching the two, astoundingly, I found a poem by Marion Janacek, based on the two exact images: Poe and the Admiralty, Paris After Charles Meryon and Edmund Dulac

The sky was a realistic black/white; Indoors, the blue of his body read The Raven, out –loud, seeping into divan-frames like a season Of slow floods insulating water As the accoutrements and décor of everything Float, his coaled shoes oblivious, His eyes closed as he sighs. Outside, Their arrival was equally realistic: The skin of the flying fish opalescent, The horses gushing through troposphere—laying siege To the admiralty—were perfectly, anatomically correct. ...

Don’t lie Joss, we know it’s you…

6.

You realise, after writing this, revisiting the exhibit now after 2 months, that the Goya is nowhere to be found. It was never in Melbourne. You say to yourself, curiously, almost in awe, where could it be? Where could I have left it?

Acknowledgements: My thanks to Marian Janacek for their permission to include their poetry/blogs in the final piece. My thanks to Chalise Van Wyngaard for her permission to paraphrase her. The full version of this piece, with hyperlinks, references and footnotes can be found online.

ART BY NICOLA DOBINSON

CREATIVE

by accident

cautious cauldronfuls of mourning set up like a chemistry set, chests of unopened drawers where tubes lay slack like mouths with absent teeth; a scientist collects (for their own sake) hidden dawns where no one sees wallflowers climbing, peeling the sky with its tendril teeth, as though removing a band-aid off an eternal wound.

unasked for

moths whose wings thicken with boredom from its ruined velocities, flutter down her acid windpipe, to where ruby pains plummet in pulses, collecting in a gaping stupor, a crosslegged numbness that corresponds with the female month.

foreign policy the sky is your enemyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s napkin, stitched together by your forgiveness in patches which their agenda mismatches but lookers are not seers; whoeverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s looking will not see: the food is the hatchet, your final tendency.

46

POETRY BY NATALIE FONG

CREATIVE

ART BY KIRA MARTIN

47

CREATIVE

utmost virtue

BY ALSTON CHU travel heavy tread light, as the crow flies (murder on my feet) and murder on my mind) aspire to keep promises as bladder stones & frosting bones honour the steppe hard hart scarps mend and lend body that dense bread neath dark stars carve (from a land) carven through by mountain venge a revel in supplication name winds more surely than children or virtues of the land ‘Mercy’ and sea ‘Patience’ short strokes shape a long sharpness though polishers know the touch of grit blunts the burr plentiful among golden shine

ART BY CAROLYN HUANE

ART BY SHERLYNE JENNIFER

ART BY NIKHILESH CHAUDHARI

ART BY JESS HERNE

ART BY CHRISTOPHER HON SUM LING

ART BY DERRICK DUAN

ART BY RAKESH GILL

ART BY QAISARA MOHAMAD

ART BY ALAIN NGUYEN

ART BY MAGGY LIU

ART BY RACHEL MORLEY

ART BY BLAKE TANG

ART BY ZOÃ&#x2039; ALFORD

ART BY TROY CAMERON

ART BY SHERRY AINE TE

ART BY SUPASSARA TRIPUN

ART BY WEN QIU

ART BY ILSA HARUN

CREATIVE

THE TRIAL

BY ELIZABETH SEYCHELL

E

veryone in the café turned as the glass shattered—except her. She paused only for second, pen still, gaze frozen upon that page, before resuming her frenzied scrawl.

From that trial shift onwards, she was the only customer I saw.

Her gaze first caught my attention. I then noticed the messily braided grey hair, the feline eyes bespectacled with silver frames, the ears adorned with wooden earrings dangling to the bottom of her chin. Even as she wrote furiously, the rest of her body remained eerily still. All focus was concentrated on absorbing her surroundings. She was conscious of every murmur, giggle and sigh speckling the silence of the cafe. She caught the subtle changes of conversational tone, the pauses often saying more than actual words. She captured secrets of the café perceptible only to her. I needed that notebook.

“Hey Matt, does that lady always come here and sit and write like that?”

He looked up from his phone, startled. Seemingly unaware I was still here—even though I’d been making a racket washing up.

“Um, which lady? We get a lot of regulars—” “The one that always sits in the back, with the grey hair and all the black, and she’s always just sitting there with that notebook.”

He tilted his head back, his languid movements frustrating me more than usual. I pulled at the hangnail on my right thumbnail.

“Oh, yeah, I know the one. Yeah, she’s always here. Always orders a long black but never touches it—really hurts the barista’s feelings.”

“Have you spoken to her?”

“Pfft, nah. Legit, the only thing I’ve ever heard that woman say is ‘long black’.”

He looked back down at his phone, leaning lazily against the counter.

“Do you know anything about her? She must be from round here if she comes this often?”

“Jeez, Ella, you’re pretty obsessed with this customer for someone so new. I don’t know. Anyways, it’s five—I’m off.”

He slipped his phone into his pocket, striding to the front till, scratching his oily scalp. I don’t know why I’d expected him to have noticed anything. The guy didn’t even bother to check the doors were locked on closing shifts.

I just couldn’t think about anything else. Beyond the aloof witchiness, other things about her seemed definitively… odd.

The door always banged unreasonably loud when she left, as if there were a punishing gale outside even on the mildest of days. Rambunctious children would suddenly turn mute by her table. And of course, she was always so strangely, meditatively still, as if the arm writing page after page was wholly detached from the upper body observing everything peripherally. With every shift, I grew more convinced of her strangeness. Yet noone else seemed to notice.

The next day I was polishing the cutlery when she made her first move.

“Ah, shit. Someone’s left their bloody licence. Ella, pop it on the bench, I’ll call whoever it is in a sec.”

My manager was cleaning the tables when he’d noticed it lying on the floor. Ms Amelia Estaleene. Born May 17th, 1967.

33 Finley Drive, Canterbury, 3435. I knew she’d left it here on purpose.

By 5:30, the floors were mopped, the benches wiped. I was ready to bolt.

“Okay, the clean-up’s all done. I gotta run. See you tomorrow, David.”

I hung up my apron with fidgety excitement, striding out of the café into the winter chill. The door slammed shut, my mind flickered: 33 Finley Drive.

33 Finley Drive.

33 Finley Drive.

It was only 15 minutes away, close to the station near my old school. It felt odd to be weaving through these familiar, suburban streets, retracing my steps with fresh, feverish excitement. I’d lived near this woman for so long, yet never seen her trekking these hibiscus-dotted paths. I wondered whether maybe she’d seen me. Finally, at the turn off near the station: Finley Drive. I ruthlessly examined the house numbers: 23, 25, 27, 31—

ART BY CAROLYN HUANE

57

CREATIVE I would have known it was hers even if I hadn’t seen the number. Framed by ornate wooden pillars, it was the dark centrepiece of a trio of townhouses. The front yard was monstrously overgrown, the elm tree extending to the secondfloor window. I could barely make out the stained-glass door amidst the plants crowding the front, their branches strangling the metallic fence. Handcrafted wind chimes tangled in the slight breeze. All the curtains were drawn. I crept to the front door, laying my hand upon the cool doorknob. I wouldn’t turn it, just touch it, and back away. I’d leave it at that and plot my next move rationally, methodically.

I opened the door. Inside was a musty mausoleum, crowded with antiques. Traipsing across the hallway lined with a faded, Persian rug, I saw the walls covered with dusty shelves brimming with tarnished knick-knacks. The unlit fireplace loomed ominously. It seemed impossible that anyone actually lived here. The hallway grew narrower and darker. I wanted to turn back, but it felt too late—I had to keep moving.

I made it to the kitchen, and breathed for the first time since I’d entered the house. I surveyed the area. Newspapers covered the entirety of the bench, the surface scattered with coffee cups and wasted fountain pens. Dirty plates piled high in the sink, the dark floorboards coated in a film of dust. But the papers were dated only from yesterday. I touched one of the coffee cups. It was still warm. She was here, camouflaged in this dilapidated den. I flicked through one of the papers, its pages subsumed by her annotations. Just as I leaned down to read her looped script, an unseasonal wind roared outside.

The flimsy windows whined in protest. The singular light of the kitchen flickered on. I felt the temperature drop. All initial intrigue quickly morphed into sheer panic. She was here, she knew I was here, and now I wanted out. I backtracked down the hallway, staggering over the papers strewn across the floor. My foot slipped, sending me tumbling down. Scrambling to get myself up, my limbs knocked noisily on the creaky floorboards. I looked to the left down the hallway, fixed on my escape. My legs gave way as I fumbled to stand. My breath was short and shallow, my head pulsed with nauseating terror.

Just as I was finally up and ready to run, a creak sounded from behind me.

“I hope you’ve at least brought my licence?”

Her voice echoed throughout the hall. The wind silenced, the kitchen light stopped flickering. Her pitch was low, cutting through the thick, stale air of the household. Those once captivating features were now demonic. Her wrinkled mouth was now a snarl, her sharp eyes daggers, those bony hands claws ready to attack.

58

“I—, I—” “I know what you’re after. Oh yes, don’t think I haven’t noticed you just as much as you’ve noticed me, Ella.”

“H— how do you k-know—” I stammered into silence as she strode towards me. My brain screamed at my legs to flee, yet they refused to listen.

Her eyes bore into mine as I stood there helplessly, mute and paralysed. This was the end. I pictured the basement where I’d be held prisoner, the missing person reports that would soon spread. Fragmented images of my own funeral ran through my mind as she drifted closer, lightheadedness overwhelming me. Three more steps towards me and I’d be gone. Two more steps left, I stopped breathing. I closed my eyes. One more step and— Suddenly, she halted her stride. I opened my eyes when I didn’t hear the floorboards creak. I looked to see her studying me with that exposing gaze before she quickly ducked to the kitchen. Before I could even exhale, though, she was back there in front of me. She now held the notebook for me to accept.

“This is what you came for, right?”

Her sardonic tone jolted me from paralysis. Right there, held out in front of me like that—it was irresistible.

Automatically my hands took the book, my fingertips tingling.

“Well, read away! I know you’ve been wanting to since the second you saw me, Ella.”

I obeyed, slowly opening the ragged notebook. The binding was barely intact. I felt her eyes staring down, her thin, towering figure leaning over me like a vulture.

“Well, go on! Read it for Christ’s sake! You’ve been just so awfully keen to see what’s on those pages, haven’t you?”

My eyes darted towards her, her brow arched, her arms contemptuously crossed. Still, with a slow, deep breath, I collected myself, turning to the most recent entry. It was written only this morning.

5/6/2018 The woman behind me takes another passive aggressive dig at her husband. She thinks he hasn’t noticed her new top, or the auburn highlights fresh from only two days ago. He noticed her new perfume too. The musk is nauseating. He hates the amount of powder she has on now. Snowflaking off of her face every time she sighs, every time she looks away. Disgusting. She’s bored. He knows. She can’t wait for him to go on his business trip tomorrow.

He stayed back late four times this week. She sips her skinny latte.

He turns the page of his crossword—

ART BY CAROLYN HUANE

CREATIVE “We both know you don’t care about that couple. Turn to the next page.”

How did she know all this about complete strangers? Did she know all this?

“I said, ‘Turn to the next page’.”

Her command forced my hand into motion, my eyes flitting straight to what I knew she wanted me to see. Beads of sweat began to drip down my neck, as I glanced up and back from her to the book. I began to read.

She watches me, and her pulse quickens. She’s pestered her coworker about who I am, about where I live. Later they’ll find my licence, and she won’t be able to stop herself. She’ll memorise the details, and come around later tonight. She’ll tell herself she’ll only have a quick look at the house, that she’ll control herself. Then she’ll discover the unlocked door. She can’t help it, yearning for excitement, for something more. She’ll find me waiting, watching.

She’ll freeze for a moment, too captivated by the sight of my notebook to flee. She’ll read this section— The script was uniform. The smudged ink was dry. And there was too much on that page for this to have just been written. She’d completed this passage long before I’d entered.

“H- h- how can you know all this?”

“Keep reading. Out loud.”

I looked down and noticed blood smeared down my left thumb from pulling on the hangnail.

“I said, KEEP READING.” Her order rang with the force of a tempestuous gale. She began to creep towards me, the black drapes of her skirt hissing menacingly along the floor, the corners of her mouth lifting into a nightmarish smile. I saw the peek of yellowed, pointed teeth. A snake’s fangs ready to strike.

“She-she’ll read this section aloud to me, and then she’ll see me coming towards her—”

heat against the side of my calves. The fireplace was now on.

I saw an amber glow in my periphery. The candles atop the mantlepiece were now alight.

“I said, KEEP READING.” “Br-brain of hers. She lu-lusts after me, lu-lusts after the unknown, the unreal, the deviant older woman. She’s stuck here in her job, in this town, but now she’s stuck here with—” My legs gave way as she continued to slither towards me.

I tumbled to the ground, the notebook flying out of my hand.

The hellish spectre grew larger and larger. I felt the rising heat, I smelt smoke. The curtains caught flame. The howl of the wind crescendoed into a ghoulish chorus matched only by the volume of her spine-chilling cackle. Her devilish snarl widened as the surrounding flames flickered furiously. A petrified scream escaped my lips. I was about to be engulfed by the smoke, by the flames now consuming the hallway, by this infernal woman. My legs writhed in a last-minute escape attempt, kicking the notebook into the fireplace’s depths. The laughter grew louder as specks of darkness shrouded my vision. Her narrow eyes glowered red. Her wiry grey hair had formed into Medusa-like tendrils. Her laughter was all I could hear, those eyes, those fangs were all I could see. My hands slid across the dusty floorboards. As the notebook burned, her expression grew more menacing, more terrifying. Her arms stretched out towards my throat, pinsharp talons making their way towards my bare skin. Her face was now right next to mine, her cool, ghostly hands now tightening around my neck. I was about to be swallowed whole. My eyes closed, my arms fell to my sides. I gasped my last breath, fading out of consciousness. The notebook continued to burn, voracious flames eating away at every word. The woman kept cackling wildly, her laughter echoing throughout the house.

Suddenly, a shriek erupted from the fireplace. The orange flames flitted to green, to magenta, to white. Only a few curled pages remained undevoured by flames. The woman’s figure began to shrink. The loudening squeal of the fireplace drowned out her devilish squawk. The spectre began screaming, panicking at her waning power. The staircase screeched, the windows banged open, the wind howled with vengeance. The woman was finally mute. As the last fragments of that notebook were consumed ablaze, she tumbled to the floor. The red glint of her eyes began to fade, her veins blackened against her pale, paper-thin skin. Her breathing slowed, and her arms fell as her head rolled to the side. The ornate metal framework of the fireplace crumpled, buckled, surrendered.

All was ashes, drained and still.

As she crept closer she seemed to grow larger. I could see the full top row of her fangs. I noticed the demonic glint flickering in those narrow, jet-black eyes.

“C-coming towards her. Sh-she’ll see me up close. As horrified as she’ll be, she won’t be able to l-look away. She’ll look closely at the face she’s obsessively wa-watched day after d-day. I know how often she’s thought about me, how many stories she’s c-concocted in that fev-feverish brain of hers—” I realised I’d begun to creep backwards as she edged closer towards me. The woman grew larger with every word that left my mouth, yet her figure seemed to grow fainter, a deathly phantom towering over my shrinking frame. The wind outside whined louder and louder, reverberating throughout the antiquated frame of this tomb. I felt a sudden sense of

ART BY CAROLYN HUANE

59

shelling pistachios

BY CHARLOTTE WATERS she peels pistachios in the kitchen. traces hinges with crescent nails releases the nuts from their shells and drops the pieces into two bowls. she is a ticking clock. what becomes of the jesters who forget to wash off their paint she wonders. do they sleep stuck inside out like upturned cockroaches. leftover crumbs of laughter overlooked on china plates burst buttons and spill from her veins. she doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember when it happened the ecdysis. she hangs in the air like a naked soul a letter addressed to no one. it reads. life ventriloquises death. figures bloated with pockets of absence evade the chafing of chains. her walls breathe like music machines bellows tamed. flat-eyed carcasses dance on puppet strings. the taxidermistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s practical joke. molluscs are emptied of saltwater eddies. pistachios scurry from their shells. she is the flesh clinging to dust bones.

60

ART BY ALEXANDRA BURNS

CREATIVE

Amber Blindfold

BY JAMISYN GLEESON I am afraid of the bees. I can’t pass through them. My hair doesn’t coil into antennae and I have no wings; my vertebrae is flat and fearful and all too human. Oh, how they swarm and shiver in golden rivers. Dew drop, dew drop, forbidden fruity sweat. You traverse through them. They are not your enemies, but mere faces admiring the jewel behind the glass cabinet of your eye. I call to you, but you walk among them: the sea of fluttering things, the sunset-coloured pollen. Grasses stir beneath helicopter wings.

Petals spread their lovely legs—we all give in eventually. You rip the chains from their daisy locks and poke green legs through green bodies. From these blustering blooms you create diadems, and like magnets, bees and bodies are drawn to you. Their black and yellow stripes grow bolder, embracing you and warning me: bright, fuzzy prison-bars. I step forward and lurch back. I am stone, rock, pebble. The nectar of your eyes drip, drip, drip down that apple-like canvas. When you finally look at me you steal my upturned mouth. Now, you see an empty field. Now, you see only a world of yellow.

ART BY ALEXANDRA BURNS

61

CREATIVE

o

BY STEPHANIE KEE like a pearl-shaped ship on an inky sea she glides imperceptibly, making headway without want of lighthouse, for no beacon could compare with her otherworldly glare

62

ART BY ILSA HARUN

CREATIVE

The Night Train: Recipe for Sleeping in Motion

BY RUBY ADAMS Begin your gastronomic journey with the following ingredients: One litre of travel pillow A tangle of headphones Quiet music thoroughly mixed A tablespoon of eye mask, poured softly over your face.

One and a half cups of a slow-paced book Two hundred grams of excitement, Half a kilo of exhaustion for balance (home brand, exercise formula, or sleep deprivationâ&#x201E;˘).

Thoroughly stir ingredients in a bowl of spare time at the station, Saving the addition of reactive liquids until after departure.

If available in your cupboard, the following spice additions are also recommended at this stage: Just enough leg room for the right position, Forty-five degrees of recline, Backpackers maintaining accented but quiet conversations, Tidal breathing of the old woman sleeping beside you.

As the train pulls away from the station, heavy with inertia, a Milky Way of lights beginning to trundle past your reflection in the window, the ambient conditions are ideal for blending.

(Try not to interrupt this moment with a toilet break).

Noisily knead travel pillow for five minutes before placing in baking dish, Read a few pages of that slow book.

As the consistency develops, Pause for a moment to note the rattle and hum of carriages, a view of darkness flowing.

Set dish in oven, add final dash of eye mask, Bake on low for as many hours as possible.

Ignore any loud noises from fellow bakers.

Enjoy waking in motion.

ART BY ILSA HARUN

64

ART BY WINNIE JIAO

CREATIVE

I am now here

BY GISELLE MARTIN I am nowhere

fill

tiny twitching suns

the air

I am tired

the waves keep

pulling

one day

I know I will

stop

treading water

maybe Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll push up

a dandelion

a wish will be made

the sun

b r e a thing

into a

and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll have done

moon

something right at last

wet eyes; the colour

and saltiness

of the sea who buried me

one day

I might

float

through

the

and someone will

air

breathe

me in

and never know

what once

was

real

ART BY WINNIE JIAO

65

CREATIVE

CONTENT WARNING: MENTIONS OF ANIMAL DEATH

SNAKE SHOUTS

BY ALAINA DEAN He had come with a whip. She was hoping for a gun. Her children were watching through the kitchen window, standing in the sink with old bubbles fizzing against their socks.

‘It’s in the iris patch,’ she said, leaning on the shovel usually propped up beside the back door.

‘You’ll have to hunt it out so I can get at it,’ he said. The whip was coiled loosely in his right hand. His walking stick was on the back of the four-wheeler. He probably should have brought it over.

driving too fast, but the road is empty and the wind roaring through the windows is comforting.

They don’t have to talk when the wind drowns out their thoughts.

‘A snake.’

‘Huh?’

The dog barked from its chain at the clothes line.

Her sister sits up in her seat, leans forward, slides her hand through her hair. There is a snake, stretched out across the road, a brown shadow. The car stops.

‘Shush up!’

‘Run over it.’

She stepped into the iris patch, watching for the glint, listening for the rustle.

‘Wind your window up.’

‘Can you see it?’

‘No,’ she shook her head. She poked at the mulch and turned back to face her father.

The snake struck out from the hay, over her boots and her stomach convulsed. She thrust at it with the shovel, catching it under its belly and flicking it into the air. She ran as the snake twisted, until she was standing in the middle of the lawn. She glanced at her children, four noses pressed up against the glass and gave them a smile.

With the windows up the car is suffocating. They turn the air conditioner on, but it sucks in dirt and they choke. They turn it off.

‘Just drive straight over it.’

The wheels skid. White knuckles on the steering wheel, she holds her breath. Her sister is sitting high in the seat, her hand braced against the window. The snake goes under the car. Her sister spins in her seat, looking back at the empty road with the grass rustling.

‘It’s not there.’

The snake landed with a dense thud. It writhed for a moment and then reared slightly. The dog whined.

‘What?’

‘Dad!’

‘Did you run over it?’

Her father was standing still, watching as the snake moved across the grass. This was not a snake lazy with warm blood, this was a snake given enough time to draw venom into its bite. He knew what this snake would do, how it would linger for a moment and then strike forward, a gold-brown streak on the grass. He let the tail of the whip fall and swing against his leg. He held his breath.

‘Yes.’

Crack! Crack!

Twice on the head.

The cracks echoed off the side of the house.

X She is driving by memory. Fingers loose on the steering wheel, eyes glazed over. The car takes the corners organically, smoothly. Her sister is in the passenger seat, eyes trained out the window, watching the dry gums march by. There is dirt before them, a river of dirt and rough gravel. She is probably

66

They are silent and start to sweat. ‘It’s up under the car. Shit.’

X Her youngest has just started to walk and his sisters are getting great joy out of dragging him around like a new toy.

His legs are unstable but he plods after them down the garden path to their grandparents’ house. She pulls out the cake tin from the boot of the car and slams it shut. The kids have left the gate open. She tugs it closed behind her.

The girls have walked around the back of the house to the cool verandah. Her son turns the corner. The girls start to scream, out of sight. She breaks into a run across the dry lawn and wheels around the corner. She grabs her son by the back of his shirt and yanks him away and up into her arms. The cake tin clatters to the ground.

ART BY ASHER KARAHASAN

CREATIVE

The snake doesn’t move. It is small, about the length of her forearm and is lying on the cool concrete. Her daughters have scrambled up onto the chest freezer at the end of the verandah, dancing anxiously on their toes.

“What is it?” she hears her mother say from behind the gauze door.

“A snake! A snake!” the girls chatter.

“I think it’s dead, Mum,” she calls, shifting her son onto her hip and approaching the snake. She nudges it with the toe of her boot. She flips it over and its head lolls where it has been severed.

Her mother appears, wearing an apron over her summer house dress and her hair in rollers. She puts her hands on her hips and looks down the verandah.

“Oh, your brother got that one a couple of hours ago when he came for lunch.”

The girls climb down from the freezer and approach the dead snake but she shoos them away.

“Never touch a snake, even if it’s dead.”

Her eldest daughter picks up the cake tin and takes it inside.

She puts her son down and he toddles after them. She passes her mother in the doorway.

“Typical of him to leave it on the verandah like that.”

Her mother picks up the shovel leaning against the freezer and scoops up the small snake. The lawn crunches under her feet as she carries it over to the back fence and flings it into the paddock.

X

ART BY ASHER KARAHASAN

67

CREATIVE

Canterbury Road

BY KATE WILLIAMS

Each day I am the gentle road’s uninvited guest.

I give the dirt off the bottom of my shoes in thanks, And my host lends me its spine to walk.

Faded to a cheap grey with age, it is always happy to see me: Small asphalt crystals reflect the light, Winking and smiling shyly As my feet tap out a rushed good morning and goodnight.

It’s only a certain evening shadow That reveals the unsettling warp of the road’s body, once so perfectly smooth.

Only then can one see just how carelessly time has dipped its toe in the asphalt, Taken pleasure in watching the ripples mark the street.

This road is the tide that swells and breaks unseen.

Embarrassed by the honesty of the cracks in its skin; These silent scars, not deep enough to fill with tar, Bear the humility of all that is seldom noticed.

How many times have I hurried across this road And not felt its crippled back aching beneath my shuffling feet?

How many years has it lain here, quiet, Content in its unending suffering.

68

ART BY SOPHIE SUN

CREATIVE

Below the Belt

BY CHRIS PSYCHARIS I You’ve had more whiskey today than you have water. You can’t bear to open the door. You stand in the courtyard. You stare up at the centre of Orion’s Belt. His whole body takes form and the rest of the night sky follows slowly: all skies slowly follow.

II In the living room that guy is chatting shit again. Bragging about his latest conquests, the two-pint munter acts like a big man. He collapses before he gets the chance to propose one more game of beer pong. Behind you a girl is begging her friends to leave. Jono will be here soon and they simply cannot be in the same room. Your friends are arguing about which Star Wars movie is the best. 5-6-4-3-7-1-2 is the obvious choice.

Eardrums shatter as the aux cord DJ fumbles for the plug.

III In the garden some lads play Goon of Fortune. They laugh in their underpants as their mate drowns in vomit. Behind them a man performs push-ups to prove his worth. No one is watching. A couple makes out on the fence while the dartrolling philosopher next to them recounts Trump’s latest faux pas. You’ve already heard this one tonight so you go to the kitchen and pick up someone’s best cheap wine...

IV A seagull is trying to attack you. Is it hungry? Does it think you have chips? You did eat chips before. Are the senses of a seagull so finely tuned as to recognise a history of chips?

Maybe it’s just a cunt. You take your seat at the stop. One of those lads who gets kicked out of the club puts his feet on the seat next to you. You look for a way out.

V You need to piss. You get on the last tram to North Balwyn.

You waited for a long time so you need to piss. You’ll have to wait until you’re home. You sit down. The couple across from you is making out. They look happy. You accidentally make eye contact with one of them. You look away. An old man across the aisle is glaring at you. Is it because you’re wearing a badge that says “Circle Jerks”? Does he know what a circle jerk is?

Maybe you’re not giving him enough credit. Maybe he’s just more of a Black Flag man. You look away. Some lads just got on the tram. One of them has a rugby jumper draped over his shoulders. He’s bragging about the girl he hooked up with. You wonder if she’s doing the same with her friends. She isn’t. An old friend of yours steps in. She sits next to you. She was at a club and had too much to drink. She feels sick. She says this is a low point in her life. You say it’s ok. You say you think that a couple of times a week. She laughs. She doesn’t realise you mean that. You get off the tram and walk home.

VI You haven’t slept in two days because you can’t be bothered going to bed. Walking home at 8am you see things you haven’t seen in a long time: people out for breakfast, old Greek women shuffling to church, parents walking their kids to school, a man in a kebab shop slowly readying a fresh tube of meat. It’s all happening.

VII You can’t bear to open the door. You stand in the courtyard.

You stare up at the centre of Orion’s belt. His whole body takes form and the rest of the night sky follows slowly: all skies slowly follow.

You pissed on your shoe.

ART BY SOPHIE SUN

69

ART BY BETHANY CHERRY

CREATIVE

McFuck It

BY THARIDI WALIMUNIGE

“H

e went this way! I want all units braced at the northern perimeter!”

Kevin isn’t the best at trespassing which explains why he is being chased through the S.U.S.S. Research Facility by numerous security guards.

“Shit! How is this happening? Oh god, what do I do?”

Hang on, Kevin may very well procure a sensational solution which could see his heavily armed opponents subdued, the exit located, and a getaway secured.

“Okay! My hands are up. No need to shoot. If you could just direct me to the nearest exit or, I dunno, do you guys have those info screen thingies? Like at Westfield?”

Evidently, Kevin, master of sensational ideas, will not be making an appearance today.

“Oh, those Yeah, yeah, yeah! Real helpful, right? See guys, I told you we need some of them info things. How am I supposed to clock in on time if I can’t find where I’m meant to be every time the stations change? So really, logically, it’s the company’s fault that I’m late to my post all the time. You get me?”

“Peters?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Shut up.” “…yes, sir.”

If you’re quite done just standing around, Kevin, perhaps you could spare a thought for the predicament you’re in?

Breaking and entering an aptly abbreviated compound?

Peeking at classified experiments that would put your beloved sci-fi novels to shame? Alerting the test subjects of your presence because you forgot to turn your phone on vibrate?

Ring any bells, Kevin?

“You know what, I’ll be fine without directions! In fact, I’ll be outta here in no time. And I didn’t see anything! Cross my heart, mate. Yeah nah, just saw some scientists doing… science. Nothing weird! Not that there would be anything weird going— ” BOOM! * “Sir, there’s been an explosion.”

Because everyone in the office, from your boss to the janitor emptying the bin in the corner, couldn’t have concluded that for themselves from the deafening bang.

“Yes that’s quite apparent, Dr Evans. Just tell me, are the creatures in Lab 3A secure?”

If by secure you mean, have they mauled all your nameless scientists before blasting the doors with their fiery breath and forcing their way out? Then, yes, they’re secure.

“No sir. They’ve escaped.”

* “Peters! Hoffson! Find out what lab that came from. You there!

Put your hands behind your head and—”

SQUAWK! “What in the— ?”

Kevin, if you would be so kind, stop wasting time and get out of there.

“Hey! Get back here—AAAHHH!” Well, would you look at that? The world’s taken pity on you, Kevin. Your opponents swarmed by the laboratory escapees and the exit located. Now if you could stop pulling at a door that says push…

“Finally! Jesus, this place is a nightmare! Okay, just get to the car. Wait, what’s that?”

Kevin, everyone knows not to look behind them if there’s a weird noise.

“Oh my god! It’s those bird slash reptile thingies from before! Why are they following me? WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME?” Yes, expect a literate answer from these creatures. Oh, and Kevin? Have you calculated a countermove for when the creatures catch up and stream into the car once you open the door?

“Wait, no! What are you doing?! Get out of my car!”

That’s a no, then. Furthermore, Kevin apparently thinks he can assert himself over these frenzied, fireball-spewing animals. He’ll come to his senses soon enough. Wait for it…

“Ah, screw it! Let’s just go!” * “Why hasn’t anyone from S.U.S.S. followed me? I accidently stole their bird-reptiles. Beptiles? Rirds? Nah, beptiles sounds better.”

Kevin would’ve figured out what to do about the creatures and S.U.S.S. if he hadn’t been preoccupied coming up with that innovative name.

“Is that a—? Oh my god, of-fucking-course! Even when the only thing around here is a shady research facility, of course there’s a nearby Macca’s.”

SQUAWK! SCREECH! SQUAWK! “You gotta be kidding me? You guys are hungry? Okay, okay! If I feed you, will you be quiet? But you gotta stay in the car.”

Feed an animal even once and you sign a lifelong contract with them. Don’t feed them, Kevin. It’s that simple, just— “Can’t believe I’m gonna buy Macca’s for thirty beptiles.”

Well then, congrats on becoming a mother of thirty inhuman children. There’s a chance, Kevin, that your future will see no complications. But something, not even that deep down really, tells me not to get my hopes up.

“Okay, it’s fine. It’s Macca’s, they won’t question my order… uh, hi. Can I get three-hundred and sixty nuggets?”

ART BY LAUREN HUNTER

71

CREATIVE

CRAZY STEVE RODGERS PART TWO: BUCKY AND I ARE GETTING MARRIED!

BY JACINTA DOWE 1. EXT. NEW YORK CITY SKYLINE - EARLY MORNING. Everything appears serene until IRON MAN flies through the sky with a loud whoosh! He is distributing fluttering bits of paper from above. The camera pans down to street level, and one of the papers flutters into view. It reads: Wedding of the Century: Bucky Barnes and Captain America in classy italic font.

NATASHA: Definitely worth celebrating.

Music starts playing.

NATASHA: Remember back when we had problems?

BUCKY: Oh man, that was annoying.

CUT TO: BUCKY and NATASHA: But now because of-

2. INT. STARK TOWERS. NATASHA and BUCKY are deep in discussion over BUCKY’s wedding dress scrapbook.

BUCKY: I want it to be simple, but elegant. Something I could win a knife fight in.

NATASHA: Of course! How about this one?

BUCKY: —lifelong extensive therapy and the love of a good man-

BUCKY and NATASHA: —we’ll never have problems again!

VISION enters.

BUCKY: It’s a bit out of our price range …

NATASHA: Hmm, I’m sure we can find one a lot like it at a cheaper cost.

BUCKY flips through the pages some more and sighs.

BUCKY: I’m so excited. It seems so recent that I was brainwashed and trying to kill Steve and now we’re getting married!

VISION: What are you two talking about?

NATASHA: Who the fuck are you?

BUCKY: (slamming a shot) Um, he’s that … that guy.

NATASHA: Oh, yeah! That guy.

BUCKY and NATASHA: We’ll never have problems again!

NATASHA takes a shot of vodka.

72

NATASHA: —five shots of vodka-

ART BY RACHEL MORLEY

CREATIVE

STEVE: We have a slight problem though.

NATASHA caresses vodka bottle.

BUCKY and NATASHA: Now everyone will know that our love is undying!

We’ll never have problems again!

BUCKY: … except I still have nights where I’m randomly crying.

BUCKY and NATASHA: We’ll probably still worry about humanity Because for some reason that keeps being a problem But the aliens know we’re happy as we could be And if we need to fight to save the world We’ll use weapons that run on love Tony Stark is developing those weapons The first trial failed but that’s because it wasn’t true love

BUCKY and NATASHA: No!!!

STEVE: Huh? Oh it’s nothing world-threatening.

BUCKY: No problem! We have love!

STEVE smiles goofily.

STEVE: Okay, yeah. But also Tony invited New York to our wedding.

NATASHA: New York? Like, as a concept?

STEVE: Like as a city.

STEVE enters.

BUCKY: Oh no. I don’t think we can fit them in the venue.

STEVE: Hey Bucky, whatcha doin’?

BUCKY: Steve!

NATASHA: We decided to have an impromptu stag night.

STEVE: I believe he’s planning on a livestream in Time Square.

BUCKY: Oh. I’m … drunk.

BUCKY: We’re looking at wedding dresses!

STEVE: We can deal with it later. Enjoy your stag night.

NATASHA: And drinking.

BUCKY: It’s the stag night I’d always dreamed of.

STEVE: That’s awesome, Bucky.

They kiss.

They kiss again, and STEVE exits.

VISION: So do you guys wanna …

NATASHA: Who the fuck is that.

ART BY RACHEL MORLEY

73

FLASH FICTION PROMPT SIX: PUZZLES, RIDDLES AND LIMERICKS PLAYFUL PUNS AND ONE BIG CROSSWORD THAT FITS IN 100 WORDS AND UNDER CROSSWORD: UNIMELB BUILDING NAMES

BY STEPHANIE KEE A [2] at the end indicates 2 words, with no spaces.

Single word answers may be the whole name, or part of a name (e.g. surnames). Check the online version for answers!

DOWN 1. Speck & reverse Reg 3. Sweetheart, fix five 5. Addled T. Gerbil 7. Most studied desperately, initially 8. Bathroom mixture [2] 10. Inside the minibar—Ryan 11. Snakes

(PAGE, PARAGRAPH, SENTENCE, WORD) farragomagazine is often followed by a slippery, slimy slug.

Make the initials of this sentence into a slug to get the next piece of the puzzle.

BY JESSE PARIS-JOURDAN

NITUL’S REALLY LONG LIMERICK o y’all wanna hear (or read, in this case) a story? Well, let me tell you about my friend Ken Yun. He was born in Asia, but was brought up in Kenya. I was talking with Ken Yun, the Kenyan-Asian about a small (fictional, this isn’t a real story, ya know!) country known as Yunasia in the South-East Asia and he told me that the people living in Yunasia, ethnically known as the Yens, have managed to perfectly apply John Maynard Keyes’ ideas of economics in their economy.

He also told me about how he, Ken Yun, the Kenyan-Asian Keynesian had a grandfather, on his mother’s side, who was a Yen (the ethnicity in this case, not the Japanese currency) from Yunasia in South-East Asia.

BY NITUL DESHPANDE

D

ACROSS 2. Short, jumbled recommendation 4. Pastor shelter 6. City with department store [2] 9. Cooties in pirates’ call [2] 12. Bland pine crews confused [2] 13. . [2] 14. Not more chocolate 15. Jumbled speech lacks bee NITUL’S REALLY LONG LIMERICK CONT’D en Yun, the Kenyan-Asian-Yunasian Keynesian Yen, told me that he had lived in his maternal grandfather’s house which was called the Ye Sian Family home (after his maternal grandfather who bequeathed the house to his granddaughter).

The house was on Ye boulevard in Ke prefecture of Nya city, the capital of Yunasia for the past 10 years. This automatically made him a citizen of Yunasia.

After conversing with him on multiple topics, I asked Ken Yun, the Kenyan-Asian-Yunasian Keynesian about his thoughts on the key to applying John Maynard Keynes’ economic ideas into society. So Ken Yun, the Kenyan-Asian-Yunasian Keynesian Yen from South-East Asia whose address was Ye Sian House in Ke, Nya told me that the key to Keynesian Economics is to influencing aggregate demand in the economy though activist stabilisation and economic intervention policies by the Government.

BY NITUL DESHPANDE

K

SEND US YOUR TINY WORDS: NEXT EDITION’S PROMPT IS ENDINGS Send your 100-word and under end of the end to editors@farragomagazine.com

74

ART BY ILSA HARUN

FOR AND AGAINST: LOCKOUT LOCKHEED S

FOR BY LOCKOUT LOCKHEED

tudents at the University of Melbourne ought to be informed about a lot of things. First, that their university is making secretive deals with transnational arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and BAE. Second, that these partnerships incentivise war by institutionalising and normalising the presence of weapons developers on our campuses. But third, and perhaps most relevant, that neither of these companies is Australian-owned.

Lockheed Martin is the largest US military contractor in the world, a surprising feat given their notorious budget blowouts, tax evasion, environmental fraud and espionage. It’s hard to believe that their lab will be applying AI, radar and robotics to friendly non-lethal drones. Do we want multinationals funnelling money, research and graduates into the allconsuming web of arms research? It’s difficult to get research jobs when your CV is “classified”. In the game of realpolitik played by some of our critics, using US corporations to break free of US influence seems like a (excuse the pun) misfire.

As evident in our campaign work, there’s more to our fight than Australian self-reliance. Our mission isn’t to end war, but to draw a line at public institutions. Having weapons developers on campus promotes a specific brand of war, one defined by the pursuit of profits (not defense), where collateral damage is just an overhead. This is because when sales—and student jobs—are dependent on the deployment of weapons, there is an incentive to violence.

Meanwhile, we stand in resistance. As part of the larger community-based Disarm Unis campaign, the work of Lockout Lockheed goes beyond student-based issues, with a scope that stretches from Melbourne to Cairns and Pine Gap. The University claims to act in the “esteem of future generations”, whilst continuing to prioritise corrupt industries like weapons and fossil fuels. This legacy of environmental destruction and destabilisation is not one to be held in high esteem. Research into “technologies crucial to future prosperity” does not and should not require funding by amoral, polluting, corrupt megacorporations. After all, let’s not forget who invented war for profit—that one certainly wasn’t an accident.

As for those brave champions of the destructive status quo, we cordially invite you to redirect your intellect to uniting the student body and broader community against the military industrial complex, and come to our meetings at 12pm Wednesdays, in Graham Cornish A (level two, Union House).

76

S

AGAINST BY LOUIS DEVINE

tudents at the University of Melbourne ought to be informed about their fees being used to develop joint research facilities with arms manufactures Lockheed Martin and BAE. On this point I am in full agreement with Lockout Lockheed. I dispute however, their premise that these partnerships somehow actively promote warfare, and the assumption that weapons and warfare are intrinsically wrong.

Lockout Lockheed have reduced the complexity of this issue such that it resembles the myopic campus parochialism that often plagues student politics and espouses a moral absolutism that makes this philosophy student blush.

When it comes to the belief that Australia should stop participating in American led wars, Lockout Lockheed and I are kindred spirits. Our defence policy shouldn’t hinge in its entirety upon the obsequious preservation of ANZUS. Yet so long as this reality continues, Australia defence planners will be forced to conclude (rightly or wrongly) that the only way to guarantee American protection is to follow them into war across the globe. In order to rectify this, we must develop an advanced domestic defence manufacturing industry. Selfreliance means less US dependence. For example, as the situation currently stands, if Australia were to acquire nuclear submarines for their long-range capacity necessitated by our geography, a lack of domestic knowledge and technology would mean that an American nuclear technicians’ constant presence would be required.

I am not so naïve as to believe that the University’s partnership will achieve this overnight, yet when viewed in the broader context, it is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.

Lockout Lockheed’s reductionist and narrow view would make sense if the research facility with Lockheed (STELaR) were devoted solely to making bigger and better guns. Of course, something so simplistic isn’t true. The STELaR Lab will provide Australian industries (both civilian and military) and students with access to the technologies that are crucial to future prosperity and security, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and robotics. It is simply a fact of reality that many of the technologies we utilise in modern society were initially developed in response to military or strategic needs. After all, it was the Pentagon who invented the internet.

One may wish this were different, but although such naïve idealism is clearly a recipe for success in student politics, it is lacking in its ability to be applicable in the real world.

ART BY DAVID ZELEZNIKOW-JOHNSTON

ART BY ASHER KARAHASAN

UMSU and the media office are located in the city of Melbourne, on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations. We pay our respects to their eldersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;past, present and emergingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and acknowledge that the land we are on was stolen and sovereignty was never ceded.