2020 Edition Five

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FARRAGO EDITION FIVE 2020

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Acknowledgement of Country Cultural warning for mentions of the destruction of significant sites.

Content warning for alcoholism.

The Djab Wurrung Directions Tree was brought down on October 26, the same day that the Victorian Andrews Government was lauded for the impending changes in lockdown restrictions. This occurs as an act of violence, one that continues to be perpetuated against our First Nations siblings who are treated as second class citizens.

We stand alongside the Djab Wurrung people who have lost this sacred part of their culture. We stand alongside the Djab Wurrung people who may yet lose further parts of their culture as Premier Daniel Andrews, Minister for Planning Richard Wynne, Minister for Transport Jacinta Allen and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Gabrielle Williams allow this cultural genocide to happen during lockdown, during a global pandemic.

We cannot “get back on the beers” when ancient ancestor trees are being torn down. We cannot celebrate a day of no cases, when the Community is mourning. We cannot do this when the mere fixation of getting “back on the beers” ignores the permeating culture of alcoholism and its significant effects on First Nations peoples not only in the form of substance abuse, but as an excuse for imprisonment and an excuse for murder.

When #IStandWithDan and #TopShelfDan trend without any acknowledgement of the horrors that have been inflicted upon the Djab Wurrung community, we must acknowledge that popular media has it wrong. That #NotTreesNoTreaty has also trended quietly.

We must continue to search and advocate for the smaller voices that speak out about overshadowed and ignored injustices.

We extend our acknowledgement beyond the lands of the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations, the lands on which this magazine has been made and the Student Union sits, to the siblings at Djab Wurrung who have been deeply affected by this. This land and those trees always were and always will be first and foremost, Aboriginal. No amount of public apologies or acknowledgements from settler and colonial Australia can take that away or right the histories of misjustice and maltreatment. We must continue to do more.

Bethany Cherry Boon Wurrung Land of the Kulin Nations.

Amber Meyer Wurundjeri Land of the Kulin Nations.

Sarah Peters Boon Wurrung Land of the Kulin Nations.

Tharidi Walimunige Wurundjeri Land of the Kulin Nations.

EDITORS

Amber Meyer Bethany Cherry Sarah Peters Tharidi Walimunige

COVER

Anya Wong

SOCIAL MEDIA

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

ILLUSTRATORS

Alice Tai Anya Wong Annette Syahlani Arielle Vlahiotis Cathy Chen Elmira Cheung Franki Stackpool Geraldine Loh Kitman Yeung Michelle Pham Yuk Kei Lo Yuki Phuong Ngo Phoebe Owl Rohith Prabhu Rose Gertsakis Reann Lin Stephanie Nestor Sue Park Vivian Li Yena Kim Zino Feng Steph Markerink Nina Hughes Torsten Strokirch Apapist Panichewa Sidonie Bird De La Coeur Jing Tong Teo

CONTRIBUTORS

SUBEDITORS

MANAGERS

Emma McCarthy Ailish Hallinan Ailish Hallinan Finley Tobin Allen Xiao Ana Jacobsen Iain Soumitri Amelia Costigan Angus Thomson Lauren Berry Anindya Setiawan Amy Wortmann Asher Christina Harrington Asher Christina Harrington Charlotte Waters Benjamin Arya COLUMNIST Claire Yip Celia Schild Elmira Cheung Dana Pjanic Charlotte Armstrong Klesa Wilson Elizabeth Seychell Christina Savopoulos Lee Perkins Evelyn Ranogajec Daniel Crowley Tessa Bagshaw Felicity Lacey Felicity Lacey Tessa Marshall Finley Tobin Finley Tobin Tzur Ko-Geen Rochvarger Janelle Del Vecchio Gabriel Dartnell Sunnie Meg Jo Oakley Georgia Bunker Wendy Lin Lindsay Wong Izma Haider Lucette Moulang Jamisyn Gleeson ONLINE COLUMNIST Marcie Di Bartolomeo Jean Baulch Annalyce Wiebenga Mark Yin Jemma Payne Shaira Afrida Oyshee Markella Votzourakis Jesse Skerritt Monique O’Rafferty Joanna Guelas PHOTOGRAPHY Nicole Moore Joshua Munro Abir Hiranandani Nishtha Banavalikar Lilly Skipper Ailish Hallinan Noa Abrahams Lucy Robin Nurul Juhria Binte Kamal Alicia Christabella Andreas Kira Todd Alice Tai Poppy Willis Nick Parsons Andy Xu Pavani Athukorala Marcie Di Bartolomeo Ben Levy Rebecca Fletcher Mariam Nadeem Ella Davidson Rohith Prabhu Meredith Tyler Shahrizad Zaina Choudhury Finley Tobin Pavani Athukorala Helena Wang Stephanie Zhang Rebecca Fletcher Jean Baulch Tessa Marshall Rida Fatima Virk Jing Tong Teo Tiia Kelly Sohee Kwon Jocelyn Deane Tom Shute Srishti Chatterjee Kashish Sandhu Victoria Thompson Stephanie Nestor Ly Luong Wen Yee Ang Tiarney Aiesi Mingyu Tan Vanessa Lee Nguyen Nguyen Will Minack Rida Fatima Virk Stephanie Zhang

MUSIC TEAM

Anoushka Arora Dylan Glatz Marsya Ali Lauren Berry Zaina Choudhury

EVENTS

Kashish Sandhu Lian Ren

WEB DESIGN TEAM Wei Wang

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.

Art by Nicole Hegedus

03 Editorial 04 Pass The Parcel 06 Mental Health Support For Young People During COVID-19 Not Enough

28 Portrait of a migrant childhood with an uncle-roommate

56 Bad-Ass Women: Joanna of Castile

30 A Third Culture Kid’s Experience: The Art Upon Gallery Walls

58 Urban Nostalgia

08 A Mediation For Heartbreak

32 The Curtain Calls for you to think: Self Acceptance

Ailish Hallinan and Jesse Skerritt

Srishti Chatterjee

Izma Haider

60 In the Middle of the Empty Woods

Tzur Ko-Geen Rochvarger

62 ...as colours pour from tar

33 The OTHER Theory of Evolution: The Greatest Failed Experiment

15 “Oh...”

34 Photography

Lily Skipper

16 Tutors At ‘Tipping Point’ Students’ Suffering During Wage Theft-Pandemic Double Hit Joanna Guelas and Angus Thomson

18 Politics of Zoom CLasses Sohee Kwon

20 The Religon of One Direction: In the Name of Harry Styles, Our Lord Amen Lucy Robin

22 Apple Crumble: The Perfect Companion Christina Savopoulos

23 The Walk Of Shame Celia Schild

24 7/11 Wine in a Hiroshima Studio Apartment Georgia Bunker

26 Letter to the Editors Joshua Monro

27 ‘Space Junk’

Ailish Hallinan

Kira Todd

Klesa Wilson

10 November Calendar 12 OB Reports 14 The Morrison Government Pandemic Politics Finley Tobin

Sunnie Meg

Tessa Marshall

Abir Hiranandani Ben Levy Daniel Crowley Finley Tobin Kashish Sandhu

Asher Christina Harrington Ana Jacobsen

64 The Walz Of Spring Wendy Lin

66 What body am I in today Jean Baulch

67 Flash Fiction: ‘Current’ Assorted authors

68 The Cherryman: Wind of Grey Robe Lee Perkins

43 Dissection of a Piglet’s Heart

70 Package Deal with the Devil

44 Sea Monster

72 The Mother’s Lullaby

45 Exile

74 burst asunder

46 Table

75 Feature Art

48 Lonely Hearts of the Animal Kingdom

76 Candid Communication VS Elaborate eloquence

Amy Wortmann

Jamisyn Gleeson

Mariam N Khan Megan Tan

Tessa Bagshaw

50 Conversations At A Diner

Jemma Payne

Benjamin Arya Meredith Tyler

Stephanie Nestor

Rebecca Fletcher

52 Horoscopes

78 The Girl Who Searched for the Heavens

54 The Sound of Silence

80 Radio Fodder Playlist

Nicholas Parsons

Charlotte Armstrong Jamisyn Gleeson

55 Just the Usual, Thanks.

Will Minack

Rida Fatima Virk

Radio Fodder Music Team

Bethany Cherry

Reading through Farrago submissions last month, there was an overwhelming feeling of struggle. Students were at different stages of struggle, like the kind you experience when you’re stuck in mud. Some, waist deep, overwhelmed, breathing was difficult, and hope wasn’t in their horizon. Others, one or two steps ahead, the mud down to their knees. A few now on their feet, the mud dry and a distant reminder. Whether you’re in the thick of it or free from it, sometimes we have to endure the struggle to build the strength. This edition features some of the strongest students I have ever seen. One step at a time, they did it. You can too.

Amber Meyer | 董右瑄

Borrowing from writer Benjamin Law’s critique of tokenism, I’ll say this with my whole chest. For readers with marginalised identities, insinuations that your successes are borne by anything besides effort are baseless. Here, self-doubt is a socialised practice and distracts from the realisation that at least you didn’t get where you are because of “nepotism based on whiteness, class and networks forged in exclusive elite schools” (2020).

Sarah Peters

Despite the uproar at the Government’s ‘Job-Ready’ Bill and its impact on the Arts Industry, I wonder if people really know the impacts their choices can have. Paying artists for their efforts and work should not be so difficult, yet it lingers in every crevice, even within student bodies.

As students, we are not always experts in our field, but we are trying to pave the way for others and support our artmaking communities at all levels. Exposure doesn’t pay the bills, last-minute changes don’t aid the arts, treat my enjambment as law. I am very tired, but this editorial goes out to all the creatives and to Phuong who made me feel even cuter in this illustrated editorial.

Tharidi Walimunige

Being an Editor during conflicts on a state, national and global level produced experiences I wasn’t prepared for yet also made me realise the fortitude and compassion of our creative community. This has been a challenging year for everyone. So, it was disappointing when our little boat called the Media Department was rocked by the very people meant to fund and represent us.

It’s disheartening to learn that others don’t understand or appreciate the work you do. But people with that artistic flame inside them are strong in the face of adversity. Whatever comes your way, don’t stop creating. Regardless of what anyone says, your writing, art, and involvement in media and publishing are worthwhile. Reader, don’t let anything stifle your creativity.

Illustrated by Phuong Ngo

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‘Pass The Parcel’ by Elmira Cheung

‘My Good Reason’ by Elmira Cheung

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NEWS

Content Warning: COVID-19, mental illness, self-harm

MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT FOR YOUNG PEOPLE DURING COVID-19 NOT ENOUGH

Ailish Hallinan and Jesse Skerritt

As the pandemic continues, attention is shifting towards how to best handle the physical and mental impacts of COVID-19. The mental health of young people has been identified as being particularly vulnerable to the impact of the virus and the associated measures taken to prevent its spread. But, what is being done to support them?

Here at Melbourne, the University claims to have drastically widened its support for students’ mental health since the pandemic began. According to a University spokesperson: “The University has been actively reaching out to students who are most likely to face very challenging circumstances to support them with their transition to a virtual campus and online learning.”

The most notable aspect of the University’s efforts has been an increase in the funding of services delivered through the Counselling and Psychological Services (CAPS).

Orania Tokatlidis, the Clinical Head of CAPS, spoke to Farrago about the additional services.

These include: increased counselling appointments, specialist multi-session programs, webinars and information packs which focus on specific issues arising from the pandemic, and most notably, an after-hours crisis support centre.

Tokatlidis said that while the number of students accessing counselling services has remained fairly steady, “people are coming with more complex issues”.

Despite this, she explained that the diversification of services as a result of the pandemic has allowed CAPS to meet the demands of students.

“It’s about having a variety of things [which can] be useful in different ways for different people.”

While CAPS’s online booking system only allows students to book for that or the following day – calling the service will ensure students are able to book into the service. Triage facilities are also able to fast-track appointments depending on their urgency.

Tokatlidis told Farrago that despite the challenges presented by the pandemic, there have been some positive outcomes.

“The pandemic has made people realise that mental health is really under resourced in the community”.

She also spoke about how services have become “more valued” and how institutions have found funding for services which have long been necessary.

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She highlighted the establishment of the after-hours crisis service as a notable positive outcome. It has been contacted 65 times in just over two months – around once per day.

Tokatlidis said that the experience of the pandemic and providing services remotely would ensure CAPS takes “a better, blended model” into the future so as to remain more accessible to students.

However, it is not only up to CAPS to ensure students’ mental wellbeing.

In an interim report for their university mental health framework, youth mental health organisation Orygen identified that “embedding student wellbeing within the university requires a whole university approach”.

The report goes on to highlight that it is important to consider how “systems, structures, processes, policies, relationships and resources” contributes to students having a “mentally healthy university experience”.

Tokatlidis also emphasised the necessity of “embedding good wellbeing practices in the whole university approach”, touching on exam and assessment timetabling and the Special Consideration program.

The University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) however, has identified a number of areas where they feel the University has inadequately considered student mental health during the pandemic.

“Decisions like the delay in making a decision about WAM, issues with emergency support fund, the unclear nature of online exams and proposed changes to Special Consideration have all had a drastic impact on students’ mental health”, says UMSU President Hannah Buchan.

“More support is needed for students”, Buchan told Farrago.

“The University needs to be more compassionate when making decisions about students.”

“The University needs to continue to provide mental health services, but they also need to consult students about the decisions that they are making”, she said.

Buchan said a failure to do so is “exacerbating mental health issues”.

This particularly applied to proposed changes to the Special Consideration program, which UMSU has said range “from the benign to the ridiculously mean spirited”, and are made more “inappropriate” by the added stresses of the pandemic.

This calls into question the University’s success in ensuring institutional support for mental health during the pandemic. A University spokesperson told Farrago: “The University’s services have taken a ‘wellbeing first’ approach, with staff taking extra time and effort to ensure each interaction with students allows them to talk about how they are coping with the challenges of studying during this difficult time.”

Farrago spoke to a tutor from the University who wished to remain anonymous. When asked about the University’s allocating additional resources to implement the ‘extra care’ the spokesperson mentioned, they replied: “the only thing I’ve received as staff is an R U OK email last Thursday and nothing else”.

“We didn’t get paid for consultations before”.

“To be honest this is the first I’m hearing of a ‘wellbeing first’ approach.”

Illustrated by Arielle Vlahiotis

“We used to get paid for an hour of consulting… now class preparation, consultation and first tutorial of the week [are] lumped into one hours’ pay of ‘initial tutorial’ time”.

COVID, and we definitely [aren’t] given any extra resources to support students now. A lot of the goodwill of the teaching team in terms of looking out for students comes from a genuine love of teaching that the Uni unfortunately, exploits.”

Considering these responses alongside the UMSU’s criticisms, it would appear the University is not sufficiently integrating mental health wellbeing practices within the institutional instances ORYGEN identified.

Just as damning – and with broader potential implications for the university cohort – the tutor told Farrago, “apparently if one of my students gets COVID, there’s a whole procedure in place that none of [the staff] knew about but that the Uni was peddling as part of a strategy to support students”.

Both the Victorian and federal governments have also introduced packages aimed at supporting those suffering from mental ill health during the pandemic.

Since March, the Australian Government has announced several increases to mental health support, including extra funding for service providers and ten additional Medicare-subsided therapy sessions.

In a press release from 2 August 2020, Federal Minister for Health Greg Hunt said: “Mental health and suicide prevention remains one of our Government’s highest priorities, and this Government recognises the mental health impact the COVID-19 pandemic is having on individuals and communities, particularly those in areas such as Victoria, where regrettable but necessary measures are needed to stop the spread of the virus”.

Despite this sentiment, the government has been criticised by experts for not doing enough to both recognise and support those with mental illness during the pandemic. One such expert is Professor Patrick McGorry, head of the Orygen Centre for Youth Mental Health in Melbourne.

“I don’t think they currently understand the scale of the problem”, he said.

“We predict a 30% increase in need for care on top of what was happening before for young people and we are starting to see it already.”

Since late-July, there has been a drastic increase in young people in Victoria presenting to hospital with self-harm issues, up 33 per cent from this time last year.

One of McGorry’s main criticisms is the lack of spending on mental health compared to other government-funded services, like the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

“The underspend is quite incredible, which means only a minority of people get access to care, and only a minority get the right intensity and duration”.

River* is a student at the University who suffers from depression, generalised anxiety and disordered eating. River has experienced first-hand how difficult the pandemic has been on young people suffering from mental ill health.

River* was able to access the additional Medicaresubsided therapy sessions offered by the Federal government, but found themselves rationing the extra sessions out of fear they’d run out when they needed them the most.

“I would be writing down issues that were affecting me so when I did meet with my therapist I would be like ‘okay these aren’t important enough, I can’t afford to talk about these issues. I’ll just talk about the main ones’”.

River* believes that more needs to be done to support students and others suffering from mental illnesses during the pandemic.

“Those sessions cannot be presented as the sole, all-encompassing solution to an issue that manifests in many different ways. A lot of people in my position might just suffer alone because they aren’t getting the help they need as the system currently stands”.

Professor McGorry has several suggestions for how the Government should remedy this.

“We need to build up new workforces and new models of care, and also bring in digital mental health as a complementary strategy. They should be absolutely one of the top priorities for the Government going forward”.

Whether the University and the Government take this advice from experts and those with mental illnesses is yet to be seen. *Individual has requested to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of topics discussed. A pseudonym has been used in place of their real name.

If you have been impacted by the issues raised in this article, or would like to seek further mental health aid, we encourage you to look into these services: Lifeline 13 11 14 https://www.lifeline.org.au/ Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636 https://www.beyondblue.org.au/ HeadSpace https://headspace.org.au/ CISAustralia https://www.cisaustralia.com.au/health-and-safety/mental-health-support/ Black Dog Institute https://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/

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Illustrated by Yuk Kei Lo Yuki

A MEDITATION FOR HEARTBREAK

Srishti Chatterjee / @academeaow

E

ven before it happens, mourn it. Memorise what his fingers feel like when they scratch your head every time you hug him. Slowly feed your grandmother some fruit, and when she has trouble swallowing, know that this is the last time she smiles at you.

Keep a box of tissues ready by your bedside, and another on your desk, just in case. Prepare some Panadol next to a glass of water. Let your lips touch the bottle of Aldi’s wine with every intention of getting to the bottom of an affordable substitute for the therapy you’ve been avoiding.

All your t-shirts once belonged to them. Heartbreak is a rite of passage. Therefore, grieve like you feel the liminality, like you’re hovering in the transition between not wearing their t-shirts anymore, but not throwing them away either. Your own t-shirts are overworn, and smell of sweat. Sweat smells of ordinary summer mornings with them.

Go buy a new notebook when thoughts get too much to keep in. This notebook will soon be gathering dust on the shelf, because it is too pristine for your ugly snot and tears and occasional recollections of how beautiful his eyes are.

Don’t just grieve the small details—grieve big. Collapse at the foot of your bed after you finish those lectures.

Rehearse it, grieve like an entire civilisation is about to be swept away by the river (because it is).

Even before it happens, take a few walks out in the cold by yourself. Feel the nothingness, like there’s no one on the streets but you (because there isn’t).

Give yourself some practice, like sleeping is for death. Grieve the brown of his eyes, and the way your grandmother could knit with her eyes closed.

Heartbreak is loss without reparations. It takes practice; it begs to be dwelt in. Build a home of it, and one day you’ll walk in and know exactly how many steps it takes to reach the light switch.

Even before it happens, imagine the first time you’ll hug someone after this is over, because that means you’re hoping, desperately, that you’ll survive the apocalypse.

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Illustrated by Zino Feng

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NOVEMBER

MONDAY 9

Queer x Disabilities Zoom Collective 12pm Bike Collective 9am

TUESDAY 10

Enviro Collective 12pm Trans Collective 2pm

WEDNESDAY 11

THURSDAY 12 QPOC Collective 12pm

Creative Arts Collective 3pm

MONDAY 16

TUESDAY 17

WEDNESDAY 18

THURSDAY 19

FRIDAY 20

MONDAY 23

TUESDAY 24

WEDNESDAY 25

THURSDAY 26

FRIDAY 27

MONDAY 28

TUESDAY 29

WEDNESDAY 30

THURSDAY 31

FRIDAY 1

FARRAGO Edition Five Launch Party 3pm Bike Collective 9am

Queer x Disabilities Zoom Collective 12pm Bike Collective 9am

Queer x Disabilities Zoom Collective 12pm Bike Collective 9am

Enviro Collective 12pm Trans Collective 2pm

Enviro Collective 12pm Trans Collective 2pm

Enviro Collective 12pm Trans Collective 2pm

Queer Collective 1-2pm

Queer Collective 1-2pm

FARRAGO Edition Six Launch party 7pm

Media Department Fitzpatrick Awards 5pm

Climate Action Collective 12pm (Southbank) QPOC Collective 12pm

QPOC Collective 12pm Christian Union International 6pm

Climate Action Collective 12pm (Southbank) QPOC Collective 12pm

FRIDAY 13

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President | Hannah Buchan

OB REPORTS

We’re nearly at the end of the year! Who would have thought that we would actually make it here?

Recently, UMSU has been busy advocating for students during the lockdown. This semester, we won the extension of the WAM amnesty and have been pressuring the University to take action on student mental health. Now that lockdown is over, we are making plans for a gradual return to campus and looking towards how we can implement orientation next year. It’s a huge effort to make it through this online year, and everyone should be proud of the work they have done.

General Secretary | Jack Buksh

Clubs and Societies | Jordan Di Natale

Hey hey Superstars, This semester has been incredible! Online WinterFest kicked started so much fun and gave students an insight of what clubs have to offer even when not on campus. Clubs have really adapted with the online setting and they have created so many cool and exciting online events! In fact, for AWARDS WEEK, there has been a new category “BEST ONLINE EVENT” for small, medium and large clubs!!! Trust me, deciding the winners here was tough!

Finally, this year has been the first time ever in clubs history that the department has held 200+ AGMs in 1 semester! WOW! As always, keep being superstars!

Creative Arts | Emily White and Olivia Bell

Tastings came and went with much success! The brave artists that took part in the showcase presented experimental new works and wowed digital audiences across two nights. We are so proud of all the little gems that are in the midst of being created and excited to see what they flourish into. Above Water launched on Halloween Eve and is yet more evidence of what can be created in spite of distance and lockdowns. We also recently concluded our semester of workshops that saw people learning practical skills needed to succeed at being an artist in the digital age.

Education Academic | Joshua Munro and Georgia Walton Briggs

Education Public | Charlie Joyce and Noni Bridger

Hello lovely readers, we’re taking you though to the end of Semester 2 and the end of lockdown! (fingers crossed) Our Semester activities are wrapping up but we still have some events going, including a session on Envisioning a Democratic University on November 3rd via Zoom. We’re hoping to have some study and chill events during SWOTVAC and the exam period so stay tuned in to our social media @UMSUEducation for that! You’ll also hear of any upcoming rallies or protests on our socials and also over on No Cuts at Unimelb!

Burnley | Kaitlyn Hammond

Hi Burnley! We hope you have had a satisfying end of semester and are ready to jump into summer!

We are excited to bring you a celebratory end of semester online quiz night! We’ve had an awesome year of activity from upskilling workshops to social nights and are already getting excited about what next year has in store. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and Facebook to stay updated on our activities and give us some feedback on what you’d like to see for next year!

Instagram: @UMSUburnley Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/burnleystudentassociation

Disabilities | Hue Man Dang and Srishti Chatterjee

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Indigenous | Hope Kuchel & Shanysa McConville

Facebook | umsuindigenous Instagram | umsuindigenous

People of Colour | Gurpreet Singh & Nicole Nabbout

Activities | India Pinkney and Hayley Stanford

Hello! We hope you have all been well! The Activities department has been keeping busy in semester two with loads of free entertainment and events! Our Tuesday bands have been AMAZING! With an incredible line-up and awesome people coming online and interacting with the bands. We also held our first ever UMSU Activities Escape room, which was a HUGE success, with over 250 people signing up either individually or as a team. Our annual comedy competition was also a huge success, with the comedians performing amazingly in the new online format.

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

Southbank | Verity Crane and Hayden Williams

Welfare | Natasha Guglielmino

Women | Aria Sunga and Naomi Smith

What a year to be the Womenʝs Officers! Thank you to our wonderful community who has supported us throughout the year. Whether you attended collectives, wrote for Judyʝs Punch, or helped us with our campaigns – seeing your faces via Zoom always made us smile. A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of launching our annual publication, Judyʝs Punch, edited by Kiara Allis, Amal Wehbe and Jamisyn Gleeson. We encourage everyone to have a look at the beautiful magazine which this year is called Chrysalis, it’s a perfect and cathartic way to end 2020.

Environment | Olivia Sullivan and Sophie Kerrigan

We had a very successful Rad Ed Week last week where we hosted a range of interesting workshops such as composting, bike maintenance, a panel on sustainable art and media, edible weed foraging and a movie screening. It was great to have some simulating conversations with fellow students and learn some new skills! We’re going to be hosting a panel discussion on indigeneity and environmentalism in mid-November so stay tuned! We’re also wrapping up our divestment campaign in the next couple of weeks and presenting our petition to the Vice Chancellor to call on Unimelb to fully divest from fossil fuel and weapons manufacturing companies. Thank you to everyone for their support!

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OB REPORTS

We hope everyone had a lovely ‘mid’-semester break and are already back into the swing of staying up late, crying over an assessment, and wishing your exam timetable looked better. We recently held a Yarn and Weave session for our cohort which was an amazing turnout with great conversation, talent and music. Under Bunjil Volume 7 will be online soon so please keep an eye out on our social for the official launch date đ&#x;˜Š Volume 8 is also being produced and will be released by the end of the year!

NEWS

THE MORRISON GOVERNMENT’S PANDEMIC POLITICS

Finley Tobin

W ith our lives consumed by COVID-19 this year, it has been almost impossible to keep up with every de-

velopment in Australian politics. As we emerge from the second wave of the virus in Victoria, it is important to look back at the federal government’s policies and recognise they have made life harder for students and young people during the pandemic and beyond.

One key piece of legislation pushed through by the federal government during the pandemic is the so-called “Job-Ready” graduates package. The package reduces fees in some courses while hiking them in others in an attempt to boost enrolment in university courses that align with the Morrison government’s national priorities.

However, the fee increases outweigh the decreases, meaning overall student contributions to degrees will rise by $476 million per year. Furthermore, the government will reduce their overall university funding by $293 million per year. This means that even the courses with reduced fees will be backed by less government funding.

In short, the legislation is a lose-lose for students, who will be forced to choose between a more expensive course, or a less expensive course with worse funding.

Yet, the government hopes the package will pave the way for 39,000 more student places by 2023.

“This will mean even worse quality of teaching due to overworked staff, even fewer subject choices, even larger classes and even worse student services,” University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) Education Public Officers Noni Bridger and Charlie Joyce told Farrago.

They believe the legislation may result in more cuts to the University’s casual staff—at least 450 of whom have lost their jobs since the beginning of the pandemic. Over two thirds of staff from the University are already employed on short-term casual contracts or fixed-term contracts, leaving them vulnerable to the economic fallout of COVID-19.

“The bill will only make this worse. It does not contain provisions to save a single job, but still increases university places,” Bridger and Joyce said.

Many jobs could have been saved if the federal government had included universities in its JobKeeper Payment, but the rules of the program were changed three times to ensure that universities would not qualify.

The situation is even more dire for international students, who were not only excluded from JobKeeper, but were told by Scott Morrison at the height of the first wave, “it’s time to make your way home.”

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Kashish Sandhu is an international student studying a Master of Marketing Communication at the University. She believes the Morrison government could have done more to help international students like her.

“We are here and we pay almost three times more than normal students do. We are paying for everything here by ourselves, so we add a lot to the economy as well, and we are being told to go back home?”

“

For me, Melbourne is home.

What do you mean go back home?

“

Sandhu was working three jobs until COVID-19 struck, including swim teaching with the YMCA, and photography for the Melbourne Aquarium. When her workplaces reopened after the first wave of the virus, she found that employees on JobKeeper were prioritised.

“You’re not getting government support, you’re not getting work when it opens up because they only call people who are on JobKeeper, so there’s no respite from either… there’s nothing, so you’re just here, and you can’t do much about it.”

Students and young people will also bear the consequences of the Morrison government’s so-called “gas-fired recovery” from COVID-19, with $52.9 million of funding set aside for the gas industry in the recent federal budget.

Of that funding, $28 million will go towards opening five new gas basins, including the Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory. According to official Northern Territory estimates, that basin alone could emit 117 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. To put that in perspective, the Hazelwood coal-fired station— known as Australia’s ‘dirtiest’ power station before it closed in 2017—emitted 16 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

Yes, you read that right: just one of the planned gas basins could produce 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum more than Australia’s most notoriously dirty coal station. And the Morrison government is planning five of them.

We wish there was a positive note to end this on, but there isn’t. At almost every stage of this pandemic, the Morrison government has failed to secure the futures of young people.

They have crippled our universities with the JobReady package and hung university staff and international students out to dry, all while taking the nation backwards on climate action.

And we will be the ones to carry the consequences of these policies for the rest of our lives.

FARRAGO

“Oh...” by Lilly Skipper

15

NEWS

TUTORS AT ‘TIPPING POINT’, STUDENTS SUFFERING DURING WAGE THEFT-PANDEMIC DOUBLE HIT

TUTORS ARE ASKED TO MARK 1,000 WORDS PER HALF HOUR COULD YOU DO IT? Joanna Guelas and Angus Thomson

First year Arts student Sam Warner did not expect to spend most of 2020 talking to his tutors from his bedroom.

He says the transition to online learning has been difficult but he can also see the strain it has had on his tutors.

He said that one of his subjects has just two tutors for around 250 students and this has affected the feedback he has received.

“Some [assessments] are taking a really long time to mark and they said that’s just because there’s so many students and not enough staff.”

Packed Zoom classes, brief feedback, awkward online assessments — every student has a version of Sam’s story. But even before the COVID-19 pandemic created a crisis for the tertiary sector, casual tutors often had to choose between doing the work they were paid for and providing adequate support to students.

The University of Melbourne has been locked in a wage theft dispute with the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) since early 2019. The Union found that payment practices in the Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, and the School of Computer and Information Systems meant that tutors were being paid a set rate for marking students’ work, rather than for the hours they actually spent marking.

16

Olivia* is a tutor in the Faculty of Arts’ School of Historical and Philosophical Studies. She told Farrago that marking time varies from essay to essay and many take longer than the 4,000 words per hour the Faculty actually pays her for.

“

Some are really clear cut, some are not clear cut at all and will take days, honestly.

“

Daniel* is a teaching staff member in the School of Architecture, Building and Planning. ABP is not one of the faculties being investigated for wage theft, but Daniel says the faculty owes him thousands of dollars in wages.

In one subject Daniel teaches, tutors often mark as many as ten essays in the hour they are paid for. That equates to just six minutes per essay.

“How can you read and engage with a piece of work in six minutes and give appropriate feedback to the student?”

Daniel said that wage theft is “nothing new” in his faculty and students are suffering, not least because subject coordinators design assessments based on how long they take to mark. “Students should always be at the centre of anything that you design in your subject,” he said. “I don’t think it’s good practice to design an assessment task based on how long it will take to mark it.”

Marking is at the centre of the NTEU’s dispute with three University Faculties – Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, and the School of Computer and Information Systems – but it is not the only practice the Union has contested. NTEU representative Geraldine Fela said the expectation that tutors attend lectures, answer emails and consult students in their own time forces them to choose between working the hours they’re paid for and giving students the feedback they deserve.

Fela, a branch committee member for the NTEU, tutored a subject she’d never taught last semester.

She said students would have got more from her as a teacher if the University had paid for her to attend lectures.

“

My tutoring was not as good as a result.

“

Daniel said that the pandemic has also taken a financial toll. The budget for one of his subjects was cut significantly this semester and Daniel found himself doing more work with larger class sizes and less one-on-one time with students.

“I didn’t want the students to suffer,” he said.

Olivia said that she will continue to work overtime because she wants students to have good feedback. But she said uncertain job security also plays a role in casual staff doing more work than they’re paid for.

“

“My tutoring was not as good as a result,” she said.

Olivia said that the University has “absolutely no idea how much time any of these tasks take.”

“I don’t get paid to answer a single student email,” Olivia said. “[But] If you emailed a tutor and they didn’t respond to you because they don’t get paid for it, you’d think that’s a shit tutor.”

“The University expects you to do it, they just don’t expect to pay you for it.”

In a statement provided to Farrago, a University of Melbourne spokesperson said that the University agreed with the Union’s position and settled in late 2019. When we asked them why Arts tutors like Olivia were still being paid piece rates, they said: “Information about matters that the University resolved with the NTEU in late 2019 has been provided to tutors.”

Olivia also said that many tutors are doing even more unpaid work in the shift to online learning. She said there has also been more emotional work as tutors have had to manage students’ mental wellbeing.

“You worry about students who aren’t coming into Zoom classes,” she said. “It’s easier to let students fall through the cracks, which is really stressful.”

“I think that’s why we’re all sort of at a tipping point right now, because we don’t have the capacity that we usually have to deal with being taken advantage of.”

It [The University] relies on us having a vocation to teach, wanting to teach, wanting to be good tutors. It relies on knowing that if we don’t do it, somebody else will,

“

she said.

“It [The University] relies on us having a vocation to teach, wanting to teach, wanting to be good tutors. It relies on knowing that if we don’t do it, somebody else will.”

The NTEU estimates that the University will have to pay out $6 million in unpaid wages to current and former staff. Fela said the University cannot use the financial hit of the pandemic as an excuse to stall or get out of paying up.

“You don’t get to steal money off people and then not pay it back just because times are tough.”

Fela said that, despite the difficult circumstances, tutors do teach very well - a sentiment Sam Warner agrees with.

“It’s just a matter of them [the University] providing support, because I think the tutors and the staff are very eager to help,” he said.

“It’s hard for us too,” said Daniel, whose passion for teaching comes through, even over Zoom.

“I hope that the students understand that we are trying as hard as we can with what we have to ensure they have as good an education as possible.” *names changed at sources’ request.

17

POLS2020 SATIRE NEWS

Politics of Zoom Classes Subject Guide

Teaching Staff Subject Coordinator:

Dr Boryn N. Schléeze

Dr Boryn N. Schléeze is a Senior Lecturer in Politics in the School of Social, Political, Metaphorical and Bureaucratic Sciences. Dr Schléeze is a political scientist whose recent publications are on the relationship between digital technologies and student learning. He was recently promoted for his work affirming that online and in-person study provides an identical experience for students. A passionate advocate for gender equality, Dr Schléeze is also vocal about his denouncement of sexual predators on Twitter and in university emails.

Email:​ ​bs.chancellory@unimelb.edu.au Tutor: Guy White Guy White has recently completed an BA (Hons) in Philosophy and Anthropology. He describes his research as intersectional, drawing most of his inspiration from the works of Kant, Aristotle and Plato.

Featured as a case study in leading sociologist Karen Memesworthy’s 2021 book ​Why Men Have Unflattering Social Media Photos: Hot Guys Are Hotter IRL​, White is excited to teach this course and share on weekly discussion boards his favourite songs, like ‘Woke Blokes’ by Thelma Plum. He wrote several think pieces for Farrago​ during his undergraduate years, notably his opinion article “Historical fiction saved my life: I feel seen, heard, and ​celebrated​ for who I am”.

Email:​ ​white.guy@unimelb.edu.au

Teaching Staff Availability

Teaching staff are available during consultation hours only if requested and only if email is insufficient. Student emails will be responded to in a timely manner (within 48 hours), but please be aware that in some cases teaching staff may not reply to emails at all.

Subject Overview

Politics of Zoom Classes invites students to examine the virtual sphere in which we now live, especially the e-classroom of the University of Melbourne, now commonly known as the Victorian Chapter of Zoom University.

This subject is designed to equip students to adapt to an online university model, the future of higher education.

The university believes that the Zoom model is not only cost effective, but also provides a higher quality of education than in-person classes.

Student evaluation of this subject

In semester 1, the university elected to disregard the Subject Experience Survey (SES) results. The university believed the semester would be an “unprecedented”, one-off occurrence of online learning and extends this view to semester 2. The university firmly maintains that singular experiences cannot be adequately evaluated and student feedback is redundant in most cases.

The following are predicted to be raised as the best features of the subject: ● ‘The wokest lectures I’ve ever had.’ ● ‘My tutor actually attended the lectures.’ ● ‘High quality, page-long feedback on my assessments.’ ● ‘Subject coordinator requested feedback about the course every week.’

1

18

Sohee Kwon

Week

Topic

Readings

1

Introduction and Zoom Classroom Etiquette

David Foster Wallace 2005, ​Consider the Lobster​.

2

Can I Eat in Zoom Classes? And Other Questions People Do Not Ask Before Doing Them

3, 4, 5, 6

Awkward Silences and Conversations that Go On For Too Long

Céline Dion, ‘All By Myself’.

Heytch Wan 2020, ​Annoying But Helpful Teachers Pet Traits: Nodding Furiously.

Arrë U. Allwright 2020, ‘RBF Version 2: Patriarchal Tips for Resting Bored Face’.

Boryn N. Schléeze 2020, ​Common Sense Manners: Why Lying Down Under Your Covers Is Not Appropriate During Zoom Classes.

Michel Foucault 1977, ​Discipline and Punish 2: The Silence is Deafening.

Hannah Gadsby 2020, ​No Punchline, Just Tension​.

Rebecca Solnit 2014, ​Men Explain Things to Me​.

7

Diversity in Online Spheres: Who gets heard?

8

Feminist Theory, Gender and Sexuality

9, 10

Zoom Fatigue and How to Get Over It

11

The Politics of Eye Contact

Emma Watson 2020, ‘Harry Potter and the Transphobic Tweets That Ruined My Childhood’.

P. Ocee, ‘Making Space for the ‘Other’: Reflections from ​that​ One Week on Race’. bell hooks 1981, ​Ain’t I a Woman?

Aileen Moreton-Robinson 2000, ​Talkin’ Up to the White Woman​.

BuzzFeed 2020, ‘How To Flirt With Queer Girls On Zoom Without Wearing Plaid Every Week’.

Boryn N. Schléeze 2020, ​Emailing Us Your Problems Won’t Fix Them: Apply for Special Consideration Instead.

Brené Brown 2020, ​The Solution to Zoom Fatigue? Zoom Therapy​.

Buzzfeed 2020, ‘The sexual tension between me and my webcam is palpable’.

Michelle Lee 2020, ​I Think My Tutor Is Only Looking at the White Kids.

JK Rowling 2019,​ Differentiating Cho Changs Online.

12

Finding Connection in the Digital Age

Aimee N. Payne 2020, ‘Managing Inner Conflict Between Staying Back in Tutorials for Building Rapport with Tutors and Learning that Tutors are Exploited by the University of Melbourne’.

Boryn N. Schléeze 2020, ​Me: My Internet Sucks, Help Me Please ​☹ University: Contact Stop 1​.

Ol Al Own 2020, ‘In 2020, Booty Calls Can Kill You: Will You Ever Find Love Online? Will You Ever Find Love At All?’

2

19

NONFICTION

THE RELIGION OF ONE DIRECTION

IN THE NAME OF HARRY STYLES, OUR LORD… AMEN: Lucy Robin

A

t first, I didn’t like them. You weren’t supposed to.

Boys pantsed you in the playground. They licked the sap from trees thinking it was honey. Boys were pests.

When I read about an up-and-coming boyband in the rainbow-glazed entertainment pages of Total Girl magazine, I decided to bring the matter before the jury the next day at school. The response was negative.

Noted. Not supposed to like One Direction.

It was 2011. We were in grade five. If you needed enough support to wear a crop top, you were hot shit.

We discussed the structural integrity of tampons and tried to smuggle Forever… by Judy Blume into our library pile when our mums weren’t looking. We were fine in ‘girl world’.

One night, my brother and I were left with our babysitter. Alice was—as all ‘big girls’ were to me—so cool. We spent the night watching [V] Hits, a collage of hedonistic femme-pop; a top 40 countdown announcing itself ad infinitum. In ‘Super Bass’, Nicki Minaj was air-grinding with her pink-haired posse. In ‘Born This Way’, Lady Gaga was helming a flash-mob, clad in a studded silk-and-leather underwear set. If it weren’t for Alice sitting next to me, I would have responded to Gaga’s instruction to put your paws up with a bold salute of my own. None of this was new to me.

But now, interrupting the strobe lights and chunky wigs, five boys had invaded the screen. Four brunette, one blond; all skinny and wearing low-slung chinos.

My first reaction was not exhilaration, but rather boredom. Who are these bland boys, and where has Gaga giving literal birth to herself gone?

Alice stirred excitedly beside me as the first lyrics swamped the living room. You’re insecure, don’t know what for.

20

‘One Direction!’ she squealed. ‘Do you like them?’

I hesitated. I wasn’t supposed to like them, but I also wanted very badly to impress Alice.

‘YES! Of course, I do! Love them!’ I turned to the screen, desperately hoping she wouldn’t ask me any more questions that would reveal I knew nothing.

‘I like Harry the best,’ she declared. A boy in a checkered button-up sung to us. Deep caverns were fixed in his cheeks, bolstered by a perpetual smirk.

The group ascended sand-dunes and ran towards the camera, then away from it. Three female companions arrived in a Volkswagen beetle, wearing pastel short-shorts and Ray-Bans. A soccer ball was thrown around haphazardly. The boys ran into the water with their pants hoisted up. When the bridge came, Harry leaned into one of the girls as though he were about to kiss her; but instead serenaded her up-close. I glanced at Alice, trying to gauge her reaction. She was frozen, transfixed. My brother was dozing off next to me.

The final jubilant chorus imploded, then the instruments disappeared and it was just Harry’s voice. YOU DON’T KNOW YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL. OH-OH. THAT’S WHAT MAKES YOU BEAUTIFUL. The next music video started. Alice said something else about how devastatingly beautiful Harry was. Time moved on. But even when my teeth were brushed and the lights were off, I was still thinking about what I had witnessed. It was all so sincere. It seemed like they really wanted me—eleven and scrawny, with a sparse, stringy fringe—to know that I was beautiful. I wanted to be one of those girls on that sepia-toned beach, getting chased around and charmed. I wanted to possess the precise anatomical ratio of being simultaneously pretty and not knowing it.

* I don’t remember how my friends came to love them too. Maybe they all had similar experiences with big girl babysitters. But suddenly, it was a thing. We were all infatuated.

We each assigned ourselves a ‘husband’. I was an emphatic Zayn girl. I loved his gravity-defying quiff, his thick eyebrows, and that he spoke quieter than the rest of the boys. I memorised each of their hometowns and birthdays, the names of their parents and who they were dating. I wrote down all I could find in little flip-top notebooks, a diligent detective in a sweatstained school polo. Zain Javadd Malik (my future last name!). Born January 12th, 1993 (only seven years older than me!)

After school, I ruthlessly hogged the family computer, shoving my younger brother out of the stuffy front room. I watched any YouTube videos of the boys that I could find. They made dick jokes and flirted with female interviewers. They interrupted and roughhoused; zipped and unzipped their hoodies like bored kids at the back of a classroom. They all wore stylist-vetted preppy clothes, but they looked like they balled the sleeves of their jumpers into their fists and wiped their noses on the fabric when no-one was looking. They looked like they wore supermarket body spray.

By the time their album arrived, I was indoctrinated.

I replayed the music video to ‘One Thing’ over and over, taking turns watching each of the boys. When Harry looked deep into the lens and sung you keep makin’ me weak, I felt like my chest was filled with something carbonated, like I’d had too much fizzy drink. All that I could do to release the energy was to let out a big, long, primal squeal of affection. * Those years of condensed hormonal obsession seem foreign to me now. There remains the surface embarrassment of knowing that I kissed the posters on my wall, one-by-one, before bed each night. But more than that, it seems like I was a different person; like I was gripped by something strange—even insidious— for five years of my life.

On one hand, an isolated period of total fanaticism is deeply ingrained in the experience of being a teenager. Perhaps amidst the volatility of growing up, it helps to have something steady to hold onto. Yet, it seems to me that my loving of One Direction was motivated by something else, perhaps something deeper—the desire to be noticed.

Concerts were not just a musical event, but a night charged with the restless possibility of proximity. In those multi-tiered stadiums, we were sharing AIR with them. There was the chance to lock eyes with them from the crowd, to touch them if you were in the front row, even to commando-crawl onto the stage if you were brave enough. If you were fortunate enough to catch one of the half-drunk Mount Franklin bottles they lobbed into the crowd—you had basically shared saliva with them.

When the boys came closer to our seats to sing on the B-Stage, a friend and I repeatedly shrieked their names, filling every silence. NIALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL! Surely, we reasoned, one of them would glance absently in our direction, in which case they would have our cherubic faces stored in their brain—even if only for the night.

At another show, I made a sign reading WAVE AT ME on one side and BLOW ME A KISS on the other. To my dismay, security made me rip the letters off to ensure that I wouldn’t use the sign—it would block the view from behind us. When we got to our seats, I crouched down and painstakingly attempted to glue the paper cut-outs back on with Papaw Ointment.

A scroll through my now-defunct fan Twitter is a glimpse into the mind of another girl. I repetitiously summoned the band members from their corner of cyberspace, pleading ‘plz follow me xo’, and ‘notice me, king’. My attempts were, of course, futile; the tweets drowned out by all the other teens trying to be seen.

Every time they came to Melbourne, my friends and I would embark on a pilgrimage to their hotel, camping outside the lobby until the sun went down. One stagnant summer day in 2015 was spent traipsing through the chlorine-scented hallways of Crown Towers, riding the lifts up and down; hoping to run into Liam on his way to the gym, or Louis returning from the breakfast buffet.

What was our plan? What were we searching for?

Was it the chance for a rushed selfie and garbled recitation of how much I love thee? It seems to me now that we were unknowingly participating in a new kind of twenty-first century groupiedom, with all the obsession, but none of the backstage fondling.

What about the energy I hurled from my enclave of the universe to theirs? Do the eight consecutive hours I spent watching a ‘1D Day’ live stream mean anything now? Perhaps the members of One Direction were more imaginary friends than idols; a salve for the loneliness, to be accessed instantaneously through the sheer power of fantasising.

Between the ages of eleven and fifteen, my gaze was perennially fixed on five intercontinental males, rather than on my own life; dull and remarkable, all at once. My contentment was contingent upon their approval, rather than my own. All that I am left with now is disorientation and a collection of crumpled concert programs in my bottom desk drawer as remnants of a fever dream.

And an attraction to Harry Styles. That still remains.

Illustrated by Teo Jing

21

COOKING

Apple Crumble: The Perfect Companion

Christina Savopoulos

This recipe is quick and easy to make if you need a last-minute dessert! I first learnt how to make this recipe on a cold winter’s day. The fire was going, and I had just experienced the worst week of my life... I’m only joking, I’m not going to venture on some longwinded personal story that’s in no way related to the recipe (looking at you, bloggers). But in all seriousness, this apple crumble is the perfect way to counteract the lockdown blues we’ve all unfortunately come to know so well. I’ve definitely missed my yiayia’s cooking and making this dish helped me feel like I was back in her kitchen. I have always loved helping my yiayia in the kitchen—granted it’s usually to make pizza or tiropita (cheese pie), but just the act of cooking makes me feel closer to her.

Whether your ideal afternoon is being planted on the couch binging your favourite TV show or sitting outside reading a book while basking in the sun, this crumble will be right by your side as a well-earned dessert. I guarantee you will have just as much fun making this dessert as you will eating it, and it’s a great way to harness some ‘lockdown skills’ that you can show off when gatherings are allowed again (hopefully soon!). Now, I’ll give you what we’re all here for: SERVES: 4 TIME TO PREPARE: 15-20 minutes TIME TO BAKE: 20-25 minutes INGREDIENTS • • • • • • • • •

3 apples 1 tbsp white sugar 1 tbsp lemon juice 1/3 cup cold water ½ cup rolled oats ½ cup plain flour 1/3 cup of mixed white and brown sugar 70g butter Cinnamon and extra brown sugar for topping

METHOD 1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Cut apples—remove their core and dice.

2. Place diced apples in a saucepan along with water, lemon juice and white sugar.

3. Put saucepan over medium heat and cook until apples soften. Remove saucepan from heat and set aside.

4. In a bowl, combine rolled oats, flour, and white/brown sugar.

5. Chop butter into small squares and place in bowl. Using the rub-in method, rub the butter into the oat and sugar mixture with your fingertips until all butter is combined. Feel free to add more squares of butter or oats if mixture requires.

6. In a medium sized, round ovenproof dish, pour apples evenly across the bottom.

7. Sprinkle oat-sugar-butter mixture over the top, covering all the apples.

8. To finish, sprinkle some brown sugar and cinnamon to cover the oat mixture.

Place in oven for 20–25 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with ice cream and/or custard!

NOTE: To make the recipe entirely gluten free, substitute plain flour for gluten free plain flour. Instead of rolled oats, use quinoa flakes to achieve the same effect.

Enjoy your apple crumble with a side of your favourite TV show or movie! It’s by far the best way to make the most of your quarantine.

22

Illustrated by Cathy Chen

Content Warning: pregnancy, sexism, contraception

L

NONFICTION

THE WALK OF SHAME

Celia Schild

et’s talk about sex. Specifically, the unprotected kind. In Australia, this doesn’t have to result in an unwanted pregnancy, thanks to pharmaceuticals.

There are currently two types of emergency contraceptives (EC) available to purchase over the counter: levonorgestrel and ulipristal acetate. Both prevent fertilisation of an egg and are most effective when taken soon after the sexual encounter.

There are many positive aspects of EC. Available for purchase at all local chemists, it’s easily accessible regardless of location. It can be purchased without identification, so you do not have to disclose your age. Further, EC has relatively minimal short-term side effects, with any nausea, headaches and fatigue subsiding within a few days. More prolonged side-effects include changes in menstruation, which can result in an earlier, later or heavier period depending on where you are in your cycle. Importantly, EC has no proven long-term side effects, making it an effective, reliable and safe method to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

However, while purchase of such medications is often the result of a mature and considered decision, it is highly stigmatised. The ‘Emergency Contraceptive Pill’ (EC) is interchangeably referred to as ‘The Morning After Pill,’ or ‘Plan B,’ all of which possess varying negative connotations alluding to a mistake or act to be avoided. In this way, the labels act to punish the individual, rather than reward them for a considered purchase regarding their body. Unfortunately, this is only the start of the stigma attached to EC. Across the many independent stories I have heard regarding the purchase of EC, shared feelings of anxiety, shame and guilt abound. These are echoed regardless of whether the sex occurred with a partner or stranger, whether they went to the chemist accompanied or alone. Writing for POPSUGAR, one woman reported she was “looked at differently” by the pharmacist upon requesting EC and subsequently treated like a “reckless child”. The extent of anxiety is so great that studies report up to 75% of individuals have avoided the purchase of EC altogether. The suggestion that fear and anxiety is preventing individuals from seeking necessary medical help is alarming for both the mental and physical health of those concerned.

After requesting to purchase EC, you must fill out a questionnaire. A comprehensive study in 2011 suggested this “irrelevant” and “intrusive” questionnaire was an “outdated” practice, and it would be far more beneficial for the pharmacist to have an “empathetic conversation” with the individual. Nine years later, the questionnaire is still a mandatory aspect of purchasing EC, despite evidence suggesting it is not only a hinderance but harmful, too.

Firstly, you must specify the number of hours since unprotected sex. As the effectiveness of EC diminishes over time, it is necessary to ensure the medication works successfully. However, unlike most options, the question requires a specific number to be written, forcing the individual to recount and detail the amount of time since the act. It thus draws attention to the sexual act as the issue of focus, and the person seeking EC is implicitly punished for their part. Further, the questionnaire asks why EC is required: was it a broken condom or a missed contraceptive pill? This fails to provide further evidence of need, which has already been recognised, but instead assigns blame, as one is asked to establish the degree of fault that is attributed to them. This amplifies feelings of guilt and shame regarding the sexual encounter, with any pleasure from the sexual act itself replaced by negativity.

Consequently, negative effects of EC are largely societal, rather than medical. The promotion of EC is minimal, with most people hearing about it via word of mouth. As such, there may be those needing to access it who lack the relevant information. This lack of promotion is likely due to stigma. Despite increasingly progressive attitudes towards premarital sex in society, women in particular who engage in sexual activities still afford greater judgement than men.

The phrase ‘walk of shame’ applies almost exclusively to women, suggesting having one-night stands are something women should be ashamed of engaging in.

In contrast, men are often congratulated for ‘getting laid’ on a night out, which presents positive connotations that strengthen both ego and confidence. Similarly, the plethora of insults applied to women who are sexually active, such as ‘slut’ and ‘whore’, serve to punish women for their sexual behaviour, without an equivalent vocabulary for males.

It is hypocritical for the media to promote an age of sexual liberation and sexual pleasure when such acts are informally sanctioned with stigma. It seems sexual freedom is still determined by the ideologies that promote female purity and innocence. It’s on us, as a society, to help changethese messages, so future generations can grow up without viewing their sexual experiences as synonymous with shame.

Illustrated by Vivian Li

23

NONFICTION

7 ELEVEN -

WINE IN A HIROSHIMA STUDIO

Georgia Bunker

24

Illustrated by Elmira Cheung

I

’m told that love is big, unconditional romantic gestures. It’s holding a stereo blasting “our” song outside your bedroom window. It’s flash mobs in Grand Central Station. It’s getting off a flight to Paris just before take-off. It’s singing “I Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” in the bleachers in front of the whole school.

Love is big, love is loud, love is crazy, stupid, public, all-consuming and sacrificial. Most importantly it’s validating. Everyone knows you are the chosen one.

Numero uno. Do anything for you and don’t care who knows.

Little me got fed these falsities, these Hollywood exaggerations, and I’ve spent a long time since being confused about why everyone doesn’t seem to want to shout just how much I mean to them from the rooftops. If they don’t, stamp it on their forehead, pinkie promise, swear-to-die— is it even real?

I am neither old nor wise, but the little perspective I have started to accumulate has reinforced that this type of love is nothing more than a fantasy based around unrealistic validation and movie sales. It’s not all bad, nor all false but, it’s just not where my true experiences of love lie. So, let me tell you some stories, some beautifully imperfect, quiet love stories.

I’m shown that love is an empty road, a full moon and a tragic tale. It isn’t my tragedy; it’s yours. You lived and breathed it, and it still scares you. But walking down this road you feel safe enough to whisper it to me, to share a fraction of your pain. You tell me about the hardest day of your life, the heaviest thing you’ve borne. It’s a still night at the junction between spring and summer—not quite the tourist season; the weather isn’t nice enough to draw the crowds yet—so it’s quiet, peaceful, and ours. You do not cry as you tell me, but your voice shakes, revealing something I’ve not seen in you yet: vulnerability. I squeeze your hand, a subtle current of electricity passing from my palm to yours. It whispers “you can trust me”, that I don’t think less of you. We walk the rest of the way in silence, listening to waves crash in the distance.

I’m shown that love is a fluorescently lit hotel room in a faraway country. I cry, shattered and far from home. I thought I could outrun my heartache, replace my lost soul with lost feet, but I can’t. I am tired and I need to go home. You call the airline, your voice quiet and firm. In this moment, you are the logic and reason to my chaos. You organise our flights home reassure me that we are making the right choice. You don’t ask me about my heavy heart; you know from the silence that I’m not ready. The truth I know without you saying; you love me, I love you and you will do this for me without expecting the grandeur of thank you flowers or online declarations. You won’t speak of this to those who don’t need to know, and that calms me. Our vow of silence is safe, secure and raw. Later, you turn out the fluorescent lights and tell me you love me. It feels like my first breath out of the cold water I thought I’d drown in.

I’m shown that love is groceries in a tiny kitchen, cheap champagne in wine glasses we don’t have. You cook and tell me about your day. The sweet smells of garlic, chilli and beef that fill the kitchen are the distraction I’ve craved. We speak of 90s TV shows, their flaws, and how we love them anyway. They give us quiet comfort, escapism and laughter. I feel much the same about you right now. The warmth of food and friends slips down my throat and into my stomach, filling my body like a flame relit, a light at the end of a tunnel. You never said I love you but your throw together-meal gives me hope. We sit in bed and chat, not about love, but about nothing at all. I feel warm.

I’m shown that love is a basement in a home that isn’t mine, on the other side of the world. I have siblings and a mother that don’t share my blood but show me kindness nonetheless. An old TV plays Stranger Things. Besides the witty dialogue, the room is still. It is the kind of quiet you only get in summer, when everyone is just a little bit more relaxed, and the air is as heavy and comforting as a blanket in the dark. I let the comfort of a good show in the company of kind people envelope me.

I’m shown that love is cheap 7-Eleven wine in a Hiroshima studio apartment. I sit across from you; the only other person in the room, the only other person I know, in this country and so far in this life. We play cards and top up each other’s wine, getting tipsy, warm and woolly. The world is quiet here in this studio apartment. It feels shrunken to this interaction.

I forget my frustrations with who you are becoming, at how different and strange we are growing. But tonight, your love feels familiar, like the calm before the storm.

You pour me more wine and look at me, smiling softly.

The words are there; you’ve said them before, you’ve said them for five years, you don’t have to say them again. Soon they will fade, but tonight I can feel them in the air, and taste them in this cheap 7-Eleven wine.

Later we make love, in the quiet, in the dark and still comfort of our borrowed Hiroshima studio apartment.

What I’m told and shown of love are opposites.

I’ve been conditioned to crave the vehement, show-offy kind. When I get that I will be whole, methinks. But really, all I need is the gentle, unassuming, kindness of quiet.

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NEWS

Letter to the Editors T

he Students’ Council of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) is broken. It no longer serves students and instead addresses the personal grievances of a small group of people who zealously attempt to enact their personal ideologies. I have been the 2020 Education (Academic Affairs) Officer of UMSU in 2020, and have been involved with the internal function of UMSU and have worked on critical UMSU policy and advocacy. About every two weeks during this year, I have been required to attend often shambolic meetings of UMSU’s Students Council. Most meetings are of the length of about 2 hours and sometimes go for much longer, but not for the right reasons.

It has been a difficult year for student unions around the country, with corruption allegations at La Trobe Student Union and the imminent closure of the entire Theatre program at Monash University. International students are more often exposed to racial attacks in public, and face steep fees for a decreased quality of education. Many students face a depressed job outlook, unhelped by the cuts to staff that are delivering reduced academic resources to students, and lower UMSU funding that restricts the ability of UMSU to deliver important assistance and advocacy.

Yet, recently, Students’ Council has chosen to focus on irrelevant and inconsequential questions, such as the internal problems of unrelated trade unions; whether entire countries are racist; whether political parties are homophobic. And it has spent many, many hours pursuing the Media Department over whether their printing company is unionised, a mortal sin that other departments of UMSU have apparently committed with the same printing company in the past.

Councillors are always met with ridicule and vicious attacks for daring to disagree with controversial motions. Other times councillors are called racist for following legal advice on the operation of the UMSU Election, despite there being genuine instances of the undermining of Indigenous rights.

This is ridiculous, and those involved need to pull their heads in. The purpose of UMSU is to advocate for student interests, not personal or political ideology. I urge councillors to disallow motions irrelevant to students and for those in the bubble to use civil mediation over vitriol and insults.

Joshua Munro 2020 UMSU Education Academic Officer

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‘Space Junk’ by Ailish Hallinan

27

NONFICTION

Portrait of a migrant childhood with an Uncle-roommate

Izma Haider

1 Non-passengers cannot go into airports in Bangladesh.

My granny’s lined face—a mask of sagacity—was a novelty, simmering with anxiety and inexperience in the flat white light. Lips pursed like the aviation industry was one big blunder. She disapproved. People die in the place they were born. Most of all, we want consistency in a person.

My mother and I crossed the ocean. A yawning distance, the likes of which my Mamas or Mamis1 had never seen or felt in their entire lives, much less any of my grandparents: we gulped it in one Atlas bound.

2 Granny was an FWV. When I ask her what that stands for, she takes a minute to conjure ‘family welfare visitor’. Buried under bureaucratic acronym-ity, the ambiguity is intentional. With one FWV per city district, Granny visited each clinic in her jurisdiction in rotation, parcelling out her days with vilified IUDs, subdermal implants and girl-children. The scarcity of the service is a warning. She practiced midwifery intermittently, but family welfare suited her. You need control, you need discipline, and above all, you need to be a good girl.

When she was 26 on a steamer, she saw a man, jolty and panicked, seeking a doctor for his feverish son. He was stylish, Granny says, rakishly metropolitan in a suit and Ray-Bans. I have met a cartoon of great uncle Afzal, pinstripes drowning his body and the same Ray-Bans, propped up rather than worn. They would have had the same effect draped over reedy cotton branches. But I can see him on that steamer, young, rising through the ranks of a private agriculture corporation as a limitless world flowered for him in the post-war boom2. Over a cool compress on his son’s forehead, did my grandmother waver on his strong hands? This woman, temperance itself, tendering to a married man. Naturally, Granny asserts, she never entertained any thoughts beyond decency. Like restraint could be a miracle and a realisation in itself.

She was introduced to Afzal’s younger brother, my Grandpa. Granny was teetering on the edge of chirokumari3.

Grandpa put saucers of milk out for stray cats. He was decent, save a penchant for motorcycles, which Granny objected to and he promptly gave up. Haltingly, they married. They had my Mama, my mother, then a plum tree in the yard and she never looked back.

1

Uncles and aunties

2 Bangladesh Liberation War 3 Spinster

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Although Grandpa had an enviable position in the same agribusiness company, he devoted himself to many side ventures. Investing in the schemes of others, road making, construction; he was shortly in the business of brick distribution. On a tip that the government was moving a bill to pave all the dust roads sempiternally criss-crossing the country, he bought a cement mixer. The bill, if ever there was one, did not pass. In rickshaws barrelling through the streets of Barisal, he joked he almost built it all with his bare hands.

His last and biggest project was tiger prawns. His friend came to him, wide-eyed with wonder at the money to be made in tiger prawns; Hussein, criminal amounts! There was no more to be said.

Grandpa swiftly ordered a shipment and bought a plot by the beach for breeding. He and my Mama stayed in a blue apartment nearby, their untrained eyes habituating to the floundering crustaceans over three months of scrutiny, backs craned like waterbirds.

They came home every other weekend, three hours each way on the train, his head bumping against the window with his son sprawled beside him.

3 Mum and I were flagged for random checking at Brisbane Airport, the baby-vomit-yellow tag a shout around our suitcase. You have been seen. We were opened up and inspected. Granny’s rolling-pin was thrown away.

Dark shiny eyes wrapped in a scarf, my mother was 25 years old, desperate in that airport car park empty like in dreams—what happened in July 2007 to clear that carpark for my mother to teeter on those ruthless lines like an authoress in the woods, like a woman on a rope? I have often wondered. Mum steps into the middle of the road.

And then cloud-break. A soothsayer cometh in the shape of a sedan. We are asked You alright, love for the first time and a phone is received through the window with breathless thanks. The sedan stays until my father arrives to bundle us back to the Gold Coast, electric on the highway. It stays with us when we reach home and eat—a warm cavernous saucepan of orange prawn curry in coconut milk like so many egg yolks—and remains with us still.

4 I knew some monosyllabic English from nursery1 in Bangladesh: pots, cats, mats and the like. That first Australian year, I learnt fast. I devour Disney films in English this time, cracking open the halting alien phonemes with yellow-black 3D-bevelled subtitles; the stories I already know, spoonfuls of sugar. I graduate.

ABC2. And again. ABC3. My library books fatten from Aussie Bites into Hans Christian Andersen and purr.

One day, we are swimming in the complex pool.

A girl my age babbles, pretty in frilly Dora bathers. I summon all my powers of concentration and respond, burning with Napoleonic confidence. The conversation up to this point is not impressed on me, but the dissolution of it immutably is.

Pardon? asks Dora-girl.

I flick through my mental index cards. I don’t know pardon. I swim away, speechless. I am not me; the language is not mine. For all my earnestness, I fall short.

These instances cut sharp images in my mind.

Grade 2, Mrs Currey’s story circle: I pronounce nowhere now-here. Until grade 4, I am unclear on the difference between invaluable inestimable priceless worthless. If I learnt English at first to fit in, I now do it in double time to stand out. I have a profound relationship with my reading level colour. My name is Izma, my eyes are brown, and I am seafoam blue.

5 Seven-hundred dollars rich, the first thing my father bought in Australia was a computer. The second, a good leather jacket. Dad always thought himself something of a rebel. He watched his friends hang their university degrees on their wall and little else. He did this without pity. Then, he crossed the ocean and made something out of nothing.

He also went to university, which is where he met Mum. My parents are romantics. They had a love marriage—which was broadly judged to be a budhi koi gese2 idea—but this is the most circumstantial evidence. They are English literature majors. By necessity, they are romantics. Dad is weaned on Americana, Twain and Steinbeck. Mum is partial to Briton mystery and poetry, Doyle, Christie, Keats. And Rumi.

They love Victor Hugo. They love Roots. They watched their friends’ parents marry them off to a sweet little homemaker they found in the village grahm, rural families in a red vein of clay homes marking where the flooded rice fields ended and the dust road began.

Radically, they decided there was a choice.

Bone-deep they knew their friends were wrong.

6 State school costs like a private one for non-Australian citizens: $12,000 a year. Dad drove taxis like everyone else and Mum got a job at the Surfers Paradise Coles.

She came back home roaring with laughter every night with stories of all the characters she’d met.

We moved into a duplex complex like kings. I told my classmates my house has two stories too, not knowing that was not what they meant.

We had a roommate, Dad’s friend that I called Uncle. He drove taxis through the night and his room smelled like grass. His day started when I came back from school. I made after-school snacks; he, breakfast.

Sugar and butter on white bread (untoasted); chip butties go down easy with a glass of mango juice; triangle cheese stirred into chickeny microwave noodles, oh my.

Once we were indulging in powdered milk from the bag by the spoon, as we often did, when I choked.

Uncle gave me water, which packed the powder into clumps. I sputtered and mantled and went red, then purple. My mother and father, bones aching, come home to Uncle, too high to function, stringing me up by the ankles and shaking me down like a bottle of Heinz. And from my mouth, as a small white dove in a dust bath, a pearly pile of spit and waterlogged milk powder.

Some of our friends came over that night. They fussed over me until I cried for shame and tickled me until my stomach hurt more than my throat. There is a photo of my parents and Uncle watching the Channel 9 Friday night movie. Blurred figures in the background with glasses in their hands. Like any other photo of a party of twenty-somethings but for me lolling on the faux-Persian rug in front of them. Overbright eyes and taut cheeks, they were painfully young.

1 Kindergarten 2 Where did your brain go?

Illustrated by Torsten Strokirch

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NONFICTION

A Third Culture Kid’s Experience: The Art Upon Gallery Walls Klesa Wilson

T

he art upon gallery walls speak of deep histories, people immortalised in paint, lingering in their own mythologies. My feet always take me to the eighteenthcentury European section, desiring to stand before illustrious portraiture of affluent women in creamy gowns, or poised families before pastoral landscapes, their homestead grandiose in the distance—beautiful, amorous, unified. Within my education it’s intrinsic to study this body of work, to ponder over ancient and classical pieces that have somehow met me in time. To discover their origins, creators, subjects, to think it belonged to someone, was made to be hung over their fireplace. The art upon gallery walls capture someone’s present to be viewed by their children, grandchildren, and now me.

It captures legacy and lineage, something I cannot fathom. Partly for its outdated, elitist conception, but also through my own emancipation from familial connection.

Would I ever have the opportunity to have such relationships with my relatives, take a photo with them, let alone have us posed together and captured in painting?

My Indonesian side of the family knows of me, but not the real me. My mother’s immediate family migrated to Australia when she was young, her first language now fragmentary. She never taught me what she knew while she knew it—something I do not blame her for; she was navigating a different country she had not grown up in, something I too would experience. But when her sister’s family visited after moving back to Jakarta, they called me orang bule, a “white foreigner”, unable to speak Bahasa, unable to be fully Indonesian. My father’s whiteness is a blight on my persona. I could have asked them to teach me, but I stayed silent with resentment. I did not wish to know the people that did not seek to equally understand my circumstances. There will be no photos, nor art upon gallery walls, capturing my Indonesian heritage.

My Australian side of the family knows me—somewhat.

Ever since moving back here, I’ve had more opportunities to interact, drink wine with, talk to as if I’d known them forever. But living in Bangkok for a decade had caused separation from my birthplace I had not felt until we finally spent time together. They were Australians, had lived here since they were children—I could never understand such a belonging, a rootedness, stories and memories.

The privilege of having loved ones entrenched within one encompassing place. They did want to know me, but they could never understand how belonging is not tied to the South Australian coast.

I managed to take a photograph with my Australian aunt and grandmother a year ago. Three generations!, my aunt exclaimed, boisterous from our reunion.

To view the image was a crack in the dark room of my identity, though it was not happiness that trickled through.

All I saw in the photo was the darkness of my skin compared to theirs, their blue eyes next to my brown, me on the far-end as an outlying figure in a circle I had only become familiar with. But it was not sadness that emerged, either. I’d finally received the tangibility of family—and it was bittersweet. There is a photo, at least, capturing my Australian connection.

Still, there is a cavity in my life where this lack of familial art remains. Gallery walls need more than semi-blurry images captured by my uncle’s tipsy hands. The simplest way to express my dual-heritage would be to have my parents posed with me, one half belonging to my strongest Indonesian kin, the other who would tell me stories of growing up in Adelaide when my life revolved around Thailand. Yet to imagine even having my parents together in the same room, now both living in different countries and separated by clashing opinions, would be the greatest feat to accomplish.

There will be litte photos, and no art upon gallery walls, capturing my dual-heritage. What would one portray if I commissioned a painter to immortalise my lineage? There is no family home to stand before as my parents and I have lived in dozens. There are no creamy dresses—they would be too bulky to move across oceans. Where would I hang it? I could not carry it across the globe to display it next to the windows framing every new cityscape. Such a thought made me realise how saturated my identity is with discontent.

But perhaps it is my own image of family that has caused this, distorted by these galleries of forged identity. Perhaps painting and having portraiture is a bygone ritual. I often overlook what the fleeting urgency of digital photography has captured in my other relationships ones not defined by blood, my found friendships: drunken nights superimposed by light flares from club beams, harsh midday tones reflecting against the crockery of shared meals, warm sunsets and golden glows from beach swims. Perhaps the term ‘family’ has become dictatorial in my mind as something defined by blood, the concept of lineage comforting some part of myself itching to belong.

Then I think of the friends who have held my crying body in their laps. I think of my father who walked me to school every day until I was eighteen. My mother who worked to the bone to provide. The lovers who eased the tumultuous thunderstorms of my heart. These moments are not grand, illustrious, or beautiful—they would not make good photographs, nor good paintings. They would be messy, harsh in colour, not smoothed and unblemished—and they would be real. Such a realisation made me question: how much do I truly need a physical gallery or tangible items to represent my family?

The four walls I crave to display my past exist within my memory, they exist in the pockets of the world where I have walked and dreamed. My dual heritage exists within the fabric of my skin and the shape of my face, and it exists in my terrible Asian-fusion cooking. But it is most poignant, this art, in the embraces of people I love and who love me.

It is true that art galleries sing of family. But it is the blending, merging, fusing of paint that whispers of mine.

Illustrated by Michelle Pham

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NONFICTION

The Curtain Calls For You To Think Self-Acceptance

Tzur Ko-Geen Rochvarger

I

f you have Netflix, which I assume the majority of you do because what else is there to do during a lockdown and pandemic, you’ve probably seen an ad or the trailer for the new Joe Mantello & Ryan Murphy film “The Boys in the Band”. This modernised adaptation tells the story of a group of homosexual men in the 1960s and how a birthday party in a small New York apartment can become the epicentre of self truths and confessions of old loves. It becomes the intersection of the diverse narratives and personalities of homosexual men everywhere.

Knowing that there are original stage and film versions, I couldn’t help myself but google and look at people’s opinions - and then of course make my own.

When the original off-Broadway play hit the streets in 1968 it was both controversial and revolutionary. A year later, it was followed by the infamous Stonewall riots - an undeniable landmark in queer history. In 1970, a film version was released and while it was critically acclaimed, it also resulted in harsh critiques. In 2018, the play was revived to much praise and positive reception with the actors in its premiere being signed for the 2020 adaptation we now watch comfortably at home during this very pandemic.

So why so many versions of such a narrative? Surely it gets old to see the same group of homosexual men wallow in their misery.

When the play first hit the stage and the film first hit major screens it was a present narrative - a reflection of current realities of the time. The relatability ignited a spark in viewers, for queer folk alike it meant seeing their story told in motion picture. For those with what I’ll call stone-cold opinions it was a reality check.

Nonetheless, it touched hearts and minds alike for many different reasons and it set gears in motions to what we, today, can say is pretty-good (comparatively of course).

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Yet in 2020, watching it on a Netflix party virtual date, the narrative still hit home. To date a guy that is closeted to the world and is “straight” is an experience that isn’t a myth; it’s still living fact. To be from a religious background and have that self-hatred embedded in the fibre of your existence is still very much a fact.

2021 might not need a Stonewall 2.0 and I am happy to say I see more and more queer narratives hitting the screen. So why is it that this film still came off as so profound? I think it’s because it provides the depiction of universally lived experiences. Instead of giving us a modern romanticized retelling, it gives a stone cold truth. While Stonewall was a catalyst for many great things in the queer community, queer experiences worldwide don’t revolve around it the same way that American ones do. To retell this story means to serve a cold, hard dish to swallow - there is a lot to figure out in the grit of self-acceptance. Pushing aside all the self-wallow and pity, and shallowness, that Zachary Quinto and Jim Parsons serve so well, the stories they tell and the tears they cried in front of the camera are the stories and tears of the people watching them.

It is this relatability that will keep the narrative of both play and film alike timeless. Self-acceptance is a journey, and not the one you have through a tulip-bloomed field on your European backpacker self discovery trip. Instead, it is a walk in the dark with one eye open - but you have to believe the gamble is worth it. Sometimes the step gives away underneath your feet and you will crash to the floor crying, swatting away every person trying to hold you, but that’s okay.

Having that band of people around you hold you is a chapter in that story.

Illustrated by Rose Gertsakis

NONFICTION

The OTHER Theory of Evolution: The Greatest Failed Experiment

D

Tessa Marshall

uring iso, I’ve bounced aimlessly through Wikipedia long enough to land on an article titled the ‘List of Discredited Substances.’ It includes the Philosopher’s Stone, a universal solvent, and even a unicorn’s horn. With each entry, is an explanation of how the substance was discredited, usually through various experiments (We apparently know unicorn horns don’t exist because of ‘failure to find any since medieval times’ . . . interpret that how you will).

Those who thought of these obsolete substances are today mostly seen as misguided fools.

But one won a Nobel Prize. In fact, Albert Michelson is known for the ‘greatest failed experiment in physics’.

The Michelson-Morley experiment sought to detect the ‘luminiferous ether’. Physicists observed that light behaved like a wave. Scientists knew that other waves, like sound, travelled through a medium. For the sun’s light to travel through space to Earth, they presumed it must travel through something, naming this the ‘luminiferous ether’.

Physicists figured that as Earth moves through space, it must also move through the ether, generating an ‘ether wind’. Imagine that Earth is a rock in a riverbed and the water flowing over the rock is the ether. In this analogy, the ether wind is the river current. Now, think of light as someone swimming in the river. How fast they swim will be affected by whether they swim with or against the current. In the same way, Michelson and Morley predicted that light would travel at different speeds depending on whether it was travelling with or against the ether wind. They sent light beams in different directions and measured whether the light travelled at different speeds.

Genius. Except that no matter how often they repeated the experiment, what direction they tried or how precise their measurements were, the light’s speed was constant. Ether had no impact. Did that mean ether didn’t exist?

With no ether to explain light’s movement, physicists were forced to think differently. They discovered that light acts both as a wave and particle. Michelson and Morley’s non-discovery also enabled Albert Einstein to develop the theory of special relativity. (This ultimately led to the invention of GPS, which rescues my spatially challenged brain whenever I leave the house).

Many of us know how it feels to devote time, tears, and excess caffeine to a cause, only for it to fail spectacularly. I hope the Michelson-Morley experiment reminds you that not only is failure okay, but it is also essential for progress (especially in science). Maybe, like Michelson, a failure will become the biggest success of your career.

Illustrated by Rose Gertsakis

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FARRAGO NONFICTION

CW/ Mental illness, self-harm, suicidal ideation, cannibalism, biological descriptions

IMPLOSION Pavani Athukorala

D

ip my brain in iced water, dearest—it is too hot.

I think it will hiss as it plunges, like a saucepan left on the stove for far too long, wisps of steam rising from the edges of the pail. Soap it well, leaving my brain in the lemony suds for weeks afterwards (for there is much poison to be drawn out) before drying it between the snow-white folds of your towel.

Is it done, dear heart? Has the ugliness gone, leaving me pudding-soft and cool to the touch?

No. No, of course not, how very stupid of me. As though it were that easy, as though my sickness were slight enough for s​ oap and water to wash out.

Never mind. We will keep trying.

Do you remember us studying Greek tragedy at school? You never understood why I loved it so obsessively, why I learned whole verses by heart and recited them for comfort sometimes, like Bobby Kennedy after they blew Jack’s head off. Frankly, I would like nothing more than to be the plaything of some vengeful god, tangled in cosmic forces too insidious to overcome.

I blame myself for ​everything​, you see, run over my nineteen years in my mind with a fine-toothed comb, finding ugliness because I am expecting to. What a relief then, if I suffer not because I am weak, but because I am fated to.

I know, I know that it’s silly of me to tell you all this—as if you could make me better—but I just can’t help myself. I cling to you so hard it leaves your forearms red-gouged, hoping against hope that this might be it; it might be you; you might do what none of them could and heal me. God, I’m sorry. What an unfair, unasked-for burden to place upon your head, sweet boy.

The cure is in the house, I must keep reminding myself. Not brought by other hands from distant places, but by its own, in agony and blood. I wonder if Aeschylus was right about that one, you know. Lord knows I’ve tried, but it’s just so hard.

So go into our garden for me. You know that my mind is always quiet in gardens, as it is in temples and by oceans—something about the rich damp of the soil, that exquisite expanse of sky above. Carve off slabs of aloe; snip mint and mustard-flower; pick lavender and lemon-balm. Once your basket brims with feathery greens, grind it all into a thick paste in your mortar and pestle. Wrap my brain in a poultice, letting the herbs dye grey matter green, drawing out evil like pus from a wound.

Did that work? Oh. Well, we have no other choice, then. I’m afraid you must hurt me now.

Unspool each cortical fold—careful, now—and lay my unwound brain lengthwise upon your kitchen table.

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Run your hands against the rubbery surface, tugging this way and that, checking for deformities and mutations. For I am convinced there is something very wrong inside my twists and turns—there m ​ ust b ​ e.

Some hard little thing; a tumorous pebble leaking ugliness like an oil spill, muddying the clear blue waters of my mind. I imagine it will look a bit like chicken liver, the heart of my darkness, that it will pulse red-hot and alive against your skin. Kill it for me, will you? Stake it through like a vampire’s heart, bury it in some darkened corner of your garden, and return my quietened brain back into me. Perhaps that will break the curse; perhaps I will then be well.

Or perhaps I will never be well, which is what terrifies more than anything else. Oh, how I wish you knew what it felt like—what my mind tasted like. It can get terrible lonesome in there, and no words I have can explain how or why the irrational can feel so rational, why bleakness springs and swells on sun-yellow mornings, how the fear sometimes grows so sharp, so keen, I want to tear my flesh into ribbons and claw myself out from inside my body.

Fascinating, isn’t it, that humans cannot feel each other’s pain? You who I know best, you who have partaken in my body and my blood, even you will never feel my pain as you do your own. Now, this is of course as true for physical pain, but that comes with tangible reminders. I can press your fingers against my burning forehead, smear you in my blood and pus, show you black bruises against brown skin. This feels different.

I ask you to believe me when I say this is as bad, if not worse—and you do believe me sweet boy, which is more than most have done—but in the doubtful pre-dawn dark, I sometimes wonder whether that is enough.

So do this for me, if you will. Taste me.

First, julienne thin strips from my frontal lobe, frying them until their edges crisp and centres turn a tender pink (no spice—I am best paired simply with salt, I think). Then roll me around on your tongue—slowly, letting the flavours blossom.

Do you taste it? A decade of self-hate, pooling like rancid oil? The sour-milk tang of worry, of chewed lips, scratched arms and nails bitten to the quick? One particularly bitter, gristly bit from that time I lost something I had wanted so much, and decided—quite calmly, without any ceremony—that I should die? I wasn’t lying, you see. It really did hurt.

I want you to stand witness to my pain, to taste its every nuance and inflection, and to know how terribly, unspeakably cruel I have been to myself.

This at least you can do.

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CREATIVE

Dissection of a Piglet’s Heart

Amy Wortmann

1. right atrium how strange it is. how fragile, wobbling watery yolk in my palm ribs bending between my fingers like pipe cleaners scattering blood onto a sanitized tray

2. right ventricle how strange to imagine its first stirrings, moth wings wedged between slumped lungs, foetal halfthoughts that never grasped the taste of oxygen

3. left atrium what was it? a cleft between atria, dented ventricles, a concave pericardium squashed like a soccer ball on wet grass? what smothered you when you came into the open air?

4. left ventricle did you kick? did you squeal? or were you lifeless like this melting marble of a heart?

Illustrated by Bethany Cherry

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CREATIVE

The Sea Monster

Jamisyn Gleeson

A sea monster lurks beneath dirty waves.

It rises when I stare at the water for too long.

Its body sends a veil of salty spray to the ocean floor and its mouth forms a great black pit when it screams.

I imagine myself swimming, floating sinking inside of it, unnoticed.

I try to transform my mind into a compass that will lead me elsewhere but gravity pulls me back to the monster and its tribe of tangled tentacles.

I’m unable to unhook its watery fingers from my own so I step into the seafoam and lie next to the monster’s pruned, pallid body.

It doesn’t attack me – it doesn’t even flinch.

The monster just sits with me and observes the way that starlight distorts the reflections of obsidian clouds, which cling to the wet ivory moon.

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CREATIVE

Exile Mariam Nadeem

‫ينلمحت ضرألا قوف ضرأ ال‬ No land on this earth carries me ‫يمالك ينلمحيف‬ So my speech carries me Mahmoud Darwish I do not speak of olive trees and the smell of gunpowder.

My exile is one of peace, the crash of the Arabian sea. The crescendo of the adhan, the steam of a stone oven. A mother’s soothing hum, a father’s provision.

My exile is one of exclusion, the unfamiliar turn of a dialect.

An airport returned to, a line for foreigners.

My exile is one of choice, a clipping of a job advertisement, the promise of a home.

My exile is a poem, a land of its own.

Illustrated by Steph Markerink

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CREATIVE

TABLE

Gabriel Dartnell

don’t you hear me Mámá? the boy said. the small, brown woman sits at the table, meets his gaze eyes open, h(ear)ing closed. instead, she unties her tongue from the roof where it is kept, letting her mouth open onto his expectant ear , loosening the words watch them spill out into still air. phrases snake their way across the table. a table that she sanded, stripped back. back arched, her lithe arms lash the wood a new self—smoothing the setting. the nightly dance on the boy’s tongue. tongue the sharp scent of lemon, it’s wafting the words along their way. the crunch of inflections on the boy’s hands as he bites down on salty scales, juice dripping down, a way. (on fridays the boy and his mother don’t eat fish. they have pes. (definition: pes = diminutive for pescado = Spanish (fish)). scales f a l l whistle, whistle in the air now mijo vas a engordar mijo no tomes mucho mijo come más tortilla, tienes que terminar tu maiz. why aren’t you hungry? her hand slaps the table. the dishes clatter and he looks up, up into the voice crackling, broken breaths passing from mouth to ear. notice what I’ve done— para tú, and this is all I ask. all I ask.

Ask, all I, all— waves smashing crashing over the boy’s head. feel it now. i’ll make you.

Mijo mijo mijo mijo mijo mi hijo rolling up and out and onto and into the skull. blink and you’ll miss the holes carved out te quiero te quiero te quiero te quiero cuts scratch, scratch on the bone it’s in the thoughts, you know. mámá always says the fish rots from the head. i see it now.

Mámá, mámá, your table, it’s new.

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Illustrated by Teo Jing

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CREATIVE

LONELY HEARTS

ANIMAL Female Hyena “Seven inches of love.”

Remember that joke about how men would take pregnancy more seriously if they had to give birth through their dick? Yeah, not much of a joke for me.

See, us female hyenas are alpha as fuck, with enough hormones to make a bodybuilder weep. It means we’re stronger, more aggressive and our lady junk is huge. Our clitoris becomes so large it turns into a “pseudo dick”. Yes, you will have to fuck me in the clit-dick. Because you guessed it, the clit-dick is also our birth canal! If you think that sounds nut-punching painful, you’re right!

Our clit-dick-baby-slide is about one inch wide and the pups are almost a kilo. Yes, sometimes it tears.

Yes, sometimes we die. Is it worth it? Eh. I’m looking for a mate that’s not intimidated by a strong, independent, clit-dick wielding woman.

See you around,

48 46

OF THE

KINGDOM Tessa Bagshaw

Male Bowerbird

Banana Slug (Hermaphrodite)

“I’m not designing a nest; I’m designing a dream!”

“Seeking small pleasures.”

Here’s my vision: you, me, and a bower designed by yours truly. A bower is like a nest but so much more, darling. You’ll see hacks out there that’ll design their “hip” bowers with twigs, flowers, shells and human rubbish. As Karl Lagerfeld said, “Trendy is the last stage before tacky”. It is not enough to bedazzle a nest with bright things. There must be a theme and a story. My nest will display the finest stones, beautiful forest debris, perhaps even some bones. It will tell a tale of life, passion and death. It will be bold! Romantic! Visionary! I will spend hours designing, ensuring everything is placed just so.

Do call by my bower, darling. If you have any taste, I’m sure you will determine I’d make a stylish mate.

I hate the phrase size doesn’t matter. For banana slugs, it kind of does. Sure, I’d prefer something just right rather than something too small. But I definitely don’t want something too big. Not after last time…

What? Nothing!

So, about me: I like the colour yellow and swimming.

I’m about seven inches and so is my body. *wink* As a hermaphrodite, I believe sharing is caring, so we’ll fertilize each other, after I’ve established if you’d be a good fit. Because well, I’m a little intimidated by mates that are bigger than me. It’s just the last time I was getting sexy with a mate, we miscalculated.

Turns out they were larger and they got…stuck. Okay yes, I had to bite their penis off. I had no choice! YOU WOULD’VE DONE THE SAME!!! *Ahem* Well, if you’re seven inches or smaller, come over for some sexy synchronised swimming.

Fashionably yours, Louie Plumagé

Love, Minnie Plantain

Illustrated by Phuong Ngo

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CREATIVE

CONVERSATION AT A DINER Nick Parsons

They sat in the end booth of the diner, the one furthest from the door. He still wore his hat and her, her coat.

“It’s just awful isn’t it? What happened to Howard.” She looked out the window at the darkened street outside.

“It always is, when someone is murdered.”

The waitress came over and gave them their coffee. She thanked the waitress, but remained unmoved. The only other occupant of the diner was a man eating pie at the other end of the counter.

“What were you doing on the eighth anyways?” he asked her.

She opened up a packet of sugar and poured it into her coffee. “I was in my aparment all night. My cat was sick and I had to take care of her. She’s just so dear to me you know.” She took a sip. His coffee remained untouched.

“And let me guess. Because of this you didn’t see anyone, and nobody saw you. And your cat was better by morning so that there was no need to take it to the vet, and no way for anyone to know how sick that cat really was.”

She only looked at him.

That won’t do for an opening, will it?

It doesn’t give you any real sense of the characters and how they’re feeling.

I need to show that the questions are making Mary (I didn’t even mention that her name was Mary!) nervous. Have her shaking the cup as she picks it up or having trouble opening the sugar.

And the way they talk about the deceased is rather blunt and unnatural.

Maybe if Mary questions him about how it happened.

And do I need to mention that the man at the counter is eating pie? Do I need him at all? To recall Chekhov’s gun, “remove everything that has no relevance to the story.” Better to get rid of him altogether.

There’s also much to improve in the way of phrasing and superfluous words to remove. Hell, I even misspelt ‘apartment’.

I’ll simply have to write it again.

They sat in the end booth of the diner. He still wore his hat and Mary her coat.

“It’s just awful isn’t it? What happened to Howard.” Mary looked out the window into the darkened street. “How did it happen?” she asked without turning back to him.

“He was poisoned.” He stared straight across the table at her.

The waitress came over with their coffee. Mary thanked her and he said nothing. The waitress went into the kitchen, leaving them alone in the diner.

“What were you doing on the eighth anyway?” he asked.

She struggled to open a pack of sugar, unable to get enough of a grip to tear it open.

“I was in my apartment all night. My cat was sick, and I had to take care of her.” Finally getting the sugar open.

“She’s very dear to me you know.” The mug shook in her hand as she drank from it, coffee nearly spilling over the side. He picked up his coffee.

“And let me guess. Because of this you didn’t see anyone and nobody saw you. And your cat was fine by morning so there was no reason to take it to the vet, and no way for anyone to know how sick the cat really was.”

She only looked at him.

Though better, it’s still far from anything good. It can be worded better and he isn’t supposed to touch his coffee yet, I don’t know why it says he did.

I’ll have to come back to it some other time, but let’s continue with the narrative for now.

She brought the cup down from her mouth and put it on the table. All her strength seemed to have left her.

“Just because no one saw it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.” Her voice was breaking.

“And just because you said it happened, doesn’t mean it did.”

He looked straight at her. She turned and looked out into the street to avoid his gaze.

“What do you know about Howard’s murder?” His coffee remained untouched.

“Do you really think I had something to do with it?” Her eyes were lost in the darkness outside.

“No. I know you had nothing to do with the murder. The author is just trying to throw off the reader. The way you can’t hold your coffee still and had trouble with the sugar packet, they’re just details to show that you’re hiding something. But it’s unrelated to the murder as the reader will eventually find out…”

What the hell was that? He wasn’t supposed to say that, nor was he supposed to know it.

It’ll have to be redone.

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She brought the cup down from her mouth and put it on the table. All her strength seemed to have left her.

“What happened to that man at the counter that was eating the pie? Where did he go?” Her voice was breaking.

“The author got rid of him.”

He looked straight at her. She turned and looked out into the street to avoid his gaze.

“Apparently he didn’t serve the story. Something to do with Chekhov’s gun.” His coffee remained untouched.

“I think it’s awfully mean to just get rid of someone because they don’t immediately impact the narrative. And doesn’t the author know that Hemingway valued inconsequential details like that?” Her eyes were lost in the darkness outside.

“I suppose they must if you mentioned it. But I think it has become rather clear that the author has lost control of this story. I mean, just look at this conversation. This isn’t what we’re supposed to say…”

He’s right, but there is no need to point it out. But why is he? It’s not what I’m trying to write. Am I really just going mad?

Maybe if I were to do it again it would turn out like it’s supposed to. What other choice do I have?

She brought the cup down from her mouth and put it on the table. She seemed as normal as ever.

“Do you think that if I mentioned the man eating pie he would come back? Like if I was to say: ‘Look at the man sitting at the counter over there. He seems to be enjoying that pie of his.’” Her voice was cool.

“I suppose it might.”

He looked towards the far end of the diner. She turned and looked towards the counter to watch the man eating the pie.

“The author really has lost the plot, in more ways than one.” He drank from his coffee.

“Well I’m just glad that the man is back. What pie do you think he’s eating? Do you think we should ask?” Her eyes were fixed on the man at the counter.

“I mean, why not? It’s not as though anything more interesting is going to happen in this story. And if I had to guess what type of pie, I would say apple. What do you think…?”

Why are they so transfixed on the superfluous man and his unnecessary pie?!

Why don’t they do what I want them to?

They both slid out of the booth, leaving behind money for their coffees, and went over to the man at the counter.

“I think” Mary said, “it’ll be a cherry pie.”

Standing beside the man, she said to him: “Excuse me sir. You seem to be enjoying that pie greatly, and we just wanted to enquire as to what type it is.”

“It’s blueberry, and the best I’ve ever had,” he replied.

“Looks like we were both wrong.”

They thanked him for his answer and went outside. The air was cool but still.

They walked down the street with no real sense of direction.

They can’t leave. This isn’t what’s supposed to happen!

“You know,” Mary began. “I don’t think your name has been mentioned this whole story.”

“It’s Jack O’Connor,” he said, answering the question that had been implied. “I think it wasn’t mentioned because the author couldn’t think of it.”

They stopped at the corner of the block.

“Well Jack, what’re we going to do now?”

Forget about this nonsense, go back to the diner and continue with the narrative as it’s supposed to be.

“What is there even to do at such an hour?” he asked, ignoring the author’s pleas. “We could go to the cinema.

Are there any movies you want to go see?”

“There is one movie with Audrey Hepburn I want to watch, Charade. I’ve heard rather good things about it.”

“Very well, let’s go see that.”

They crossed the road and began in the direction of the East Village Cinema.

A man is dead and the culprit is still at large! Don’t they care to know who did it? Don’t they care to bring them to justice?

“We both know it was the brother who did it,” Jack said. “And he’s so riddled with guilt that he’ll turn himself in tomorrow. So there’s no need for us to do anything about it. It’ll resolve itself and anything we try will only waste our time.”

“So leave us alone would you,” Mary chimed in. “This is our story now! And quite frankly, it’s going a lot better now than when you were in charge of it.”

Is there anything lower than being slighted by your own characters?

“Probably. But there wouldn’t be much.”

They then turned and walked off into the night.

Illustrated by Elmira Cheung

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SECTION TEXT HOROSCOPES

Charlotte Armstrong The stars and I have taken to playing board games to pass the time. They’re shit at Risk, it turns out, so we’ve gone old school.

For those of you who want to play along, crack out your Co-Star sanctioned star charts and see if you can use yours to win a game. The universe always moves in response - equal and opposite reactions and all that. Try not to fall into a Fool’s Mate though - keep an eye on your diagonals.

Here’s the chessboard - your move, hurry up. The universe is waiting.

Aries

You move a pawn to D5. The universe takes one of your pawns. Sacrifice is essential for victory. What are you willing to lose?

Taurus

You move your queen to B3. The universe moves their queen to D7. A faint “yaasss” can be heard.

Gemini

You move a knight to F3. The universe slides a bishop to F5. What a crusade - are you worth divinity?

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Cancer

You move a pawn to C4. The universe pushes a pawn to C6. The proletariat masses stare one another down.

Leo

You move a knight to E5. The universe has their queen retreat to C8. An aggressive stance indeed.

Virgo

You move a knight to D5. The universe picks up a pawn and places it at A6.

Illustrated by Alice Tai

Libra

You move a knight to C3. The universe mirrors with their knight in F6. Twinsies.

Scorpio

You move a pawn to E4. The universe redacts its bishop to G6. The clergy really are afraid of the people.

Sagittarius

You move a bishop to B5. The universe draws out a knight to D7. Your holiness may have to be ready to fight, should the need arise.

Capricorn

You move a pawn to D4. The universe drags a pawn to D5. Despite the threat it represents, you think to yourself how cute the little pawn is.

Aquarius

You move a bishop to D7. The universe is taking its sweet time to respond. We may be here a while.

Pisces

You move a knight to F6. The universe disarms your knight with a pawn. People power, I suppose.

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CREATIVE

The Sound of Silence Jamisyn Gleeson

M

idnight, and you begin your walk home. In the abandoned suburban streets, you imagine you are the sole survivor of an apocalypse. Though once afraid of the dark, necessity has forced you to grow up quickly and now the night is your friend. Traffic lights flicker, continuing their rounds. Their metallic hearts beat alongside yours.

You feign listening to music through cheap headphones. Night is not unruly. It’s pleasurable. There is space to breathe, to collect, to resume being the thoughtful and understanding person you know you are, somewhere deep down. It’s too late to dwell on anything that needs to be done and too early to begin worrying about tomorrow. You are in a silent state of bliss, all on your own in this velvet night.

Your breathing becomes ragged as the path twists upward, transforming into a perfect, tantalising hike. A woman – your distant neighbour – fiddles with her Christmas lights, untangling and unwinding them from the trunk of the fattest tree on her lawn. They flash on, off, on, off. Each time they fade you see only black and think, maybe she has turned them off for good. Seconds later, the crystallised reds and greens appear again, showing off their needle-thin bodies. You’re happy, because now the silence isn’t lonely.

You emerge from the valley like an ant rising from a narrow hole in the ground. Limp summer leaves fight one another from above. They startle you. A creature escapes the foliage and blends into the charcoal sky. Its wings beat ferociously against it.

This creature is your familiar, now.

When you return home, it’s dark. The house is asleep. You go to your room after taking off your heavy shoes and lie in bed with peace, with the silence.

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Illustrated by Vivian Li

CREATIVE

Just the usual, thanks.

Will Minack

F

ew operations rival the sheer coordination, precise communication and military-grade timing of a well-run fish and chip shop at six-thirty on a Friday night. To witness a fish and chip shop going at full tilt, gears turning, pistons firing, is a strange wonder. Like the engine of a running car, its finely tuned system of inputs and outputs chugs along in a vaguely miraculous way. By the same token, a fish and chip shop in disarray—overwhelmed, understaffed, patrons sharing concerned glances—is a calamity of the highest order. A bottleneck on the fries, a shortage of dim sims, a faulty card reader—all can bring an otherwise well-functioning store to its knees.

My local fish and chip shop has always been the Aston Martin of fish and chip shops. The weekly visit remains the one resilient routine still standing as all others have fallen away. When everything outside its four walls seems up in the air, it has become a bedrock of consistency. “Ready in 15 minutes”—shouted down the phone-line above a clatter of noise—means ready in 15 minutes. No sooner, no later. Upon arrival you’ll see ten or so employees crammed behind the counter, locked in a frantic rhythm like the bees of an especially efficient colony. A middle-aged Asian man, clearly the head of the operation, stands coolly at the till, exchanging warm paper packages for cash and credit cards as his workers swarm around him. To pick up an order from this particular shop is to observe a masterclass in small business management.

So came my surprise, last Friday, when I was regretfully informed that I would have to wait a few more minutes for my order. The grill was full, the till-man explained, feeling as if some sort of justification was necessary. I pushed back against the white-tile wall—alongside the other customers in a way that resembled a police line-up—and watched on. I could see that the grill was indeed full. Each beef patty and grilled flake had been expertly arranged to maximise its limited real estate. It was operated by a small hunched woman, whom, from their subtle communicative gestures, I judged to be the wife of the till-man. He would a turn a fraction towards her, she’d flash two fingers and receive an affirmative nod. Two minutes. The rest of the crew consisted of a small army of teenagers.

They worked the fryers, manned the phones, wrapped the orders and scrawled monogrammatic labels on them in blue texta.

Tonight, each cog in the machine was noticeably stretched to its limits. There was tension in the greasy air. One of the boys in charge of taking phone orders scolded another for forgetting—again—to note down the time on the relevant slip of paper. The deep fryer popped and its operator yelped as the grease singed his arm. The sound was mimicked playfully by a few of the other workers, before a stern look from the till-man swiftly reminded them of their duties. But it was too late. Equilibrium had been lost, and the usually well-oiled machine was slowly slogging up the hill of peak time.

Meanwhile, a common restlessness descended upon the queue of customers. The human chain, spaced appropriately, simmered with the invisible energy of hunger. An energy manifest in the kinetic forms of foot-tapping and phone-scrolling and mask-fidgeting. Most listened out intently for the till-man, pouncing at first syllables and then retreating; Beth walked out with the greasy treasure that had, for one orgasmic millisecond, been claimed in the mind of Ben. Those clacking plastic strips became a sort of finish line. A final checkpoint declaring the ultimate Friday night victory. I could taste the cool air on the other side. Any minute now.

Illustrated by Geraldine Loh

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CREATIVE

O

ur next leading lady was a reason behind me wanting to write this column in the first place! Like many great women in history she was termed ‘mad, and it was all because of a narrative perpetuated by three very controlling men in her life - her husband, her father, and her own son. The story of ‘Joanna the Mad’ is truly the ultimate ‘bitches be cray’ scenario. Joanna was the daughter of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the first de facto King and Queen of Spain (you may have heard of her sister, King Henry VIII’s

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first wife, Catherine of Aragon). The claims made about Joanna – namely, that she was “mentally unfit” to rule the lands she inherited - have been a cause for speculation by both historians, and her own contemporaries. Indeed, despite the chorus of men claiming her to be nuts, those who interacted with her found her to be of sound mind and body. A mystery if ever there was one…

I was jolted awake by an unending, sudden scream. The scream contained no pain or confusion – it was a sound of realisation, of someone connecting a maze of dots.

Shit.

I collected my skirts as quickly as I could and jumped from the bed. I hadn’t bothered to bury myself under the blankets or undress at this time of day - I was disobeying orders by sleeping when my Lady was awake. Usually no one noticed, and I could sneakily rest unbothered. But today, I heard her scream I’d never heard like that before.

“My lady! I’m coming!” I scuffled down the hallway, the narrow walls twisting and turning as the stairway came into view. I climbed up, up, up.

I didn’t bother knocking. And it seemed the visitors hadn’t either.

“My lady?”

The circular room was cramped with books and elegant furniture. With arched windows offering a picturesque view of Tordesillas, and two more upper levels which were equally stuffed yet well decorated, the suite still felt unsuited to someone of my Lady’s status. Yet today, the four men kneeling before Joanna were a brutal reminder of her standing: the unsuspecting new Queen of Aragon.

All heads turned my way as soon as I cleared the staircase.

“He’s dead! Ferdinand is dead!” She spoke with little composure, the strain in her voice indicating her overwhelming excitement at hearing some actual news for once.

I eyed off the men, all dressed in black. Clearly, they held a comfortable place within Aragon’s court, and right now, their clothing implied the recent death of someone of a higher status. I straightened my back and steered myself towards my lady, seemed to be her frame shaking.

“Who let you in here?” I shot at them.

“We were allowed in by the Nuns. We told them we brought news from the King himself.”

“The King is supposedly dead. How could he have given you this news?”

“Ferdinand is dead. They’re talking about the new King.

My son,” Joanna interjected with pride, reaching out for my hand.

Her son. He had sent news weeks ago, telling all who resided here that Joanna’s Father had passed away and that she was under no circumstances to discover this fact. Keep news as it always had been – light, joyous, with no hint as to what was happening outside.

“I know you have not been sent here by my Lady’s son.”

Joanna’s son had been strict with the instructions.

The Lady was never to be told anything of her Kingdom, a rule her Father had set years ago and one the new King had intended to keep in place. I’d never bothered to question it.

It was easy enough to hide information from her, and easier still to keep her from asking in between her erratic moods.

The men looked at each other, rising from their kneeling positions as I angled my body towards them, in front of my Lady.

“Your majesty, your Father has been dead for many weeks, as we said” the man at the forefront said.

“Your son now rules Aragon and Castile,” another added.

“We wish to change that.”

Joanna blinked at them as I stepped away, realising what was happening in this room.

“You talk of treason,” I uttered to the men, backing up against the wall. To even hear what was being discussed in this room“We talk of restoring her Majesty to her rightful place, as Queen of both Aragon and Castile, as is her right,” the first man added, straightening his back.

My eyes wandered to Joanna, sitting in her chair, blissfully unaware of the outside world until minutes ago. She was the Queen of both provinces and so far as I knew, no one had ever tried to deny that. My lady was mad, according to her Father and Son, and her wild emotional swings meant she couldn’t govern a household - let alone rule two of the wealthiest duchies on the mainland. I couldn’t see her face, but the mood in the room undeniably shifted.

“You need to leave.” I quickly made for the door, beckoning for them to exit as I held it open.

The men made no move.

“We wish to discuss this with the Queen.”

“She is unwell,” I remained firm, one eye on the Lady.

“That’s what they say. But she looks perfectly fine to me.”

How could I make them understand how dangerous the game they were playing was, with me there, hearing clearly their treasonous whispers? I needed to get them out now, to ensure my Lady remained calm and free of her dark thoughts before disaster struck.

“Please. I will not ask again. You must go.”

As the second man, who had not said a word throughout this whole encounter, made for the door, a voice rose up.

“No,” Joanna said, her voice strong.

“My lady?” I felt my stomach drop to the floor.

“I wish to hear what they have to say.”

I clutched at my chest as soon as the words came out of her mouth.

But loyalty lies where it is earnt. Everything she was about to hear, concerning her Son, her Father, the actions they’ve taken...she wouldn’t be able to hear it on her own. The sparkle in her eye was reserved only for the boy she had raised long ago. So I quietly shut the six of us in the room, bracing myself for what would come next.

Illustrated by Stephanie Nestor

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58

CREATIVE

URBAN NOSTALGIA Kira Todd

P

eople associate cities with alienation. Consumerism. The soul-sucking nine-to-five grind.

Cold capitalist sterility and chaotic excess, side by side. Tall towers devoid of character, obscuring the sky with glass and steel. Crowds so suffocatingly thick you lose your sense of self. Glaring lights, loud noises you can’t drown out. Light pollution, sound pollution, air pollution. So much of everything that people can only take it in small doses, that they want to retreat to the comfort and peace of their own homes to recover from the intensity of it all.

But in the middle of the city is where I feel most at home. I find solace in its flood of sensory experiences, belonging in its vast and ever-expanding limbs which I could never hope to fully explore. I find familiarity and comfort in the multitudes of strangers I walk by and so fleetingly interact with.

The glow of neon lights feels warmer than the flame of any fire. A gulp of smoggy city air refreshes me more than a breath of sea breeze ever could.

The city has never felt artificial to me. I feel life pulsing through me as I rush down narrow streets, weaving through dense crowds, walkways, alleys; through shopping arcades, deserted backstreets and hidden laneways, sprinting to catch trams and speeding down escalators to make it onto the platform before the train pulls in.

Crowds, pollution, grime, the ticking of pedestrian crossings, the whir of passing traffic, the insistent ringing of tram bells; I want it all to envelop me.

And now, the sight of deserted streets and empty trams still rocks me to my core, even though I’ve had months to become accustomed to it. People talk about the decline of the city. Maybe workers won’t return to their central business district offices. Perhaps people will feel too claustrophobic and anxious to squeeze themselves into crowded trams and tiny cafes. Concert halls and museums will stand empty for quite some time. Club dancefloors will gather dust for much longer. When the city can finally breathe again, what will be left of it?

What if the city I know and love is gone forever?

What if I never get to return home?

Illustrated by Rohith Prabhu

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CREATIVE

In the Middle of the Empty Woods Asher Christina Harrington

A

small cloaked figure hurried across the barren earth as the last of the sun’s light leaked from the sky. The only thing between him and the horizon was a lonely little house, nestled in the shadow of the last starving tree.

The tips of its leafless branches split and splintered like a hundred bony fingers, their shadows reaching out for the traveller across the empty landscape. But as he drew closer and closer, they retreated with the sinking of the sun—as though beckoning him to hurry home before nightfall.

Once safely inside, he placed the sack he’d been carrying carefully upon the floor and hung his hooded cloak on the hook by the door. He then turned to find his sister in much the same way he’d left her. On the other side of the cluttered space that was both kitchen and living room, she lay curled up on a badly scratched and half-collapsed couch. Too engrossed in her reading to look up, she made him a small verbal greeting that was somewhere between a “hello” and a “hmm”. The book in her hands was one she’d fashioned herself. When they’d first happened upon the abandoned little house, page fragments had littered the cracked and peeling floors like impossible leaves. She’d bound them together into clumps of stories and would often rearrange them still when she wanted something new.

What other lost treasures might’ve lingered in that house were now almost entirely lost to the human eye; for crammed tightly in the space between brother and sister was a jungle of pot plants. They covered the floor and filled every available shelf—some even dangled from the ceiling by gleaming silver chains. The otherwise unused kitchen table was all but consumed by them. The largest of the plants towered over their fellow inhabitants and bore stone fruits; the smallest sprouted sweetly from teacups along the windowpane. It was this great wave of green that truly welcomed the brother home. Well, that and the eyes of over a dozen hungry cats as they crept from their shadowy hiding places.

He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Witt?” he asked.

“Yes, Sage?” his sister replied without looking up from her book.

“Has there been an increase in the number of cats since this morning’s count?”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

Sage’s eyes scanned over the cats once more. “I was quite certain there were twelve this morning,” he said.

“Now I detect thirteen.”

“Well, that is odd,” Witt agreed. “But still, twelve, thirteen ... who can keep track? They are only very small.”

“Well yes, but I believe that one beside you is rather new,” Sage said, pointing to the cat in question.

“I don’t see how you could be so sure,” replied Witt, her eyes still carefully fixed upon her book. “Cats do look very similar.”

“Indeed, but that one is noticeably different.”

“Oh? How so?”

“It’s smiling.”

The cat at Witt’s side was almost bald, save for a few tufts of messy grey fur. Its tail wiggled enthusiastically and its tongue hung from its open mouth. Its breathing was heavy, yet it did not seem distressed. And when Witt looked down at it, it bounded up onto her lap and licked her face. The eyes of the twelve other cats peered out from their places, perplexed and perhaps just a little disapproving.

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Illustrated by Yuk Kei Lo Yuki

“Oh, alright,” Witt confessed, finally meeting Sage’s eyes. “People came by the house looking for food, and I told them we had none—just like you said to—but that we could sell them some plants, only they didn’t have much to trade, except for this cat and... well, I made an executive decision!”“But Witt,” said Sage, just about at his wit’s end, “we have no need for so many cats.”

“You did say animals might become the primary currency within the next five years,” Witt reminded him.

“And will you be parting with any of them when that time comes?” Sage asked. “... But the cultural capital—” “—That’s what I thought.”

Sage weaved gracefully through the pot plants and knelt before the bouncy cat. “I suppose it is rather endearing,” he admitted. “Does it have a name?”

“They called it Terrence the Dog.” “What’s a dog?”

“A type of cat, I assumed. I didn’t ask.”

“Probably wise.” Sage nodded.

“Here, sit and become better acquainted,” Witt insisted. “I’ll put away the harvest.”

In her forgetful enthusiasm, Witt leapt up onto her new shaky legs and almost went tumbling to the floor.

“Witt!” Sage exclaimed as he caught and steadied her. “You must be more gentle.”

“I do try to be. I just forget sometimes.”

“Well you must remember better,” he warned her.

Her face downcast, Witt trudged uneasily through the sea of cats and plants. The soft tickling sensation of fur rubbing against the skin of her legs was nice. But different. She wanted to kneel down and touch them with her hands, but she knew her legs would struggle too much to get back up.

“Things were much easier before,” she told her brother.

“Physically, perhaps,” said Sage as he watched Terrence the Dog lick at his red-stained hands. “But if we don’t change, we’ll never belong. We’ll never stop running.”

Witt’s old reliable arms quite easily lifted the heavy sack Sage had left by the door.

“I like running,” Witt said wistfully as she carried the sack over to their modestly-sized chest freezer. “I miss being able to run. And being able to be outside. And being able to run around outside. I miss being… I miss the feeling of being free.”

“But you weren’t free,” Sage reminded her. “We’ll be free when all the operations are completed, when they think we’re one of them.”

“I suppose,” Witt conceded. She lifted the lid of the freezer with a small heave and emptied the sack of newly acquired limbs and organs into the frozen collection below.

“I just wish being human didn’t have to be so tricky.”

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NONFICTION

… as colours pour from tar Ana Jacobsen

“Nothing could be more magically tremendous than that other world, that world of the dead over which Osiris presides – nothing, that is, other than the world of colour that emerges from the world of blackness, from that black mud, protoplasmic Osiris, we might say, drifting and compacting at the bottom of the meandering Nile, equivalent to the refuse remaining at the bottom of the alchemist’s pot following combustion.

Hearken to the most mightily alchemical transformation conceivable, not of base metal into gold, but of black into living colour…”

I

-Michael Taussig, ‘What Colour is the Sacred?’

n early 2016, some friends from art school and I drove to Warrandyte to explore bush tracks along the Yarra River around the Pound Bend Tunnel. Chris brought torches, Layla had an elaborate recording device with headphones, and I had a pair of Rainbow Fireworks Glasses in my pocket.

It was 10pm on an overcast night in early autumn.

The water looked like black, gooey tar – deep, glossy and sinister. Pobblebonk frogs and sleeping dusky moorhens lay hidden in the reeds on the riverbank. We were on this walk because I used to go on similar adventures in Warrandyte as a child with my aunty, uncle and little brother. The memories of those times seemed to have transformed into my own personal folklore; entire sensorial experiences of light, sound and sensation, amplified and distorted so that they had become bizarre and unearthly. Koalas growled in the trees above us as we got out of the car and began walking.

The tunnel loomed in the darkness; an impossibly dense void that could have been a portal to the centre of the Earth. It was created in 1870 as a way to divert the Yarra River so that a five-kilometre expanse of the riverbed could be mined for alluvial gold. As detailed in the Visitors Information Guide that we read on signage that dotted the path as we walked, it was the discovery of gold and the rapid influx of miners in Warrandyte twenty years prior to the tunnel being formed that resulted in the forced removal of the traditional owners, the Wurundjeri people, from their land. The Evelyn Tunnel Mining Company never found the treasure they were searching for and a proposal that was later made to utilise the tunnel to generate electricity was also unsuccessful. Pound Bend was just an abyss.

It was so mild that night that I was barely aware of my own body. I gazed up at the towering silhouettes of trees on the other side of the river and Layla asked, ‘Are those trees gigantic?’ – she couldn’t really tell in the moonlight.

I wasn’t sure but somehow they looked prehistoric from where we stood. A scuttling noise and movement in the reeds by the water was caused by what I assumed was a river rat – but it could have been anything. What we couldn’t see was limitless in how its form might manifest and even what we could somewhat more directly perceive in the dark was still polymorphous.

Human beings are not naturally nocturnal animals, so what we perceive at night can become distorted and malleable in the mind’s eye. In darkness there is potential for the human imagination to overcome apparent logic or reasoning.

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The opportunity to rethink the constraints of matter and consciousness that we are afforded when we are immersed in darkness is akin to the raw potential of stem cells to be triggered into specific conglomerations. What light or colour that does emerge once the sun disappears below the horizon becomes a shape shifting substance capable of growing itself into an infinite variety of entities.

As Michael Taussig describes in his essay, What Colour is the Sacred?, it is in this state that ‘Colour vision becomes less a retinal and more a total bodily activity common to fairy tales in that we may pass into the image while we are looking at it.’ We can actively weave mythological or imaginative narratives into our own realities in the present moment as opposed to exclusively in retrospect when we are then disconnected from the first-hand experience.

Nighttime is conventionally associated with menacing portents, as darkness is often portrayed as the home of monsters that wait for the ordinary daylight world to be transformed into ominous territory. But it is through darkness that we can generate new, self-determined narratives and identities for ourselves. In her essay A History of Shadows, Rebecca Solnit describes ‘the world as a theatre’ in which the ‘acts of the powerful and the official occupy centre stage’ whilst the ‘inventive arenas that exert political power outside that stage’ (in the ‘audience … the aisles, backstage, outside, in the dark’) go largely ignored.

In a hut just up from the banks of the river, we found torn pieces of kitsch curtain material and small pieces of rotting timber. We used head torches to bathe objects in a concentrated circle of light. The blurry edges of the spotlight created frames around the vividly coloured images. Within this narrow illumination we began constructing possible stories and scenarios – had somebody been squatting here, in this makeshift abode? Why had they left? Just as my vision was compromised during these night adventures, so too was my ability to fully comprehend the past. I was blind to it, only able to sieve through the dimly lit materials of my consciousness in order to make sense of myself in all of the time leading up to that present moment. That was the only time I was ever offered an examinable reality, and even then, it was so utterly impossible to know it. If only upon returning to that place in Warrandyte where I used to walk at night, I could excavate my memories from that river of tar, experiences once mired in the past, now perfectly preserved under a black, glossy mask. Life could emerge from the asphalt body and perhaps as I continued to explore, I could understand the experiences as they were first lived.

Graphics by Su Park

Photography Art by

by Ana Jacobsen

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‘The Waltz of Spring’ by Wendy Lin

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‘What body am I in today’ by Jean Baulch

FLASHFICTION

‘CURRENT’ Vanessa Lee It is raining and I look at the lone rose bush in my front yard; how it sinks down with the weight of rain as though in exhale. Spring has come and the children are playing in the street, with ribbons of rainwater swirling at their feet. They are dreaming of battling ocean currents and hurricanes and spinning tales of submarine captains and mermaids. I remember it well. There is rain, there is sun, there is chest-aching laughter, the tang of strawberries and roses in our hair. I breathe a little easier, standing beside my little rose bush.

Felicity Lacey Turbo tempo of the status quo rodeo – it’s a vertigo puppet show to which I say “no”. Call me tardy, but the truth is that I’m just unhurried; why rush to hold the ocean when the tide will still turn tomorrow? In the shadow of the current, I pull my face into my carapace, not to isolate but to meditate, as I reacquaint myself with how to navigate that which I contemplate. I’ve come to know that the afterglow will still show even when I ebb and flow with the undertow as I cultivate a turtle state.

-Life Lessons from a Turtle

Tiarney Aiesi The Mask

I traced my finger along the confectionaries lined out in their separate tubs. Chocolate covered raisins, caramel fudge and honeycomb. The cashier wore a floral printed mask tight against her face, murmuring a greeting as I entered the store. I picked a strand of black liquorice for my father and Turkish delight for myself. I met her again at the counter, the table sticky with sanitizing spray. She spoke then in a muffled, choked way as I handed her my change.

Unable to decipher her rudimentary language I pocketed my sweets and walked away.

Marcie Di Bartolomeo I swim. I swim, and I swim. Deeper towards the hole. The hole at the bottom of the ocean. I can feel it calling out to me. Calling for me to swim. Closer to the hole. And I obey. The current flowing in my veins obeys. I swim. I twist my arms, and my legs. I contort my body downwards, like a fish searching for food. Deeper and deeper. The light fades around me. All is black. I feel something. I’ve reached the hole. I take a deep breath. I let the currents take me into the hole.

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CREATIVE

THE CHERRYMAN:

Wind of Grey Robe

Lee Perkins

North Wind.

Tempest Ovest.

South’s Wrath.

Tongue of the East.

Winter folk call it ‘Scraggle-on-Vent’, Mountainers the ‘Earth’s Sigh’.

The scaled tribespeople of the Somner Isles, ‘Inland’s Kiss’, ‘Strength of Hope’, ‘Continent’s Calling’.

Those of the Centre Steppe have called it ‘Grass Razor’, ‘Tempest Flame’, ‘Midnight’s Confusion’.

But no mythology, no folk wisdom, no proverb, told of the grey-robed creature on its headwind.

Sweeping above the trepid kings’ roads, venting through cracks in mal-fitted village windows and peering into the fearful lungs of soldiers on The March.

So keep the reddening fires.

Robed-comfort torn from thrones who were sweet friars, held hands of the young.

All drowned that day.

*

So keep the Sinistra Spire.

Fire still, hearts, minds, and should the hour come again in the heat of day, the cold sweat that still keeps us up at night shall stray the White Robe from the Drowned, Death Path.

*

*

The provinces and lonely places of this country had forgotten the cool touch of a god.

Hollow halls stood where once roots of the earth would anchor wanderers and queens alike to the breath of the divine.

The North Wind bore the grey-robed figure without consent—a spectre, half-formed, it carried to the swamps of Stormwater.

This next move was not the creature’s.

This second coming was not the return of civilisation; of truth.

This was not the lows and their deep climbings returning; the grey robes instead heralded blood to droop the soil in thunder, for the Wind would slow.

The robes would drop and keep falling, scratches from brambles, swords and pikes of history, until all that was above was the world in its entirety—all the creature would bare.

Of the time when the Gale blew, when all that was exciting was the empty promise of rest and the lonely fresh harvest, lowly taverns birthed this passage:

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So keep the wicked roots.

White Robes cursed from over the breach, not a choice the tortured make, but honest truths.

Surges broke the Stormwater.

So keep the Blackrock face.

Muted cries would break the comfort walls, promises, promises, promises, none to retrace.

All broken by the tails of the White Robe.

This time though, the Wind come from a god.

The White Robe’s desires sundered, thunders of the breach called back to his mind.

White had been cast to grey, the salt of his fingernails now filled with the earth he was to shoulder.

Acceptance and forgiveness, but penance comes last, the most frightful, the most sorry.

Palace of the Earth.

Roots of cherry, Promise of the blackberry, mulberry, and thyme.

Robes of water will grow, Nurture in light, Beholden to all, Through fear, and through fright.

Illustrated by Anya Wong

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CREATVIE 70

Illustrated by Franki Stackpool

Package Deal with the Devil E

Jemma Payne

veryone wants to know what he looks like. Think of your doctor. Or the woman you see at the gym every day. You recognise their faces, but try describing them to me.

No? Yeah, it’s like that. Only he wasn’t young and hot and quick-footed like people imagine him – in fact, he wore orthopaedic-looking shoes and his hairline had receded almost to the horns.

Sometime in 2010, would’ve been March or April, he showed up in the kitchen of the co-working space and made me a proposal.

It wasn’t so much a deep waterfront with a boathouse and a dozen specialised rooms. What he really offered was enough impressed hangers-on to fill a boat and a bar and a billiards room, a pool deck and an indoor/outdoor entertaining space and four chattering levels of garden all the way down to the river.

The price was my soul, obviously. No interest, no repayments until the end of time.

Still, I decided it was an offer I could refuse.

Three years later, my app had taken off. That’s what you get when you Uberise social media.

I had a sexy car. I had a sexy computer. I had a sexy blender. I had items nobody would have imagined could be sexy until that model came along. A model came along: a supermodel girlfriend.

And, as promised, friends. Friends when you get rich, they’re like slugs after you plant lettuce.

One day in late December, I had all these slugs over for a party. They did indeed nearly fill the house. Which is (not to brag) quite a feat.

Around eight o’clock, bulls-eye ripples appeared in the smooth water of the Zen fountain, then the infinity pool, even the boiling spa. The heavens (as it were) opened up, and the party shifted to the indoor end of the indoor/outdoor entertaining space.

“Hold on, Clara,” I said, hitting the switch to close the new Vergola. “Check this out.”

The louvres clapped shut just as I realised it wasn’t Clara behind me.

Like I said, I’d recognise him anywhere. Though he now wore rimless glasses and had perhaps had some success with hair implants. He beckoned me and slipped into the pool, balancing one of my cocktail glasses on the edge. I felt it best to follow him in, even though I was still in my Smart Casual. The rain had soaked me in seconds, anyway.

“How do you like this?” He put a hand on my shoulder and waved the little paper umbrella in a wide circle.

The gesture encompassed the pool deck, the entertaining space, the stainless-steel barbecue, my mere awareness of the concept of an outdoor kitchen. And the river, of course.

Even though a bad smell sometimes came off the mangroves.

I propped my elbows on the pool’s infinity edge.

“Um, it’s great? And my view is fantastic.”

“You’ve got me to thank for that.”“What?”

“You never said I couldn’t give you stuff for free.” He sipped the cocktail. “Free trial ends this month.”

I could hear a game of Mario Kart starting up on the PlayStation in the home cinema.

“My app got half a billion downloads.” I stepped away from the edge, to the pool stairs. “But, thanks anyway?”

“I need it back next month,” he said.

I stopped. “Wait, this is mine, my life, you can’t just—” He took another sip of the cocktail. “I’m willing to consider a lease-to-buy option.”

“I’ve never understood how those things work.”

“Yeah, who reads the fine print?” he said. “But it’s simple.

You hand over as much of your soul as you want, until you’ve paid off everything you want to keep.”

Inside, someone said “pwned” out loud, and another guy replied “Awesome!” with a big sincere huff behind the first syllable. Over the rain and the pool’s waterfall, I thought I could hear Clara’s liquid laughter.

“And I can wrap up the contract whenever?” I asked.

“When I’ve sold – bought – as much as I want?”

“No lock-ins, no exit fees.”

“Ever?” I asked.

“Til the end of time.”

He knocked his empty cocktail glass over the fake waterfall.

I sighed. Broken glass in the pool filter was a nightmare.

He took the stairs out of the pool slowly, water pouring off his clothes. I noticed he’d gone in wearing his orthopaedic shoes, and that the new combover wasn’t nearly as successful when it was wet.

He jammed the paper umbrella in a hedge and went around the side of the house, limping across the stepping stones through the Zen garden. The rain was drowning the sounds from indoors, now. Or maybe they’d turned off the music.

I left the party to its partying (nobody noticed my absence) and walked further into the rain, down the steps to the boathouse. I sat on the edge of the old jetty, which I hadn’t yet had replaced. I took off my Nikes, but the water was too low to dip my feet in. Anyway, the river was dirty, and worse when it rained.

I should take some time off work, I thought. Book an Air BnB. Or a room in the Ritz, or a ride on the Ghan. Or a guru.

To give me time to think.

But if you ask me now – if there is a me now – time was my enemy from the start.

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CREATIVE

The Mother’s Lullaby Benjamin Arya

That sweet lullaby,

That sweet lullaby,

My first single, my first album, my first concert

A song, a shanty, a dance of love and life

Emanating from my mother’s chest to the drums of my ear held against her breast

Of passion turned living thing

A little head floating up and down with her every breath after breath

Of love turned tangible and real, Am I

Amidst the weary grating of her aching bones,

Its sound melodious and comforting,

Against a larynx of desperation,

Like a party on the moon at midnight

And a mind occupied by toils and loans.

By invitation only, special and all novel Where the guests read the dreams of the humans below,

That sweet lullaby,

And where children set fires to melt all the cheese into snow.

Singing to my little mind Blank and ripe for love,

That sweet lullaby,

Like Rome and Romeo or Juliet beneath the Parisian lights

A chant, a cry, a tribal tune

Like sunlight, no, starlight unravelled beneath

Against my eardrums rattles the sound of June

The clouds of midsummer nights

Of summers cold, now winters warmed,

Of transcendence, of beauty and awe for a universe of life.

Beneath the fever of her maternal moon Against wars and famines and colds and strangers

That sweet lullaby,

Sung, defiant, with a vigour to defend,

A faint rhythm, a little heart beat, a quiet pulse

Like the drums of conflict, echoing from warring tribal chambers

Nurtured by the sweet sounds of a bumbling joy,

That sweet lullaby,

In love and appreciation of my life A once embryo turned little thing with flabby arms am I,

Protective, all seeing, all knowing, all feeling

Like a caterpillar turned butterfly that’s still learning to fly

Accepting, willing, even planning at a moment’s notice, to sacrifice

One so innocent, so divine, so vulnerable,

Dreams, passions, life and all,

It needed to be cocooned in the melody of a mother’s pride.

For a second more, another little breath, another faint heart– beat. A life for a little life, cocooned in my mother’s arms Blessed by a melody so sweet, Bees would lick it off the bark of trees.

Note: Inspired by my mother, who immigrated to Australia in 2007 to provide a better life for her family.

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Illustrated by Kitman Yeung

Illustrated by

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Art by Stephanie Nestor

NONFICTION

burst asunder Meredith Tyler

sun-sweet green flesh rimming a pink rockpool rosy anemones swirl in glistening sea gardens a coral paradise afloat with life: Juno’s summer lagoon splashing kids lick pink syrup fingers – the fig tree watches silently. guardian of green worlds on heaped branches high; dusk rustles quiet leaves.

Illustrated by Michelle Pham

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VERSUS

vs

Candid Communication Elaborate Eloquence Rebecca Fletcher

You just wrote the word ‘panegyric’ unironically, so you need to stop a moment. It’s a cracking word, but why have you chosen that and not just ‘an obituary with boatloads of praise’? Is there a word count in whatever you’re writing? In fact, what are you writing? Is this an email to your mum, or are you writing a really dense poem? When would it be okay, and when is it too much? Is it ever okay to use, or are you just showing off? If you’re not sure, it’s okay—your resident turnip is here to walk you through it.

Plain language:

Traditionally, academia has been pretty stuffy, so information has been hard to find. However, as we strive to make the internet more accessible, we need to think about the language we use. We need to think about non-native English speakers. Sometimes there is no call for complicated language or strange phrases. We need to keep our communications clear and concise.

But is that boring?

To say that a simple vocabulary restricts creativity may be partially true, but many books have told their point without complex language. For example, The Cat in the Hat only uses 236 different words to tell the story. Two hundred and thirty-six words that a first grader would know and be able to read by themselves.

Another thing to think about is idioms and figures of speech. Up the top there, I wrote ‘boatloads of praise’, but how much is a boatload of anything? It’s a figure of speech that doesn’t translate easily without rephrasing. ‘A lot of praise’ would be more understandable.

If you have a message that you want a lot of people to understand easily, you need to write it in simple language. Shorter sentences with fewer clauses might seem restrictive, but they don’t limit you as much as you might think. In fact, they might help you express your ideas more clearly.

Less plain language:

Of course, mankind did not reach its dizzying heights of supremacy over, well mostly other people, through accessible language. Language expounds and excoriates, extolling virtues and exasperating listeners. It can entice and inveigle, mystify and mortify. In fact, the restriction of such floral phrasing is one of the key means of control in George Orwell’s 1984, the reduction of our tremendous English vocabulary reduced to simple phrases and limp, stackable modifiers, a quantification of sentiment, a kind of modular outrage.

For example, if you just looked the word ‘panegyric’ up in a dictionary (like I did to make sure that I was using the right word), you might have found that it means to heap praise on something. But the only time it’s ever really used is to describe a particularly ornate and complimentary eulogy. Which obviously isn’t the same thing at all. So how sure are you about the word that you’re using and what it means, and how sure are you that it’s appropriate? Most poetry favours elaborate constructions of language, so clearly there’s still a time and a place for all them fancy words you’ve learned.

The final word:

So, to confound or not to confound? That is the question, or really that’s not the question at all. The real question is how clear do you need to be? How clear do you want to be? What’s the expectation? If you’re being tasked with writing a poster aimed at community health, for example, you might want to think carefully about your audience and how complicated you want to make it. If you’re writing your magnum opus, however, you might want to have the option of a few more complicated words in there, and honestly if they fit, then go for it. But there’s definitely a time and a place for either type of language.

So back to the original point: have you just used that big, fancy word for a particular reason? Or did you just want a chance to blow the dust off it and show everyone how clever you are? If it’s the latter, maybe put it back in the drawer and use a word that lets people know what you actually mean without unnecessary distractions. Sometimes there’s an elegance to brevity (I certainly don’t want my shopping list to appear in paragraphs). French mathematician Blaise Pascal is quoted as saying “I would have written you a shorter letter but I ran out of time”. The fact that I took around 800 words to tell you that piece of information is the only real argument I have.

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Illustrated by Arielle Vlahiotis and Nina Hughes

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CREATIVE

The Girl Who Searched for the Heavens

Rida Fatima virk

O

ne after another. Her tears bubbled up and slid down her cheeks with each hiccup that escaped. Her tiny frame trembled with each breath taken. Breezes blew all around her; not with encouragement but a reminder—the hollows of her near-past howled. Like the numbered pattern of a clock, bodies systematically lay around her and the Hands no longer told the time; only serving to be wrapped around her little form.

“Unwind, untangle, right your angle, walk fro not to and you shall stumble upon the Heavens.”

A passing wind whispered.

She lifted her head only to face a creature of a black and white swirling pattern floating in place with no discernible limbs. Its swirls came to a close as a blackhole in the very center of its being.

Who are you?” she moved her mouth, yet her voice had rotted. However, the creature understood and replied, “I am Undecided.” Its mouth stretched into an absurdly large toothy grin.

The Girl tried to ponder but her withered mind could not handle the task it was given. To think, requires energy. To bring a thought into existence, requires action. Yet, will you?

She started unwinding, untangling. Her joints creaked as she made a strenuous effort to stand, against the gravity of her anguish. I…will. But…I cannot think; thoughts no longer grace me with their clatter, however, I will search for one.

Undecided hummed and swayed back and forth, “Where will you,” it tilted its head, “search for one?”

“The Heavens will grant me one,” she said, weakly yet surely. She walked forth, with the creature trailing closely behind her.

One step in snow, another in an array of flowers. One on cracked mud, another upon golden leaves that sent ticklish shivers to the bones. Undecided followed her without leaving a single footstep behind. What is he? She wondered at times, but for now decided to label him as a guardian of sorts.

The ground upon which her delicate feet journeyed on, had never let the deep, dark red colour fade. One that carried on the tortured memories of the sufferers.

“I will give you a hint!” Undecided lifted its finger to its mouth as if to shush any observation being made.

The Girl raised her big, black eyes to meet its nonexistent ones, “Search for the stain unblemished since the beginning of Time.” “…Where?” a croaky whisper escaped her lips.

“Look to the East, look to the West. Where do you think the feast lies best?” he tilted his head and she followed the same gesture.

She looked all around her, and a thought came skipping to her. A thought! A thought! Her eyes lit up as the rusty gears of her mind began their rotation after long last. She perked her ears at the genius idea that took formation in her young mind. Ah! That might work! She shut her eyes tight, pointed out her arm, and began spinning spinning spinning round round until she fell on her behind with her arm still pointed. The Girl opened her eyes and said with great confidence, “That’s the way to go!” and so they went.

“East? Is that the way you truly wish to go?”

Her lips stretched slightly into a faint smile, “The Heavens are my guide.”

“Hmmm,” Undecided hummed as it followed closely behind.

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They began their journey to the East and though it did not look much different from the West, it certainly exuded an unknown energy. As they travelled further and further in, she began regaining her lost vitality, growing stronger than ever before.

She investigated every nook and cranny that came her way but the stain upon the world was yet to be found. Her newfound optimism guided her determination and soon she chanced upon bunched-up mountain ranges. The center. Need to find the center. Thoughts came to her more easily now and formed themselves into strategies.

“The spot is the pot of luck, the spot is the pot of luck!” She sang repeatedly as they neared their undiscovered destination.

After much climbing they reached a field of flowers that stood tall like countless guards ready to defend their stronghold. The flowers were indeed much taller than her, “Shall we cut them down? Or pull them from their roots?” Undecided suggested in a rather serious manner, with its eyes locked onto hers and its ears hanging on to her every breath.

“We mustn’t. We mustn’t. Mother Nature has cried for so long and this is her last stand. To protect what must never be harmed.” she paused before continuing, “Some obstacles can be handled with gentler methods.” She stopped right in front of the flowers. Every flower; roses, irises, chrysanthemums, peonies, magnolias and hollyhocks, displayed their beauty with great splendour and exuded strong scents proudly.

Each petal had an otherworldly silky sheen to it and tempted one to touch them. However, regardless of type, every flower protruded a myriad of thorns that threatened to cut at the slightest touch. The Girl walked straight in and swam her way through the field. Each thorn pricked her, drew blood, scarred her yet not a single complaint was uttered by her. This much at least, must be endured. Finally, she had made her way across and stumbled upon the Heavenly stain.

The stain radiated a light unknown to this world; one that couldn’t be darkened despite attempts made in centuries past. “Thoughts were granted and humanity was restored within you.” the passing wind whispered once more.

“The Heavens? What of the…Heavens?” she asked.

“The search brought you to you, for the Heavens have always resided in you.”

The Girl had remembered, had realized and accepted. The breezes had tried to remind me, but I had forgotten. She smiled as she relaxed. The stain emitted a sense of peace and warmth that rejuvenated her body and soul, however, one thought came swirling back to her.

She turned towards Undecided who stood observing her, “What are you?” she asked.

Its eyes told of the relief and delight it felt; and smiled gently as never before, “I am what I am. I reside in every I and guide when disconnect has thrown the mind and soul into disarray.”

“Where will you return to?”

“No need to return for I never departed,” It spoke as it glowed like the Heavenly stain and scattered across the land.

Illustrated by Apapist Panichewa

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Illustrated by Michelle Pham

1. CRY — Julia Jacklin 2. Waterfalls — TLC 3. Rockstar — Mallrat 4. Frequency — Sylvan Esso 5. Feel Flows — The Beach Boys 6. Low — Chet Faker 7. No Plans To Make Plans — Lime Cordiale 8. Transatlanticism — Death Cab for Cutie 9. Hand It Over — MGMT 10. Into the Mystic — Van Morrison 11. Take Yourself Home — Troye Sivan 12. welcome and goodbye — Dream, Ivory 13. Amp Rental — Mac DeMarco 14. Oom Da — Kala Gare 15. West Coast — Coconut Records 16. Home — Caribou 17. Bitter Sweet Symphony — The Verve 18. Momentary Bliss (feat. slowthai and Slaves) — Gorillaz 19. Deuzy Vibe — The Regime 20. Good Times — Genesis Owusu 21. RUSH — Tia Gostelow 22. blind — ROLE MODEL 23. Entropy — Grimes, Bleachers 24. How Was Your Day? — beabadoobee 25. I Am Easy To Find — The National 26. Every Single Night — Fiona Apple 27. Current — Phoria 28. Liability (Reprise) — Lorde

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‘CURRENT’ PLAYLIST

Available on Fodder Spotify

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The Media Office would like to acknowledge the True Custodians of the land on which we work, the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nations. We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present. We extend our acknowledgements to the First Nations students and staff members in the University of Melbourne community. The land we are on is stolen and sovereignty was never ceded.

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