2020 Edition One

FARRAGO EDITION ONE 2020

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Acknowledgement of Country The Farrago magazines are published on the sovereign and sacred land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to the Wurundjeri elders past, present and emerging.

The Wurundjeri elders are the backbone of the Wurundjeri people, and we wish to honour their wisdom and strength. We also wish to pay our respects to the Wurundjeri ancestors, the ancestors who guide the Wurundjeri people today. As guests on sacred and unceded Wurundjeri country, we respect the power, wisdom and authority of the Wurundjeri ancestors and elders.

We will honour and upkeep the law of Bunjil. As Bunjil decrees, we will not harm Bunjil’s land, we will not harm Bunjil’s waters, and we will not harm Bunjil’s children.

We honour and acknowledge the Wurundjeri people’s continual spiritual and physical connection to their land, ocean and sky. It is important that we also acknowledge the harm that colonisation has done to the Wurundjeri people, past and present. We also acknowledge that the Wurundjeri people are a strong and resilient people despite the harm and oppression done onto them. We stand with them in their fight for treaty and justice!

Melbourne (Birraranga) University is built upon a sacred Wurundjeri creek, whose non-colonial name is lost to us. This creek is known as Bouverie Creek. Just like the Wurundjeri people, the eels that live in this mighty creek have survived, thrived and are still here!

I, Jess Ferrari, would also like to pay my respects to my elders and other First Nations elders — past, present and emerging — as well as my ancestors (yenbena) and other First Nations ancestors.

Jess Ferrari (Yorta Yorta and Bangerang)

EDITORS

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Bethany Cherry Amber Meyer Sarah Peters Tharidi Walimunige

COVER

Bethany Cherry

SOCIAL MEDIA

Emma McCarthy Natasha Jose Kalath Janelle Wong Helena Wang Joy Ong Ly Luong Isabella Ross Cat Ingham

ILLUSTRATORS

Myles Knight Alice Tai Yena Kim Geraldine Loh Anya Wong Arielle Vlahiotis Wendy T Lin Rohith Prabhu Phuong Ngo Phoebe Owl Vivian Li Rose Gertsakis Kitman Yeung Yeung Michelle Pham Reann lin Annette Syahlani Cathy Chen Stephanie Nestor Sue Park Wendy Lin Lo Yuk Kei Elmira Cheung Ruoxi Feng Abir Hiranandani

This magazine is made from 30% recycled paper, excluding the cover and gloss pages, which are 99% recycled. Please recycle this magazine after use.

Farrago is the Newspaper of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU). Farrago is published by the General Secretary.

The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of UMSU.

CONTRIBUTORS

Jess Ferrari Jack Buksh Tessa Minns Alessandra Akerley Angus Thomson Sarah Peters Sujith Nair Lucy Turton Alain Nguyen Finley Tobin Ailish Hallinan Nurul Juhria Binte Kamal Ann Khorany Amber Meyer Lauren Berry Rebecca Fletcher Shaira Afrida Oyshee Tharidi Walimunige Felicity Lacey Matt Bostock Bethany Cherry Stephanie Nestor Markella Votzourakis Caity Wen Yee Ang Caitlin Wilson Luoyang Chen Tiarney Aiesi Charlotte Waters Kavya Malhotra Teck-Phui Chua Alexandra McAuliffe Mark Yin Nicole Hegedus Lindsay Wong Ana Jacobsen Pavani Ambagahawattha Michael Scalzo Corey McCabe Angela Nguyen Kaavya Jha Michelle Pham Lo Yuk Kei Annette Syahlani Mitch Needingham Rohith Prabhu Shantha Walimunige

SUBEDITORS

Wing Kuang Victoria Thomson Finley Tobin Mark Yin Ailish Hallinan Tessa Marshall Stephanie Zhang Nishtha Banavalikar Allen Xiao Nurul Juhria Binte Kamal Markella Votzourakis Marcie Di Bartolomeo Anindya Setiawan Elizabeth Seychell Dana Pjanic Claire Yip Poppy Willis Evelyn Ranogajec Jo Oakley Nicole Moore Asher Harrington Tom Shute Lucette Moulang Shahrizad Zaina Choudhury Felicity Lacey Charlotte Waters AJ McFadden Amelia Costigan Tiia Kelly Janelle Del Vecchio Noa Abrahams Lindsay Wong Rebecca Fletcher Rohith Prabhu MUSIC TEAM Gina Song Marsya Ali Kevin Yuan Jem Smith Shahrizad Zaina Choudhury Cat Ingham Lauren Berry Bec Meier Chelsea Rozario

Illustrated by Zino Feng

EVENTS

Kashish Sandhu Lian Ren

WEB DESIGN TEAM Wei Wang Alicia Christabella Andreas

COLUMNIST

Lee Perkins Tessa Bagshaw Sunnie Habgood Klesa Wilson Tessa Marshall Tzur Ko Green Rochvarger Elmira Cheung Wendy Lin ONLINE COLUMNIST Shaira Afrida Oyshee Annalyce Wiebenga

PHOTOGRAPHY

Finley Tobin Ly Luong Jing Tong Teo Jocelyn Deane Ming Yu Tan Alicia Christabella Andreas Rida Fatima Virk Ben Levy Helena Wang Stephanie Zhang Abir Hiranandani Kashish Sandhu Nguyen Nguyen Jean Baulch Ella Davidson Alice Tai Andy Xu

S T N E T N O C

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Editorial Calendar OB Reports UMSU Budget Lucy Turton

09 UMSU Updates Jack Buksh

10 I Am A Journalist Lo Yuk Kei

11 Proposed changes to special consideration scrapped Finley Tobin and Ailish Hallinan

12 Australian Creatives Rally For Bushfire Tessa Minns

13 Metro Tunnel On ‘Track’ For Success Alessandra Akerley

14 Where’s The Dean?

NTEU’s Search a...Sucess?

Nurul Juhria Binte Kamal

16 Co-Op To Close After Sale To Online Retailer Angus Thomson

17 Observing Australia During The Bushfire Crisis Sujith Nair

18 Inferno

Wendy Lin

20 UMSU Condemns University’s Inaction Against The Bushfire Crisis Ann Khorany and Amber Meyer

22 Doll

Michelle Pham

23 SEX. A Third Culture Kid’s Experience Klesa Wilson

24 The OTHER theory of evolution Tessa Marshall

25 Feature Art

Rohith Prabhu

26 Twenties in the 21st Century E.Cheung

28 Sponsored Post: Languagely Rebecca Fletcher

29 Student Leaves Assignment To Last Minute Because Time Is Just A Construct

52 Strange Little Boy Wen Yee Ang

54 Matryoshka Dreams Charlotte Waters

56 The place Where The Stars Have Gone Stephanie Nestor

Lauren Berry

58 Losing Grip

Sarah Peters

60 Badass Women; Eleanor of Aquitaine

30 How To Forget Him 31 Feature Art Annette Slyahlani

32 The Curtain Calls For You To Think Tzur Ko-Green Rochvarger

33 Photography

Charlotte Davies Abir Hiranandani Finley Tobin Ailish Hallinan Jean Baulch Keely Tzoukos

41 Melbourne Within Me: Excerpts From My Journal Shaira Afrida Oyshee

42 A Catcher’s Handbook Kitchen Ants Tiarney Aiesi

43 gallery of rotten riches Felicity Lacey

44 Pomegranate Streetwalker Caitlin Wilson

45 Feature Art Kaavya Jha

46 for joy.

Rebecca Fletcher

Sunnie Habgood

62 B I G L O V E Ana Jacobsen

63 Horoscope 64 Lonely Hearts of the Animal Kingdom Tessa Bagshaw

66 The Cherryman: The Boy from Stormwater Lee Perkins

68 DISNEY vs DREAMWORKS: Battle of the Animation Studios Lindsay Wong

70 Vive La Révolution Corey McCabe

72 Not A Teenager, Not An Adult Angela Nguyen

74 PTV Woes

Pavani Ambagahawattha

76 Quiet Entitlement: The Problem with Mum and Dad Investors Michael Scalzo

Markella Votzourakis

78 DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition

Luoyang Chen

79 Flash Fiction: Summer

Matt Bostock

80 Radio Fodder Playlist

48 I follow your route 49 Love Note: 54 50 The Snow Falls Softly Caity

Illustrated by Zino Feng Illustrated by Zino Feng

Tharidi Walimunige Assorted Writers

Radio Fodder Music Team

Bethany Cherry What a time to be alive. The controlled cinematic chaos we are so comfortable watching from our screens has become our reality. There is no pause button for this movie and no room for error. Every action today will have a reaction tomorrow. As you take the time to slow, sit, and read Farrago, I hope you can appreciate every moment for what it is; a chance. A chance to dance to the playlist, to listen to a stranger, to be kind to yourself.

I hope it gives you a chance to fall in love with being alive again, as you may not have the chance tomorrow.

EDITORIAL EDITORIAL

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Amber Meyer If you write your goals down, you’re more likely to achieve them. Right? So, here’s me, putting promise to paper. I will make proud the community that built me up. My first-ever printed words found home in Farrago — for many of you, that’s the case too. This opportunity to speak, and be heard, extends to all students at the University. With the privilege of working on this team, I dedicate my love to underrepresented voices. They already have immense creativity and dynamic passion. I’m just here to make sure we’re paying attention.

Sarah Peters I’m still debating whether I organise my Farrago’s by colour or chronology. Either is an option but, there’s so many that I’ve acquired over the years. Anyone would think this is my final year of uni. I was too scared to get involved in my undergraduate, but when I found myself subediting beautiful poems, something clicked. Being a part of student writing and art is intoxicating at every level and during my time at uni developed into a necessity, a third lung. The limit for lungs might exist, but for copies of Farrago?

There’s always a space on my shelf.

Tharidi Walimunige An outlet for my wackiest tales and film-loving ramblings, a pathway to meeting friends, a space to have my voice heard, and the delight of crafting something tangible. Farrago takes on many meanings to me. Reader, I hope this publication can do the same for you. I hope the words, art and people you encounter here inspire you, make you laugh or teach you something. As Beth, Amber, Sarah and I inherit Farrago’s 95-year legacy and strive to make a mark in its future, we’ll always remember that there is no Farrago without dedicated readers and contributors. So send us your works, pick up our babies from the stands, and join us for the ride!

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MONDAY 2

Women of Colour Collective 12-1pm Women’s Room International Women’s Day Banner Making 1-2pm, Arts Lab

WEDNESDAY 4

WEDNESDAY 4

Education Farmer’s Market Stall 10am-2pm, Concrete Lawn Women’s Collective Women’s Room 12-1pm

Queer Lunch Arts Lab 1-2pm Queer Political Action Collective Food Co-op 2-3pm

MONDAY 9 Queer x Disabilities Collective 12-1pm, Disability Space

WEDNESDAY 11 Start of Uni Party 7pm-late PoC Collective 1pm-3pm Training Room 1 Queer Lunch Arts Lab 1-2pm

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TUESDAY 3

Queer Speed-Friending Joe Nap A and B 2-3pm Queer x Disabilities Collective 12-1pm Disability Space

TUESDAY 10 Southbank Queer Collective 12-2pm BBQ Arts Lab: Botanical Drawing 12:30-3pm

THURSDAY 12

Education Action Collective 12-1pm, Level 2 Union House QPoC Collective 12-1pm Training Room 1

TUESDAY 3 Trans Collective Training Room 2-3pm

THURSDAY 5 Education Action Collective 12-1pm, Level 2 Union House Arty Party 6pm

TUESDAY 10 Women of Colour Collective 12-1pm Women’s Room Trans Collective Training Room 1 2-3pm

THURSDAY 12

G&Ts with the LGBTs 5-7pm Ida bar George Paton Gallery 5-7pm

WEDNESDAY 4 Union House Twilight Festival 5-10pm

FRIDAY 6 International Women’s Day Panel 2pm International Women’s Day Banner Making

WEDNESDAY 11 Farmer’s Market 10am-2pm, Concrete Lawns Women’s Collective 12-1pm Women’s Room

FRIDAY 13

Creative Arts Collective 2-4pm Student Climate Strike 12-3pm

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MARCH MONDAY 16

Education Week Queer x Disabilities Collective 12-1pm, Disability Space

WE

ESDAY 18

Farmer’s Market Stall 10am-2pm, Women’s Collective 12-1pm Women’s Room

FRIDAY 20 Creative Arts Collective 2-4pm

WEDNESDAY 18 Happy Healthy Art Making Workshop 2:30-3:30pm Queer Gals Movie Night 4:30-7pm, Rowden White

MONDAY 23 Queer x Disabilities Collective 12-1pm Disability Space

TUESDAY 17

Women of Colour Collective 12-1pm Women’s Room

TUESDAY 17

Trans Collective Training Room 1 2-3pm Arts Lab: Botanical Drawing, 12:30-3pm

WEDNESDAY 18

THURSDAY 19

PoC Collective 1pm-3pm Training Room 2 Queer Lunch Arts Lab 1-2pm, Queer Collective Food Co-op 2-3pm

Education Action Collective 12-1pm, Level 2 Union House Pot Luck Open Mic Night 6-9pm, QPoC Collective 12-1pm,Training Room 1

TUESDAY 24

TUESDAY 24

Women of Colour Collective 12-1pm Women’s Room Trans Collective Training Room 1 2-3pm

Southbank Queer Collective 12-2pm BBQ Arts Lab: Botanical Drawing 3pm

WEDNESDAY 25

WEDNESDAY 25

THURSDAY 26

THURSDAY 26

Farmer’s Market QPoC Collective 1pm-3pm Training Room 1 Queer Lunch Arts Lab 1-2pm

Queer Speed-Friending Joe Nap A and B 2-3pm Queer x Disabilities Collective 12-1pm Disability Space

QPoC Collective 12-1pm, Training Room 1 G&Ts with the LGBTs 5-7pm Ida bar

Education Action Collective 12-1pm, Level 2 Union House George Paton Gallery Closing Event 5-7pm

Illustrated by Rose Gertsakis

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OB REPORTS

President | Hannah Buchan

Hey! My name is Hannah and I’m your 2020 UMSU President. If you’re new to the University of Melbourne (or even if you’re returning) welcome to UMSU! UMSU is your Student Union, and we’re run by students, for students. We do heaps of things like offering over 200 Clubs & Societies, throwing parties, giving out free food, and running a free legal service.

We’re also going to run a huge campaign about student rights at university, so keep an eye out for that! There’s no better time to get involved in your Student Union like the start of the new decade, so if you’re keen to come get involved come visit us on level one of Union House.

General Secretary | Jack Buksh

Hello everyone and welcome to 2020! As General Secretary, it is my role to ensure that UMSU remains true to its aims, and is run in an effective, transparent and inclusive manner. We are governed by an elected students’ council, which meets regularly, and meetings are open to all students. Departments of UMSU also hold their own committee meetings and collectives, providing all students with a chance to have their say in the direction and activities of the student union. All meeting details can be found on the UMSU website under the Secretariat tab. My office is located on the 1st floor of Union House with the rest of your student representatives. I encourage all students to visit us.

Clubs and Societies | Jordan Di Natale

What up Superstars! My name is Jordan Di Natale (aka The Italian Stallion of UNIMELB LOVE LETTERS) and I’ll be the 2020 Clubs and Societies Office Bearer! I am a science student with aspirations of becoming a doctor! So, how did this soon-to-be-doctor get involved in student politics? Well, ask my friend Josh!!! The C&S office (and Gunter) is located on the First Floor of Union House, next to North Court. You can’t miss us with the purple windows!!! Our huge SUMMERFEST CLUBS DAY is on the 26th of February!!! We also have course related clubs attending the Commencement Ceremonies at the Royal Exhibition Building from the 24th - 28th of February. Not to mention, a mini-clubs expo on the 2nd of March! Keep Being Superstars!!

Creative Arts | Emily White and Olivia Bell

We’re Emily and Liv, your Creative Arts Officers for 2020! We’re here to bring you Arty Parties, Open Mic Nights, workshops, Q&A sessions and fun times dedicated to all things creative. If you want to make some art (any art, truly anything you could imagine) while you’re at uni, we want to help you make that happen. Pop into our office on level 1 of Union House, near the Guild Theatre, or come along to the Creative Arts Collective running every Friday at 2pm in Arts Lab, level 3 of Union House.

Education Academic | Joshua Munro and Georgia Walton Briggs

We’re Georgia and Josh – your Ed Ac OBs in 2020! We help you with all things education at uni. Whether it be Special Consideration, Unrecorded Lectures, Assessment in SWOTVAC and so on, get in contact with us! We work closely with UMSU Advocacy and Legal on these issues. This semester will be a big one – we’re kicking off with a survey on the new MyTimetable system. Find it on our social media and website for your chance to share your thoughts on the new timetable.

We’ll also continue to fight against unrecorded lectures, unfair and inaccessible special consideration and high stakes assessments. Send us a message or come and say hi on Level 1 of Union House!

Education Public | Charlie Joyce and Noni Bridger

Happy new year! The EdPub team is back at it and ready to keep fighting for student and workers rights, free education and an end to corporate universities. We reckon education should be for everyone, and it should be accessible to everyone too. For too long, universities have put profit before students. We want to change that. This year, we’re going to be teaming up with the NTEU (the union for university employees) to put power and control back in the hands of students and staff. We’re also going to be campaigning in the wider world for justice, equality and action on climate change! Come to our collectives and get involved in the department!

Burnley | Kaitlyn Hammond

Hey! I’m Kaitlyn, Burnley’s representative for 2020! The Burnley team is excited to put on some new events this year to keep our friendly little campus more connected. We have goals to have some fun collaborations with other UMSU departments, and are looking forward to hearing some new suggestions from Burnley students about the types of events and resources they would find beneficial. We plan to start the semester strong with some wellness-oriented events and set up some recurring activities to build connections across our campus (and with students from other campuses!).

Can’t wait to get started!

Disabilities | Hue Man Dang and Srishti Chatterjee

Hello! It’s 2020 and we’re so excited to meet all of you! Our department is a safe and inclusive community space for students who have visible and invisible disabilities as well as carers. You can pop by Level 3 in the Union House to visit the Disabilities Space or to Level 1 to meet us (Hue Man and Srishti) at the Disabilities Office. We’re always down for a nice iced tea and want to know all about how we can support you better. We have had a handful of activities over the summer break and will have things in the calendar every week of the semester so check out our Facebook Page and Group for more details!

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Indigenous | Hope Kuchel & Shanysa McConville

People of Colour | Gurpreet Singh & Nicole Nabbout

OB REPORTS

Womenjika! We are your Indigenous Officers for 2020! Hope is a proud Barkindji woman, Barkindji translating to the people of the river. Shanysa is an Eastern Arrente woman from Alice Springs: red desert country. We are now proud residents of Naarm and acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we live and work, the Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung people of the Kulin Nations and their Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty of this land was never ceded. We produce Under Bunjil, an Indigenous-led magazine, participate in Indigenous University Games and promote safety and inclusion on campus. This year we want to produce our first ever Blak Musical and enforce proactive use of language at University! See us at SummerFest for face painting and copies of Under Bunjil!

Hey everyone, we’re keen to be your 2020 People of Colour Officers. The PoC department believes in racial justice through any means necessary. This means we’ll be working hard at tackling wage theft, putting the mental health of students of colour at the forefront and ensuring course content is culturally sensitive and accessible. If you’re keen to get involved or just want to grab a feed, come to our weekly collective on Wednesdays at 1pm or swing by our office on the first floor of union house. Alongside our weekly collectives, early on in the semester you can catch us and our friends in other departments at Surge Camp and at International Women’s Day events.

Activities | India Pinkney and Hayley Stanford

It’s Hayley and India here and we’re so excited to be running the Activities Department in 2020. We are here to ensure that your uni experience isn’t just assignments and stress, but something a little more fun. Our vision is to provide safe, accessible and enjoyable events every student can enjoy. We are passionate about bringing people together, to create friendships that last through your degree. Semester 1 for our department is jam-packed, with the first-ever Union House Twilight Festival, Start of Uni Party, comedy and movie nights, St Paddy’s Day Trivia and so much more. If you like the sound of live music and free food, keep an eye out for our Bands, Bevs & BBQ on Tuesdays or our BBQ lunch on Thursdays on North Court.

Queer | Ciara O’Sullivan and A’bidah Zaid Shirbeeni

Hi lovelies, it’s your resident Bisexual Babe Queer Officers A’bidah and Ciara and we’ve been preparing for another Hot Girl Summer (pictured). The Queer Department represents, supports, and advocates for queer and questioning students on campus: whether you’re dealing with queerphobia in the classroom, or just want to hang out with your fellow gays, we’re here to help. We’ve got an exciting year ahead and have planned so much for y’all including autonomous collectives, Queer Lunch, Bubble Teas/G&Ts with the LGBTs (gotta SPILL THAT TEA) and Queer & Questioning Support Group.

Follow the UMSU Queer Department Facebook page or @umsuqueer on Insta for More Good Gay Content.

Southbank | Verity Crane and Hayden Kierkegaard

If you’re new to Southbank campus, welcome! If you’re returning, commiserations! (a joke) We’re Verity and Hayden, we’re working to make life on Southbank campus better by building community across disciplines, increasing access to support services, and fighting for a quality education! If you’re reading this, it’s probably Orientation week (or after).

Hopefully you have enjoyed it, have met us, and are ready for the year ahead! If not, there are other opportunities: Union Social (our fortnightly pizza + board games night) take place on Thursday evenings from 5.30pm of odd weeks during semester in the UMSU Space (on Level 2 of The Hub Building), every Wednesday we have a free lunch for students behind The Stables between 12-2pm, in even weeks on Tuesday we have Queer Lunches in the UMSU Space between 12-2pm.

Welfare | Declan Kerger and Natasha Guglielmino

We’re Tash & Declan, your 2020 Welfare Officers! If you’re new here, welcome to Unimelb. If not, welcome back :) We hope you have had a refreshing break and holiday season. The Welfare Department is here to make your time at uni a little easier. This year we’ll be back with free breakfast, the food bank, wellness classes and volunteering. We also have our housing campaign coming up so stay tuned for that. Come to our Summerfest stall to hear more See you soon!

Women | Aria Sunga and Naomi Smith

Hey! We’re Naomi and Aria, and we’re super excited to run the Women’s Department for 2020! We love the Women’s Department and are thrilled to be the elected Office Bearers for 2020. This semester we’re starting up a new women’s volunteering base (check out the UMSU website for more information!), Rad Sex and Consent week (like @umsuwomens on FB for updates ) and our regular collectives for the semesters: Women of Colour Collective (in the Women’s Room, Tuesdays 12-1pm), Women’s Collective (in the Women’s Room, Wednesdays 12-1pm) and Queer Gals Movie Nights (in the Rowden White Library, Thursdays 4:30-7pm in Weeks 3, 7 & 11). See you all soon!

Environment | Olivia Sullivan and Sophie Kerrigan

We’re Sophie and Liv, your new Enviro Officers. We’re the department that fights for our planet. We’re a close-knit community of activists and tree huggers alike who get together for fun and immersive activities. We also run dynamic campaigns such as Climate Catastrophe, Save Creswick Campus, and Waste Management. These are an excellent way to meet rad people and make radical change, on and off the campus. For something a bit more mellow, we have a weekly collective, as well as awesome events such as Green Screen, Play With Your Food, and Radical Education Week. So come and join Enviro to be a part of tangible change.

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NEWS

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2020 UMSU BUDGET Written by Lucy Turton

E very year the University of Melbourne Student

Union (UMSU) passes its annual budget via Students’ Council. Why should you care?

Well, the Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF) is where the majority of UMSU’s funding comes from. The SSAF is what you pay to the University or put on a government loan each semester, and it covers things like events and programs, building maintenance, and student activities.

A good chunk of the money the University receives from SSAF goes to the student union, which decides how to budget that money each year. In 2019, UMSU was allocated $7,048,679 by councillors who are now to be paid a “sitting fee” in 2020. There have been several other significant changes to UMSU’s budget in 2020. The Activities and Indigenous Departments received huge budget increases. For Activities, this is reportedly to cater for larger events and bands, while the Indigenous Department is hoping to expand its programming to include a Blak Musical. The Media Department saw a notable budget decrease this year due to an editorial decision to reduce the number of Farrago magazines published throughout the year.

As well as the internal departmental budgets, UMSU affiliates to a couple of larger national organisations. This year, Students’ Council passed $90,000 in “affiliation fees,” the highest amount of affiliation in UMSU history. Last year UMSU gave the Australian Student Environment Network (ASEN) $10,000 and the National Union of Students (NUS) $65,000 (the highest of any of its affiliated student unions across the country). The NUS is the peak Australian student union body, and aims to represent the interests of all tertiary students by running national campaigns and lobbying efforts.

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However, controversy and infighting regularly surrounds the NUS National Conference each year (you can read some of the reporting from the 2019 conference on the Farrago website). Another 2020 budgetary change for UMSU is the demise of the Destination Melbourne program, which successfully ran at Unimelb for the last ten years. Destination Melbourne aimed to introduce new students from rural and regional areas to the city and help orient themselves before commencing their studies.

2020 Students’ Councillor Catriona Smith described it as “a program that helped to teach students at the university how to navigate city life...”.

Farrago understands that the decision to axe the program was made due to concerns about its high running costs. UMSU President Hannah Buchan said that she worked particularly closely with student representatives this year to ensure an efficient use of money and “comprehensive plan[s] for the year.”

Infographics by Alain Nguyen

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NEWS

UMSU UPDATES Written by Jack Buksh

UMSU is run for students, by students and its aim

is to make sure your time at university is as enjoyable and well-supported as possible. As General Secretary, it is my role to ensure that UMSU remains true to its aims, and is run in an effective, transparent and inclusive manner. As boring as they may be, UMSU’s governance structures ensure that student money is used to better all students on campus. As your student union, we have an obligation to all of you to continue to be as effective as possible.

All Student Representatives are governed by an elected Students’ Council, which meets regularly, and meetings are open to all students. There are 15 General Representatives (plus six elected representatives for special constituencies – Queer, Indigenous, International, Postgraduate, Students of Colour and Students with Disabilities), all of whom are elected at the annual student elections in September: https://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/getinvolved/studentscouncil/ Departments of UMSU also hold their own committee meetings and collectives, providing all students with a chance to have their say in the direction and activities of the student union.

All meeting details can be found at; https://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/about/secretariat.

I encourage all students to come along to Students’ Council and move motions or to contact your Student Representatives. We serve you - and it is important that every student’s voice is heard. My office is located on Level 1 of Union House, along with the rest of your Student Representatives. You are welcome to contact myself - or the President, Hannah - if you have any queries or are looking for new ways to get involved with your student union. A warm welcome to all new students, and welcome back to those returning. I hope your time at university and your involvement with UMSU is as fulfilling and enjoyable as mine has been.

Students’ Council so far…

In the first Students’ Council meeting of the 2020 term, Students’ Council passed UMSU’s budget for this year. The UMSU Students’ Council expressed that it stands in solidarity with the Intersex Community, condemns the violation of intersex rights and officially affirmed the Darlington Statement.

Students’ Council condemned Domino’s for engaging in wage theft practices across various franchises and reaffirmed its commitment to stand in solidarity with and support victims of wage theft.

It also moved that student money will no longer be used to support Domino’s pizza. Students’ Council moved that it stands in solidarity with all students currently being affected by the violence in India and that UMSU offers its support to anyone being impacted by these attacks. Students’ Council also reaffirmed its support for any student to join protests against climate change. Council moved to recognise and oppose the bipartisan support for the fossil fuel industry, as well as the University of Melbourne’s continuing support for these industries. UMSU supports the upcoming climate rally on the 13th of March.

Jack Buksh

UMSU General Secretary secretary@union.unimelb.edu.au

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Art by Lo Yuk Kei

NEWS

PROPOSED CHANGES TO SPECIAL CONSIDERATION SCRAPPED Written by Finley Tobin and Ailish Hallinan

The University has elected not to pursue contro-

versial changes to its special consideration policy that were proposed in September 2019. According to former President of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU), Molly Willmott, the changes included a ‘fit to sit’ rule, which would prevent students from applying for consideration after an assessment or exam is completed. For uncompleted exams and assessments, the University proposed a more strict enforcement of the requirement: that students submit supporting documentation within four business days.

According to Willmott, the University also proposed removing the ‘special on special’ provision, which allows students to apply for a second round of special consideration in extraordinary circumstances.

UMSU released a survey shortly after asking for students’ thoughts on the proposed changes. The survey recorded 2108 reponses, culminating in a submission by UMSU to the University’s Policy Network in October. In December, UMSU President Hannah Buchan confirmed that the proposal to remove ‘special on special’ and introduce a ‘fit to sit’ rule had been scrapped and would not be brought before the University’s Academic Board.

“The proposed changes to special consideration had a detrimental effect on student wellbeing and affected the accessibility of education for both undergraduate and postgraduate students”, Buchan said.

“It was a success for student feedback—thousands of people stepped up and got involved, which was absolutely integral to our success in blocking some of the proposed changes to special consideration.”

According to UMSU’s submission to the University’s Policy Network, 91 per cent of respondents called the proposed changes unfair. Students responded to each of the proposals on a scale ranging from “No Effect” to “It Would End Me”.

The removal of the ‘special on special’ provision was the least popular change among the student body, with more than half of respondents selecting the “It Would End Me” option. Two thirds of respondents said that they were concerned about the University’s proposal to tighten the special consideration timeframe, while 73 per cent were against the ‘fit to sit’ rule. One respondent to the survey said, “the proposed changes simply [sic] do not consider the nuanced and complicated situation students can be in and are particularly unfair to neuro-diverse students, students with ongoing mental health issues and students in difficult home situations where their situation can change unexpectedly and have large impacts on their performance.”

According to the submission, a key reason for the University proposing the changes was the idea that students may be “gaming” the University’s policy by applying for special consideration in unwarranted circumstances—despite that “there is no evidence that supports this narrative.”

The submission concludes that “‘gaming the system’ or ‘safety net’ applications are both extreme and uncommon events, and the University appears to have foregrounded these issues as a convenient alternative to addressing the real needs of students.”

A spokesperson for the University did not confirm whether UMSU’s submission played a role in the changes being scrapped. “The special consideration policy reflects the feedback that was provided by all of the University’s stakeholders during the consideration period,” they said.

According to Buchan, “The University doesn’t always have students’ interests at heart, and the policies that they implement show this. If we want the Academic Board to value student views we need to make student voices heard, and UMSU will always take the fight to the University.”

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AUSTRALIAN CREATIVES RALLY FOR BUSHFIRE RELIEF Written by Tessa Minns

As donations towards the recovery effort for Australia’s unprecedented bush-

fire season near $500 million dollars, the arts community has rallied around these fundraising efforts, with a wide range of events, auctions and pledges organised around the country in the past months. In the wake of the bushfires, broad sections of the arts community including authors, musicians, comedians and performing and visual artists have put their skills towards the fundraising effort. Prominent among these efforts has been the ‘Authors for Fireys’ fundraiser with over 900 items from 500 public figures auctioned, with the proceeds going to bushfire charities around Australia. The fundraiser quickly attracted the contributions from high-profile authors, publishers, illustrators and media personalities. Figures such as Jackie French, Kevin Rudd, Clementine Ford and Trent Dalton offered a range of items such as signed memorabilia, book club appearances, private meetings and future characters named in honour of the highest bidder. The brainchild of young adult authors Emily Gale and Nova Weetman, Gale said of the fundraiser, “that this began with the arts community, who are often dismissed as less important than other industries, is also a strengthening aspect.”

The music community has responded to the bushfire crisis similarly with prominent national and international musicians organising fundraising concerts. Among others, acts such as Stella Donnelly, Gang of Youths, Mac Demarco and Tash Sultana have all pledged to hold benefit performances through the year. While The Wiggles have already performed the first of two reunion concerts in aid of the Australian Red Cross and WIRES Wildlife Rescue. Large aid concerts have also been announced.

Fire Fight Australia, featuring international musical acts such as Queen, Jessica Mauboy and Olivia Newton-John, sold out within 24 hours of tickets going on sale.

Geoff Jones, the chief executive coordinating the concert described it as “designed to raise as much money as possible for the bushfire relief and hopefully raise people’s spirits in the process.”

It was further announced that Sound Relief, a benefit concert first held in 2009 to raise money for the recovery effort after the Black Saturday bushfires, will be held again in March 2020. The Melbourne music community has echoed these efforts, hosting a series of live benefit gigs at venues across the city that showcase local musical talent. Future fundraising events are scheduled throughout 2020.

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NEWS

METRO TUNNEL ON ‘TRACK’ FOR SUCCESS Akerley

Four of Melbourne’s busiest rail lines were replaced by buses for the majority of January, as construction of the Metro Tunnel continued.

Having

commenced in 2018, the Metro Tunnel Project has arranged for the construction of two 9km underground tunnels along the Sunbury, Cranbourne and Pakenham lines.

The building of these tunnels aims to eliminate congestion in the city loop, by creating space for other train lines to run more frequent services. The 11 billion dollar project is set to be completed by 2025.

Alongside the tunnel, this project includes the addition of five new stations, including Parkville station, which is currently being built on campus at The University of Melbourne. Students have often joked that the station will be their “graduation present”, as the station is not set to be finished until at least 2025, long after many current students will have graduated.

However, both the station and Metro Tunnel will greatly benefit future students, reducing commute times by up to 20 minutes each way.

Currently, however, the planned constructions have disrupted the usual commute for thousands of Melburnians. The following train routes were disrupted because of these constructions. Buses replaced trains for the majority of January on the Frankston, Sandringham, Pakenham, Werribee, Hurstbridge and Stony Point lines.

As a response to this, Victoria’s Transport Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan has ramped up existing bus and train services, having prepared around 300 replacement buses to transport commuters during this period. Allan acknowledged that the tunnel would cause many inconveniences during this ‘blitz’, but thanked Melburnians for their patience throughout this period. These actions meant commuters living along these train lines were subjected to a far greater commute time. Monash University student – and Pakenham resident Helena Granada – is no stranger to long commutes.

On a normal day it takes her an hour and a half to travel into the city by train.

Illustrated by Myles Knight

However, these bus replacements demand an additional “hour or more” to her usual travel time. Granada, who is currently completing a summer intensive program, states that the extended commute minimises time in which she could “potentially be working and studying”.

Delays like this have left citizens frustrated and dismayed with this project. Regardless of this, construction works are moving according to schedule. The works—including the building of 1.8 km of track, installation of six track turnouts and the removal of several dangerous level crossings along the Frankston line—were completed as per schedule.

Because of this efficiency the trains were up and running again by the 29th of January, four days before the predicted February 2nd finish date. Although they were unable to offer their personal opinion on the constructions, employees at Swanston Street’s Metro Tunnel HQ confirmed that the works are currently operating on schedule.

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NEWS

WHERE’S THE NTEU’S SEARCH On 9 December 2019, representatives of the Na-

tional Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) presented the Dean of Faculty of Arts, Professor Russel Goulbourne, with a petition demanding for casual staff to be paid when attending lectures. The petition was signed by 270 staff members, both casual and permanent. The petition addresses the fact that Faculty of the Arts casuals were expected to attend lectures, despite not being paid. Just last year, the University ceased lecture attendance payment in the School of Culture and Communication. The NTEU received reports that this is happening in other faculties as well. According to the Union, the petition is also a demand to improve student learning conditions as tutorials are spaces where students discuss lecture content with their tutors.

“The lecture attendance campaign is a values-based campaign about the integrity of pedagogy at The University of Melbourne. It is about protecting the intellectual community from the threats posed by neoliberal austerity measures at the University,” said Casuals Organiser, Ben Klunker, “the integrity of the tutorial space is in question when lecture attendance is neither expected of tutors nor paid. In order to appropriately model and support student engagement with course content, tutors need to attend lectures,” said the University spokesperson.

According to the NTEU, the meeting with the Dean only happened after multiple meeting requests and two occupations of the Dean’s office in Old Arts.

The meeting took place in HR Executive Director Sally Eastoe’s office in Raymond Priestly instead of the Dean’s. Despite showing willingness to meet with casual representatives during the second semester of 2019, the Dean refused to meet with them twice before the meeting on 9 December resulting in the occupation of his Old Arts office by NTEU representatives.

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Each refusal resulted in having his office at Old Arts to be occupied by NTEU representatives. However, HR Executive Director Sally Eastoe had asked the representatives to present the petition to her at her office at Raymond Priestly instead. The representatives refused.

“

We knew that meeting Sally Eastoe was a dead end because we’d been told as such.

We wanted to meet with the Dean and we did not want him to be able to shirk his responsibility to casual staff,

”

said Kunkler.

“The NTEU’s criticism of the Dean is disappointing given they were aware of and had agreed to a dispute settlement process which the parties are obliged to follow in the enterprise agreement. Under the terms of this agreement, Union disputes about the interpretation and application of the enterprise agreement are dealt with by the University through the office of the Executive Director Human.

According to the University, the Executive Director of Human Resources & OHS was available to meet and receive the Union’s petition. However, it was understood that HR did not have authority over academic and pedagogical decisions such as lecture attendance.

As such, it was appropriate for casual representatives to meet the most senior member of academic staff in the Faculty, the Dean; not HR. “Because this matter was contested industrially… the University [HR] maintained the pretense that casual NTEU members had no business talking to their Dean.

DEAN? A... SUCCESS?

Written by Nurul Juhria Binte Kamal

This is bogus. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. There is nothing to stop academic staff from speaking to academic staff. Whether the matter happens to be party to an industrial dispute is incidental,” said Kunkler.

Professor Goulbourne only resumed communications with NTEU after the second occupation where a meeting was finally arranged. University Executives and the Dean only invited Branch President, Steve Adams, and Branch Committee representative for casual staff, Annette Herrera, to the meeting.

During the meeting, the Dean divulged that he was unaware of the petition and had yet to read it.

When NTEU representatives presented the petition, Professor Goulbourne said that it was under discussion at the “faculty level”. However, when Branch Committee representative for casuals, Geraldine Fela asked for a guarantee that lecture attendance would be paid from 2020 onwards, Eastoe was unable to guarantee it. The Dean kept mum. Casuals are employees hired by the University for short periods with no guarantee of work beyond their hiring period. They, together with fixed-term staff, make up 72.5% of the workforce at the University.

They work without the provision of leaves such as paid leave, sick leave, long service leave etc.

The contracts they work under often underestimate the work that is required, leading to chronic underpayment by the University. Most tutors are casually hired. The current Enterprise Agreement states that, “If casual tutoring staff are required to attend lectures, they must be paid for doing so”.

While the University acknowledges its obligations, it is refusing to fulfil its requirements by hiding behind the ambiguity of the word “if ” in the clause.

As such, Schools and Faculties are unobligated to pay casuals when casuals’ contracts state that lecture attendance is optional or are not required.

In the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, casual tutors are directed to not attend lectures and will instead receive an additional three hours in their contracts. These extra hours are meant for meetings with course coordinators to receive and understand the entire semester’s worth of lecture content. According to the NTEU, directing tutors not to attend means that casual tutors will be less informed than students about the course content.

“It feels disrespectful, like our work as casual tutors is not valued, and that the faculty is prioritising its bottom line over the quality of our working conditions and of students’ education,” said casual Arts tutor, Eleanor Benson.

According to NTEU, a more “militant response” with potential industrial action may be necessary.

Currently, the NTEU Victoria Division is working with The University of Melbourne’s Graduate Student Association (GSA) to lodge a submission to the Senate Inquiry on unlawful underpayment of employees’ remuneration.

“

Subsequently, there will be [an] opportunity for sessional tutors to request a review of previous lecture attendance and where required back-pay. We envisage that we will have an agreed protocol with the Union over the next couple of weeks to address any pay requests that may arise,

”

said the University spokesperson.

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CO-OP TO CLOSE AFTER SALE TO ONLINE RETAILER Written by Angus Thomson with additions by Sarah Peters

The Co-op bookstore will close its doors at the

end of March after almost sixty years on The University of Melbourne’s Parkville campus.

Despite its sale to online book retailer Booktopia, the Co-op store on Grattan Street will remain open for the first four weeks of semester to clear remaining stock and ensure students receive their ordered textbooks.

The Co-op bookshop chain, which operated stores on 34 university campuses across Australia, as well as the Curious Planet chain, owed $12.6 million when the board decided to appoint an administrator in early November. Booktopia, the buyer, is already Australia’s largest retailer of higher education textbooks and expects the purchase to help grow annual revenue from $131 million to $175 million in 2020.

The demise of the Co-op means that its 2.1 million members, mostly current and former university students who paid a $25 membership fee to buy from the Co-op, will no longer be part of Australia’s largest membership scheme.

As well as the loss of the membership scheme, students have told Farrago that vouchers purchased before the Co-op entered into administration are not being honoured in store. The CEO of Booktopia, Tony Nash, told Farrago that Booktopia had attempted to recover the voucher credits but that they were

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wrapped up in the Co-op’s other business, Curious Planet, which was not acquired by Booktopia in the deal. “Unfortunately, that was one of the frustrating things about the takeover… that those [voucher] credits couldn’t be transferred,” he said.

Mr Nash did say that some vouchers were being honoured if the holder spent the equivalent amount in store.

Although the Co-op is unlikely to stay open beyond March, Mr Nash said he would “strongly encourage” a student-run cooperative on campus.

Jeremy Nadel from the ‘Take Back our Co-op’ campaign also said that there was still a place for a bookstore on campus.

“The benefits of a community-run hub for students is very important. It might not be wildly profitable, but it performs an important service,” he said. It is more likely however that a commercial retailer will take over the merchandise and stationery side of the Co-op, with educational retailer The School Locker reportedly in discussions with universities.The Co-op’s financial difficulties had impacted some students as early as 2018.

Ailish Hallinan, a student at The University of Melbourne, told Farrago that she had been employed by the Co-op during the second semester of 2018 but was let go due to “revised budgetary restrictions.” “The Co-op hired me and a bunch of others … and then let us all go before we could actually start work,” she said. Mr Nadel said the Co-op’s demise was due to decisions made by the board of directors to prioritise “maximising profits instead of maximising value for their owners”— their student customers.

“They have run the Co-op Bookshop into the ground, and what was left of it was increasingly irrelevant to students,” he said. Farrago did not receive comments from Co-op Administrators Andy Scott, Phil Carter and Daniel Walley.

Illustrated by Wendy T. Lin

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NEWS OPINION

OBSERVING AUSTRALIA DURING THE BUSHFIRE CRISIS Written by Sujith Nair

As an international student at the University of

Melbourne, I am dumbstruck at what’s happening in this country. The last few months in Australia have seen frustration and confusion towards the Australian Government and their response to bushfires among the residents of the country.

The impact of this disaster has transcended the political situation of the country at every level.

Despite 2019 warnings from the NSW Firefighters Association about the catastrophic weather conditions and the need for efficient resources for the firefighting teams in the future, some Australians have felt not enough was done. In an interview with the Washington Post, Anneke Demanuele, a convenor of Uni Students for Climate Justice said, “We are running out of time to act on climate.”

When I first arrived in Australia I felt everything here was organised and that the government really put in an effort to maintain the wellbeing of the society. But after the bushfires, my feelings have changed as I watched youths emerge, voicing concerns about the effect of climate change and the state of the government. Despite acknowledging climate change at a press conference in early January, Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has said “no response by anyone in

government anywhere in the world can be linked to any one fire event”, as recorded in The Guardian.

I question the turbulence that is visible in the government. Agencies have not been sorted out; why has no climate action been taken on preserving the environment? It has lost this country’s flora and fauna, eye-catching attractions for tourists across the world. Student protests have demanded the world to push their governments to take action against climate change, rather than send their thoughts and prayers for a better tomorrow. I feel there should be further dialogue set between the government and the general public, through which the government is made to listen. This may help propagate them to take an active interest in resolving the adversities surrounding climate change.

With huge numbers at the 10 January Climate Protest, and many following throughout February and into March, I am seeing further government backlash, questions of accountability and discussions on climate change and its hazardous impact on not only Australia but also our world.

References: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-29/school-strike-for-climate--sees-students-march-across -country/11749566 https://thediplomat.com/2020/01/australian-bushfires-a-government-in-disarray/ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/04/morrisons-government-on-the-bushfire s-from-attacking-climate-lunatics-to-calling-in-the-troops - Guardian https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/political-stunt-federal-government-launches-bushfire-inq uiry-to-probe-state-policy20191223-p53mh3.html https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/bushfire-crisis-fuels-student-climate-activism/ne ws-story/701bd0091705ffc6bdf9778e56fec68e https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/australia-fire-crisis-fuels-groundswell-of-sup port-for-bolder-action-on-cli-

Photography by Finley Tobin

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‘Inferno’ by Wendy Lin

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UMSU CONDEMNS UNIVERSITY’S INACTION AGAINST THE BUSHFIRE CRISIS

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Written by Ann Khorany and Amber Meyer

In its January 22 Students’ Council meeting, The

University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) condemned the University of Melbourne for not fulfilling its duty of care to students and staff in the Summer Term, during which bushfires in East Gippsland led to hazardous levels of air quality.

In early January, Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, Dr Brett Sutton, advised vulnerable individuals, such as those with heart or lung disease, or asthma, to minimise their smoke exposure. He also warned that all individuals might experience symptoms from the smoke levels, including “worsening coughs” and “nose and throat irritation”. Less than two weeks later, Sutton called Melbourne’s air quality the worst in the world, and the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) Victoria classified the pollution as “hazardous”. The EPA gave the following dates ratings from “very poor” to “hazardous”: January , January 6, January 14 and January 15.

UMSU President, Hannah Buchan, said that although the bushfires were outside of the University’s control, there is a pressing need for “mechanisms in place to support students affected by bushfires”. This includes “availability of masks” and “[leniency] with mandatory class attendance” when pollution levels are dangerous. According to UMSU General Secretary, Jack Buksh, the University has not taken steps to “provide protection’’ to students. UMSU hopes that its purchase of P2 masks will motivate the University to do the same. Disposable P2 face masks help filter out particle matter 2.5 (PM2.5).

The Acting Chief Medical Officer and State and Territory Chief Health Officers released a statement explaining that prolonged exposure to PM2.5 can cause a variety of health problems. In the University’s Health and Safety Policy, point 4.1 (a) called for the minimisation of the risk of injury or illness to staff and students, while point 4.1 (b) called for the creation of safe working and learning environments.

Education (Public Affairs) Office Bearer, Charlie Joyce, told Farrago that the University should have “acted to prevent students and staff from…danger”.

According to him, the institution should have improved its policies to reflect the worsening conditions in other cities. He lists Sydney as an example, in which the Air Quality Index reported hazardous levels of pollution as early as November last year.

Summer Term Music student Annalyce Wiebenga said that no facilities were provided to students

partaking in the summer term and that it was up to them to cope with the smoke. Wiebenga said that attending the University during these circumstances was like “standing in front of a bonfire”.

Biomedicine Honors student and Disabilities Officer Bearer, Hue Man Dang, noted that many buildings had “poor insulation and ventilation”. She said that “Because there were no fans, the air [indoors] wasn’t moving. It was difficult to breathe.”

French and European Studies student Olivia Bell commented that “Coughing and breathing difficulties can happen to anyone.” As the Creative Arts Officer Bearer, they worked on the Parkville campus during days of heavy smoke. “Even if one doesn’t have extreme symptoms of smoke inhalation…[they can still experience] heightened anxiety”.

In addition to staff and students, volunteers for VCE Summer School (VCESS) were also on campus. Approximately 500 students were involved in the annual program run by UMSU. VCESS subject tutor and social media manager, Allen Xiao, said that the circumstances forced program organisers to cancel outdoor activities on Wednesday of the first week. VCESS Directors did not respond to Farrago’s request for comment.

“

That was the day when the air pollution index was extreme.

We were told to stay indoors…

”

“There were students phoning in with asthma or health issues that were exacerbated by the bushfires,” Xiao said.

“I honestly felt like I couldn’t breathe properly,” VCESS biology tutor Nicole Nguyen told Farrago.

The air quality was at its worst, and she and her fellow peers were still required to attend the University and run the program. Nguyen wore her own masks to protect her wellbeing against the high level of pollution. She was able to obtain some extra masks that she had bought from overseas. She gave her spare masks to people that “were asthmatic or struggling”.

When asked about what action the students wished the University would have taken, Xiao and Nguyen both agreed that buying P2 masks and giving out more warnings to students would have been the fitting thing to do.

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) University of Melbourne branch commended the University on its creation of the Bushfire Response Working Group. The NTEU also noted that the University’s “legal obligations” to workplace safety include the provision of masks at all campuses.

It compounded the importance of providing such protective wear as the University was likely to be in a “better situation to source and provide masks” than individuals themselves were.

In late January, Students’ Council passed a motion to approve $500 from its budget for the procurement and distribution of P2 masks for students. Buksh told Farrago that UMSU had not confirmed a supplier for the masks due to low stock levels. Quotes from suppliers claim that the money can buy up to a thousand masks. Joyce seconded the motion and said that the University’s words for student welfare “are far stronger than its actions”.

Welfare Office Bearer, Declan Kerger, who moved the motion, could not be reached for comment.

A University spokesperson said in response to questions about the provision of masks that the institution’s current responses are more “sensible and practical” in the “deteriorating atmospheric conditions”. The spokesperson also told Farrago that the University sent advice from “the government, the health authorities and emergency services” to its students and staff. An email from Vice-Chancellor Duncan Maskell on January 6 described help offered by the University. This included financial assistance and “appropriate consideration…to students whose academic progress is adversely affected”.

Medical student and VCESS volunteer Sarah Burger told Farrago that “Staff and student health is a priority, but the distribution of resources like masks to all students is a more complicated issue…People have lost their homes, land, incomes, valuables and friends/family this summer. It is important that we take this into perspective and maintain [the] utmost respect for those that are persevering through this crisis.”

“Even if [the students] miraculously get the masks and the fire season is over, it’s probably going to happen again. I think it would be worth having at least a small stockpile to be prepared in the future if [the University] can’t be prepared now,” Wiebenga said.

More to come online. Farrago thanks Associate Professor Helen Jordan for her guidance on the matter from a public policy perspective.

Photograph by Mitch Needingham

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Art by Michelle Pham

CONTENT WARNING: discussions about sex

A THIRD CULTURE KID’S EXPERIENCE

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SEX Written by Klesa Wilson

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very sexual experience that I have had has boiled down to one governing emotion: guilt. When it came to talking about sex, my parents were on opposing sides of the fence. My white-Australian father was adamant on giving me “the talk” at a young age, asking me questions unabashedly about my sexuality as I grew into my teenage body. It was awkward, a girl discussing sex with her dad, but it normalised the swathe of sexual insecurities that came with getting older. My Indonesian mother, like many of my Thai friends’ parents, was less candid on the subject. We spoke little of sex, if at all. My education and self-reliance were far more important to her.

I was met with similar divergence at school. Growing up, I had a British private education in Bangkok. Though the Caucasian teachers had a liberal approach to teaching sex—assigning us foam penises to put condoms on, discussing consent and the premise of birth controls—the conversation did not carry past the classroom.

In Thailand, the topic of sex was tackled gracelessly; living within a collectivist society where status is coveted, parents felt the topic was too taboo to be discussed with their children, and the Asian-dominated student body was reluctant to air their sexual experiences. To them and their parents, knowledge and diligence were paramount. None of the girls ever discussed masturbation and the boys examined sexuality from the perspective of ‘conquest and domination’ through their illegal pornography consumption that was only available from offshore torrent sites. This contrast was isolating for me; between the cultural differences of my parents, and the environment at school, I thought I could only have one or the other—the enjoyment of sex, or my education and ambitions.

Moving to Melbourne for university, it was unusual to hear such unbarred conversations about sex. After all, sex had been treated like a social anathema for most of my life and to discover that my friends enjoyed other people just as much as they studied was both shocking and liberating. Sex floated into conversations just as breezily as one might discuss television shows. Although Thailand’s focused culture helped me foster a strong work ethic, living in Australia and being immersed in a culture that values independence made me question how little aspiration and sex are intertwined: is it possible for one not to cancel the other?

To say that navigating these cultural clashes has been tough for me would be an understatement. I want to both implement the self-sacrificing mindset of my Asian heritage whilst having the autonomy that my white background encourages. Living in Melbourne, I’ve tried to embrace the selflessness I was taught in Bangkok—I want to do well at university for my family. But I’ve also started to welcome selfishness, to try to understand that the strength of my mind has no correlation with what I do with my body and that sex does not, and should not, be something I feel guilty for having.

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THE OTHER THEORY OF EVOLUTION Written by Tessa Marshall

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harles Darwin. Marie Curie. Isaac Newton.

In science class we only celebrated successes. But for every scientific superstar there’s a generation of equally intelligent scholars who got it wrong. If mentioned at all, these scientists’ ideas are mercilessly mocked. The four humours? Ridiculous. The Earth as the centre of the universe? Absurd. Alchemy? A fantasy!

Hindsight makes it easy to scoff at these debunked theories.

What’s more difficult is putting yourself in these thinkers’ shoes and appreciating their intellect and dedication. Take biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. These days, he is best known for Lamarckian evolution, where traits acquired during the organism’s lifetime are passed onto offspring. A classic example of Lamarckian evolution: millions of years ago, a giraffe with a short stumpy neck was hungry. But an unlimited supply of fresh juicy leaves—a ruminant’s equivalent to an Instagram-worthy bottomless brunch—were at the top of towering trees. The giraffe was desperate for a gourmet meal, stretching its neck so far to reach the leaves that the structure was permanently altered, passing their longer neck onto their offspring.

Cringey, right? Lamarck’s example is still contrasted with Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection precisely because it sounds so ridiculous. But given the limited scientific knowledge of the 19th century, was it really such a crazy proposal? I mean, creationism was still a dominant and widely accepted belief. People criticise Lamarck for having no clue how these acquired traits could be passed on. But Darwin also had no good explanation for the mechanism of natural selection. Neither Darwin, who we laud for his genius, nor Lamarck, who has faded into relative obscurity, knew anything about genetics. Gregor Mendel, who pioneered genetics, was Darwin’s contemporary. But because Mendel surrounded himself with pea plants in a tiny church in the Czech Republic, his ideas didn’t exactly spread like wildfire.

So, neither Lamarck nor Darwin had any clue how genetics facilitated their theories—but that shouldn’t stop us from celebrating them. With today’s knowledge you may scoff at Lamarck. But On the Origin of Species references and endorses his ideas, and countless experiments explored the validity of acquired inheritance.

Lamarck’s theory wasn’t definitively disproven until the 1930s (and even later in the Soviet Union, where it became part of their official biology).Despite being wrong, Lamarck was one of the first people to not only acknowledge that species change over time, but also provide a systematic explanation for those changes. He paved the way for modern evolutionary biology, and debunking his ideas taught us a lot about evolution. We should give more credit to the brilliant—but wrong—scientists that make progress possible.

Illustrated by Su Park

Illustrated by Zino Feng Art by Rohith Prabhu

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SPONSORED POST: LANGUAGELY Written by Rebecca Fletcher

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STUDENT LEAVES ASSIGNMENT TO LAST MINUTE BECAUSE TIME IS JUST A CONSTRUCT Written by Lauren Berry

In the final, stressful minute before his literature assignment is due, Arts student Wes Wednesday is cool as a cucumber after realising that time does not, in fact, exist. Having experienced an epiphany only mere hours earlier about the societal construction of time, Wednesday has refused to let stress and other negative emotions enter his consciousness. In doing so, Wednesday argues that time is just a means of dictating people’s individual experiences.

“If time doesn’t exist, why worry about the submission deadline?” asked Wednesday. He continued to tap leisurely at his laptop—the brightness of the screen reflecting the pure inner light of his soul. “NOW is all there is. It’s all there ever was.

There’s no such thing as the past or the future.

These are concepts that we’ve been conditioned to believe are fixed realities. We worry so much. We live in fear of the clock, we’re slaves to time. The clock should fear ME! I am real. I am the clock master.” Witnesses to Wednesday’s meditative zen responded with varying degrees of awe.

“Wait, he’s not stressed AT ALL? How can you live life stress-free? That’s a preposterous idea,” argued a friend, a Biomedicine student.

A bearded philosophy student, also at the University, exclaimed, “Dude really understands what’s important, man! He gets what’s really real!” while nodding incessantly. “Of course, I couldn’t do it. I actually need to get my degree… for something.”

Wednesday’s mother had to sit down immediately after hearing her son’s revelation. “Obviously this is horrifying,” she said. “If the assignment isn’t good… if it isn’t finished… if it’s late… Oh GOD. He’ll fail the subject, then fail the course, then fail his life. What’s the point? We might as well have sent the cat to university—at least she’s more proactive.”

Wednesday dismissed such negative reactions as signs of ignorant, clock-ruled people.“Time’s a tricky little illusion… but it’s nothing that a cup of tea and a biscuit can’t help expose,” he said.

There are no further updates at this time.

Illustrated by Phuong Ngo

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HOW TO FORGET HIM

CREATIVE SECTION TEXT

Written by Sarah Peters One. Throw out the shirt, the one with the netting, and crashing blue water, where he hunted you, all the way down.

Two. Scrub your skin, in the places where he touched, redder than the heart, he splattered across you.

Rub it raw.

Three.

Smash the amulet, that you are so sure, holds his eye within it, (they share the same tone) don’t let him see you.

Four.

Burn the words he wrote, from their place on your bones, there are no more what if ’s or lies to lick into your skin.

Five.

Forget the way his name sounds, it will not bring forth ravens, tearing your knuckles and wrapping them through your bloodied wrists, his name won’t write your fate.

Six. Shake the shouted whispers from your hair, they’re nothing more than dandruff now.

Let them make snow and build make tracks to new places, that disappear before him.

Seven.

Tell the guy at the party, why you’re so introverted, when you discuss “boy problems” as he holds your hand warm, the first demonstration of masculine comfort you’ve felt, since your Daddy’s arms.

Eight.

Kiss the people, Who create homes out of tents you feared, when it was dark, And he would wander.

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Illustrated

by Name Illustrated

by Bethany Cherry

Illustrated by Annette Syahlani

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NON-FICTION

CONTENT WARNING: racism and 9/11

THE CURTAIN FALLS FOR YOU TO THINK Written by Tzur Ko Geen Rochvarger

Kindness. You’d think the will to do good

would trump everything else. Think again! I sound cynical—I don’t mean to—but there is good out there, so much choice to make it all better and we sit every day in fear. Not everyone does. I give props to those living their lives in the moment, fearless and with halos of lemon-drop sunshine. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate life and fear is a biological instinct that keeps us safe. It’s normal, yet I can’t stop thinking of the fear that we let dictate our lives to the point where it ferments into hate.

Fear is engulfing nowadays and so prevalent, especially with the fast-paced cover stories of the news. I can’t stop thinking about why it’s easy to let that fear run every fibre of our being. Take 9/11: it was so shocking to the world that the entirety of how airspace and airways ran changed forever. I bring up 9/11 because even now, nearly two decades later, it is so relevant that it has been adapted into an award-winning musical, Come From Away. It’s a spectacular show that makes three hours pass like a blip of a second. I walked in thinking it would be an archetype of a musical.

Instead, it was something else altogether—one story, told by several voices, and it was outstanding. I cried over the loss of a newborn, loss of identity and the loss of a son. I felt every character’s embrace and heard every cry in its sea of silence. The musical as an artistic piece was marvellous. As a piece that mirrors the reality of our world today, it is transcendent.

When I left, all I could think about was how the tragedy of 9/11 surpassed physical borders and changed the world forever. 9/11 left a mark on the world so strong its presence still exists. Tensions between the US, the poster-boy of Western power, and the Middle East were already high-strung; 9/11 just added gasoline to an already searing fire. I bring this up, not because I want to stir controversy, I just think this conversation is so important into realising how much we divide ourselves based on fear.

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In the musical there’s an Arab chef and, like everyone else, he finds himself stranded.

Everyone is stranded at this tiny, almost forgotten place called Gander; yet, the moment the news reaches the stranded passengers, and the town, he is ostracised in a heartbeat. None take a moment to empathise with what this man is experiencing. He is fearful, he is alone, and most of all, he is as displaced and lost as everyone else. In spite of all this, to everyone else his skin colour and birthplace become homing beacons of distaste. I’ll have you know, be it a spoiler, it gets better. Good hearts and open arms prevail and kindness triumphs.

Nonetheless, the reality is that this is not the case worldwide and that is why it is so important to recognise the impact of the manifestation of fear into hate.

Reaching out a hand, metaphorical or not, sends waves of good mojo. The moment one townswoman took time to listen to the chef, she learnt of his skill and the wall between them fell. Tiny acts cascaded and gave everyone a new scope of this gentleman: relationships changed, hearts opened. It starts with being aware of our fears, taking chances on the people around us. No one is born with the intent to harm. What we do transcends into the world and catalyses what others do. Race doesn’t make someone what another man was.

Race is the perfect example of human fear.

It exists to divide, in its origin at least. I’m aware that in modern clinical sense it has its certain benefits… but that is beside my point!

The fear we feel can save us or make us—and when I say make us, it’s in the sense that it defines us and feeds the underbelly of hate. Call me a sucker but I believe that an open hand gets you further than a balled-up fist. Fuelling racism, the forefront model for hate, gets us nowhere in our modern age and it never will.

If I would say one thing about Come From Away, other than that it is worth every minute and dollar, it would be that it highlights that amidst suffocating hate, it is possible to find that lemon-drop of kindness in you.

FARRAGO

Photography by Charlotte Davies

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Art by Abir Hiranandani

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FARRAGO

Photography by Jean Baulch

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Photography by Finley Tobin

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Photography by Ailish Hallinan

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Photography by Charlotte Davies

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Photography by Charlotte Davies

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Photography by Keely Tzoukos

Written by Shaira Afrida Oyshee

I Seagulls of St Kilda beach have mastered their craft, each learnt to fly to the highest of heights. They do not flap their wings frantically like city sparrows who trust human beings, but they do love french-fries and I too have felt greed, the lust for the tangibles of Collins Street. I too, devoured the regrettable for a minute’s pleasure, I too lived sometimes, a little and too much.

III In Fitzroy along the spray-painted walls there is a hidden bar where old ladies with green hair perfectly belong. Its for the forever teenagers, always under construction and has a narrow door on the side. Never settling and completely unsettled within. Some days I find mirrors with black lip prints, and freshly broken shackles on the floor.

The shop next to it is for yoga and massage, the one next to it is a bar which holds tipsy poets on wednesdays; a boy stands up on stage, he says Fitzroy is ‘mess appreciated’.

II 189 Elgin Street is a cafe which holds what I thought we had lost: good soup and a slow view. It is a museum of inefficient objects put to dance. Michael said he had built the whole cafe with his bare hands (and of course a few tools). He said no one else could have put it together exactly like he did. I said, in that case this is poetry. Nadeen asks the visitors their names, not to misspell them on identical plastic cups but to exchange tales, centuries apart, and I too have a reluctance to change. I too have made running time the butt of my jokes.

CREATIVE

MELBOURNE WITHIN ME: EXCERPTS FROM MY JOURNAL

IV Walking through Carlton gardens, the rows of yellowing old elm trees shed their leaves on me. Since I am alone here, I like to imagine them to be a visible form of my grandmother’s blessings; and why would I not? The elm trees wear their wrinkles just as proudly.

I walk slowly letting my body catch as many of the frail little leaves, while making sure nobody catches me doing so. There are a few things we just don’t explain.

Illustrated by E. Cheung

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CREATIVE

a catcher’s handbook

Written by Tiarney Aiesi

a jar, a box, a grabbing

fist: the necessary

utensils for capturing a cabbage butterfly. a pair of hands, of knees lowered

— disguised — in tall

grass and perennial

dandelion weeds. a love for spearmint, for the burgundy red

rhubarb patch

in which they cluster

unafraid of poisonous leaves.

kitchen ants Written by Tiarney Aiesi

Kitchen ants sit on my counter like miniscule pieces of perfect black liquorice.

They reverberate their pheromone calls between fragile walls in single file.

Yet, afraid for the sugar and the blackberry jam I take RID! and cast the creatures quiet.

Their filament legs writhe and wriggle under beads of foam kill formula slowly bursting.

With a sponge I wipe the ant bodies clear and let the sink swallow with a methodical gurgle sigh.

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Illustrated by Su Park

Written by Felicity Lacey

drinking honey from the heart of a ghost under the withered moon of catastrophe a stain on the blueberry sky. who is the architect of impenetrable despair in a gallery of rotten riches? god is all out of lies.

Illustrated by Alice Tai

CREATIVE

gallery of rotten riches

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CREATIVE

POMEGRANATE STREETWALKER Written by Caitlin Wilson

walking is therapeutic but

I’m seven pushing my bike down the lane the crunchy gravel sounds delicious sour cream and onion chips and the tinkle of sparkly pink handlebar streamers a man turns I cringe without knowing why

walking alone at night is

my friend tells me men look at her chest we’re at the supermarket sitting on the floor, waiting for our parents

we’re fifteen she’s disgusted I’m jealous idiotic.

I walk anyway brave and I look at boys at seventeen I keep waiting for it to feel like pink chiffon light and airy a frisson of first-look longing but I always tense first arrogant.

I hold my breath as I walk past three men their gaze hits my stomach, soup-heavy sick I’m reminded of jackals I’m reminded I attached a padlock to my keys when I was twenty: deadly weapon I’m thinking about having it engraved with womanhood I’m meat or maybe a pomegranate arils and arils spilling out of me onto the asphalt

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Illustrated by Wendy Lin

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Art by Kaavya Jha

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for joy.

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CREATIVE

Written by Markella Votzourakis

the sky’s sparkling with fractured light the champagne has bubbled our heads and carried us away and i’m in your dress because it looked silky like the underside of your wrist. i confess, however, that the dress is a compromise because my eyes are lingering on the smudge of your lipstick but i’m contenting myself with your second-hand warmth, seams tugging at my shoulders while you tug at my cap where it’s holding your hair back from your face. we’ve swapped shoes too— my sneakers for your heels to save your aching feet and i regret it as they pinch my toes like crab claws but i love the unfamiliar tapping beat of my steps on the pavement and i can’t stop dancing to it so i’ve memorised the song and i think after a few more sips of champagne maybe you should dance with me too? our hands catch and your fingertips caress the lines on my palm like you’re reading my future, gentle and knowing brave like you’re seeing us together in the same way that i see us: alight like sun streaming through cathedral mosaic windows leaning in like you want me close enough to taste your breath, the fizz of champagne sweeter when it’s not from a flute so it goes, falling entwining kissing in the light of our guardian moon with your lipstick laugh staining my mouth plum, joy saturating my skin like a blush, petal-pretty. i want this to be remembered. that i lived, once, as i wanted— in a pretty dress tinted the refraction of light through a prism laughing out spectrums of colour and spinning ‘til we’re stumbling with the street still like a bated breath my beating heart in my ears like it’s pressed to a loudspeaker and you smiling into my shoulder, teeth pressed to salted skin like you can hear the way i love you.

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Illustrated by Michelle Pham

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I FOLLOW YOUR ROUTE CREATIVE

Written by Luoyang Chen

Can you stay I want to tell you A moth in the sink is Not a broccoli Otherwise I’d pick it up And place it on the bench It’s a moth in the sink A living moth Now the tap water runs Like waterfall Straightforward, forceful Now the moth is wet – Flapping its wings, but not drowned Now the water turns hot – The hottest the heater can get Now the moth is gone Flushed down the sink

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Illustrated by Vivian Li

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LOVE NOTE: 54 CREATIVE

Written by Matt Bostock

You are still there Frozen Smiling, Head titled back, Washed In gold. Your eyes are crinkled, Filled with love And laughter.

Back when you were unaware of me.

Before your fingers Interlaced with mine.

Before cheeks became Stained and blotched.

Before heads rested Heavy in laps.

When wings Still worked.

Before scabs were made, healed, Then pried open Before lines were drawn, crossed, Redrawn - then repeated.

When all rocks knew was rest.

At least You will always be happy Frozen In that moment

Illustrated by Vivian Li

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the snow falls softly

Written by Caity

the snow falls softly fingers run through crevices as cloaked figures sweep time is fleeting they run losing memories like leaves trees echo in the void slow motion dark wild curls water stained paper ink running like blood words erased from existence phantom laughter the fire rages retribution shadows falter in the faint flicker golden eyes close as the phoenix flies inhale, silence colonnades crumble into dust talons sweep from the sky stars picked like flowers love; light in the stasis erupts like Vesuvius the edge of the universe spills over constellations die quietly like candles held in a state of suspension in the ruins of Atlantis

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Illustrated by Abir Hiranandani

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CREATIVE

STRANGE LITTLE BOY Written by Wen Yee Ang

they call you Strange, little boy. in legoland you broke down like our little tin car kicking crying words failing so: they had to pull us out.

tell me why? flashing lights smiling dolls crowding people dark room voices like screams battering rams pounding pounding unstrange children love theme parks. a woman said he’s not coping take him out like it was our fault, I whisper they don’t know.

they call you Sick, darling boy. a chronic disease pathogen deep blood mind there is no cure. you get symptoms medical reports therapy check-ups for government funding it’s all inside, it makes you shriek at rough fibres of new clothes spiders on skin.

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they call you Slow, dearest boy. you cannot paint or do maths like they say your kind can but: you read a hundred books name a thousand things planets

jupiter saturn uranus neptune

satisfied in your universe. no eye contact attention speech lying on belly rustling pages so calm but are you happy? they call you Disabled Difficult Different Special.

Alone you Sit on the playroom mat, my Dear. they think you so so so so Strange

Illustrated by Geraldine Loh

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CREATIVE 54

MATRYOSHKA DREAMS Written by Charlotte Waters

One

Two

The tiger awakens as you grip the bars and use them to propel you into a 360-degree jump.

Beads of sweat nestle on your neck and your heart swells in its cage. He rises slowly and turns his head towards you, as if he’s heard your ribs begin to creak with the imagined pressure.

He plods around the edge of his enclosure, angled towards the bars so that their shadows overlap his stripes. It’s as if he’s decreeing the cage’s boundaries, marking the shape to which his desires must conform. You stretch yourself out, no walls to compress your ligaments, dangling your freedom in front of him like a necklace of pearls. A snarl splits through his eyes.

His head follows you as you drop to the ground, feigning death. It rises with your crumpled limbs, which tighten and arrange themselves into a careful arabesque.

Then you are flying.

You trace stencils on the tiger’s eye, your tiny canvas, with the silhouette of your body. His stare thickens and cloaks you in honey. You dwell inside his frontal lobe and your body is a piece of no man’s land.

You dance, bathing deep in your fame, long after your muscles have grown tired. You dance until your skin and bones are turned to cardboard, your flesh and thoughts squeezed up and out through your ear.

Kicked out, your brain hangs sheepishly in the air above you.

Watching from outside yourself, a kernel of laughter rises in you, but when you try for a wry smile your lips are nailed in place. Your song sticks in your throat. When you curl your hand in a fist, you cannot feel your nails digging into your palm.

The tiger catches your every movement before it is fully formed. He lays claim to it, so that he can choose to free it from his grip when the time is right.

It is by these means that he takes your attempt to flee and twists it into a piece of choreography that’s perched somewhere between the erotic and the absurd.

Your limbs collapse inward, drawn towards your skin in a sickly caress. He senses the tug of your heel and you feel his arms close around you, invisible.

Moving his hands to your waist, he supports you in a pirouette.

Spinning towards drunkenness, you realise the cage wall has no end but is wrapped around you.

When his invisible grip loosens and you keel over the dusty stone, the bars continue to churn. The observer becomes observed. He’s been watching through the bars since before you were born.

He’s allowed the shame to creep onto your face as you notice a gathering crowd, which erupts into laughter, a jerk reflex.

They jeer at you and make strange sounds. You’ve forgotten how to speak their language: your tongue is a lump of meat, a dead mound lounging unwelcome on the roof of your mouth.

Rooted to the cage floor, you cock your head to the side and narrow your eyes. Your face has the texture of linen and rests contorted, its features stiffened as if they’ve been strung out for centuries.

Three

Four

The voices which had seemed to threaten you, auction you off, no longer press their noses against yours and sneer. They transform, mid-somersault, into applause, circling you from above and below. Families squirm in their seats and dot your vision, clusters magnetising to form a pattern. A man in a tiger suit stalks away through the curtains. The pantomime is over.

Your brain, which had been suspended in mid-air, re-enters without a sound. It comes to rest at the back of your tongue, then spreads outward. Your heartbeat dangles from the tip of each inhalation and your cheeks sting with relief.

Your acting was good. You inhabited your character completely, efficiently, careful to smooth out any pockets of idleness. You possessed—or were possessed by—two entities, maybe even more, within a small minute. You swelled to house predator, prey, and an audience reeled in by a belief it chose to hook around your waist.

Something lands on the stage and comes to rest at your toes. A five-pound note, a posy, or a slab of meat.

With a bashful smile, you scan the audience for the culprit, but your mission is diverted by a pair of amber eyes. It manifests between the shoulder pads of two coats, projecting an alien light. Perhaps, dreams can be impregnated with daughter dreams, burrowing deeper into your waking hours until day is indistinguishable from night.

You shiver, a motion which sends a small shockwave through the audience. It seems your performance, the unzipping of your pride, has softened them to you. Prompted them, somnambulant, to tie a knot between your nervous system and theirs.

You become sensitive to your power over them; there are strings running downward from the tips of your fingers to their mouths. Even so, when you think of the amber eyes in the crowd, you realise the current goes both ways. One tug, you could kill them. One tug, they could drag you into their hovel.

The strings are neither real nor unreal. Dreams breed inside dreams. A hiccough crawls spiderlike up and down the theatre.

Illustrated by Reann Lin

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CREATIVE

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Written by Stephanie

Nestor

THE PLACE WHERE THE STARS HAVE GONE

He tells you to meet him on level six of that car park tucked behind the shops. There must be nowhere else to park at this time of night.

You don’t realise it’s the rooftop.

Standing in an empty car park can elicit feelings of anxiety in you because of the low ceilings, chorus of echoes and strange noises But standing on the highest level, where the sound disappears into the night and the only people around are six storeys below, your fear doesn’t exist. Without a ceiling or walls, you have a 360-degree view of the land and the sky.

The high-rise apartments aren’t as immense as they seem.

The orange lights of the streets roll on into the distance, fading into specks upon the ground. He hasn’t texted you back.

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Are you here yet? Where are you?

Heeelllloooo???Bored with staring at your phone, you wander around the car park.

You walk along the perimeter, looking down every so often before flinching when the vertigo hits. Once you do a few laps you check the time. He still hasn’t replied. You text him again. You don’t end up checking the time.

You turn your attention to the sky. It’s not how you remember it.

Isn’t it meant to be black?

Now it’s grey, a warm grey like smoke. Clouds are still visible even though it’s getting close to midnight. Where are the stars? There are always stars in the night sky.

Always. Always? You can’t remember the last time you looked up at the sky but there were definitely twinkling stars.

Illustrated by Arielle Vlahiotis

Flickering, little lights to decorate the darkness. Not smog. Never smog. Maybe if you went out to the country you might see the stars again but you’re twenty minutes from the Dandenongs. There must be stars here. The stars have always been here. You have always stayed in the same place but your place hasn’t stayed the same. There are new people with newer bigger houses, apartment buildings and high-rise car parks littered all over.

The world is growing without you.

They are pushing the stars out of the sky while you wait at the bottom, unaware that they’re being stamped out, suffocating in the smog. It isn’t until tonight that you see the vacancy in the sky.

Tonight is the first night in years you have remembered the stars.

You couldn’t have been that close to them.

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You would have said goodbye. You feel that absence now. You feel the space where they should be.

You know that these people won’t stop pushing the stars out of the sky. Midnight is no longer that dark blue-to-black sky with a glowing moon, but rather a grey muddied with orange. You will have to idealise the smog now. Romanticise yourself lying under the smog sky with him in your arms.

How he looks in that orange glow, not the moonlight.

The only lights left are those sprawled across the horizon, illuminating roads and houses. The stars of the land. But they are not stars, they are too geometric, too orange, too much like the smog.

They don’t remind you of home, or the late-night barbecues, or the games with friends lying on the

trampoline seeing who could spot the Southern Cross and The Big Dipper first. Those orange lights don’t form any patterns, they are laid out too neatly. We can’t project our heroes and myths onto them. Real stars are beyond us.

You have lost the stars. You have to settle for that orange smog. You have to forget about them as your city climbs higher and higher. What are they trying to reach if not the stars?

You hope that they’re still behind that smog. Still shimmering even though you can’t see them. But you’ll never know. You check the time. He’s not coming.

You’re not waiting for him.

Stephanie Nestor (she/her) @thesenesx

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CREATIVE

LOSING GRIP Written by Rebecca Fletcher

John woke up with a grenade in his hand. That wasn’t

the worst of it. His alarm said he was going to be late for work.

“Shit shit shit.” Bleary-eyed, he moved his (non-grenade) thumb vaguely across the phone’s screen to shut it up. Not yet knowing the full gravity of the situation, but suspecting it was going to be significant, he allowed himself a single, full-armed stretch before letting one eye peek at the non-phone hand.Still a grenade.

He stared at it for a moment, waiting for it to explain itself. It failed to do so before the alarm sounded again, reminding him that he was, in fact, still going to be late for work. He looked at the phone. 8:31am.

While it would be incorrect to suggest that John was okay with the current state of affairs, he was intimately familiar with what was going to happen if he was late for work again. He was going to have his arse handed to him. And he much preferred his arse stay where it was. John’s apartment looked like a seventeen-year-old’s bedroom. A firm advocate of working smarter not harder, his clothes were carefully organised in piles on the floor and his bin was full of paper plates. As such, it should come as no surprise that he had a roll of electrical tape on his bedside table. There was nothing nefarious about it; he was just the kind of person more likely to tape than band-aid his toenails after blithely hacking away at ingrowns.

He wrapped the tape firmly around his grenade hand, making sure he couldn’t move his fingers. Once confident that he wasn’t going to accidentally blow himself up, John was able to focus on the more important things—like finding shoes he didn’t have to lace.

Five minutes later he was out the door, satchel over his shoulder, dashing for the bus stop just up the road.

He reached it, panting, and joined the queue. As he one-handedly wrestled his card out of his wallet, the bus driver stared at him. Or rather, at his hand.

“What’s that, then?”

“What’s what?”

“What do you mean ‘what’s what’? That—the thing on your hand.”

“Hrm? Oh, I just didn’t want to forget something, so I taped it to my hand.” The driver blinked at him, then leaned on the wheel towards him.

“What is it?”

“Look, I’m going to be late.”

“Is that a grenade?” John decided to test his skills of persuasion.

“No?” The driver heard the question mark.

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“Mate you can’t bring that on here.” John goggled at the bus driver, card poised over the reader.

“I don’t see a sign,” he ventured, trying not to make eye contact.

“You don’t need a sign, it’s a bloody grenade.”

John felt too harassed to make an argument about the relative merits of proper signage.

“Well I don’t think that’s very fair. I need to get to work.”

“No one’s getting anywhere if that thing goes off. Are you stupid?”

John considered a counterargument but wasn’t entirely sure where to start. After a few moments of silence, he realised he was making the bus driver’s point for him. John turned around and stepped off the bus, self-righteous in his belief that the driver was being incredibly unreasonable, but well aware that the next bus would be along in five minutes.

Looking around, he slowly pulled his hoodie out of his satchel and draped it over his hand, hiding the grenade. When the next bus came, he had the good sense to slide into the middle of the queue and avoid notice.

Finding an inconspicuous seat up the back, he looked at his phone. So long as the bus didn’t get caught in traffic, he’d get there on time. He let out a huge sigh of relief—maybe today wouldn’t be so bad after all.

--With a bit more swagger than he usually employed, John walked into the office two minutes early. He flumped down noisily in his chair, hoping to look confident to anyone watching him (no one was), and dropped his things on the floor.

After ten interaction-free minutes of trying to type in his password—complicated somewhat by having only one free hand—Karen, the receptionist-cum-dictator, walked up to his desk.

“Hi John,” she chirped at him, the smile never reaching her eyes.

“Hello Karen.”

“How’s it all going this morning?”

“I have to be honest… absolutely spiffy, couldn’t be better.” John had little tolerance for Karen at the best of times, and this was far from that. There was a longer-than-polite pause.

“Well, I couldn’t help but notice that you seem to have something on your hand there,” she said, her tone not dipping. John looked at it as if seeing it for the first time.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s a hand grenade.” Another pause, long enough for John to realise the gravity of the situation: They think I’m going to blow the place up.

Instead of mentioning that if that was the case, he would have done it about a week after starting there, he had the good sense to add, “It’s for a bet.”

“And by it…”

“Yes Karen, the grenade.” He was audacious enough to sound terse.

“A bet,” came the flat echo, her expression not changing.

“Yes, a bet, with my brother.”

He could almost hear the wheels turning in her head.

“What do you get?”

“What?”

“What do you get if you win?”

John hadn’t anticipated the grenade needing a backstory.

“He has to carry it around for twice as long.”

“Well that doesn’t seem worth it.”

“You’ve never met my brother.” Her attempt to stare John down failing, Karen straightened her collar instead.

“Might be best to keep it at home tomorrow, alright?”

“Of course Karen, anything for you,” he replied as sincerely as he could manage. He watched her walk towards the small group of people who had gathered to watch. John repayed their discretion by pretending not to watch them slowly work their way around the room, pointing to him as they whispered to everyone sitting. He didn’t know what was said, but no one else came over.

The only thing John liked about his job was how little he had to think about it. Unfortunately, it was not designed for someone with a bulky object in one hand.

It would be a lie to say that the morning went easily. It did not. It’s very difficult to type with only one hand, never mind put in an earbud or hold something to staple. It took until morning tea for John to convince himself that his position was untenable. Surely leaving early wasn’t the same as turning up late, so packing up his desk, he decided to try his luck. Walking past Karen, he made a movement towards the door with his head.

“Not feeling great today, think anyone would mind if I ducked out early?”

Her eyes flicked to his hand — yes that one — and back to his face. With a forced smile and tight tone, she told him that she was sure it would be fine, and to make sure he left all that at home tomorrow, okay?

His hoodie over his arm, John backtracked his journey from that morning, wondering if there was some way he could exploit this situation to get out of work again in the future. He was still wrestling with scenarios (maybe the neighbour wants you to babysit their bomb?) as he got off the bus and wandered back towards his house. He was idly rearranging his hoodie when a familiar voice called out.

“What are you hiding?”

It was Samantha, John’s smoking buddy.

They were the only smokers living on that block and she only spoke when she had something to say. She was out watering the front yard flowers with a hose.

“What?” John said.

“In your hand, you’re hiding something.”

“What on earth would make you think that?”

“Well if you weren’t, you would have just shown me by now.” She didn’t break eye contact.

“Any chance of a do-over?”

“Is that a grenade?”

“Yes, it’s a grenade.” Fortunately, Samantha didn’t seem flustered.

“How’d you get that then?” She sounded like she wanted one.

“I woke up this morning and it was just there.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Why didn’t you just tape the spoon down?”

“What spoon?” John wondered if he was going mad.

“The lever, on the grenade. That’s what it’s called.

Why didn’t you tape that down instead of taping it to your hand?”

“I was late for work.”

“Oh, that’ll do it then.” She moved the hose to another pot.

“Do you think that’ll work?”

“Being late for work?”

“No, taping the lever down.”

“Yeah of course. Best thing for it really.”

“Right. Well, thank you” “No worries mate. Let us know how it goes.” She looked away. John continued the two-minute walk down the block, into his building and up the stairs.

He went straight into the bedroom to grab his roll of tape, then sat down in the living room, dumping his satchel on the floor. Reaching over with his empty hand, he grabbed the nail scissors on the coffee table in front of him.

His mind was completely blank as he slowly snipped into the hastily-wrapped layers of tape. Apparently the looming threat of imminent disintegration was sweaty work, as the glue was already gummy from its few hours of keeping body and soul together. Cutting around the bottom first, he taped the skinny end of the lever to the body of the grenade, gradually layering tape around the handle and the grenade as he cut his hand free, the monotony of swapping scissors for tape almost relaxing.

He leaned forward and looked at his work — a grenade, gift-wrapped for absolutely no one, sitting on his coffee table. He slowly opened and closed his hand, still sticky from the tape residue, staring at the wall.

He picked his bag up again, swinging it onto his shoulder as he stepped forward, not seeing it tip the grenade as he walked out the door, which he closed behind him. One less problem and the rest of the day off had left John with only one question: Was it too early for a pint?

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CREATIVE

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Name a prominent female figure in history – go!

Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Elizabeth the First; all famous- and for good reason. They made big differences in history that men simply couldn’t ignore.

I’d like to shed some light on women whose mark on history has been neglected, who changed its tide but haven’t been given their fair share. Maybe they weren’t sexy and didn’t have sway on the course of the Roman Empire. Or maybe, they simply weren’t from the Western hemisphere. Either way, these women were badass in a man’s world, and their stories deserve to be heard. To begin our journey, I’d like to introduce Eleanor of Aquitaine, the sharp witted aristocrat who changed the course of two country’s histories. Born during the 12th century, Eleanor of Aquitaine was orphaned at aged 15.

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Instantly becoming the heiress to her Father’s vast estate, she immediately became the most eligible bachelorette in Europe. Quickly swooped up by the King of France (King Louis VI), within hours he had betrothed her to his heir (another Louis!), and five months later, they became King and Queen of France. No male heirs were produced from this union, and after 15 years the marriage was annulled on terms of being too closely related (did no one investigate this beforehand?). But never fear, within weeks Eleanor had already made other plans for her future.

Indeed, here’s a snapshot into the mind of Eleanor of Aquitaine as she moved on from her tooclose-for-comfort ex-husband to wed the future King of England (yes, you heard that right- the lady moves on quick).

Illustrated by Stephanie Nestor

SECTION TEXT “Your majesty, I implore you to listen-” “Last time I checked, I was no longer Queen.

Drop the title.”

The sound of brass on tile fills the desolate hallway as Eleanor paces forwards, the Archbishop close on her heals.

“Fine, then. Your Highness, please, will you hear my counsel?”

Eleanor pauses in her tracks, sucking in a breath as she turns not to face the man, but the arched windows that line the passage.

Aquitaine stretches out before her, its beauty incomparable to filthy, cramped Paris. A quaint village had since grown from the old smattering of brick houses that resided outside the estate. It blocked her view of the rolling green hills and crystal clear ocean she’d grown accustomed to seeing, but no matter. She liked the village better. A slight layer of grime coated the once clear glass, her only window into a world beyond courts and confinements. Eleanor’s heart flutters seeing the beauty and prosperity of the land – her land – around her.

“Duchess?” enquires the Archbishop tenderly.

She savors the landscape a moment longer before turning to face him.

“Yes, Archbishop?”

“Will you-” “Yes, yes, get on with it.”

Eleanor turns on her heel, briskly pacing down the hallway before coming to a pause underneath an archway. The Archbishop quickly spills his wisdom.

“Your highness, the young Duke of Normandy is a worthy recipient of your hand, but combining the Duchy of Aquitaine with his already vast lands is almost an act of open rebellion! And with your annulment so fresh in France’s mind, God can only forgive so much. I’m sure the Duke will understand you wishing to preserve one last shred of dignity!”

The little man pants slightly, his eyes boring into the back of Eleanor’s head, awaiting a reply. She stares into the archways above, feeling but not yet acknowledging the Archbishop’s burning gaze.

An untraceable look passes over her face – is it smugness, contemplation? She swivels slowly to face him, hands clasped, elbows pointed.

“Archbishop, do you know the story of my great grandfather, the honourable William the Ninth?” she enquires softly.

“I...”

He looks quizzically at Eleanor, her head tilted, a coy smile playing on her lips. She looks as if she were posing for a portrait, regality radiating from her gaze. Resignation flooded the man’s face.

“Yes, your Highness. He was a wonderful man.”

“He wasn’t just a lord, you know. See here?”

Eleanor indicated to the words written above her.

“I have given up all I loved so much: chivalry and pride; and since it pleases God, I accept it all, that He may keep me by Him.’ My Grandfather wrote that, and my Father had his lyrics carved into some of the doorways.”

Eleanor steps towards the Archbishop, fixing him with a piercing stare—her presence fills the room, a Queen in her own right.

“My dear man, I do not seek the Duke’s hand in an act of rebellion, nor to betray the Lord’s faith in me. I do so to secure the legacy of my house in the years to come, and to ensure any of my future sons have the chance to live, not just rule. They will never have to give up things they love, like I have.

Do you understand me?”

The Archbishop nods, eyes wide. She takes a step towards him.

“The Kingdom of France has given my family nothing but grief. I have seen it. I saw it with my Father. I heard the stories from my Grandfather and ancestor’s time. England offers us another chance, another hope.”

The Archbishop’s expression turns stony at the mention of the Kingdom across the sea.

“The Duke is not King yet.”

“Oh, no, Archbishop...but he will be.”

Smiling benignly, she approaches the nearest window, gazing out into the country she would soon have to leave again. Had it somehow become greener? The far off water sparkles in the midday sun, and the brown and blacks of the village seeming even less drab against the bright green hills. Everything Eleanor was going to do, the sacrifices she was preparing to make in order to leave France’s regime, she would do with the memory of her home locked tight within her heart. Closing her eyes, she tilts her head, listening to the faint crashing of waves against Aquitaine’s shores, to the laughter of children in the village, to the rolling of carts over cobbled pavement. Her voice finally pierces the serenity.

“Seeing as I will be a new Queen within a matter of months, maybe you actually shouldn’t drop the title, Archbishop.”

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NON-FICTION

BIG LOVE Written by Ana

Jacobsen

I

was 14 when Mum and Dad brought Billie home.

She was soft and heavy like a bag of rice, and she smelt like honey and straw. On school nights I would lie on my stomach, eyes glued to the computer, with this tiny white creature curled up on my lower back. Her features would be hidden in the folds of her puppy skin. She looked like a little secret.

Billie became a part of our family and bore witness to everything that happened throughout my teenage years. We lived in a two-storey house built in the late ’70s, in the quiet suburb of Greensborough. Over the eight years that we lived there, we renovated our house bit by bit, including stripping paint off the wooden beams downstairs and the doors throughout the house, revealing layers of paint chosen by the previous owners: Doctor’s Waiting Room Grey $2 Shop Moisturiser Banana Yellow Ken Doll’s Outfit Khaki Green Peter and Gloria (The Ballroom Dancers’) Apricot Pink When we first moved in, there were patches of Banana Yellow left, contrasted against the overwhelming Grey in the shapes of various pieces of furniture that the previous owner hadn’t bothered to move while she painted on her latest colour. My parents called these neglected areas “portals”.

My teenage years were filled with angst, and when things started to get bad with my brother, I wanted to be able to step into the ‘portals’ to escape the arguing that went on in my house. I wanted to sink into the carpet or get sucked into the bath’s plughole. Instead, I would sit on my bedroom floor and cry into Billie’s fur and she would lick the tears and snot off my hands.

She is still the size of a human baby, but in dog years, Billie is 52.

She is a time capsule. She was my teenage diary, and my stories now remain behind her frantic, black shining eyes. Two Christmases ago, my parents moved to Brisbane and took her with them. When I see her now, I feel this overwhelming desire to envelop her. I can’t squeeze her tight enough as she’s wriggly and wants to play with the ball anyway.

My emotions are uncontainable, boundless and borderless for this tiny, hairy middle-aged-dog-lady. I know that parents often get pets for their children to allow them to experience death and grief before having to eventually go through it with the humans in their lives, but losing Billie will mean that I will have to grieve for part of myself as well.

Billie My Little Vanilla Pudding Tiny Biscuit Baby Seal Li’l Pig Bat Noodle Piglet Princess Leia My Sweet Little Darling My Little Sister You are the Physical Manifestation of my Love

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Illustrated by E. Cheung

HOROSCOPE

ARIES

(March 21 - April 19) (Jan 20 - Feb 18)

GEMINI

(May 21 - June 20) The weather is changing, and it’s time to adapt. Don’t fight it.

You will be blown away by the possibilities.

You burn brightly, and you always have.

But you are about to be tested, so reserve some of that fuel and have some cool water near by.

SAGITTARIUS

Focus on what matters most. Today is a second chance at yesterday, and will serve you well for tomorrow.

(June 21 - July 22) It’s time to look back at the poeple you have left behind. Get those knitting kneedles out, it is never too late to stitch up old ties.

(July 23 - Aug 22)

(Sept 23 - Oct 22)

You stand as tall as a sunflower, but when the sun falls, so do you. Breaks are important, but don’t be scared to shine.

Your body clock recently rang an alarm... more pampering to wind those clogs back! Soon you’ll be good as new.

SCORPIO

Something will burn you. How you tend to it is important.

Will you give it air to breathe, wrap it up and move on, or touch it again?

PISCES

(Feb 19 - March 20) You are very skilled at playing people, but it’s time to learn how to listen, and appreciate. Tune into your friends.

VIRGO

(Oct 23 - Nov 21) As the sun sets, it is tempting to let your New Year’s resolution slip away. Don’t let it fade. Stick with your dream, and see it through.

CAPRICORN

(Dec 22 - Jan 19)

LIBRA

LEO

(Nov 22 - Dec 21)

CANCER

You always have time for everyone else, but it’s time for you now.

Remind yourself you have one life, and it belongs to you.

AQUARIUS

(Aug 23 - Sep 22)

TAURUS

(April 20 - May 20) Like your body, your mind need time to head. Don’t burn out and drink lots of water.

Illustrated by Cathy Chen

That sweet honey is a bit sticky...be careful not to get stuck, but don’t let the sweet treat get away. The trick is to be aware.

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CREATIVE

LONELY HEARTS

ANIMAL

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Male Pufferfish

Male Honey Bee

“Love is an art and I am an artist.”

“I’m a ride and die kind of guy.”

Bonjour, mon amour! I think perhaps you are the muse I’ve been searching for. You are refined, yes?

You want someone that’s good with their fins, maybe a little tail action *hon hon hon*, and you have exquisite taste. You see, my body is an instrument of love. And I am fluent in the language of romance; art!

I will make you a masterpiece! Using sand, I will create the most exquisite two-metre-wide circle of art the ocean has ever seen. Then you may honour me by laying your eggs in the centre of the design, ripe for fertilisation. We mystified scientists for years. How could a tiny fish make something so magnifique!?

All things are possible through the art of love, ma chérie. A great artist is nothing without a muse.

I’ve been unlucky in love. In a hive there are three types of bee: a queen, workers and drones. I’m a drone, see? My sole purpose is to mate with the queen. If I die before I achieve this, my life will have been meaningless! Please consider me. I have a lot to offer: I’m sweet. I’m eternally devoted. I’m a great dancer. Most importantly, I’m searching for more than love. I’m seeking a queen to die for.

I do mean that literally. While we have sex midflight, my balls explode, my reproductive organs and some abdominal tissue are torn out and left inside you. Then I’ll die. But don’t worry, it’ll be great for you. Will you bee my one and only? Please?

Je t’aime, Puff Dufish

Eternally yours, Bertie Bee

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OF THE

KINGDOM Written by Tessa Bagshaw

Female New Mexican Whiptail Lizard “You’re a strong independent lizard who don’t need no man.”

Listen up ladies! The revolution has begun and we’re all we need! In our particular species of lizard there are no dudes, only chicks. The story goes that a female lizard of one species got nasty with a male lizard of another species. And wham-bam thank you ma’am, we can lay and hatch eggs without fertilisation from males. Plus, we have double the chromosomes, so our kids are still genetically diverse. It’s like cloning! Cool, huh? So listen, we don’t actually need each other to make little lizards.

But if you’re down for some hot lesbian action, it helps to get things going. The future is female!

Lizzie the Lezzie

Illustrated by Yena Kim

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CREATIVE

THE CHERRYMAN THE BOY FROM STORMWATER Written by Lee Perkins From the edge of town to its sombre centre First rays of moonlight through doorways did enter Second moon for a thousand ages Priests now blind from sacred pages A new light from Pip’s tree, born to splendour!

The first child born to a god brought the moon back.

The first child born to a god brought the moon back for a night, and from his first rest the sign returned ready to again be unchallenged for an age.

But I still hold the moon within my mind and throughout my spirit, and it does not light the cavernous range of my emotions.

The priests, who ripped me from my wailing mother’s arms as I came alive underneath the Cherrytree, herald peaceful times.

They ignore the depression of truth behind them, gathering slowly not the eternal summer rains, but the years of excrement from a mortal body whose divine spirit cannot soar.

I am twenty and four now, and I approach the future with trepidation and with angst.

Partly from the forgotten cosmos of my mind, but mostly from the unrelenting optimism below Blackrock Hall, home of the Blessed Son, of the persons that worship underneath the eternal sun, do I shirk hope and look only to return Above.

Besides their leathery skin, straw-like hair and brows creased from lack of relieving shade, the people of Zatlo had evolved to not know anxiety, second thoughts, nor the hammer of negative consequence.

As one child dies thoughts are spared only for the excitement of a second son, and shepherds guide their flocks near cliffs and wolves negligently trusting that stock of the same size will be born.

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I stand on Sinistra Spire, as high as the mountains guarding Zatlo, cragged peaks never touched by man. Their bases tumble, split, and crack into the valley of the city, the few alpine forests of their foothills streaming into the amber and redbrick streets of Cherry Quarter. Creeks and streams wash these pine needles and petals through Poth and grow ten-fold in size to shroud the furnaces of Westgate in Steam.

Fat, exhausted and wallowing, the urban surges as begun by the iced tops of the Zatlo mountains surge and pool beneath and between the ten-storey bridges and the cobbled, driftwood dwellings of Stormwater.

I was whipped this morning by the Herald of Taboo, a message to the god, my parent, that the priests had not received enough tribute this Passing.

Yesterday I was stretched on ropes for the same purpose, and the day beforehand trapped in ice-water in the darkness for an entire Rising, a weekly occurrence, to pain my parent into bringing back the moon. I am blood crimson and powerful.

No knives at my throat.

I step forwards with Stormwater in my eye.

A Jimmy-ho the lats did shut And a Jimmy-ho lost his nut!

A Sarah-pimmy got a caught in her tinny And a Sarah-shimmy out a chimney!

But too-right they a freaked outta sight And a riggity-ho but the doors did hold So old Sol caught not a sight of their butts, What a rut!

Chanted by a woman within a darkened bar, these are the first sounds I hear landing in the crooked town. The crowd of revellers surrounding them shout “What a rut!” back at the leaders at the end of each verse, to my face, as though I am a boy again being reprimanded for singing too loudly at Chapel.

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“A lookin’ here. Dark cloak in the middle of Sun’s Highest and a skinnin’ all a powdered like. Someone’s a washed in unknowin’!” says a woman’s voice from behind me. The clobbering of hard leather and iron on driftwood pulls my heart down to the bridge with them. I turn around in time to feel a sand-encrusted hand grasp my throat and to hear a voice that I so wish was not mine squeak, “Anything. Anything!

Take it all, I’m not bothersome!”

A mane of curled auburn locks controls the hand, and beneath the same voice sniggers, “Bothersome or not son, Blackrock wants you back. And I want hefty tin in my pouch before Shade’s Up!” In a blur, my legs and arms are numb and my head lolls backwards. I am thrown limp over a shoulder.

Stormwater becomes a pastel ribbon of sky blues, peach, apple, and tan.

I cannot return.

I cannot return to endure the blackness of my mind.

The virtuous depression of Blackrock will rule me no more.

The eight-foot shoulder is a tree branch and my will a hacksaw.

Our rapid pace is gliding but my breath is the frozen wind.

The marauders that surround me and their huntress leader are standing and breathing as I crash onto the planks, but they are this bridge and I am the stormfull waters below.

This water is cold, and I have enacted my first miracle. Away from Blackrock.

I will learn the truth behind why my mind is the last to harbour the moon, the nature of my mother’s abandonment and how to bring Blackrock to its knees.

Illustrated

by Anya Wong Illustrated

by Name

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DISNEY VS DREAMWORKS Battle of the Animation Studios: Written by Lindsay Wong

A

nimated films are an integral part of the movie industry, regularly topping the box office and working as a reflection of society. Almost everyone has a soft spot for animated movies, regardless of age.

Being lost in a child’s world allows adult worries to disappear, if only for a moment. Growing up in Tokyo, I took frequent trips to Disneyland and DisneySea with my friends, so Disney has had a big presence in my life. These short getaways really felt magical to me as I was growing up. I didn’t have a care in the world when I was at a Disney Resort.

Its stunning visuals, heartwarming and emotional stories and likeable characters were enough to take me back to simpler times, when I didn’t have to worry about #adulting or school. These memories inspire me to frequently binge-watch Disney films.

Both Disney and DreamWorks Studios have produced some of the most beloved animated films of our generation. Disney’s “classics” like Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast are as memorable as meme-worthy and iconic DreamWorks hits like Shrek and Bee Movie. While I am biased towards Disney, both studios receive competitive praise and commentary, so a good-natured battle between the two seems called for! Disney’s stories have travelled from China, to France, to Africa, but have been subject to controversy due to racially insensitive characterisation. Considering its widespread global audience, Disney only started featuring non-white characters in feature films in the last three decades, with the exception of The Jungle Book in 1967.

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Young children from many diverse backgrounds idolise Disney princesses, yet only a handful have been non-white. The few POC characters are portrayed at best, comically, and at worst, with primitive associations. In Moana, the Polynesian demigod Maui is obese and naive.

In Pocahontas, tribal people are labelled as “savages”, undermining and invalidating the culture and history of Native American communities. Racial stereotypes have also been imposed on the characterisation of Lady and the Tramp’s Siamese cats, with their slanted eyes and thick accents.

DreamWorks has never encountered the amount of criticism that Disney has because its films are generally racially sensitive. However, their most recent film, Abominable, became the centre of an ongoing controversy involving a Southeast Asian territorial dispute. One scene depicted the Nine-Dash Line, an undefined demarcation line used by China over a large proportion of the South China Sea. DreamWorks has adapted bible stories in an appropriate manner, and movies like Kung Fu Panda that are set in non-Western countries even have culturally sensitive jokes. Their movies also don’t sugar-coat bad things that happen, such as when Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon loses his leg. They approach it in a realistic and sophisticated manner instead of immediately providing a happy ending.

Illustrated by Michelle Pham

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Where Disney often fails to place many of their films in our culturally diverse societies, DreamWorks films convey a strong message about how we connect with each other and respect differences. Bee Movie highlights the value of insects in the environment, while Shrek is about not conforming to society’s beauty standards.

DreamWorks features unconventional characters, like a green ogre, an adorable dragon or an infant boss, and global settings, such as China (Kung Fu Panda) and Scandinavia (How to Train Your Dragon).

Also, Disney has consistently promoted the idea that all princesses need a prince in their life to save them.

It has only been in recent years that films emphasised the importance of family and friends, instead of a relationship, to succeed. I really like how DreamWorks portrays romantic relationships. Unconventional couples in healthy relationships, like the donkey and dragon having a family of little flying donkeys, sends out a more diverse message to children about love. However, DreamWorks struggles to build an emotional bond with audiences. While Disney can easily make a person tear up during its climax, in a DreamWorks movie, viewers will more likely be focused on the hilarious jokes, intense storyline or the thrill of action and adventure.

I personally don’t find DreamWorks’ animated characters as visually appealing and attractive as Disney’s, but that makes the characters more “real”.

In terms of craft, Disney’s use of nostalgia and ability to transport you to a magical world in every new film has successfully garnered a large and loyal fanbase. The vivid colours, gorgeous settings and emotional, catchy music depict a wondrous world in each film’s inevitable happy ending. While Disney has a magical air around its films, DreamWorks’ films are more mature, appealing to both children and adults, and even their stories focus on more serious themes. The bizarre situations, settings and hilarious, original jokes present in their films will attract audiences of all ages. Nevertheless, I love the works of both animation studios, even in my 20s. Animation is a unique genre because of its ability to appeal to children and adults. Watching animated movies makes you feel nostalgic and yearn to be a kid again, and it’s a great feeling.

Illustrated by Name

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VIVE LA RÉVOLUTION Written by Corey

I

McCabe

n the past year, there has been a groundswell of support for climate action across Australia, with numerous demonstrations comprising hundreds of thousands of people. While many protests have taken the form of relatively tame marches, others, such as when climate activists glued themselves to the ground to prevent delegates from entering the 2019 International Mining and Resources Conference, have been notably more disruptive.

Regardless of the means involved, Australia’s climate protests have been met with similar censure from federal and state governments: the government will acknowledge that while people have a right to protest, these protesters have taken it too far. Protests that risk violence, the government argues, cannot be countenanced. The government’s response poses a question: does violence have a role in political protest, and if so, what exactly is that role?

Despite criticism from federal and state governments, there exists a long and varied history of violence in political protest. Yet, this history is often obscured. One historical case often considered non-violent is the suffragette movement in the UK. Images associated with the movement typically show women marching and holding signs—perhaps at their most violent chaining themselves to a railing.

Less discussed, however, are suffragettes such as Mary Leigh, a school teacher and member of the Women’s Social and Political Union who joined the movement in 1906. She was involved in numerous violent acts in the name of furthering the suffragette movement in 1912, including throwing a hatchet at UK Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith and setting fire to a theatre in Dublin occupied by the same man. The suffragette movement has been sanitised by history, with unpalatable images of planting bombs and attacking politicians replaced by stories and pictures of nonviolent civil disobedience.

This nonviolent history gives an incomplete account of how the suffragettes created political change. Violent action was a more frequent occurrence than is often acknowledged.

Considering the array of protest actions throughout history, how should we define “violence” in these movements? In the literature on violence (typified by C. A. J. Coady), three definitions of the term violence appear.

Illustrated by Kitman Yeung

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First, violence is limited to cases of interpersonal force (meaning throwing a punch is violent, destroying property is not).

Second, violence is limited to “illegitimate” cases of interpersonal force. For example, police arresting an individual who has broken (or suspected to have broken) the law cannot be violent by this definition, as police have a legitimate claim to detain such individuals. And third, violence is virtually any act that produces harm in an individual or group either intentionally or through neglect. To map this onto protest: the first group does not think protesters are acting violently if they do not attack anyone, while the second may think the protesters are being violent but the police are not. The third, however, might say that both are being violent. So, why do some political movements become violent, while others remain comparatively peaceful?

The movement for marriage equality in Australia, for example, rarely turned to violence and (eventually) achieved its primary aim. However, the abolitionist movement in the US in the 19th century led

by William Lloyd Garrison, was a key motivation for the American Civil War; while the movement led by William Wilberforce a few decades earlier in the UK remained non-violent. What determines which political movement will turn violent and which won’t?

The reality is that these movements are messy. They are composed of large groups of typically discontent people with differing views about how change should be effected. While not all members of a movement will be comfortable with the contributions of the more radical activists, their contributions form part of the effort.

By analysing the contrasts and similarities between these movements, however, more patterns emerge. The first is the stakes involved in the issue.

Giving women the right to vote upended the democratic process in the UK, and many of the politicians opposed to it likely knew their position would be endangered if women could vote. Similarly, the economy of several southern states was closely tied to slave labour.

Political movements that do not aim to challenge governmental power usually face less harsh opposition and are less likely to turn to violence, as with the marriage equality debate. But the abolition debate in the UK remains an outlier. Slavery in the UK was central to their economy, but violence was not commonplace. Instead, the debate largely played out between influential people within the government. However, it is important to note that the issue held more weight for the members of parliament, given they were the people with the means to profit from slavery. Other political movements often turn to violence when they do not think their voice is heard, or more often, when they fear their voice will be taken away.

In considering the case of current climate protests, the history of violence in political movements may be illustrative. There have been numerous attempts to crack down on climate protesters, with the Queensland Parliament having passed laws to criminalise locking devices and expand police powers to search suspected activists. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has also threatened further measures to restrict the ability to protest, arguing—unironically—that protesters are seeking to “deny the liberties of Australians”. Perhaps as with the political movements of the past, politicians are aiming to restrict debate for fear of what the repercussions of holding political leaders accountable for climate change will be. To return to the motivating question: what is the role of violence in political movements?

There isn’t a clear-cut answer from history. Some movements have been able to effect wide-scale change without violence, while others resorted often to violence to have their voice heard. It is clear nonetheless that no political movement started outside the parliament has achieved much success without inconveniencing the politicians not interested in listening to them. The climate protest situation is clear: climate protesters want to be heard, but the responses from Scott Morrison and the Queensland Parliament indicate that they are not willing to listen. Protester actions may well get more extreme until that dynamic changes.

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NOT A TEENAGER, NOT AN ADULT Written by Angela

I

t is the eve of my 21st birthday. Surrounded by red cups and semi-conscious friends, I brace myself for another great year. Then it hits me: is this how my twenties are supposed to be? A cycle of day drinking before marching through the doors of the Royal Exhibition Building every exam season? I cannot drive. I cannot cook. I have never touched a water bill in my life. Surely this is not how my parents envisioned my adulthood when traversing seas for a better life.

For many like me, the struggle to become a fully-fledged adult is not a new concept, and as a result, the inability to undertake the simplest of tasks has morphed into a running joke among our generation. Years of student life have conditioned us to believe that lodging our taxes and cooking any dish that isn’t pasta are things so distant they may as well be myths. Though this age-old struggle will never cease to be hilarious, we run the risk of dismissing the very real anxiety that young people feel when faced with unprecedented responsibility.

Dear Google, what is the definition of an adult?

A person who is fully grown or developed. A human being after an age specified by law.

How informative.

Despite the numerical threshold delineating the transition between adolescence and legal adulthood, there is no concrete indication of when we should start feeling like an adult. Even the logic of imposing an age restraint for legal purposes often falters. In the USA, youth are not allowed to drink alcohol yet are able to join the military at the age of eighteen. With the ubiquity of social media, we often find ourselves falling into the pit of comparing ourselves (and in this case, our “adultness”) to those who display all the competencies of a mature and responsible citizen. What do we see in others that marks maturity, and can we ever really see those qualities in ourselves?

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Nguyen

Perhaps it is the number of part-time jobs taken alongside flashy postgraduate degrees. Or maybe it resides in twenty-somethings who have already moved out of their parental nests into the system of weekly bills and meal preparations. Surely it is when the excitement of a mid-year Dyson vacuum sale overcomes us to the point of asphyxiation.

The rite of passage paving the road to adulthood changes with every generation. As with social constructs, it is reconfigured throughout different eras and cultures. The quinceañera is a celebration marking a girl’s fifteenth birthday in many Latin American countries. Although historically symbolising the transition to marriage and domestic life, the recognition of womanhood through the quinceañera and the Western tradition of debutante balls is one of the few modern milestones of adulthood before the age of eighteen.

The age at which we reach this stage also changes from that of our parents, due to generational and cultural differences. My mum was born in a small village in Southern Vietnam alongside six sisters and a single mother. She learned to irrigate rice fields and cook for her younger siblings long before reaching puberty. The contrasts between my mum and I are jarring, however I understand that her circumstances were completely different.

Illustrated by Phuong Ngo

It would be illogical to think about my growth in terms of her life. Soldiers conscripted into the two World Wars were similarly thrust into extreme situations, inducing mental and physical transformations in order to adapt. Brains are not hardwired to develop at the same speed as we reach certain ages. Research by the University of Washington and the University of Colorado-Boulder suggests our maturation goes hand in hand with the necessity to survive, depending on the support systems available. Because of this, our mental development can accelerate when we are suddenly responsible for something other than ourselves.

With the influence of North American media, adulthood is defined through the lens of a smalltown freshman travelling miles for her dream college dorm experience. Moving out of home has therefore become the modern mark of our developmental blossoming. This simply isn’t accurate for a suburban Melburnian living a twenty-minute train ride away from university, yet I still fall prey to the idea that independence and living with parents are mutually exclusive.

The expectation to move out becomes more complicated when considering socioeconomic situations. Consider the factor of being a second-generation Australian born to immigrant parents with no inheritance, and the prospect of early financial autonomy is bleak. Likewise, the coveted position of homeowning and accumulating enough savings to take such a step is dependent on factors unique to the individual. While it is true that financial success can be achieved in many cases despite circumstances, it helps to accept the realistic outcomes of the cards we were dealt. It is important to ask whether being financially equipped is a true indicator of maturity.

This brings us to the important question: if it’s not age or financial autonomy, then what exactly ferries us to the wonderful world of adulthood?

Surely it is the unwavering ambition, thirst for knowledge and mental fortitude that we are told resides in business moguls and elite athletes. The mass-consumption of self-help books reflects society’s desire to adopt these noble qualities.

As such, there is immense pressure to constantly become a better version of our previous selves.

We need to acquire more skills than last year, obtain better marks than the previous semester and do more push-ups than yesterday. The running wheel never stops, and neither should we. This is what we are told growing up should feel like, but it doesn’t have to. Over time, this stockpile of “life lessons” lies forgotten and decomposed on our bookshelves until the next New Year’s resolution.

While preaching about the benefits of unrealistic lifestyle reforms, many books push the notion that any level of success can be achieved through sheer individual willpower. Failure to do so indicates a lack of resolve. This simplification disregards inherent social structures that interact with class, race and gender influences. Under the guise of independent self-improvement, impressionable consumers are exploited and taught that success in adulthood requires the same old formula.

Mark Manson offers an alternative approach to behavioural change in his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. Rather than fixating on the successes we lack or the mistakes we make, we should stop sweating the small stuff, focus on values that truly matter to us and accept failure as a step forward. The book encourages us to adopt a mindset that works to one’s personal capabilities and doesn’t offer revolutionary solutions by trying to carve out new identities for us. Our eligibility to the label of adulthood should not be defined by what we lack but by what we have learned through lived experience.

Maturity is humility and responsibility.

However, it is also hugely contradictory: it can involve financial stability or a total lack thereof.

In any case, what constitutes maturity is subjective, evolving and often identifiable in everyone but ourselves. The grass is indeed always greener on the other side, especially when we reserve our scrutiny for ourselves. Surrounded by friends who care about me, I let loose on a day that shouldn’t mark some chrysalid metamorphosis into adulthood. This will be a great year.

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NON-FICTION

PTV WOES

Written by Pavani

Ambagahawattha

Train

Like many of Melbourne’s international students, I hail

from a little-known pinprick in that vague landmass that some condescending Caucasian prick once decided to name the “third world”. So, when I landed in Melbourne some ten months ago, a grass-green philistine whose closet contained nary a single tote bag, I did so with high expectations.

Among these expectations was that this first-world metropolis would come equipped with a functional, if not flawless, public transport system. Operating under this delusion, I decided against paying an arm, leg and kidney to live in a glorified box in the city, and instead shacked up with family some forty kilometres from it, at the very end of the Cranbourne line. Just one train ride, I told myself. An hour long, to be sure, but hardly an unreasonable price to pay for the luxury of being a rentless freeloader. This plan, as you may have guessed, soon went spectacularly off the rails (pun absolutely intended). ‘Dear customers,’ a disembodied voice soon chirped. ‘Buses will replace trains on various sections of the Cranbourne line due to ongoing and apparently never-ending works. Alternative transport will be arranged, though it will be horrendously inefficient and drain you of time, energy and the will to live.

Prepare for countless delays, spontaneous cancellations, and other such delights galore. Thank you for travelling with Metro Trains, as though you had a fucking choice.’ If you have not yet experienced the delight that is bus replacements, dear reader, I hope that you never do. Imagine sprinting through a drizzly halfdawn to catch a 7am bus to some obscure station halfway along your commute, and after shivering in line for a half-hour, being told by some nervous underling (who is fully expecting you to shoot the messenger) that it has been cancelled, and that the next will arrive in an hour, though he can’t guarantee that either. Picture ill-equipped stations buckling under masses of irate passengers being herded to buses like cattle through a labyrinthine maze of queues. Imagine hurrying home in the pitch-dark after three hours on the road, soaked through and terrified—jumping at every real and imagined noise behind you.

Hardly a surprise then, that two months after I’d arrived, with my tail between my legs and wincing from the recent removal of an arm, leg and kidney, I went to live in a glorified box in the city.

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Tram Now that I no longer led an ignominious non-existence in Melbourne’s outer suburbs and was instead a resident of the snazzy inner North, the transition from train to tram occurred. Metro to Yarra. Frying pan to fire (kidding, kidding). In all seriousness though, the tram is hard not to fall in love with—Melbourne’s own little vehicular peculiarity, as firmly ingrained into its public persona as the batshit weather and overly revered coffee.

Even the tram’s inconveniences seem like quirks— that soothing, ghostly warble with which it snakes its way through the city, the old-staircase creak its doors make when they open and close, and the almighty lurch with which it stops, forcing passengers to clasp KeepCups and Kindles in a white-knuckled grip. Even more impressively, tram travel—especially during rush hour—is more effective than most fitness regimens. It is guaranteed to lead to the balance and coordination of an Olympic gymnast, being the only place one can learn to simultaneously: anchor one’s entire body upon two firmly planted calves, grip a handrail using a pinky, sip a scalding soy latte, carry on an obnoxiously loud phone conversation, and stalk an ex on Instagram all while on a moving vehicle.

I am the opposite of a physically fit person, but I’d swear that the two almost muscular places on my left bicep did not exist before my tramming days began. All in all, despite no Eden being complete without its serpent, and ticket inspectors (a plague upon your houses, racist scum, we see you targeting international students) remaining a spectre haunting this otherwise idyllic paradise, Melbourne’s trams are a far cry from the pungent clusterfuck that is its trains. I mean, could the free tram zone hypothetically be extended a few stops to include the city’s major universities? Sure.

But, as the privatisation of Melbourne’s train and tram networks displays, lining the pockets of our capitalist overlords is obviously more important than providing financially struggling groups (an umbrella I’m sure most uni students fall under) with safe and affordable travel. But I’ll take what I can get—as Metro has shown me, it could be so much worse.

Illustrated by Rohith Prabhu

Myki Love PTV or hate PTV, what’s nonetheless been made clear throughout my year here is how atrociously expensive it is. Students are entitled to concession cards, of course, but not international students. No, you see, to the City of Melbourne, we international students are little more than cash cows to be sucked dry through every possible orifice before our empty husks are spat back into wherever we came from.

For us, there is a loophole. We are entitled to one specific concession card—the year-long pass—for which 800-plus dollars must be paid upfront. If you, like me, are a below-minimum wage cog in some giant corporate machine, this sum is no joke. The alternative is the standard eight-dollar-a-day fare, which is even less of a joke. Most days, I just end up putting on a podcast and making the hour-long walk to campus instead. This is just one example of how those who bear the brunt of PTV’s failures tend disproportionately to be people of colour—international students, yes, but also recent immigrants, like my own relatives, who arrived with little and worked hard to build beautiful lives in this strange land, even if that meant spending hours on the road every day, commuting from the newer and more affordable outer suburbs to the CBD. For many, it takes everything they have to simply afford public transport. It enrages me that not only are they expected to sacrifice so much financially to simply get from one place to another, they are also expected to do so for a faulty service that does not value their time, safety or comfort in the slightest. These are the times when I’m reminded of public transport in my country—sweaty, cramped, hellishly uncomfortable, but ohso cheap— just a handful of loose change, really—cheap enough for even the poorest to use with abandon. Our third-world buses weren’t air-conditioned, and their seats weren’t cushioned, but despite their many imperfections, it seems to me that there was something truly public about their dependability and affordability. Maybe PTV could take a leaf out of our book.

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NON-FICTION 76

QUIET ENTITLEMENT:

THE PROBLEM WITH MUM AND DAD INVESTORS Written by Michael

A

Scalzo

ustralians need to change the way we view buying a house. Since the Menzies era, owning your own home has been integral to the Australian dream. A right afforded to those who worked hard and paid their taxes. Good citizens. Now that belief has evolved into something far more toxic: that it is your right to make a handsome sum from the property market. ‘As safe as houses’ is the phrase. While Australians in particular have always sought financial security in the property market, why is there an expectation that housing is now more than a financial stabiliser, but a financial enhancer? We have all heard that house prices are too high, but what we don’t hear is that they need to come down. As Australians continue to believe in the never-ending returns of the property market, we know that if house prices are to come down, millions of people are going to lose big.

Since the conversation concerning negative gearing and capital gains tax reduction has been effectively put to bed since the last election, the government seems intent on protecting the investments of Australians who have put their money into the property market. One phrase in particular sums up this entitlement: Mum and Dad Investors.

Mum and Dad Investors are small scale, non-professional investors. This term enables a distinction between people who invest in the property market and people who invest in anything else. If you invest in the stock market – you’re a fat cat, if you’re not a property developer and you invest in property - you’re a Mum and Dad Investor. Such a concept manifests as an embodiment of the Australian ideal: A quiet, honest, normal, hardworking citizen.

This may be a dangerous evocation to make, precisely because of its innocence. The innocence attached to property investment neglects the dire reality of the situation that comes with the phrase.

For a country where around seventy per cent of us are homeowners, and where household debt has increased by seventy nine per cent since 2004, it is fair to say that there would be a lot of nervous Australians if house prices were to fall. People who own one home are forced to see their house as an investment too, for a downturn would spell disaster for households that have become “the most indebted in the world”. However, ensuring the return of these investments is ludicrous. The government makes no similar argument for business investments or investments in stock, so why would the housing market be any different?

Ensuring that property prices continue to rise to ensure that thousands of Australian’s don’t lose out on their housing gamble is the extreme example of picking a winner, a tactic that governments shy away from doing publically anywhere else.

Bringing down the price of property is perceived as necessary by most people, but simultaneously an unthinkable ruinous possibility by others, despite the significant difference between the right to live in a home and the right to ensure a capital return from one. Reducing the incentive for property investment may restore the balance between seeing a house as a home and seeing a house as a financial opportunity.

Investing in the property market is a gamble.

A gamble that everyone has the right to make, but a gamble just the same as those trading in international currency, gold or stocks. Australians love to emphasise our belief in the right to home ownership, but as less and less people have the capacity to own their own home – we must stop connecting home ownership with capital gain. Now the financial fate of those who own one home, and those who own five, are forever connected. Both will either see a win or a loss.

Policy reform is necessary, and there are vital conversations to be had over negative gearing and the capital gains tax that promote housing investment, but it is conceptual reform that is just as important.

We must not demonise people who can afford to buy property, nor should we act like buying a house is the only way to ensure financial stability. Unlike all other investments, having a home is both an absolute need and right for all Australians, making for a dangerous cross-over between capital investment and human necessity. A 2018 report by the Grattan Institute suggests that building an extra 50,000 homes a year for a decade could leave Australian house prices five to twenty per cent lower than they would otherwise be”. However, without true conceptual reform, this only adds 50,000 chances to make a profit rather than 50,000 homes for people to live in.

Pressure on the housing market will not be relieved by reducing the amount of people wanting a roof over their head, but perhaps it may be eased by re-evaluating our perception of those wanting to make a buck. There is an innocence attached to property investment. When economic policies that have the potential to reduce the amount the federal government encourages property investment are

Illustrated by Lo Yuk Kei

floated, the return phrase seems to imply the capital innocence of investors.

Indeed, many ordinary Australians that probably don’t have the means to be property investors are being conned into seeing the innocence in property investment. Consequently, many people who only own one home are forced to see their house as an investment too, for a downturn would spell disaster for the most in-debt households in the world.

Distinguishing people by their wealth is not important, neither is criticising people for having the financial capacity to invest. However, insuring the return of these investments is ludicrous. The government makes no similar arguments for business investments or investments in stock, why would the housing market be any different. Ensuring that the property prices continue to rise to ensure that thousands of Australians don’t lose out on their housing gamble is the extreme example of picking a winner, a tactic that governments shy away from doing publically anywhere else. Bringing down the price of property is seen as necessary by most people but simultaneously an unthinkable ruinous possibility despite there being a big difference between the right to live in a home and the right to ensure a capital return from one. Reducing the incentive for property investment might restore the balance between seeing a house as a home and seeing a house as a financial opportunity. Investing in the property market is a gamble. A gamble that everyone has the right to make but a gamble just the same as those trading in international currency, gold or stocks.

Australians love to emphasise our belief in the right to home ownership, however, as less and less people now own their own home – maybe we should stop connecting home-owning with capital gain.

The problem when anything becomes too big to fail is the inability to remove the specific parasitic factors that have made the entity a problem in the first place without tearing down the entire system.

Unlike other investment opportunities, living in a house is both an absolute need and right for all Australians, making for a dangerous crossover between capital investment and human nec essity. Both sorts fighting over the same resource.

The pressure on the housing market cannot be limited by reducing the amount of people wanting a roof over their head, but perhaps it can be eased by assessing our perception of those wanting to make a buck.

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REVIEW REVIEW Written byby Tharidi Walimunige Written Tharidi Walimunige

DREAMWORKSANIMATION: ANIMATION:THE THEEXHIBITION EXHIBITION DREAMWORKS DreamWorks reamWorksAnimation: Animation:The TheExhibition Exhibitionhas hasbeen been Dtouring Australasia and the Americas since 2014. Curated

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Oneof ofthe thebest best features features of of this this exhibition exhibition were were the the One interactive screens allowing visitors to simulate animating touring Australasia and the Americas since 2014. Curated interactive screens allowing visitors to simulate animating forDreamWorks.

DreamWorks. By By fiddling fiddling around around on on these these screens, screens, ACMI,the the400-plus 400-plusworks worksofofconcept conceptart, art,character character for bybyACMI, I could change the colour of pop-corn fireworks or turn turn models and crew interviews have graced locations inI could change the colour of pop-corn fireworks or models and crew interviews have graced locations ina still ocean to rolling waves.

But these kinds of tactile cluding ACMI in 2014 (#firsttaste), the Seoul Museum of a still ocean to rolling waves. But these kinds of tactile cluding ACMI in 2014 (#firsttaste), the Seoul Museum of activitieswere werefew few and and far far between between and and could’ve could’ve been been the the Art in 2016, the Montreal Science Centre in 2018 and the activities Art in 2016, the Montreal Science Centre in 2018 and the reasonfor foraadistinct distinct lack lack of of young young children, children, the the target target NationalMuseum MuseumofofAustralia Australiainin2020 2020(#backforseconds). (#backforseconds). reason National audience of DreamWorks’ films, present at the exhibition.

Beginning as a celebration of the studio’s 20th anniBeginning as a celebration of the studio’s 20th anniversary audience of DreamWorks’ films, present at the exhibition.

Themajority majorityof of those those milling milling about about were were teenagers, teenagers, versary and with growing newrelease, featurethe release, the The and growing eachwith neweach feature exhibition youngadults adultsand andmiddle-aged middle-aged couples. couples. exhibition provides a behind-the-scenes peak at 37feaaniyoung provides a behind-the-scenes peak at 37 animated Judging by the turnout, one positive to be be taken taken from from this this mated features.

Unlike a theme-park or premiere event, Judging by the turnout, one positive to tures. Unlike a theme-park or premiere event, where the is that animation truly isn’t just for kids.

DreamWorks where theis emphasis is placed uponand the their visitorinteractivity, and their is that animation truly isn’t just for kids. DreamWorks emphasis placed upon the visitor hasbeen beenaamajor majorplayer player in in showcasing showcasing mature, mature, intelligent intelligent interactivity, DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition is has DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition is very much storylines for viewers of all ages to enjoy.

Yes, there was very much a celebration of the filmmakers and creative storylines for viewers of all ages to enjoy. Yes, there was a celebration of the filmmakers and creative processes processes behind each film.

Bee Movie (2007) and Over the Hedge (2006), but even Bee Movie (2007) and Over the Hedge (2006), but even behind each film.

The National Museum of Australia put out all the stops theseunderwhelming underwhelming features features taught taught us us about about industriindustrithese The National Museum of Australia put out all the for hosting this exhibit.

Upon entering, models of the alisation and humanity’s effects on the natural world.

As alisation and humanity’s effects on the natural world. As stops for hosting this exhibit. Upon entering, models of for the studio’s bigger and better-received hits, they gave penguins from Madagascar (2005) greeted usus and anan for the studio’s bigger and better-received hits, they gave the penguins from Madagascar (2005) greeted and usaaphysically physicallydisabled disabled protagonist protagonist in in Hiccup Hiccup (How (How To To animatronic Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon us animatronic Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon (2010)was wassuspended suspendedabove abovethe thebustling bustlingfoyer. foyer.ItItwas was TrainYour YourDragon Dragon[2010]) [2010])and andexplicit explicitrepresentation representationofof Train (2010) clear from the sheer amount of DreamWorks iconography triggers and PTSD ( Kung Fu Panda 2 [2011] ). triggers and PTSD (Kung Fu Panda 2 [2011]). clear from the sheer amount of DreamWorks iconography surrounding us that we were in for a treat.

If there’s one thing that I took away from If there’s one thing that I took away from this exhibisurrounding us that we were in for a treat.

The exhibit was structured as a long, blackened hall seption,it’s it’sthe thethought, thought, care care and and innovation innovation that births each The exhibit was structured as a long, blackened hall sep- tion, arated into sections of varying sizes.

The lack of a defined DreamWorks picture, even the misses. After After all, without DreamWorks picture, even the misses. arated into sections of varying sizes. The lack of a defined direction to traverse meant that the experience felt like an filmmakers who dared to subvert society’s direction to traverse meant that the experience felt like an filmmakers who dared to subvert society’s expectations adventure.With Withthe thesweet sweetviolin violinofofJohn JohnPowell’s Powell’s‘Roman‘Roman- and anddominant dominantideologies, ideologies, you you wouldn’t wouldn’t have have unconvenadventure. tic Flight’ in the background, I weaved around glass cases tional heroes like Shrek teaching kids that tional heroes like Shrek teaching kids that beauty is found tic Flight’ in the background, I weaved around glass cases holding 3D busts of characters like Moses, Shrek and within, or Sherman proving that kids raised within, or Sherman proving that kids raised by single-parholding 3D busts of characters like Moses, Shrek and Spirit.

Storyboards and concept art splashed the walls in entsare arenormal normaland and can can grow grow up up to to be be heroes. heroes. Nor would ents Spirit. Storyboards and concept art splashed the walls in colour.

The exhibit did run the risk of feeling repetitive as you have Astrid, Chel or Eep teaching girls you have Astrid, Chel or Eep teaching girls that females colour. The exhibit did run the risk of feeling repetitive as most of the content throughout the sections was printed come in all shapes, sizes and personalities.

Even as a huge come in all shapes, sizes and personalities. most of the content throughout the sections was printed art.

However, every so often I discovered something that fan of DreamWorks Animation, I can’t deny that there are fan of DreamWorks Animation, I can’t deny art. However, every so often I discovered something that renewed my wonder, be it a simulated production desomeclunkers clunkersin inthe the studio’s studio’s filmography. filmography. And yet, walksome renewed my wonder, be it a simulated production designer’s desk or fabric scrolls inspired by Ancient China ing through a maze of artwork and audio-visual audio-visual expresing through a maze of artwork and signer’s desk or fabric scrolls inspired by Ancient China depicting scenes from Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016). sion, physical manifestations of passion and imagination, imagination, sion, physical manifestations of passion and depicting scenes from Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016).

Forthose thoselike likemyself, myself,who whocould couldspend spendhours hoursgazing gazing wasreminded remindedthat that behind behind each each film film are are real real people. people. Real Real IIwas For intently at concept art, this exhibit would be a delight people who just want to tell stories.

And looking at it in people who just want to tell stories. And looking at it in intently at concept art, this exhibit would be a delight fromstart starttotoend. end.For Foreveryone everyoneelse elsethough, though,the thespectacle spectacle that thatregard, regard,it’s it’snot not hard hard to to celebrate celebrate the the history history of of aa studio studio from couldlose loseitsitslustre lustredue duetotolacking lackinginteractivity. interactivity. thatisisbringing bringingto to life life the the stuff stuff of of dreams. dreams. that could Photography by Shantha Walimunige Photography by Shantha Walimunige

‘SUMMER’

SECTION TEXT

Written by Mark Yin

Apollo sets, leaving you behind in his sister’s harsh, silver crepuscule for another few hours. Soon, people will be coming through the temple—the days have been lengthening, and the Twins are rarely merciful at this time of year. You close your eyes and see another planet, a planet of ash. You remember reading about how trauma is intergenerational and how humankind have been carrying it in their bones for centuries now. You pray for them all the same, whispering reassurances that thankfully, that fiery planet is no more. Summer here is never so bad.

SECTION TEXT

LASHFICTION Flash fiction

Written by Alexandra McAuliffe

The air is sticky, subduing, able to keep even the most volatile and restless of creatures at bay. I am one of those creatures. With stiff knuckles and copper nail beds, my heavy hands sink into the clay before me. Like every drop of moisture left in the air, my fortitude is quickly evaporating. The hard surface won’t be moulded so I jab at it over and over again with a knife, hoping it will form the shape of his face. Staring at the disfiguration in front of me, I wait in my kiln for the end of summer.

Written by Nicole Hegedus

As soon as the singing began, they were sent into a kind of frenzy. Cries rising from the bleached earth as the sun dropped from the sky. Neighbourhood kids in their hand-medown pyjamas and singlets zig-zagged bare-footed across the lawn. Their motions akin to a drunken reverie. Ears accustomed; searching for the source. “Over here!” and one big STOMP. Holding their breaths, mouths clamped shut with a small hand as not to make a peep in the silence of the cicadas. Slowly, the sullen note rose again, chiming into the evening chorus.

Written by Teck-Phui Chua

Dusk. He lies down, stomach up. A breeze cools him temporarily. The curtains billow in with his breath, then out. A brief calmness overrides all senses. The sun cast shadows, while leaving a warm impression behind. His stomach grumbles as the smell of dinner reaches his nose. The front door unlocks–instinct tells him it’s the mother. The footsteps agree. And just in time.A shout cues two children to rush past. He gets up and follows. At the table they sit, ready for the daily ritual.He salivates as he chews his food and his tail wags. Cicadas chirp outside.

Written by Kavya Malhotra

Australian summer smells like Indian winter. Let me explain.

The word “January” rings a dichotomy upon the mercury between New Delhi and Melbourne. I try to soak in the free aircon of Melbourne Central and my cousin from back home tells me how he couldn’t feel his fingers as he walked to uni. Indian winters are an amalgamation of smoke, lead and fog that strangles your insides and somehow, the summer of ’20 in Australia smells of the most polluted city in the world. My friend bought me an anti-pollution mask. I laughed and said my lungs don’t need it. The bushfires continue to rage and choke.

Illustrated Illustrated

by Annette

by Name Syahlani

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‘DAWN TO DUSK’ PLAYLIST 1. Hope – (Sandy) Alex G 2. Powder Blue/Cascine Park – Yumi Zouma 3. Lovesick – Midnight Fuse 4. Girl Like You – Toro y Moi 5. Rollercoaster – Jonas Brothers 6. Girl (Acoustic) - SYML 7. Homesick – Foley 8. Saltwater- Geowulf 9. Alona – The Plastics 10. Coachella - lovelytheband 11. Sand in my Shoes - Dido 12. Charcoal Baby – Blood Orange 13. Summertime – The Sundays 14. Princess of China – Coldplay & Rihanna 15. This Year – Beach Fossils 16. One Melancholy Hill - Gorillaz 17. Super Rich Kids – Frank Ocean 18. Kinda Crazy – Selena Gomez 19. Doin’ Time – Lana Del Ray 20. Fade Into You – Mazzy Star 21. Shampoo Bottles – Peach Pit 22. Diplomat’s Son - Vampire Weekend 23. Until the Sun Comes Up – Gabrielle Aplin 24. Notion – Tash Sultana

Photography by Kashish Sandhu

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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 elders - past, present and emerging - and acknowledge that the land we are on was stolen and sovereignty was never ceded.