Grapeshot Magazine | CANE TOAD

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ISSUE 2: CANE TOAD

CONTENTS 7 NEWS

23 REGULARS

51 CREATIVE

8 NEWSFLASHES

24 THE CHALLENGE

52 LAYERS OF TIME AND SPACE

10 LOCKED OUT

26 GRAPESHOT UNDERCOVER

53 MY COUNTRY

11 O-WEEK: NEITHER DECADENT NOR DEPRAVED

28 AUSSIE ANTI-COCKTAILS

54 POETRY BY THE GROG DOG

30 ARTIST Q&A

56 ART BY DANIELLE WIGSTON

12 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN WESTERN SYD

32 SAY IT LOUD INTERVIEW

13 G’DAY TO YALLAH 14 INDIGENOUS DEATHS IN CUSTODY 16 MACQUARIE MEN 17 FOOD INSECURITY 18 MUGA: A STAND-IN STUDENT UNION? 20 FAIR GO: THE POLITICAL POWER OF ORDINARY AUSSIES

34 ASK AN X-PERT 35 POP CULTURE REWIND 36 YOU ARE HERE 38 SHAME YOUR UNIT

57 REPEAT OFFENDERS 58 LONG FORM REVIEW

39 FEATURES

60 BOOKS

40 MIRROR SYDNEY

62 MUSIC

42 TOAD WARS

63 HOROSCOPES

44 BALI BOGANS 46 THE SPIRIT OF SYDNEY 48 IN THIS BOGAN SKIN 50 THE VERONICAS

61 FILM

GOT SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE? SEND PITCHES, IDEAS, QUESTIONS, WORDS, PHOTOGRAPHY, ART TO GRAPESHOT@MQ.EDU.AU

EDITOR’S LETTER G’day cunts!

Welcome to our Aussie-centric issue, Cane Toad.

And what better way to represent contemporary Australian society than a warty, poisonous amphibian that came from overseas to fuck everything up?

I think the most interesting thing that happens when someone is critical of Australian society is that they’re accused of lacking ‘pride’. A lack of patriotism is often branded as a form of ungratefulness, and that ugly sentiment raises its head and says: ‘If you don’t like it, leave’.

I am grateful to live in Australia. But at the moment, it is hard to be proud. I’m grateful to live in a place that has a multiplicity of cultures and ethnicities. But how can I be proud, or agree with Malcolm Turnbull’s repeated claim that we live in a ‘successful multicultural society’, when there are still more white dudes named John in Parliament than people of colour?

I think it’s fascinating that we live on the landmass that has the oldest continuing culture in the world, but how can I be proud of that when governments continually strip funding from Indigenous welfare (see page 8), the gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians remain unacceptably wide in terms of health and education, and the historic Uluru Statement

of the Heart – which would’ve drastically turned things around for Indigenous Australians in terms of political power – was shot down without hesitation by the government last year?

I’m grateful to live in a place where quality of life and access to education, food and healthcare is pretty world-class for the most part, comparatively, but how can I enjoy any of that when the tax dollars I pay have been used for years to imprison families fleeing persecution on offshore detention centres?

I could go on, but I’ll stop there. I’m grateful, yes, but there’s a hell of a lot of work to be done before I go getting a Southern Cross tattooed across my torso.

I’ll let you read the brilliant pieces unpacking, overturning and exploring Aussie stereotypes in this issue instead. (And to be honest if there’s one thing I AM proud of, it’s the existence of The Veronicas – see page 50.)

Hooroo, Angus xx

EDITORIAL & CREATIVE PRODUCTION EDITOR IN CHIEF Angus Dalton

DEPUTY EDITOR Sarah Joseph CREATIVE DIRECTOR Brittney Klein CREATIVE DIRECTOR James Booth NEWS TEAM Isil Ozkartal NEWS TEAM Mariah Hanna REGULARS EDITOR Nathaniel Keesing FEATURES EDITOR Erin Christie ONLINE EDITOR Max Lewis DESIGN ASSISTANT Daniel Lim EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Ilhan Abdi

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS + ILLUSTRATORS Layla Pope, Leon Gonzalez, Brigit Busicchia, Laura Neill, Cassandra Ngurah, Jack De Lacy, Cameron Colwell, Aprill Miles, Georgia Drinan, Danielle Wigston, the Grog Dog, Anika Reza, Katelyn Free, Ashton Love, Juwariya Malik, Amanda Burgess, Jarred Noulton

EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD Amanda Fotheringham, Erin Bliss, Mahyar Pourzand, Zwe Paing Sett, Paul Russell, Anthony Ryan

PUBLISHER

COORDINATOR

Gail White

Melroy Rodrigues

Grapeshot would like to acknowledge the Darug people as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work, and pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.

NEWS

NEWSFLASH Note: Some of following news articles discuss domestic abuse and sexual violence.

MURDOCH MEDIA’S MUSLIM OBSESSION REVEALED The Murdoch Media has been slammed in a report that reveals News Corp papers published nearly 3000 negative stories about Islam and Muslims last year alone.

The One Path Network, a Muslim production studio and media company, released the report, which also found that across the five newspapers surveyed (The Daily Telegraph, The Australian, Courier Mail, Herald Sun and The Advertiser), a staggering 145 front pages featured a story that ‘referred to Islam or Muslims alongside words like violence, extremism, terrorism or radical’ during 2017.

The report also points out that Murdoch’s star columnists are particularly fixated. Thirty-seven per cent of Andre Bolt’s opinion pieces centred on Islam. For Jennifer Oriel it was 54 per cent.

This seems disproportionate attention payed to Muslims, a group of Australians who make up only 2.6 percent of the population. In the light of the report, New Matilda called the slew of Islamophobic reportage ‘a kind of one-sided culture war’.

To zero in on a particular issue, News Corp dedicated five font pages and over 200 articles to Yassmin Abdel-Magied alone in the wake of her appearance on Q&A, where she defended Islam as a ‘feminist religion’, and her ANZAC Day comments.

The report speculates that Murdoch’s obsession with painting Muslims in a negative light stems from the fact that fear sells papers – at the cost of perpetuating damaging stereotypes.

“The reality is, print news is a struggling industry, and a very effective method for selling newspapers is fear, sensation, and drama,” the authors of the report wrote. “As we found in our research, the overwhelming scale of association between Islam and terror, extremism, violence, and oppression through phrasing and word choice is far more significant than any isolated events or reports. If 2891 articles include the phrase ‘Islamic terrorism’ or ‘Muslim oppression’, those ideas stick.”

2 BILLION TAKEN FROM INDIGENOUS AID Since 1999, successive Northern Territory governments have shuffled a total of $2 billion dollars worth of funding allocated to Indigenous welfare away from projects that actually help Indigenous peoples .

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For example, only 29.2 per cent of the $949 million meant to fund Indigenous family and child services was actually spent.

As the news website Welcome to Country points out, outrage was sparked in 2014 when the Abbott government considered cutting $500 million from Indigenous programs. But not much attention has been dedicated to the Northern Territories slow siphoning of funds meant for the 30 per cent of the territory’s population that identify as Indigenous.

Eighty per cent of Aboriginal peoples in NT live in remote areas, and many remain behind their non-Indigenous counterparts in terms of life expectancy, education and quality of life.

MQ WORKSHOPS COMBAT HARASSMENT Respect.Now.Always., the program combatting sexual harassment and assault at Macquarie, has rolled out new workshops aimed at promoting consent, defining sexual harassment and ending misconduct among university students and staff.

The workshops have been rolled out as university campuses across Australia enact changes to policy and launch initiatives in response to the Australian Human Rights Commission report that found 1 in 5 university students had been sexually assaulted. According to the report, almost one third of students surveyed from Macquarie had experienced harassment in a university setting.

The RESPECT@MQ workshops are run in three parts. The first focuses on ‘definitions and drivers of sexual violence in our society, our culture, and our Macquarie University community’. The second unpacks consent and sexual ethics, and the third, called #SilenceHidesViolence, helps students build skills around what to do if someone discloses an experience of sexual assault to you, and focuses on ways of driving social and cultural change.

Students who complete the workshop will receive a certificate and a letter of reference to attach to their CV. An online module about consent has also been made available for free. Visit goto.mq/respectworkshops for information and to register.

The optional workshops come to Macquarie as the University of Sydney brings in a compulsory online course about consent for all incoming students.

If you are in need of support please visit mq.edu.au/respect.

NEWSFLASH DEPARTMENT OF HOMO AFFAIRS TURN BACK THE FLOAT At the 40th Mardi Gras on March 3, the Liberal Party’s float was intercepted by a newly-formed action group calling themselves The Department of Homo Affairs.

As the Liberal’s float pulled into Oxford Street, the group blocked their way with a huge banner that read ‘Turn Back the Float! Justice for Refugees’.

A spokesperson for the group wrote in Overland: “The major political parties arrived at Mardi Gras intending to get full mileage out of recently legislated marriage equality, claiming it as their ‘victory for gay rights’. But we were there to remind them that human rights aren’t there to pick and choose when electorally expedient, and disregarded when inconvenient.

“Late last year Australia celebrated same-sex marriage as a win for civil rights and equality – and at exactly the same moment, our government cut off food, water, medical supplies and power to refugees on Manus Island.”

CHRIS LILLEY ANNOUNCES NEW NETFLIX SHOW Macquarie alumni Chris Lilley – best known as the writer and star of the mockumentary show Summer Heights High – is filming 10 episodes of a new show set on the Gold Coast for Netflix.

The creator of iconic characters Ja’mie King and Mr G hit controversy last year when his show Jonah from Tonga was cut from New Zealand television after just one episode.

The NZ Minister for Pacific Peoples said at the time that the series ‘perpetuated negative stereotypes’ of Pacific peoples.

Lilley was also criticised for using blackface to portray his character.

Lilley was the subject of further fury last year when he shared a video on Instagram of himself in blackface portraying a black character in a music clip called Squashed N***a. He was criticised for posting the video hours after protests sparked by the death of an Indigenous 14-year-old boy, Elijah Doherty.

Indigenous rapper Briggs said, ‘“It took five years to get that credence to tell everyone that what [Lilley] did was racist and fucking whack. It shows his disconnection from black culture, black politics and black people in general.”

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has celebrated the announcement of Lilley’s new show, saying that it’ll employ 350 cast and crew and bring $6 million into the local economy.

A Netflix spokesperson has said that “there are no plans for Chris to play characters of different races,” but some media figures have condemned Lilley’s Netflix deal. Writer Nayuka Gorrie tweeted sardonically, “isn’t it wonderful that white people pretending to be people of colour are given platforms! What a time to be alive!”

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE KELLY O-DWYER’S OFFICE, MALVERN On International Women’s Day on March 8, three billboards in the style of the film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri pulled up outside the Malvern office of the Minister for Women, Kelly O’Dwyer. The billboards read, ‘Women Are Being Killed’, ‘Paid Domestic Violence Leave Can Save Lives’, ‘Why No Action, Kelly O’Dwyer?’.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) was behind the stunt. Last year, the council campaigned the Fair Work Commission to implement 10 days of paid domestic violence leave. The bid was rejected.

Head of ACTU and Macquarie graduate Sally McManus told Buzzfeed, “We have lobbied [the government], gone through the courts and regulatory bodies, and come up empty-handed.

We need paid domestic violence leave. We need to be safe at work and at home around the world. We are not being quiet and we are not going away.”

Bill Shorten has promised that a Labor government will implement 10 days of paid domestic violence leave. The Coalition does not support the ACTU’s recommendation.

Minister for Women Kelly O’Dwyer has called the billboard protest a “cheap political stunt”.

“I think that it is absolutely disgraceful that Sally McManus and the ACTU would play politics with domestic violence in an attempt to score cheap political points.”

She said the Fair Work Commission is considering the inclusion of domestic violence leave in employment agreements, and that the government is waiting on the Commission’s recommendations.

At present, one woman every week is murdered by her current or former partner in Australia.

News || 9

LOCKED OUT

MILLENNIALS AREN’T THE ONLY PEOPLE SUFFERING IN SYDNEY’S HOUSING MARKET I’m gonna have to move soon.

The owners want to move back in or renovate or whatever people do with one of their spare homes. Looking for a new place is grim as a renter, especially in Sydney when you can’t afford shit.

The humiliation of looking at what is offered in your price range as well as the physical task of packing and relocating all your belongings. The looming threat of losing your bond if one of the sofas scuffs the floor on the way out. Knowing you might be doing it again in six months’ time. I feel pretty sorry for myself. I feel worse for my mum though. It has to suck to keep moving at her age.

There is this strange, very bougie assumption that most older people in this country own their homes; that boomers chewed up the market and now millennials are facing a lifetime of renting or living with their home-owning parents. Home ownership in Australia has been declining for the last quarter century and shows no signs of slowing down. And yes, this rightly terrifies young Australians who fear they will never break into the property market, but I would argue it is a far more stark and confronting reminder to older renters that the Australian Dream was not theirs to achieve.

Our pension system in Australia is based on four pillars: The Age Pension, our Superannuation guarantee, voluntary savings and homeownership. Research by the Grattan Institute has found that superannuation savings only account for about 20-25% of the wealth of households, with owner-occupied housing remained the most important source of wealth for households. So, what if you face retirement without owning a home?

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Women, generally, retire with less superannuation and personal savings than men, and this is especially the case for older women who have traditionally been shut out of the workforce to raise children, or worked menial jobs. This is particularly relevant for current retirees, as it will take two more decades before the typical retiree would have been contributing the 9% Super Guarantee to their savings. This means the last pillar these women have to lean on is the Age Pension; too bad that this year’s Rental Affordability Snapshot found that out of 67 000 properties surveyed, less than 1% were affordable on the pension.

“IT IS A FAR MORE STARK AND CONFRONTING REMINDER TO OLDER RENTERS THAT THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM WAS NOT THEIRS TO ACHIEVE.” The Council on Ageing Australia stated that the Affordability Snapshot “paints a bleak picture” and that older people, reliant on the Age Pension, are the most vulnerable to inflation in rental housing.

Similarly, Mission Australia’s report Ageing and Homelessness: solutions for a growing problem reported on the sickening levels of financial strain placed on older renters, and Jeff Fiedler, from the Housing For the Aged Action Group, reported that is now “standard” to see older Australians paying 70-90% of their pension on

rent. It is apparent that this is an urgent national issue that demands immediate attention, and yet the current discourse around housing in this country is absurd.

It is frustrating to listen to the media class lecture me on my avocado consumption as a factor in my potential for homeownership. It’s infuriating to listen to Barnaby Joyce (btw suck shit idiot) lecture people on moving away from their family, friends, jobs to find affordable housing.

But this incessant focus around young people’s potential to live securely ignores the lived present-day realities for so many older people, particularly women, in this country. It is unacceptable to think that those that have contributed to this country, paid their taxes, worked hard all their lives – all the things these snobs keep telling us are what is locking millennials out of the market – are still suffering under exorbitant housing costs in this country.

Go speak to a 75-year-old single woman spending 80% of her pension on a private rental, her life’s income being used to pay off the mortgages of some aspirational idiot’s negatively-geared investment property, and then tell me again how it’s all about pulling yourself up from your bootstraps “just like the older generations did”.

by Layla Pope

O-WEEK: NEITHER DECADENT NOR DEPRAVED I got off the train at midday and no one spoke as I crossed the concourse and pavement to campus. The air was surprisingly mild at first but warmed to the high 20s and up, moderated by the scent of human sweat and sugar dispersed by the breeze.

Across Wally’s Walk, people trudged while conversing with each other, occasionally stopping (or stopped by wandering hawkers) to hear the readily-dispensed spiels at one stall or another. Safely ensconced within the Roleplaying Society booth, I was shielded from most of the mass and disturbed only by occasional arrival of young men (and less occasionally women) keen to inquire as to our activities and membership procedures.

“Just join our Facebook Page. No fees! Yes, we’re on MacSync as well but that’s mostly for the university so they know how many members we have.” Simple, for sure. I didn’t want to make a fuss and point out how hard it’d be to sort the several hundred listed members from those still at Macquarie, so I kept myself reined in for the day, only popping up to give the other fellow some release from benign social interaction.

Our space was shared by students from MacDiz; we rarely spoke unless addressed collectively, or to share opinions on some shared topic. Our favourite Disney movies? For her?

Brave. Mine? Toy Story. An appropriate choice out of the few I could recall. All seemed to approve at the very least. “The first Toy Story was the best one.” The most nostalgic, at least. As a prisoner of this campus of nine years, nostalgia has become my shield from the march of time.

The masses continued their prowling, but as the hours passed, the schooling swarm had drawn down to a slower flow of folk, most clutching freebies from one of the corporations that have become commonplace at an otherwise student-only affair.

NAB was the moneychanger of choice for societies, as decreed by the powers that be. But it was ANZ and CommBank most prominent in their presence with their blue and yellow bags; a plague destined for landfill in a day or two. All we needed was Westpac to complete the Big Four feeding frenzy. And feed they have, especially upon the moneyed folk from overseas propping-up the so-called ‘Education Industry’. I had only a few hours on Wednesday to help crew our box, but by 2:30, things had cooled-down – helped substantially thanks to a subdued dancing display outside MUSE. One dance? Two years ago, there’d be four, each with a different flair and foreign flavour.

One lady asked of where one of the buildings was on Campus.

C3A, to be precise; I knew it was behind our position between W5B and C5C, but how to explain this to the uninitiated?

The University’s campaign to exclude all references to the old building codes from official maps has left us all even less informed than before.

What of buildings far from Wally’s Walk, or any other path for that matter? Eventually, I found an outdated one from 2009 that didn’t even have the new library and pinpointed the building’s location for her; yes, it was behind us, next to the aforementioned library, built as it was as a facsimile of the Uni’s former multi-million dollar logo (MQ’s last two cost more than twenty times the budget of today’s SRC!).

It was discovered that the issue was inflamed by the building lacking a clear identification code under the new system; even on the cheat sheet posted by the SRC that converts the old building codes to new addresses, C3A does not exist.

Eventually we made it to the afternoon. My comrade in the booth had things under control and I had business to attend to.

Admin business; I would need all the time I could have thrown at me to navigate that AskMQ swamp for another year running.

By my return at 3, the place had been well deserted. Back when O-week was in Week 1, the frivolity might continue to at least 4 o’clock, maybe even 5, but here, the party had well and truly dispersed with a little mess and hallow, white booths left behind like gravestones.

That was O-week. No real scenes, no moments of real exaltation or excess. I can heartily recall pallets of Uncle Ben’s rice tossed to a hungry crowd, stilt-walkers parading through the now barren courtyard, folk dressed in medieval garb engrossed in sword and buckler duels and more besides. Now? Maybe one or two costumed folk perhaps, but apart from the yearly humour of stall placement (atheists and anti-abortionists sharing a table and what have you) and the hawkers, was this really a day about students, let alone a real O-Week?

And yet, as I enter my last years of studies at this place, I can’t help but be introspective; has the university become benign and boring, or is it a generational shift? The consequence of a benign and boring generation growing up surrounded by fear and estranged from power – one more engrossed by virtual worlds and events than the mundane. The victory of individualist liberalism encourages ‘My’ spaces and ‘I’ phones and reserves little place for clubs or collectives, even as the world continually preys upon our digitally-moderated isolation.

Will things be any different next year? Doubtful. But that is a problem for those left behind. Will I remember enough about the day to write a trashy gonzo piece about the disappointingly unsordid affair? Probably not.

by Leon Gonzalez

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SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY A WES T E R N S Y D N E Y P E R S P E C T I V E

Sydney is considered as one of the most luxurious and ‘livable’ cities in the world. However, the socio-economic inequality and disadvantage that many people experience living in Sydney’s West is often overlooked. This disadvantage was always clear to me growing up; the way of thinking, living and spending is different outside of the West.

For example, something that never fails to shock me when I visit the North Shore is the inexplicable amount of people with no shoes on. I mean, I usually see less fortunate people with no shoes on at random along Church Street in Parramatta, but that’s not the same because they are struggling economically. People in the North voluntarily don’t wear shoes in shopping centers, at cafés and in the streets; it’s odd and sort of gross, I know.

If you went around shopping centers with no shoes on in the West, people would stare at you like you’re a walking OH&S hazard.

Driving around the Eastern and Northern Suburbs you can’t miss the pretty white houses; they are impressive and grand compared to the houses we grew up around in the West. I wonder if the people in them know how privileged they are to inherit assets instead of debt.

Being a homeowner is more common for Australians living in the city, inner east, inner west and in parts of the Northern suburbs. For Australians living in Western Sydney, there is more rental stress and far less outright home ownership.

Looking at mansions in the North, I always notice through the door-like windows that almost every house has huge artworks displayed on their walls. I wonder if I had been privileged enough to live like that, if I would indulge on huge abstract art (which by the way looked like the works of an angry 2-year-old) that was worth $4000 too. I’d like to think that I would give that money to people worse off than me that would benefit from it. Where people live and what they indulge in says much about their income.

The increasing inequality of incomes between the West and the North/East is made evident when comparing the respective median wage in the regions. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Median wage in North Sydney is $68,771 and in Coogee is $63,355. The Median wage in Bankstown, however, is $38,750.

The huge gap between incomes can be linked to unemployment. Going back to 2001, Australia’s lowest unemployment rates were mostly found in Sydney, in

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Pittwater, Mosman and Baulkham Hills, but some of the highest were found in Fairfield, Auburn and Blacktown.

People in Western Sydney have poor access to well-paid work, live further from economic activity and have far less job security. The fact that there is a high migrant population residing in the West and those with lower English proficiency also intensifies social segregation from other regions.

The lack of police presence is also something that stands out to me when I am outside of the West. It’s peaceful in the North and the East; the only police I ever see there are the ones riding bikes smiling at pedestrians.

Sadly, there’s a different reality in the West.

Western Sydney has the highest crime rate compared to other regions in Sydney; Auburn, Merrylands, Bankstown, Greenacre, Guildford, Liverpool and Granville constantly labelled by mainstream media outlets as Sydney’s most dangerous suburbs.

The West is suffering, and this is not accident. Western Sydney is a long-neglected region, and the only time major politicians like Malcolm Turnbull turn their face towards it is during election time to secure key seats in the region. The Shadow Finance Minister, Tony Burke, commented on this in an interview on ABC’s AM when he said: “You know it’s an election when Malcolm Turnbull is in Western Sydney.”

Time and time again major parties spend time campaigning in the West making “announceables”, but simply do not deliver.

Julia Gillard’s promise of a $64 million anti-gang task force during her week-long campaign in Sydney’s West in 2013, which she failed to follow up, is an example of this.

It’s not difficult to see that we have a divided society and that the gaps are widening. Life outside of Western Sydney seems much less cultured; boring, but easier.

As NSW’s fastest growing region and multicultural hub, Western Sydney deserves more. Huge economic and social infrastructure is needed in these areas and unless we have a government committed to investing in the West, the cycle of unemployment, economic inequality, social exclusion and crime will continue.

by Isil Ozkartal

G’DAY TO YALLAH THE CHANGING AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH

Australia is famous for a lot of things – our beaches, near constant sunshine, allegedly murderous wildlife, vegemite. But we’re also renowned for our absolutely cooked vocabulary.

Honestly, it’s no wonder people find it hard to understand us.

Our accents are funny, we talk fast, we abbreviate everything, and we have slang that even I, a Sydney native who was born and raised here, struggle to understand at times.

There are tutorials on YouTube dedicated to translating what the bloody hell we’re saying into plain English that have clocked up millions of views – that’s a lot of confused foreigners.

Macquarie’s own Professor Ingrid Piller has been leading a team that is studying communication between native English speakers and migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds, and how these interactions impact upon the overall experience immigrants have in Australia.

Most immigrants with English as their second language learn a standardised English that is more of a British or American English, so often the Australian version, with all its euphemisms, are lost on them.

There’s the standard slang that we take for granted: G’day, throw a few snags on the barbie, chuck a u-ey, chuck a sickie (lots of chucking things). But then there are the more nuanced phrases that most of us Australians don’t seem to notice the rest of the world doesn’t use, like ‘heaps’, ‘maccas’, ‘reckon’ and ‘arvo’.

This may all sound comedic and maybe even like an adorable characteristic of Australian culture, but research has found that these linguistic divergences may actually be contributing to challenges that new migrants face upon arriving in Australia.

“Many of the migrants we’ve done language learning with, they come from highly educated backgrounds and have very good formal English that they’d learnt before they came to Australia,” Dr Piller told SBS. “But then they had experiences [here] where they just didn’t understand.”

Prof Piller’s research has found that not only do many immigrants in Australia struggle to understand us even if they

are fluent in English, but that multiculturalism is also actively changing the way we speak.

According to last year’s census, overall overseas migration to Australia was up 27% between 2016-2017, with New South Wales and Victoria experiencing the highest rates of immigration, up 31% and 23% respectively from the previous year. Post World War II, people from all over the world have migrated here, so it’s not all that surprising that our language has evolved with this influx of cultures.

Not only are we more ethnically diverse than ever, but we are increasingly becoming more linguistically rich than we have ever been.

If you’ve been to Western Sydney – the most ethnically and culturally diverse pocket of Australia – then you’ve definitely heard words like ‘yalah’ or ‘habib’ thrown around. Moreover, if you grew up in or around Western Sydney then these words may have even made it into your vocabulary, despite not being or speaking Arabic.

“We see Arabic words, like ‘halal,’ making it into the Australian dictionary – ‘yalah’, ‘habib’, those kind of words,” Piller said.

“You don’t need to know full blown Arabic to know these words, you hear your friends at school say them, and it really happens with the young people more than old people.”

Research like Prof Piller’s is integral in better facilitating new migrants so the gap between native English speakers and people with non-English speaking backgrounds closes. New immigrants face enough challenges when not only assimilating in a new culture, but also in the workplace, in education, and when seeking medical attention.

Australia has not always looked fondly on immigration (see the mortifying White Australia Policy, and Abbott’s recent calls to cut migration numbers) but this type of cultural exchange could prove to be a fundamental stepping stone in the acceptance and accommodation of immigrants from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

by Mariah Hanna

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IT’S EVERYONE’S FAILURE MARIAH HANNA ON INDIGENOUS DEATHS IN CUSTODY Note: This article discusses the recent death of an Indigenous person.

It was in the early hours of a Wednesday morning and a siren was blaring somewhere in the distance, rousing me into consciousness. Living in Redfern, things aren’t exactly peaceful all the time, so I thought nothing of it. Just another rogue tenant somewhere who opened a fire escape, I thought, and went back to sleeping off my hangover.

Later that week, I’d all but forgotten the whirring sirens that had woken me a few mornings before, but then I was scrolling through Facebook and a story about a man who fell from an apartment balcony a few streets away from my house caught my eye. The sirens had more of a story than I’d thought.

Patrick Fisher, an Indigenous man, fell from the balcony of a thirteenth floor apartment in a Waterloo housing block. He’d allegedly been trying to escape police who had a warrant out for his arrest, after a public tip-off into his whereabouts.

To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t this story that caught my attention. It was the lack of stories about it. At the time of writing, there are approximately ten online news articles relating to this incident, and four of those were only written after a resistance rally was organised in response to Mr. Fisher’s death. Other than these few online articles, the incident has hardly made a blip.

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It’s not the first time a police-related Indigenous death was underreported in mainstream media. In fact, this is pretty standard coverage of Indigenous deaths in custody or at the hands of police – that is, minimum reportage. This isn’t anything new either. In 1991 there was a Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody in which hundreds of recommendations were made in an effort to reduce the imprisonment rates of Aboriginal people and subsequent deaths in custody.

One of those recommendations was that the media need to have a more active role in reporting on deaths and Indigenous issues, but this recommendation – like the other 300+ recommendations – has been largely ignored as numbers of Indigenous people in custody continues to rise.

It has been 27 years since this report and circumstances have only gotten worse.

“ T H ESE D E AT H S A R E H I G H LY S U S P I C I O U S ; Y O U H AV E T O A S K Y O U R SE L F W H Y N O O N E I S R E P O R T I N G I T. ”

Indigenous Australians make up 3% of the population, yet they account for 28% of the country’s prison population.

An even more horrifying statistic is that Indigenous children make up 48% of juveniles in custody. According to Amnesty International, Indigenous children are 25 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous children.

The media’s fundamental role is to inform society and to hold government bodies accountable, but in the case of Indigenous injustices the media has failed to foster real change. Instead, the onus has been on family members and community groups to apply pressure on the media to have their stories heard.

Ken Canning, an Indigenous rights activist with Fighting In Resistance Equally (FIRE) and chairperson of the Indigenous Social Justice Association, says mainstream media is failing to inform the public of these rising numbers of Indigenous prisoners, and Aboriginal deaths in custody.

Historically, Australia has had a tendency to ignore the mistreatment of minorities, particularly Indigenous people.

In recent years there has been a spike in the public’s interest in politics due to world events like Brexit and Trump, and it’s led people to scrutinise their own governments and question their own complicity as political movements propelled by racism surge to power.

“These deaths are highly suspicious; you have to ask yourself why no one is reporting it,” he tells Grapeshot. “Sometimes on page 6 you might see a little column. Sometimes there are exceptions, but it’s often forced by families.”

Eric Whitaker, an Indigenous man, died in 2017 shackled to a hospital bed. Whitaker’s family called for an investigation into his death and released images of an unconscious Eric with tubes down his throat and silver chains snaked around his ankles. “[Whitaker’s family] kept hammering the media until finally the Sun Herald published a story about it. But that was a rarity, and it was only through family and community pressure,” Canning says.

In much the same way, Patrick Fisher’s family and FIRE led a protest in Redfern the week following his death.

While an investigation into Fisher’s death has been launched, Canning says it’s already inadequate. “The Botany police, who are the neighbouring police, are doing the critical incident investigation with the Redfern police. That’s like me trashing my own dwelling place and sticking my head out to my neighbour and saying, ‘I wasn’t home, can you tell them someone else did it?’ Of course, my neighbour has known me a long time so he’ll stand up for me, which is exactly what they’re doing.”

This is evidenced in heightened participation in rallies for Indigenous rights, most notably for the case of changing the date of Australia Day to be more inclusive for the Indigenous population who see the 26th of January as a day of mourning.

While the public is becoming more empathetic towards sensitive issues like this, the lack of consistent mainstream media attention leads to continuing systemic oppression, so little action is taken by the government to implement systems of diversion or rehabilitation to reduce inequalities.

If mainstream media is not doing its job then it’s up to us, the Australian public, to continue to engage in these kinds of conversations. Because, frankly, 28% is far too high a number of Indigenous people in custody.

The lack of attention – and potential lack of justice – in cases like Patrick Fisher’s is not only a failure of the media; it’s everyone’s failure.

by Mariah Hanna

News || 15

MACQUARIE MEN THE STORY SO FAR

Content warning: This article briefly mentions sexual violence.

In late January, a Facebook page titled ‘Macquarie Men’ was created. It touted the formation of a group at Macquarie University which aimed to “support men with their physical, emotional and mental health, [providing] a safe environment to discuss any and all issues.” In the lead up to O-Week the page garnered support and derision alike.

The page also received international attention from Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs), who shared and commented in droves on an article the page posted. In effort to prevent further negative attention the post was deleted. Since O-Week, the Macquarie Men page has gathered over 120 likes (at time of writing) and the group has enough members to apply for affiliation with the university.

According to the founder, Martin Lambert, the explicit aim of the group is to “discuss the central theme of men and masculinity [...] how it affects society and how society affects it,” in regards to a number of issues such as the “disproportionate rates of suicide among young men.” They wish to support those suffering from those issues, but also “find out why these issues are occuring.” One of the major issues regarding men and masculinity, Martin contends, is “men not talking about their problems” for fear of ridicule or misunderstanding. “Our main focus is here at the university; we want to give [men] the same support other people have.”

Regarding MRAs, Martin “categorically denounces” the movement, “but not on the basis of their views.” He later added, “We don’t want to be associated with them on campus at all; we don’t support hate [...]

We aren’t here to start fights; we’re here to start a conversation.”

According to Martin, controversy with MRAs began when local MRAs spread a post from Macquarie Men regarding false

16 || News

rape accusations. The post was picked up by international MRAs, gathering hundreds of vitriolic comments on the (now deleted) Facebook post which “were focused on the source of the article, but not the content.”

The group claims to be open to all Macquarie students, including women, queer and trans men and non-binary individuals.

“We can’t have a conversation about equality if we’re only listening to men.

We want everyone on campus to join the conversation if they want to,” says Martin.

The group has yet to announce any meetings or activities for LGBTQIA+ individuals. However, Martin has expressed interest in working with both the Women’s Collective and the Queer Collective. “We all want the same thing; we want equality.”

Women’s Collective Executive Sian Sykes “remains hopeful that the Men’s Collective can exist as a positive space for men that is wholly and unwaveringly respectful to women,” yet states that the collective “cannot let slide statements and actions

by Men’s Collective members that are harmful and misguided. WoCo believes in education above conflict, and hope that we can assist the Men’s Collective in creating a space that is safe, positive and respectful.”

Queer Collective president Charlie Zada has said that he is “unconvinced this is the group we need to address issues such as sexism, rape culture, toxic and hypermasculinity.” However, he is “cautiously optimistic that with some guidance, we could have a positive experience,” and is “happy to work with them in creating events that could really benefit everyone.”

by Max Lewis

FOOD MATTERS

FOOD INSECURITY AND STUDENT HUNGER Most people agree that access to an education provides a springboard to a rewarding and prosperous professional life. But the getting-there often resembles a testing ground for students in developing skills of endurance and resilience, particularly in times of difficult financial circumstances. It is not uncommon for student poverty to be regarded as a rite of passage, a character-building experience made of two-minute noodles, expensive textbooks, and lots of partying. However, it is dangerous to romanticise student poverty, especially when we discover that an increasing proportion of university students go without necessities because they cannot afford them.

What if one of the immediate consequences of student poverty was that some students went without food from time to time? Some would argue that students’ spending priorities may be at the core of the problem, and if students were more ‘responsible’, they would not experience problems with accessing safe and nutritious food. Indeed, spending priorities can influence purchasing patterns. Yet, it should not detract our attention from the significance of financial hardship over decisions concerning living arrangements and food practices. The cost of food is considerable for people with limited economic access and often, students allocate their disposable income to other needs.

The few studies that have been conducted recently on the prevalence of food insecurity among university students in Australia send alarming signals. Research at Griffith University in 2011 found that more than 25 per cent of its university student population was experiencing food insecurity and hunger. Not only did the study confirm the strong association between personal finances, time management and food habits, it also highlighted how students living with their parents were significantly less likely to be food insecure.

A similar research project was conducted in 2014 at the University of Wollongong. The findings were even more alarming and revealed that about 37% of its student population experienced severe levels of food insecurity.

Most vulnerable of all were international students, students who were renting, and those without a car. Undoubtedly, food access is not only a question of economic access, but it is also a question of physical access.

Ever heard of ‘food deserts’, places where the only food available is either at the local service station or at local convenience store?

Of course, employment can ease problems of food insecurity, but the question remains: how many hours should students work to support and feed themselves while studying? If paid employment is not sufficient to cover food, students tend to resort to a suite of coping strategies like going back to the parental home for dinner, borrowing money, attending events where free food is made available, working for the hospitality industry, or even seeking support from food banks or welfare agencies. And for the more adventurous, there’s always dumpster diving.

There are a few points of interest here. To begin with, food insecurity is experienced to much higher degrees among university students than it is among the general Australian population. In fact, the Australian government reports a prevalence of food insecurity among the Australian population in the vicinity of 5% (Australian Institute of Family Studies). With levels hovering over the 25% mark for university student populations, it is fair to conclude that being young, paying rent or board away from home, and living in low-income households will set you up as a likely candidate as someone who is not enjoying easy access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food.

This leads us to the second point. Food insecurity and inadequate food intake reduces physical and mental health and diminishes an individual’s ability to learn, work and participate socially. Therefore, it would suggest that the very argument that tertiary education is the springboard for socio-economic development might be undermined by the insecure conditions under which tertiary education is to be obtained. Misaligned student support policies at both governmental and university levels further reinforce the vulnerability of university students at risk of poverty, financial stress and food insecurity.

How do the 40,000 students enrolled at Macquarie University fare in the face of financial stress and food poverty is anyone’s guess. But if previous research projects can be of any indication, some 10,000 students could be suffering from severe forms of food insecurity, including hunger.

by Brigit Busicchia

News || 17

MUGA

A STAND-IN STUDENT UNION?

18 || News

George Mpliokas is a rare breed of modern uni student. He’s fiercely supportive of student groups, has invested swathes of time in the group he leads, the Macquarie University Greek Association (MUGA), and, if the university cuts him a poor deal, he’s willing to fight them on it.

The fight in him flared up early in semester when it was revealed that the ‘conference rooms’ so enthusiastically touted by the university as a gift to student groups as part of the new MAZE space would not be free to use. Rather, groups will be copping a $90 fee – a fee that will be going straight into the pocket of an outsourced company – if they want to hire a room and gather in force.

It’s a particularly galling development as spaces suitable for students to gather in large numbers dwindle amongst the continuing demolition and construction work.

“We’re not very impressed,” Mpliokas tells Grapeshot. “It’s a step backwards. No one asked me to knock down C10a.

Nobody told me that MAZE would be rooms for hire. Before the demolition we had free access to rooms. We’re student groups, we contribute to the campus culture, and this is the thanks we get?”

higher up. And the SRC, as far as he’s concerned, have so far failed to come to the plate.

“The SRC haven’t taken responsibility. The SRC are just kids,” he says. “I ran for the SRC because I believe in serving the campus community and my fellow students. I didn’t get elected, and I’m only salty because we don’t see the outcomes that they promised. They’re not capable of stepping up and demanding what’s right for students.”

“I don’t see them sharing any of our posts. I don’t see them encouraging or supporting us, or other groups like us. They should know who they’re representing, but I don’t think they do. We’ve co-signed letters with the Women’s Collective and other groups, stood alongside them when the sexual harassment reports came out and such, because it’s the right thing to do. I don’t see the SRC doing that. All they’re doing is making memes.”

Macquarie’s lack of a Student Union further enables executives to walk over students and groups without much backlash.

Mpliokas says there are other mandates putting a squeeze on the operation of student groups, to the extent that even MUGA, a 300 member strong student group with a 40-year history, is running into operational difficulties. A tighter cap on their bank balance, for example, means fundraising events – which in the past have raised thousands of dollars for Greek education units – are difficult to run. MUGA was also quoted $2000 for a simple serving of alcohol and chips at an event which brought in academics, delegates and politicians from the Greek and wider Australian community.

“MUGA is probably as close to a Student Union as Macquarie’s got at the moment,” he says. “We give discounts to our members for cafes on campus, we give discounts to restaurants off campus, members get free pens, hats, jerseys.

We do everything except printing, it feels like,” he says. “We feel responsible as a larger group to support the other student groups, because we know how hard it is to keep these groups alive. We wanna do what we can to coordinate the effort, so people can come and grab a feed on campus, sign up as a member, support a student group. We’re not here to say ‘come to our stall but don’t go over there’. That’s not what we’re about. But the way things are set up, it seems we’re pushed in that direction.”

“The nature of these guidelines are just ludicrous. The university is in a corporate relationship with the catering service and provider, and the rule we’ve had is that any function with alcohol must go through them. We’ve been quoted in the past for functions with 50 people for an hour, $2000. Literally just for two bottles of red wine to have with some chips and cheese after a lecture.”

Over the last five years, the number of student groups has indeed dwindled. What happened to the smaller, colourful groups like ChocSoc, or the Adventure Time society? As construction continues, more and more groups will drop off the map, Mpliokas says. Societies that need to meet in large spaces regularly, like performance groups, will be particularly beleaguered by the room hire fees.

Even something as simple as running a barbecue has become a fraught affair. Despite the fact that MUGA has had a barbecue booked since October last year, at the time we spoke he was doubtful MUGA’s ambitions of continuing to sling free, fresh food at students would be realised.

“Macquarie University has become a place where you rock up, go to class, and you leave,” he says. “It’s not something that we created, it’s something that we inherited. The last 5 years of change, the corporate interests that’ve got their finger in the pie, and the direction we’ve been led in by the people who make the calls. That’s not SRC, that’s not Student HQ, but that’s the way that we’ve been led.”

“We’re planning for 300 serves of souvlaki at our barbecue – me and a couple of guys from our committee will hand prepare them, and marinate using the best Greek recipes,” he says. “But for all we know, we’re gonna get told on the morning that there’s a food truck from some business that has hired the space, and ‘we forgot to tell you, sorry, but they take precedence because they pay us corporate dollars’. It’s frustrating and it’s wrong, but that’s the sort of treatment we’ve come to expect.”

He says Campus Engagement, the body responsible for student groups, has been ‘sympathetic’, but are restricted in what they can do because of funding and power-cuts from

In a statement the SRC told Grapeshot that they are “fully committed to supporting and advocating on the behalf of student groups,” and have “provided over $20 000 in supplementary funding to student groups as well as advocacy and other advisory support”. They have also raised concern about the room hiring fees and are exploring “a variety of solutions”.

The SRC have reached out to Mpliokas and MUGA to “ensure they feel supported by the SRC”.

by Angus Dalton

NEWS || 19

FAIR GO JACQUI LAMBIE ON THE P O L I T I C A L P O WE R O F E V E R Y D A Y A U SS I ES 20 || News

In what was called ‘the most Aussie court ruling in recent times’

by The Huffington Post, last year activist Danny Lim won an appeal against a conviction that had found him guilty of ‘offensive behaviour’. His alleged crime was doing something that most other Aussies are probably guilty of too: calling Tony Abbott a cunt.

Danny is an iconic figure in Sydney, appearing in train stations and busy streets sporting a winning grin with his Chihuahua, Smarty, tucked under his arm, and a sandwich board plastered with messages like ‘Smile 4 Peace … Peace B With U’ and ‘Climate Change, Heat Goes Up … Love, Horny, Sex Goes Down ... the End of U’.

But it was his posters like ‘Tricky Lying Tony You Can’t Screw Education, Health, Jobs & the Environment’ that got him into trouble with the law – the ‘A’ in Can’t was inverted to look more like a ‘U’ … you get the picture.

He was found guilty of offensive behaviour and slapped with a $500 fine.

But after the 73-year-old launched an appeal in the District Court, the fine was overturned, as according to the judge the word cunt is “now more prevalent in everyday language than it has previously been... the prevalence of the impugned word in Australian language is evidence that it is considered less offensive in Australia than other English speaking countries, such as the United States”.

You might have seen Danny in the news for this iconic ruling, but you may have missed the stint during the lead-up to the 2016 Federal Election when his sandwich board read ‘had enuf – Vote 1 Danny Lim – YOUR VOICE UPPER HOUSE’.

That’s right: a disillusioned Danny ran for the Senate. He told Junkee at the time: “The politician (sic) should be more fair dinkum with the people … Turnbull has no balls, no heart, no brain. No nothing.”

Danny didn’t get the win, but his shot at Parliament does exemplify an increasing tendency for the ordinary, the zany, and the politically inexperienced to shoot for Parliament as independents, or as part of smaller parties.

In his book Rogue Nation: Dispatches from Australia’s populist uprisings and outsider politics, Royce Kurmelovs argues that because we’re seen the rise of such a drastically inept leader in the US, and watch as our own politicians stumble around behind whiteboards, get slapped with a #bonkban and munch on onions, faith in the professionalism and potency of our major parties is deteriorating – so ordinary Aussies are stepping up to the plate.

Kurmelovs writes of politicians: ‘Everyone, eventually, falls short. Every single one. And when powerful people start to look ordinary, those who vote for them start to think that ordinary people might do a better job. Break the illusion enough times and people start to cast around for alternatives.’

Scott Ludlam, the former Greens Senator who kicked off the

citizenship shitstorm when he resigned from Parliament last year, thinks these ‘alternatives’ ascending to government would be a good thing.

‘Throw out any ideas about needing a law degree or a policy doctorate or an apprenticeship in student politics … you can do this thing your own way,’ he wrote recently in The Monthly.

‘Slowly, through thousands of acts of personal determination, the parliament may come to more closely resemble the society it claims to represent.’

It was this ideology that spurred James Matheson to challenge Tony Abbott in the seat of Warringah in 2016. Matheson mightn’t be considered an ‘ordinary’ Australian – he co-hosted Australian Idol alongside Andrew G for six years before slipping off screens in 2009 – but he was obscure enough to present himself as a down-to-earth, independent political alternative for the people, especially younger voters.

He said during his campaign: “I don’t have any political experience, but you know, if political experience means that you deceive the public and means that you break promises and means that you never say what you mean, then maybe we need someone who doesn’t have ‘political experience’.”

He couldn’t beat Abbott, but Matheson garnered widespread support and a solid fanbase. He also earned a glowing endorsement from Jacqui Lambie, who said, “You go for it, James. Put on those budgie smugglers and give Tony Abbott a run.”

And if there’s anyone who knows about how to crack the Senate as an outsider from major parties, it’s Lambie.

Her successful journey to the Senate in the 2013 election began, in part, when in 2009 she walked out onto the road deliberately into the path of an oncoming car.

A decade earlier her career in the military had been brought to an end by a back injury she sustained during a training exercise.

After she was discharged, she had to fight for compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA), for treatment for both her back pain and the resulting depression.

But, after the DVA launched a private investigation that involved Lambie being under surveillance in her own home, they cancelled all payment after deciding that she had been fabricating her symptoms.

Lambie fought the DVA for five years. During that time she became addicted to pharmaceuticals and alcohol, and after a decade of fighting, it had all become too much.

Needless to say, she survived the suicide attempt. She saw her recovery as a gift from god – and with her second chance, she was going hell for leather to make it to the top.

When I call her one afternoon during a busy press day for her new memoir, Rebel with a Cause, she accidentally hits the Facetime button. “What’s goin on?! Ah, lucky I have my clothes on mate!” she cackles. “Fair go.”

News || 21

Technical issues aside, when I ask her why she decided to write her memoir she says it was for the same reasons she went for parliament: “If you’re given a second chance, you grab it with everything you’ve got. There’s a lot of people out there living with chronic pain and heaps of people living with mental illnesses. I just wanted to let them know that they’re not alone.”

Lambie sold her house in northern Tasmania to fund her run as an Independent. She soon realised that she needed far more funding, so, begrudgingly, she joined the Palmer United Party.

Clive Palmer gave her the financial support she needed for her campaign (about 2 million) that was eventually successful in securing her a spot in the Senate.

In her first few months as a federal politician, Lambie was ridiculed. Some of the derision aimed at her was justified – her unfounded, blustering attack on Yassmin Abdel-Magied about a subject Lambie clearly knew nothing about, Sharia Law, inflamed Islamophobia on social media and on hundreds of News Corp editorial pages. Between casting doubt on climate science and publicly opposing same sex marriage for religious reasons, early on in her career she was lumped in with the nut-job pile alongside Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts and Bob Katter.

“The whole time I was with Palmer United I was getting flogged.

We never even got breathing space,” says Lambie. “Pauline would come out and say ‘ah, they give us such a hard time’, and I’d think, Jesus, girlfriend. You don’t know the half of it. It was horrific.”

But Lambie is a quick learner. She rapidly developed political clout and seems to realise that when she sticks to the stuff she actually knows about – veterans affairs, welfare, education – she can be a genuinely inspiring political fighter. And she truly began to shine when she ditched Palmer’s party to stand as an Independent.

In 2015 she revealed that her son was addicted to ice and put a brave, emphatic please to Parliament to reconsider the way we tackle addiction. This time last year, too, she was lifted by an outpouring of support from people across the political spectrum after she delivered a powerful and vulnerable speech to the Senate in opposition to planned welfare cuts.

“I want you know what it is like to be at the bottom of the crap pile through no fault of our own. It is shameful and embarrassing, but we do it not because we want to but because circumstances put us there,” she told Parliament. “And for you to take more money off those people, you have no idea how bloody tough it is, every little cent counts to those people. If you really realised the damage that you are doing to that part of society, you would stop doing it.”

to get into politics and shoot for Parliament, she’s realistic about the huge challenge running as an independent presents.

“For an independent out there looking to give it a shot, even if they’d be great at the job, they’re not getting that shot. Not unless they’ve got millions of dollars behind them. They need backers, they need helpers out there on the ground. It’s near impossible to get off the starting blocks,” she says.

Lambie also hit out at the major parties for saying that they’d refuse to cut deals with the smaller parties – like the Jacqui Lambie Network, which she founded in 2015, and the Greens – during the recent Tasmanian election on March 3, in which Lambie rolled out 13 (ultimately unsuccessful) candidates.

“What a slap in the face. For the people voting for my network, and the ordinary people of Tasmania, to me what [the major parties] are saying to them is that they’re not good enough. Labor and the Liberals are so stuck up their own bums that they don’t think normal Tasmanians are good enough to be in Parliament.

Well you know what? The Liberal Party and other people out there didn’t believe that I was good enough to be in the Senate, but how’d that go? Bugger ‘em.”

The impact Lambie made on Parliament became clear when she tearfully resigned from Senate during the citizenship eligibility crisis. Labor Senator Kimberley Kitching called her ‘heroic’, and George Brandis – who Lambie had called a ‘disgrace’ in her early months in the senate – said she was one of the best-liked figures in the country.

If Lambie has made anything clear, it’s that we need to take political independents more seriously in a time where disillusionment with major parties and the same-old political operators is peaking.

Australians and journalists are sick of parliamentarians spewing the same script that sticks to party lines, and voters want ambition and accountability - of late, Lambie has led a campaign that seeks to vastly improve the transparency of political donations.

The danger in patronising people who operate outside of the standard political vernacular doesn’t need to be explained here as Trump enters his sixteenth month as President of the US. Voters are looking for leadership, and instead of looking up, they’re looking sideways at the people who they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with, or the faces on their TV screens, or in the case of Derryn Hinch, the voices playing through their radio speakers.

Lambie is at her best when she informs her politics around what she knows and her life experiences. Does she think most other politicians lead their careers in this way?

I still think Lambie’s attack on Islam was reprehensible, and even as I write this she’s ragging on #MeToo on ABC’s The Drum and dismissing the movement as ‘victimhood campaign’, which is a reductive and misinformed argument to say the least. But if Lambie represents a movement of people entering parliament free from the strings of corporate dollars and donations, and unbridled by the pressure to stick blindly to party lines, I support her cause, even if I don’t support her party.

“Most of them haven’t had any life experience,” she quips. “That’s probably why there’s so many duds up there. That’s truth mate – everything they’ve had has either been passed to them on a silver platter or they’ve just been coming up through the ranks because that’s how the factions work. That’s not politics, that’s not democracy, and it’s sure as hell not freedom.”

As we head towards the 2019 federal election, Lambie’s gearing up for a campaign to take back her Senate seat. She’s a bit strapped for cash now her politician payment has stopped, so once her book tour wraps, she’ll be looking for a job so she can fund her way back to Parliament. Visitors to Tasmania might find her behind a bar.

While Lambie has been on radio lately encouraging young people

“I’m not afraid to pull a beer,” she says. “I’ll bring my own tip jar.”

by Angus Dalton

22 || News

REGULARS

CHALLENGE

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER DOES NATHANIEL HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO MAKE A CANE TOAD CROAK?

The scene is in London, and I’m walking into a fancy French restaurant with a date when my jaw drops. The walls were covered in gold, and ornate spires held the roof up. I had been transported 200 years back in time, where the poor were dying in the streets from starvation while the rich were dying in opulent brasseries from a spatchcock bone down their gullet. I felt like a Disney Princess, and thought it was the perfect night. I was wrong.

Have you ever tried frogs legs before? I did that night.

They tasted like chicken, but saying that, most exotic meats taste like chicken to me. They were definitely a meh on the yuck-to-scrumptious spectrum, but it was my date’s turn to pay so I couldn’t complain. Afterwards I travelled home with my belly full of amphibian meat,

24 || Regulars

seriously considering veganism. I went to take a shower when I realised my chest had been engulfed by a red raw rash. I have never had an allergic reaction before; were frogs my secret Achilles heel?

The scene is now Present Day, and I am tasked with putting an end to the environmental disaster that is the cane toad. My method? Murder.

Look, I know they’re killing our wildlife and pushing native species, including other frogs, into extinction, but I feel bad whenever I deflea my cats – how on earth could I bring myself to kill one of these admittedly vile toads?

Cane toads are pretty much frogs on steroids, I told myself. If a little ribbit can cover me in a rash, what

could a mega ribbit do to me? It was a matter of kill or be killed. At least, that’s how I justified my endeavor to murder a not-so-innocent animal.

If you haven’t heard, cane toads have reached Sydney now, which is absolutely insane. I remember going up to Queensland once and seeing hundreds of those monsters squished along the pavement, which is kinda fucked up now that I think about it. Was Sydney about to experience a cane toad plague of biblical proportions, unless I put a stop to the invasion from the north?

My first course of action was to google where I could find some of these demonic amphibians. I stumbled upon a website belonging to cane toad crusaders, Team BUFO. Their sidebar had links to ‘Toad Sex’ (not my kink, sorry), but most importantly, ‘Killing Toads’.

Apparently the most humane way to kill a cane toad is to put it in a bag or container and chuck it into the fridge until they’re in the land of nod (note to self; potential idea if I can’t go to sleep), then throw them in the freezer to a slow and painless death.

I thought to give these Toad Avengers a call to get some advice on my upcoming assassinations. Lead researcher, no answer. Water expert, no reply. Call after call, multiple emails, nothing. Had the Toad Avengers disassembled? Or perhaps... the toads killed them?

I had no choice, I had to find toad’s leader and end it.

I was send coordinates to find my mark; a pocket of national park where it had been reported that a group of cane toads were spotted brazenly fornicating and breeding in a pond, to the panic of local residents.

I went to my kitchen and grabbed my deep dish Chinese takeaway container that I bought for the meal prep phase I never got around too, and headed out to Loftus, right at the edge of the Royal National Park just south of Sydney, to carry out my first murder.

by my warty nemesis to lure me here and get me lost with no way out? The odds were stacked against me, but the track is easy enough. It’s surprisingly peaceful out in the bush.

I must admit though, several dragonflies zoomed past my face and I did scream; I like to think it lulled the cane toads into a false sense of security, thinking I was easy pickings (I was).

One kilometre in and my camera starts acting funny, flashing the same frame of the ground and refusing to take pictures. Were Apple and the toads in cahoots?

During this frustrating tech problem, I heard it.

Children. Laughing. Playing. At least 10 of them by the sounds of it. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING BUSH. I was freaked out to the extreme. I went off the path to see if I could see what the hell was going on. I was in the middle of nowhere, with only a vague sense of where I came from, when another bizarre sound filled the air; it was like the train station ding ding DING announcement sound, followed by a voice asking everyone to get ‘on the bus’.

I was too stunned to grasp what they were saying. Was the magic school bus taking a tour of the bush? Terrified, I wanted out.

I stumbled back onto the path and followed it onwards.

I obviously took a wrong turn, because I walked into something out of The Blair Witch Project. The trees oozed red sap that looked like blood and some of their branches twisted liked an octopus. The path had a giant stone in the middle that looked like a massive demonic hand. Was I caught up in some twisted cane toad curse?

Terrified, I started running. Finally stumbling on an information center, I decided to ask for a way home. The lobby was filled with taxidermied animals; was I next to be added to the collection?

I arrived at this sleepy suburb still unconvinced I had what it takes to go through with this. I ask some locals if they had ever seen a cane toad in the area. They replied no. Was I even in the right place? Or were they hiding amongst us, wearing the skin of Team BUFO to blend into society? I retreated away and continued my walk to the edge of the park.

The lady, clearly ready to go home herself, asked why I was there. “I’m here to kill a cane toad” I tell her embarrassedly, confounded even worse when she tells me that I had been searching in the completely wrong part of the park. Oops. Adding insult to injury, apparently there hasn’t even been a sighting for several years.

Perhaps I should have done more googling beforehand.

Loftus is a bit of an oddity; the suburb is still in Sydney, but it feels like I’m 500km inland. On one side of me is the corner shops, and on the other is bush as far as the eye can see. There’s an abandoned tram museum, with half buried tracks running parallel to the road. There’s no obvious entry to the hiking track, so I walk alongside the highway, terrified I’d end up like those cane toads back in Queensland. I whip out my phone to find the entry to the bush.

Following her instructions, I manage to find the tram tracks in the middle of the bush (this is some Lost shit) and follow them back home. Part of me was glad to have never had to hurt a cane toad, but after such a messed-up day, even though the Sydney toad’s are probably all dead now, they still managed to hurt me beyond the grave.

by Nathaniel Keesing

8% battery.

The Mardi Gras playlist I was boogieing too was apparently too lit for my phone, and I’d have to make do with mother nature as my guide. Was this part of a plan

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PLAY THAT FUNKY MUSIC WHITE BOY MAX LEWIS INVESTIGATES THE INNER WEST MUSIC SCENE For the past two-and-a-half months, I have been engaged in the most in-depth and dangerous undercover mission in Grapeshot history. Putting my hopes, dreams, fears and even my life on the line, I have penetrated the inner-west music scene in the name of investigative journalism and definitely nothing else. I’ve played harsh noise to sixteen-year-olds; sweated out gigs in kitchens, living rooms, garages, made friends and drank a lot of cider. “But Maxwell,” I hear you ask. “Isn’t this just how you’ve been spending your free time for the past few months?” You couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve been in the deepest undercover investigation in my life with the intent of chronicling the inner-west music scene for future generations. You read these words today not because my initial article, which was infinitely more interesting and relevant, fell through. Nay, you read them to be privy to history, so you can look back at the stars of tomorrow and say, “I was there when they couldn’t play their instruments and were called ‘Beatnik Lettuce.’”

The time is late December, 2017. The premise? A mere tinder date. Romance-wise it didn’t go anywhere because I’m afraid of commitment, fun and love, but my date did mention that his friend’s ‘glam rock’ band was looking for a drummer for a gig in a few days. Not knowing anything about the band or his friend, and not really knowing how well I’d be able to drum after not doing so for over a year, I chased it up anyway.

A few days of messaging later I arrange to meet up with the glam rock band – currently a duo – at the frontman’s house above a linen shop in Dulwich Hill. The frontman was seventeen years old, trans, played guitar and sang, and was the primary songwriter for the group. Later, the other member showed up. Dressed in a yellow raincoat despite it being a cloudless day in summer, she arrived with a small yamaha keyboard but assured me she didn’t know how to play it. Obsessed with Bowie and Zappa, she’s the living embodiment of ‘born in the wrong generation’ and I mean that in the most complimentary ways possible; she’s probably got the most unique style I’ve ever seen on a human person.

We hashed out the two songs they had already written, and they were impressed with my drumming for some reason.

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Later, when I expressed reservations about being a good fit the guitarist replied, “Uh, no way. You’re totally in the band.”

The next day I finish an eight-hour shift at work and hoof it to Dulwich hill. We’ve recruited a bassist, someone whom our ‘keyboardist’ vaguely knows. He’s good, and picks up the songs rather quickly for someone who looks and acts like he’s constantly off his face. Later, a group of the guitarist’s friends pour in high on LSD. They sit downstairs and listen to us rehearse and later gush about how good we are. I’m dissociating from tiredness and not eating, which helps me navigate the tricky game of talking to people off their rocker.

It’s the next day and I’ve got another eight-hour shift at work – it’s peak Christmas time, after all. As soon as I’m done I rush again to Dulwich Hill. It’s gig time, and the destination is some rando’s house. I arrive and the place is already packed; a backyard full of drinking, laughing, smoking. The garage of this sharehouse has a full on scooby-doo van.

The other members get here. We practice in someone’s bedroom while harsh garage punk blares through the walls.

I’m anxiety-drinking lots of cider and feeling more and more dissociative. I compliment a random guy’s shirt of a local band I like and we talk about synthpop. I add him on Facebook and drunkenly demand we start a new wave band.

Soon enough it’s time to play. We’re piled into this share house kitchen full of stagnant air and sweat. The guitarist is singing through a mic taped on two crutches as a makeshift stand. I’m drunk and my limbs feel floaty. I fumble, drop my sticks, laugh at the keyboardist who snorted MDMA right before the set. One of the members of the Bleeding Knees club is here, nodding intently. We plow through three original songs and one cover of a shitty Frank Zappa song. People are bemused, impressed, indifferent. I drink more cider and chat with random people before stumbling home on a tram, a train, a bus.

Flash-forward three weeks or so – I’m now in a band with the synth-pop guy, and we have a set at another house party.

This one’s a little different; we’re playing out of a garage to a mix of fresh-out-of-school teens, random tradies and kids between the age of fifteen or sixteen. I’m controlling a synth and drum machines that I had bought just over a week prior. Again, I’m drinking enough that my nerves don’t get the better of me, shooting shit with some familiar faces from the last gig and harassing a beautiful Golden Retriever.

When we play, our set is shaky, out of place, uncertain. I can’t hear my bandmate and he can’t hear me. We play two original songs, a Death in June cover, and finish with a bizarre improvised mix of harsh noise and techno where I held a microphone up to an amp for five minutes while playing some beats. We don’t get much applause.

It’s the next month, and it’s the birthday party of glam rock band’s guitarist, so naturally we’re playing. I’m sitting, drinking, distantly engaging with conversations as more people I don’t know arrive. We play, and again I’m a little too drunk to play well. We have four original songs and a cover of a six-minute Violent Femmes song we had learned earlier that day. We’re packed into a tiny living room, and

people are nodding, dancing. My original tinder date says that I’m “pretty good” at the drums. I enjoy the rest of the party feeling a little better about everything than I did after my very first gig.

It’s exactly a month after the birthday show. My new wave band has recorded a demo that is due out soon. Our leading single has been played on graveyard shows at FBi and 2SER. We have a show at a pub put on by a local label, on the same day as Mardi Gras. After fretting about it all week, I feel the anxiety literally leave my body as I enter the venue: it’s absolutely packed. The good thing, though, is that it is packed with what I’d call ‘pub people’ – men shouting at sports, old women drinking long island iced tea, that sort of thing. Knowing that I don’t have to impress these people lifts a weight off my shoulders and I’m filled with energy. The other act – some garage punk – arrive, as well as some familiar faces, people I’ve met from Sydney’s punk and experimental scene by going to gigs with my bandmate, whom I’ve become close friends with. We set up on a small stage, complete with a PA that I plug my instruments into, and a ‘fallback’ system which means I can actually hear what myself and my bandmate are doing. I’m tipsy but not drunk, thanks to the free drink tokens given out by the pub management. Our first song, our leading single of anachronistic post-punk, starts, and the pub people filter out, leaving a collection of friends from the scene dancing and nodding their heads. We play five totally original songs, two written and sung by me. I pack up my gear, still buzzing.

The inner west music scene is weird. Almost every show you’ll see the same people, whether it be hardcore punk, experimental electronica or throbbing techno. From tiny kitchens and garages, to cramped bars and bustling bowling clubs, people come together just to enjoy music and the community. It’s also one of the most inclusive communities I’ve ever seen: every venue has pledged to be a safe space for women, Indigenous and LGBTQIA+ folk.

Acts will acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land every time they play, and, although some shows get rowdy, there’s always an immense respect for property and those participating. I’ve been a passive member of the community for a few years, but it’s only by getting involved recently I’ve been able to see how amazing the inner west music scene is. From the small scale of tiny house shows to the big-time of proper venues, there’s one thing that connects the scene of the inner-west, and it’s dang good music.

by Max Lewis Photo by Jack De Lacy

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ILLUSTRATED

AUSSIE ANTI-COCKTAILS

COCKTAILS THAT YOU CAN PULL TOGETHER AT ANY AUSSIE HOUSE PARTY AND GET BUZZED SANS BOOZE

THE ‘HUNGRY, THIRSTY, DEAD’

Raid the closest fridge for choccy milk.

Shake it up and ignore the fact that manufacturers can hide bits of dung, mud and blood in there because of its convenient dark brown colouring.

Add a dash of worcestershire sauce, a glob of vegemite, a fistful of crushed coco-pops, and shake. Strain the mixture through one of those black plastic cockroach bait things into the fanciest goblet you can find. Garnish with some roach legs you found under the fridge.

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THE STEALIN’ STALIN

Are you one of those meme communists? Are you also stingy as fuck? This beverage is perfect for you.

Grab an unassuming mug and sneak around the party tipping small portions of everyone’s drink into your own; if you are questioned by someone you are mooching off, make a scene by calling them a filthy capitalist pig and squealing loudly like a disgruntled sow.

Once you have gathered a full mug of shared goods shove it in the microwave for five and a half minutes. This will boil off any alcohol and leave a congealed shot of glucose syrup that will give you a sugar-high like no other. Enjoy, and don’t look at yourself in the mirror.

PARTY MASH

Every time the mum-friend of the party comes around with a platter of sausage rolls or party pies, graciously take one and sneak it into your pocket.

After about thirty minutes your pockets should be bulging. Excuse yourself from whatever conversation and find the kitchen. Place the party pies and sausage rolls into the blender every rich family has. Mix in ¼ cup of water and 4/4 cup of tomato sauce (or ketchup if you’re a heathen). Blend for exactly 30 seconds – you want there to be plenty of lumps like that bubble tea the kids are so excited about. Drink it straight from the container while holding your nose and if anybody asks just say it’s a protein shake.

THE ‘HEY YA’

Grab a cocktail shaker. Raid your hipster friend’s bedroom for a stack of polaroids; it’s better if they’re developed so your friend can’t put them on instagram. Place the polaroids in a bowl, splash a bit of water and microwave for about 5 minutes (depending on the wattage of your microwave you may need more or less).

Once the polaroids have melted and the chemicals are bubbling, carefully pour the contents of the bowl into the cocktail shaker. Add any ice-cold mixer and shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it. Serve and try to remember what makes love the exception.

MOZZITO

Grab the nearest bottle of aerogard, preferably the tropical strength one (none of this odorless crap), and twist off the lid. You’ll need to collect and add to the bottle: the ashes of some poor quality burnt mosquito coils, the bloody remains of a little mozzie a friend slapped on their arm, and a dash of citronella oil. Twist the lid back on, give her a good shake and then enjoy spritzing the delicious liquid in the air then walking through it with your tongue hanging out; this is how to get the most of the mouth-watering aroma and taste.

MUMMY’S MULE

MEDICINE

Every night after putting up with yo shit all day, your mum always takes one of her fancy pills and falls asleep instantly.

Sneak into her medicine cabinet and tip the whole bottle into your Shrek the 3rd soda cup; don’t worry, she won’t even notice they’re gone! She never notices anything you do anyway. We don’t want to end up in the land of nod though (Mum’s there unwinding and she definitely doesn’t want to see your snotty nose). So, add one of her Red Bulls she needs to be able to function every morning. Enjoy the paralysis down one side of your body!

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MARTINA MARTIAN

THE SYDNEY ARTIST GOING GLOBAL ON CREATING SNAPCHAT’S AUSSIE STICKERS How did you get started as an artist, and was there a particular moment you decided you were going to pursue illustration and design as a career?

I started out just illustrating for friends and small businesses, so it was only toward the end of my degree that I realised I could pursue this full time. I quit my part time job, finished classes and decided to pursue it more seriously.

Your illustrations are instantly recognisable – how would you describe your style?

Bright and bold, often with a nostalgic twist.

Which artists, writers and musicians are you inspired by?

I’m very much inspired by Memphis-era artists, positive female role models and feminist icons. I don’t idolise anyone in particular – I’m just generally inspired by brave and bold women.

You were asked by Snapchat to design a suite of Aussie-centric stickers. How did you go about designing these stickers? Were you looking to play on or undercut Australian stereotypes?

It was a challenging design job that I really took seriously.

I had just come back from an amazing Europe trip and was in a love-hate relationship with Australia, so I decided to try and reflect the parts of Australian culture which I actually liked (i.e. weren’t problematic).

Basically, I didn’t do any ‘Australia Day’ nationalistic designs, but instead included the Aboriginal Flag, the rainbow ‘YES’ for marriage equality and bin chickens.

I took a risk and used the designs as an opportunity to say something about Australia.

And it paid off! People loved it.

Do you have a favourite Aussie sticker, or is there one that’s been used the most widely?

The Aboriginal flag. Not because it’s well designed or anything, but because it meant so much to so many people to see it on Snapchat. There isn’t even an emoji recognised First Nations people yet.

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You’re in New York right now – how do you think the world looks at Australia, and what does being Australian mean to you?

I think the world sees Australia as a very far away place with kangaroos and beautiful nature. That much is true, but we have local culture and an arts scene too! I definitely feel a disconnect with Australia myself though, I travel so much because I’m still trying to find ‘home’.

As an artist working on Instagram and Snapchat, can you share some of the most exciting moments you’ve had, like when celebrities or people you admire have used your stickers?

Gigi Hadid used my ‘love’ sticker which was cool! The Riverdale cast also used my stickers, which I had a fangirl moment over, #bughead... Honestly I’ve lost track of which celebrities have used my stickers around the world nowthey have over 418 million views.

What gave you the idea to start your ‘GIF challenges’?

I’d seen challenges on Tumblr and other platforms in the past, and just decided to make my own pretty template for Instagram which would encourage people to get to know each other! It took me about 10 minutes to make and I had NO idea it would blow up the way it did. Now I’m creating GIF challenges for huge brands and getting flown to events – it’s been an absolute whirlwind experience.

What realms of pop culture are you obsessed by?

I’m obsessed with 80’s/90’s television, toys and pop culture.

The colours, the kitschiness, the patterns!

What ideologies drive or inspire your work?

Empowerment and positive thinking are the huge drivers behind my work. I want to create work which makes people feel powerful and happy, and I think bright colours and the right message can do that!

Can you describe some of the designs or illustrations you’ve put together recently that you’re particularly proud of?

I’ve been really proud of my positivity stickers lately! They’re colourful typography designs featuring positive slogans like ‘You can do it!’, ‘Don’t Give Up!’ etc. A pretty simple idea just to brighten up people’s social media experience, but it’s been effective!

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Q&A

ONE FOR US

ILHAN ABDI TALKS TO REBKA BAYOU, A WRITER FOR SAY IT LOUD, A YOUTUBE SERIES EXPLORING PERSPECTIVES ON THE BLACK AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCE Say It Loud is a webseries that features a group of millennial African and Indigenous Australians who discuss and debate issues affecting the black Australian community. The series launched in 2017 with a three-episode pilot series spanning conversations on the fetishisation of black people in terms of interracial relationships, religion, and ‘Black Cool’. I spoke to one of the writers and content creators, Rebka Bayou, who is also a university student, about the show, representation in the media and being black in Australia.

the US and UK. And Australia is a very young country and multiculturalism is a very new thing here. We’re living in a new world where black people are in the media a lot, and they’re very much perceived a certain way, developing as a new community in this country with various perceptions out there. That was the reason why we created Say It Loud. We try our best to have a solution-based discussions.

IA: How did you get involved in Say It Loud, and can you tell us a bit about the show?

RB: We tried to cover the topics with episodes such as religion, we had Muslim panellists, people of a Christian background, different religions. One girl was really arguing for native, Indigenous religions. She was saying how it makes more sense for her to follow the native religions of Indigenous people in Australia. We tried to make the questions as broad as possible, and incorporated all perspectives. We also had panelists of different black backgrounds. We had some that are half-Indigenous, South-Sudanese, West Africans like Nigerian, Ghanaian. We tried to keep it as diverse as possible cause, there’s a big mix of what it means to be black; it’s more than one nationality.

RB: Say It Loud is pretty much like a panel-based show.

There’s six people, discussing issues about black people specifically in Australia. We did that because we just saw a gap in the market, a lack of our experiences being represented. I can relate to someone [who is black] in the UK, but it’s not the same. Culturally, Australia is different to

IA: How did you choose to represent the multi-faceted African Australian experience in the show?

IA: Has your understanding of the black Australian experience changed after, or while, working on the show?

RB: It’s a lot older than I thought it was. A lot of the panelists are 30+ and were born here, Kaya [Aboagye] and Shola [Diop] .. there’s a lot more people that are actually half-Indigenous as well. I learn a great deal, especially from Kaya, she is really into the connection between Indigenous and African Australians.

What I said about it being older, there are people who have been here since the 70s but they’ve been living out in the Inner West, like Newtown Redfern and stuff, so I’ve been kind of disconnected from them. They obviously have much different experiences to living out in the Greater West.

IA: So what has been your experience, here in Australia?

RB: A huge part of it is micro aggressions. Just yesterday me and Vanessa were out together. We went to the exhibit at the MCA, and we were entering [one of the free, lower level exhibits] this lady was like “Oh, this exhibit has heaps of Australian slang in it, if you need me to explain, just let me know.”

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We didn’t say anything, it was just like… I don’t think she would’ve said that to every person walking through the door, it was very clear why she said that to us. Those kind of things where you’re perceived as the foreigner in your own country of birth.

I definitely wouldn’t say it’s limited to the black experience, just the immigrant kid experience. With blackness, it’s a tricky one because the world has a very weird relationship with black people where they desire so many of the things we produce, the things that we do, so much, like music, anything related to contemporary culture now is pretty much related to black people; African Americans or Caribbeans pretty much. But they don’t seem to want to acknowledge us as human. They’ll say things to you that they wouldn’t say to anyone else. Like you wouldn’t touch a stranger’s hair, you wouldn’t do that, but when it comes to us you somehow feel entitled. The root of that is you don’t see us as people. That’s what the root is. That issue is so much more exaggerated in Australia because people are just so much less exposed.

And there is a huge cognitive dissonance about what Australian identity is, like ‘No way, we’re so accepting’ and they just don’t want to acknowledge there’s a problem. Like if you look at the comments on my Guardian article, I’m just getting abused [Rebka wrote an article about racism towards people of African descent in Australia].

There’s heaps of verbal abuse. ‘You’re an ungrateful little shit’, ‘You should be glad to be here’, ‘We’re not racist’. All I was saying was: ‘these are the problems’. That’s all I was saying, and this idea that I should be grateful to be here, I was born here, I’m just as Australian as you! If you really thought I was Australian you wouldn’t be speaking to me like that. It’s definitely like we’re the exceptions to basic human decency pretty much, is what it is for blackness, especially in Australia.

IA: It’s pretty obvious that Australia’s years behind the rest of the Western world in terms of anti-blackness, and media diversity for all marginalised communities. Not much has changed in the past few years, save for a few progressive outlets having minorities be the face of their programmes, while everyone behind the scenes is white. A lot of POC have found it difficult to breakthrough or receive funding for their own projects. Do you think we should just build our own media or can we break through to mainstream media?

R: Well, I think that’s a double-edged sword really. On one hand, we are a minority. We’re not even 1% of the 22-23 million strong population, you know what I mean? So in order for people to understand our issues we have to appeal to the mainstream. We’re not gonna stop having these issues unless we talk to the everyday Australian, who is non-black, honestly.

Those platforms are run by non-black people, and we definitely are prone to exploitation by them. I wrote that article for The Guardian, and it was actually a blog post originally, and The Guardian is this publication that’s really – and I’m really grateful for them publishing my article.

But they’re a publication known for being progressive, especially in racial issues, especially in Australia, [because] publications like that are very rare. But I do feel like if I were to continue writing for them I would be tokenised very much, and I feel like that is a huge issue in Australia. People like Waleed Aly … um, I can’t mention anyone else, that’s really tragic. Even – I forgot that newsreaders name, on SBS..

IA: Lee Lin Chin?

RB: Yes. They’re very much tokenised, they’re very much used as the progressive card; “We can’t be racist we have Waleed on the show, and he’s a brown Muslim guy”. Even something as minor as having Waleed Aly, can still cause outrage among people. Like people refuse to watch The Project because there’s a Muslim guy on it, you know what I mean? It’s very difficult, with Australia, because people don’t want to be told they’re racist, they don’t want to be told that you’re wrong, and they really can’t adjust to a world where they’re not at the forefront. We can’t be expected to perform all the labour and be like “Please like us”. Back to what you were saying about having our own platforms, I think it’s great, but there’s issues like funding, getting across to a bigger audience. It’s definitely harder to push something that’s on a platform created by ourselves and doesn’t have the range that someone [who works at corporations like] the ABC or The Guardian does.

IA: Speaking of applying to a wider audience, how would you like non-black people - who want to watch the show, or already are watching - to engage with it in a respectful way?

RB: I honestly think, just listening to the show and trying to figure out how what people are saying applies to you as a person. So, there’s an episode on dating and interracial dating called Jungle Fever. You should think about how you perceive black people in romantic situations. Do you see them in a way that’s like … do you only see their skin colour? Or do you feel like you have to overlook their skin colour to find them attractive? Do you [think about] what would happen if I introduced a black person to my family, what would my parents say? Things like that, in terms of just working how it fits into your life, how anti blackness is performed by you and those around you, I think is a great way to interact with a show like Say It Loud as a non-black person.

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ASK AN X-PERT

CATHARINE LUMBY MACQUARIE’S MEDIA EXPERT, FEMINIST ACADEMIC AND NRL CULTURE REFORMER

Content warning: This article discusses sexual violence.

The National Rugby League is the soundtrack of my childhood. As a kid I was more familiar with the sound of commentators shouting than any Wiggles soundtrack. Ray Hadley chatted more on our trips up the coast than either of my parents, and from a very young age, I was accepting of his presence in my life, although tuning his voice out became easier over time.

In fact, I got so good at ignoring this sport, and every aspect of commentary surrounding it, it came as a rude shock in my late teens that it was steeped in scandal. Drugs, abuse and assault seemed to run rampant by the time I’d learned to pay attention to the news. Was everyone as good at ignoring this side of the sport as I was?

Professor of Media at Macquarie, Catharine Lumby, has many roles. One of these is as a pro-bono adviser to the National Rugby League on cultural change and education programs. I asked about her work with the NRL, keeping in mind the way it is ingrained into the lives of so many Australians.

“There was an alleged group rape, a gang rape, of a woman in Coffs Harbour in 2004,” Lumby explained. I’ll admit, at first I was mentally questioning which alleged group rape this was – there have been a few within the sport. However, they seemed to have inspired change. After investigating “a whole cultural map of what was happening off the field,” Lumby joined the NRL to conduct ethics-based education.

“It does not involve going in and lecturing at a group of guys.

It involves getting them into a conversation about scenarios, hypotheticals which have ethical grey areas as well as clear areas of illegality. And it gets them to then come up with responses to questions, to those scenarios, and engage them in reflection about the consequences of certain behaviours, not just for themselves, but for others.”

These programs have seen a decline in instances of violent behaviour from players, leading to my strong belief they should be delivered everywhere – in businesses, schools, universities.

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“PLAYERS WILL ALWAYS HAVE THEIR DEFENDERS WHEN THEY DO FUCK UP.” However, the players will always have their defenders when they do fuck up. Lumby spoke on the excuses she hears made for the young men around her: “‘oh, you know, the problem with these guys is that they get really drunk.’

Yeah, well, you can put a lot of alcohol in some people and they’re not going to turn around and assault anyone,” Lumby asserted. “People say, ‘Because it’s a working-class sport, they’re young guys who are animals on the field, so they’re going to be animals off the field’. I’m sorry, but look at what’s happening to elite university colleges … it’s not confined to a working-class, body-contact sport.”

When asked about these defenders, Lumby assured me that fans like this will always exist. However, I truly think they do nothing to discredit or alter her work within the league.

“I’m with the NRL because so many young guys … look up to these guys as role models. I would prefer to be working in a male-dominated culture and working with them, than standing outside and just critiquing it.”

Change is slow, and almost always must occur from the inside. The hyper-masculine space that is the National Rugby League makes this a slow and, I’m assuming, an often arduous process. However, it is comforting to know that experts such as Dr Lumby have stepped inside the boys club to slowly but surely enact change. One day, maybe, tuning out this sport and these people will no longer be necessary.

by Erin Christie

POP CULTURE REWIND

ROUND THE TWIST Have you ever… ever felt like this?

If you’re unaware, that is the beginning line of the iconic Australian television series, Round the Twist.

The program first aired in 1989 and ran for 11 years, however, sadly only had four seasons. We deserved more of this incredible and messed up masterpiece.

The show was about the fictional Twist family and their wacky adventures. It’s the kind of show where if you ask anyone who watched it, they will have specific episodes burned into their brains. I cannot list the number of friends I’ve mentioned the show to, and then have them word-vomit graphic descriptions of episodes I forgot existed. Some of it was so traumatic that I had nightmares as a child.

When the Aussie-centric issue of Grapeshot came up, I volunteered to write this piece, and I regret that offer for multiple reasons. After hours of watching old episodes, I have a lot of questions for the writers. Maybe I’m just a jaded twenty-something, but that show is fucked. Did our parents know what we were watching?

THE BIG BURP This episode shook me as a child, and as an adult, I’m still shook. To begin with, why did any green-light this episode? Pete pees on a tree, arouses a druid spirit who kisses him, and he becomes pregnant. He is then chased around town by reporters who ask no questions about how this teenage boy is pregnant until it is revealed that there isn’t a father, and then he burps the baby up through his mouth. Surely in a society where the majority of us were taught abstinence as contraception in high school, this episode is problematic. It honestly contributed to my belief as a young child that holding hands and kissing was how you got knocked up. Another issue raised is the questionable consent of the tree druid impregnating Pete.

There was no discussion of pregnancy; she only asked if Pete would help her in exchange to save him from bullies. That’s pretty shady.

Also what happened to him after this? Did he have permanent stretch marks from going from teenage boy to 9 months pregnant in the span of two days? Does Pete have parental rights over his tree? Why did he have contractions when the baby was coming out of his mouth?

How will he explain this massive part of his life to future partners? And why was everyone so chill with this? His dad just accepted it and m o v e d o n ? Wtf?

WHIRLING DERFISH Everyone remembers this episode. Bronson swallows a fish that somehow gets into his penis, which then becomes a propellor anytime it goes in water. He then uses his ‘whirling willy’ (as they refer to it in the show) to win a swimming race.

The majority of my questions in this episode are science-based, which I know is dumb to apply to a kids show… but honestly?

Come on. How did the fish he swallowed magically go to his penis? Surely if the fish were digested, it would be in the digestive tract, not the bloodstream or nervous system? How did it not kill Bron? How did the fish survive? And wouldn’t the propeller itself just spin him in circles, not push him forward in the water? Can some physics and science buffs please hit me up, because this is keeping me up at night.

LINDA GODIVA “Free at last. I can strip down the mundane layers of existence and be my true self… Naked and unashamed!” The words of Linda Twist, the teenager who just discovered a perfume bottle which when sprayed will turn her invisible; the only catch is that she can’t turn her clothes invisible. While I love this episode for its feminist undertones, from the three girls in class calling Harold Gribble out on his sexism to Linda’s self-expression, I doubt it would air today on after-school prime-time. There is a naked teenage girl on the screen. I repeat, a naked teenage girl. In the world of In the Night Garden and the cartoonised Bob the Builder (I don’t know what’s on these days!), this wouldn’t fly. The world would go into shut down. This was also in a day and age when television used actual teenagers to play teenagers, not thirty-somethings (I’m coming for you, Hannah Montana). So how did they get the permission to shoot this?

There was another episode that featured naked teens, which was ‘Quivering Heap’ back in Season 2. That was the weird episode with the vampires, and the three bullies ended up naked on stage in front of the school. I would like to mention that they show much less of these three boys than Linda, and as the girls in the class said, “That’s sexist!”

HONOURABLE MENTIONS ‘Dog By Night’ - Why isn’t Pete’s werewolf-ness addressed in future episodes? Are werewolves even still a thing? Or did Twilight kill that idea?

‘Monster Under the Bed’ - You gave me nightmares as a child!

My only question is, how fucking dare you?

‘The Ice Cream Man Cometh’ - Just why?

‘Lucky Lips’ - How was incest ever given the okay by the network?

Television shows aren’t made the same anymore, and I feel sorry for the future generations. Millennials lived through Round the Twist, and are we fucked up because of it, yes. But doesn’t that joined suffering bring us all closer together?

by Sarah Joseph

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YOU ARE HERE

A BRIEF HISTORY OF EPPING A lot of you may know Epping from the traffic monstrosity that is Epping Road, looming apartment buildings and dizzying cranes. It may also be the god-awful place that signifies the beginning of bus replacement services for the eminent Macquarie line closure. It is a neighbour to our Macquarie University, the neighbourhood that had a majority NO vote in the marriage equality survey and was John Howard’s electorate from 1974 to 2007. However, it has it’s redeeming qualities, like Tracks, the pub that is twenty times better than Ubar or Ranch. I’ve spent many a night there, cramped in the dark downstairs corner booth next to the toilets, scoffing down chips someone else bought from the bistro upstairs (their food is way better than Ranch). Rushing at 9:50pm to buy $8 cocktails before the 10pm cut off, and then eagerly waiting for Friday night karaoke to start. I never participated, definitely an observer, but worth its weight in gold when someone gets up and attempts to sing Adele.

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Epping has been my temporary home for the last few years, and as I find myself abandoning one awful sharehouse for a slightly less awful sharehouse, I’ve become attached to this little part of Sydney.

As the houses on my street have been knocked down and turned into apartment buildings, I found myself thinking about what this land used to be. This area has belonged to the Wallumedegal people for over 15,000 years, despite being handed out as land packages in the late 1790’s to white settlers. The first European settler in the now Epping area was David Kilpack. Kilpack was an English convict, punished for stealing chickens, being sent to America and then mutinying on the way. He was sent to New South Wales on the Scarborough and after testifying for a few other crimes he witnessed, was granted land that spans from pennant hills road, down Carlingford Road and across the present day train tracks. More land was given to returned soldiers

YOU ARE HERE

a few years later, Lieutenant William Kent and his nephew who owned the other half of Epping, down to modern day Marsfield.

This is not the only convict history that Epping has. It’s hard to imagine looking at the mass of construction and cranes, but Epping used to be a lush forest. True to the human character, this forest couldn’t be left as in, and was promptly turned into a convict sawmill. This sawmill was the scheme of our very own namesake asshole, Governor Lachlan Macquarie. Set up in 1816, the Pennant Hills Timbergetting Establishment provided timber for the needs of the growing colony, all cut-down and milled by the European convicts. In 1819, Oxford Street in Epping, home of my favourite place in the world at 1am on a Saturday, Dominoes, and multiple cute little old lady op-shops, was the site of the smaller labour intensive sawmill. The Methodist church in Epping was the site of the convict camp and the convict burial ground is around there too.

It’s crazy to drive past Epping and imagine the tall century old trees being cut down, which were then turned into planks to be used in heritage listed buildings around the city. This beautiful land that was untouched was made barren to the point where it was called Barren Hill at one stage. And even now we only have pockets of land like the Lane Cove National park that gives a glimpse of what this area used to be like. If you go walking through the National Park, it’s easy to imagine, but then you come across the concrete mass of the M2 spanning across the top of the walkway, and you get the metaphorical clash of worlds.

Cambria Hall was the site of many historical moments for Epping. It began as one man, David Nicholas, trying to make Epping the centre of a group of ‘village suburbs’, in which he succeeded, and then turned into a place to show Saturday night ‘moving pictures’. Yes! This was back in the day when a film was black and white and silent, these people would have lost their minds if you tried to explain watching youtube on your laptop during a lecture to them. The silent films obviously progressed into ‘talking pictures’ in the 30’s, which saw Cambria Hall turn into King’s Epping Theatre.

This thrived in popularity until the late 50’s, and since then has been an abundance of random stores including Woolies, Network Video, a hairdresser, and now, the aforementioned Plus Fitness and dirty Gloria Jean’s. It’s sad to think that something that used to be so vital to the suburb, what brought people here and what made their lives interesting, now ceases to exist…

I guess we’ve still got Tracks. That’s the same thing, right?

by Sarah Joseph

It reminds me of stories my grandmother, who grew up in this area, told me. She talked about how she used to watch the horse-drawn carts go past their house, how the milkman used to deliver milk bottles by horse, which was tethered to the farm fence across the road from them. It was all dirt roads and paddocks, with the high streets being the main thoroughfare. I’ve since been to the area my grandmother was referring to, and it’s just a residential street. Brick houses that look old and slightly dilapidated. It is one of the remaining streets that hasn’t been torn down for apartment towers, but even then, the history of this area is lost.

Another stand out erased part of history in Epping is the old Cambria Hall. Cambria Hall sits opposite the train station on Beecroft Road. It was opened in 1915 as a concert hall, however you would never be able to tell by looking at it now.

Long gone are the days of social dances, political meetings and community gathering. Modern-day Cambria Hall is now a Plus Fitness squeezed behind a Gloria Jean’s (which has the dirtiest couches, they look comfy but don’t trust them).

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SHAME YOUR UNIT:

LAWS259

WHERE LEGAL DREAMS ARE CRUSHED Disclaimer: This unit was 2 years ago and to this day I will be telling my first child about this.

LAWS259 is an introduction into public international law and the focus of the United Nations. Or, more accurately, it’s an introduction to how legal dreams are crushed.

They say choose the major you love and you’ll never work another day in your life. After 4 years of law school, I’ve realised that’s because that field probably isn’t hiring.

However, 2 years ago it was nice to come to a semester where I was finally excited to engage in my long-time passion of international law and feel empowered to never need corporate law in my life. Oh boy, was I wrong.

Between cutting subjects and hiring staff last minute, the law school reassures that tutorial teachers are all as qualified as one another. This is almost as disappointing as trying to find a power outlet in the library. So, before I continue, I’d like to raise a toast to my tutor, who was capable of teaching and deserves to have run the unit.

Lectures you ask? There is nothing better than paying $1300 to listen to the same pre-recorded lectures three years in a row. Yes, that’s right… I’m payed $1300 for a mental breakdown caused by having to teach myself. To make matters worse, lectures were like listening to David Attenborough … minus the passion … and add eternal hatred for law students due to bad memories of uni. Seriously, the university needs to consider a policy on how many times a convenor can re-use materials.

However, like any law student, dropping out wasn’t an option after the gods let you pass Business Organisations – LAWS256.

The weekly quizzes were a nightmare when you weren’t the North-Shore law student who would cheat with their ‘squad’ before a solid night at Ubar and still ace every. Damn. Quiz.

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“THEY SAY CHOOSE THE MAJOR YOU LOVE AND YOU’LL NEVER WORK ANOTHER DAY IN YOUR LIFE. AFTER 4 YEARS OF LAW SCHOOL, I’VE REALISED THAT’S BECAUSE THAT FIELD PROBABLY ISN’T HIRING.” Let’s just say blood, sweat and tears really doesn’t get you as far as they say. At this point I realised why the convenor probably held hatred for law students.

The final assessment was a 3-hour take home exam. By this stage, I was still determined to get a good mark and studied the topics, as instructed, from later weeks that hadn’t been assessed. The exam was like playing Mario Kart, except the whole road was bananas because everything was assessable and everything that was meant to be important was in fact not. To say the least, unexpected would be an understatement. The exam was later petitioned separately for its unreasonableness and for accusations of racial profiling in the scenario provided. This resulted in modification of the unit’s final assessment the following semester, however, the experience remains dismal.

In the end, the only real and notable thing that happened during this unit was Trump becoming president. $1300 for that? Why can’t I cry money instead of tears?

by I.S.

FEATURES

THE HIDDEN SYDNEY PLACES KEEPING FASCINATION ALIVE I have a fascination with discovering unusual places. I’m always happiest when I discover something like the dark upstairs corner of a coffee shop, perfect for reading, or the place where the gigantic concrete motorway reaches over a national park. I love being able to take my friends from other towns or cities to the places that I have discovered.

My favourite restaurant, hidden under a church and park, a safari-themed bar down a dark alleyway and stairs, a secret garden in the middle of the city. They are places that are unique to Sydney, and I feel a strange connection to them that I cannot explain. For someone who spent three years of her distant youth living here, and now another three of her adulthood, Sydney is both nostalgic and foreign. So, discovering more of the cities eccentricities and peculiarities, the better.

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A priceless resource in my search for knowing more about the strange and hidden places of this city is Vanessa Berry.

Berry has lived in Sydney her entire life and explores the sprawl of city to find its bizarre and nitty-gritty places. In her wandering, she documents her finds on her blog and recent book of essays by the same name, Mirror Sydney. “I’m a very observant person, someone who notices the things around me very keenly. And so, no matter where I go, I tend to notice details and wonder how things got to be the way they are.”

The blog and book are a collection of essays and observations about the various places around Sydney that are of interest to her. Each essay is a beautiful compilation of history, memoir and knowledge of the most exciting and eccentric aspects. Berry combines her existing knowledge of the local area, all the myths, rumours, and personal history, with vivid

and lively descriptions. “I don’t just kind of see what’s on the surface. I know a little more about what’s underneath it, and that doesn’t happen automatically when you are in some place that you don’t know. When you’ve got a long history, personal history, it kind of makes you feel a bit more embedded in it.”

I absolutely devoured the book over my summer holiday.

The pages are crunchy from sand, and the blue dye on the cover has spread into the first ten pages or so. From the stories of Vanessa being lectured about Doc Martins being erosive on society’s morals in Hornsby, to crocodiles kept in backyard swimming pools in Kurnell, I was engrossed. Here was someone who truly claimed the city as her own, drawing maps of her memory and exploration all over the book. It filled my appetite for knowing more about the strange and wonderous side of my home city.

When I finally got to speak to Vanessa, everything I wanted to ask was to do with how she found these places and stories.

She told me, “I started doing the blog that the book is based on in 2012. When I started, it was really just places I was curious about, and I had lots. But then as the blog was read by more people and more people found out that’s what I was doing, I got recommendations from people. I always love it when people contribute or get excited about the places that they know, or that are perhaps similar.”

A lot of her stories include in-depth historical research into the site or place. One example is her research into every single theme park that has existed in Sydney, ever, which Berry illustrated into a map herself. From the one’s we all know like Luna Park and its history of rides burning down, to Sydney’s very own African Lion Safari in Warragamba run from 1968-1991, which I had zero clue existed. “I do a lot of research,” she explained, “I use history, and I love it, but it’s not a straight kind of historical account of place in Sydney”. Vanessa continued to talk about how she is foremost a writer, and while the history is important, she is always chasing the story.

attention about,” she continues, “I wouldn’t say it’s a political blog, but it’s not really a question for me, I had to at least mention these things. Often in these places where there is a lot of change happening, it is often not harmonious. It doesn’t benefit the residents who have had their community destroyed. People are still fighting it and letting their voices be heard and saying, ‘We’re not happy with what’s going on.’”

At this stage, I brought up Berry’s Instagram, which I had been stalking for quite some time. It is a condensed version of her Mirror Sydney blog, with slightly different abandoned and bizarre places. Images of old underground train walkways, ghost signs on old buildings and really just anything that catches her eye. One of the standouts of the account for me though is the slightly creepy feeling, over-saturated black and white filter on her Instagram stories. There is something both beautiful and terrifying about seeing, in one recent post, cockatoos hanging upside down in a tree, squawking at each other in black and white that I can’t put my finger on.

“I don’t know why I started doing that,” she laughs. “It made it more interesting for me. I thought, oh, I’m going to make it black and white, and that will make it more interesting. I’m a writer, so I think a lot about stories, and what they mean, and how you make them. That might be reading a bit much into something that you’re not meant to read into at all.”

Speaking to someone with such a deep connection and love for this city is a special thing. In an age where the entire city is construction work, towering cranes and demolished buildings, learning about these places before they are gone forever is important. Even just discovering a new building or the weird history of something you’ve always taken for granted. I’ve been inspired to get out and explore, put on my walking shoes and discover even more unusual and fantastic places that I can create my own personal history with.

To check out Vanessa Berry’s work, head to mirrorsydney. wordpress.com.

by Sarah Joseph

I tried to ask her for recommendations of cool places to check out in the city, and if she had a favourite. She laughed and told me that would be like choosing a favourite child, impossible. She said pretty much ALL the places she had written about. With hundreds of posts on her blog, it’s a pretty good start getting to know Sydney’s unusual places inside and out. She also mentions driving into the city and just walking around aimlessly, which I agree, is the best way to get to know a city.

Having lived in Sydney forever, Berry has an evident love for the city and its uniqueness, which is why she writes about and links action plans like the ‘Save Our Sirius’ campaign, in the book and on the blog. “I don’t think you can really ignore it, I couldn’t do that blog without mentioning some of these big important actions people are trying to raise

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TOAD WARS I am six years old, playing a game of driveway basketball with my sister. Dribbling the ball, preparing to shoot, and her scream broke my concentration. I saw it and froze right beside my heel, a huge, glaring cane toad with warty little toxin glands pulsing. Out of pure instinct, I pitched the ball straight at the toad, flattening it with a wet, muffled thump. Despite resembling a nightmarish little Anzac biscuit, the toad turned and hopped past both of us, back into the long grass. Although completely flattened, it was still unbelievably intact.

Growing up in South-East Queensland between the cane fields and the beach meant a childhood marred by close encounters with cane toads. Queensland gave the toad to the rest of the nation – it was on our shores that the first fleet of 102 toads arrived in 1935, imported from Hawaii by the Queensland Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations. The plan was for the toad to attack the scarab beetle that destroyed cane crops. By the time it was discovered that these toads

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could not jump high enough to attack their intended prey, it was too late – the hardy little beasts were getting amongst it in their new tropical paradise like freshly 18-year-old schoolies on the Gold Coast. The population exploded and spread at an alarming rate, covering a further 10 kilometres per year, then faster and further as the the toads at the front of the pack bred and produced even faster offspring.

Some eighty years on, the legacy of the Sugar Bureau’s stupid mistake is ‘Cane Toad Season’, an annual invasion that strikes dread and despair into the hearts of all who live in the tropics, particularly those of us who are situated near a coastal cane plantation. After the pre-summer rains, the invasion front bears down. Toads in drain pipes, toads on footpaths, backyards and verandas. Toads lurking in the garden and in the grass, filling the night air with the constant trill of their mating call, and oozing poison that can blind a human and put a family dog into cardiac arrest. Cane Toad Season is a time when wearing thongs is compulsory at all

times, especially if you’re just nicking out to the clothesline after dark to grab a clean pair of undies. Toads clog the blades of lawn mowers and ‘toadkill’ carcasses stink up gutters on the side of the road.

At the ripe old age of eight, I was taught my responsibility as a Queenslander when it came to cane toads. During a social science lesson; we were sitting in a circle around my teacher Mr Burrows, when he explained that we could all ‘do our bit’ if we caught a toad or two, sealed them up in a plastic bag and stuck them in the fridge. This process, called ‘Stepped Hypothermia’, would put the toads into a deep hibernation after which they could then be transferred to the freezer, allowing them to die peacefully. I’d never considered death much, let alone the idea that there was a ‘nice’ way to kill anything. Even more horrific was the idea of a bagged toad sitting in the door of the fridge between the tub of Flora and Mum’s perfumes.

Just when I thought the lesson couldn’t get any traumatic, a kid called Ronny Gilson raised his hand.

“Yes Ron?” “I once put a toad in the microwave and it blew up!”

This was met with a clashed chorus of cheers and moans and I swallowed down the urge to spew, picturing pink and glistening bits of toad splattered on the inside of a microwave.

‘Toading’, the extremist approach to cane toad population control, is virtually a legitimate seasonal Queensland sport.

Every wet season, as local news bulletins and environmental action groups advise the public to ‘do their bit’, small armies of schoolboys armed with an assortment of ‘garage weapons’ (golf clubs, cricket bats, shovels, aerosol cans and Bic lighters) take to the streets to destroy as many cane toads as possible. The more creative the extermination the better, and gore-stories of ‘toading’ exploits were shared in the playground for weeks.

Does it come down to a young boy’s urge to hunt something tough, notorious and dangerous at an age when girls still had germs, and beer was something their parents drank?

Was it the fact that it was a cheap and inclusive sport that didn’t involve membership fees, special boots or jerseys? I doubt it boiled down to the fact that kids cared about their environment, the fragile ecosystem that the toads were destroying - one full of green tree frogs and goannas.

I even harboured this doubt as a kid. Toads are tough.

We learned in school that they could withstand extreme temperatures and dehydration, hop for over a kilometre in a single night and come back to life after 6 hours in a refrigerator. I knew that they could even survive being pancaked by a basketball. The RSPCA liked to point out regularly that a golf club lacks the size and weight to deliver a death blow to a cane toad. Yet 60% of Sunshine Coast residents, when polled by the newspaper, chose the golf club as their preferred method of cane toad extermination.

What if the hunt wasn’t really all about the kill?

One sticky summer afternoon, I was walking down to the beach when I looked across the road and saw that a telephone pole had a lump on it. Crossing the road, the image became clear - nailed to a telephone pole was a cane toad, crucified, his little hands and feet stretched out in star formation, as though he was embracing the pole. Its skin was bloated and stretched in the afternoon sun, and its mouth was slightly agape, in fruitless protest.

Nobody came to remove the little corpse from the telephone pole and it stayed nailed up there for weeks. I learned to take an alternative route to the beach, avoiding it until cane toad season was over and I eventually forgot all about it. When I resumed my usual route, months later, the toad had all but disintegrated and all that remained were the four rusty nails.

by Laura Neill

Despite environmental action groups publicly opposing cane toad cruelty, toading was a common and accepted practice in my local community. When a Queensland community newspaper recently asked its readers what their preferred method of getting rid of cane toads was, their response was resoundingly in favour of golf clubs, cricket bats and shovels over refrigeration, arguing that it was no different to swatting or spraying a fly. “Give the kids a gold club and go have some fun, I say,” one reader insisted. Further, when Queensland-born politician Dave Tollner once tried to implement a ‘Toad Whacking Day’ in his electorate in the Northern Territory, he reminisced on the glory days of his youth hunting cane toads with pellet guns, stating: “If I was a cane toad, I’d much prefer to go out by being belted over the head with a golf club than I would being stuck in a deep freeze.”

But what exactly is the mass appeal with cane toad hunting?

Why do generations of kids continue to participate?

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THE BALI BOGAN

T H O U G H T S O F A B A L I N E S E - A U S T R A L I A N O N A U S S I E T O UR I S T S Although a product of Indonesia, the humble Bintang singlet has become an Australian symbol of boganism, synonymous with VB and Southern Cross tatts. A cheaper holiday option than the Gold Coast, and closer than other Asian paradises, Bali has grown from a small surfer’s haven in the 1970’s to an accessible overseas location for all Australians. In 2016, over 1.248 million Australians flocked to the Indonesian island.

One cannot walk the streets of Kuta or Seminyak without the almost parasitic sight of the Bali Bogan: southern cross tatts visible, beer guts hanging over the cusp of their footy shorts, pluggas’ slapping the footpaths – they are everywhere.

Bogans are quick to defend their love of the island and are usually quick to rebuke criticism. However, the crisis has reached boiling point and the Balinese are more vocal than ever before.

Just like their Bintang-odoured breaths, the Bali Bogan’s disrespect and shortcomings permeate all levels of Balinese society. From personal experience, some of my more notable interactions with a Bali Bogan include them running up to a random Balinese girl, jumping on the back of her bike, slapping her on the shoulder and yelling “Mush!” as if she were a sled dog. Other more publicised instances of the Bali Bogan include an incident in 2014 where two Perth brothers were accused of urinating on a temple and glassing a local shopkeeper. The average traveller can witness their acts simply by walking the streets of Legian. You’ll see the ecstatic rush of power as one bargains over 20,000rp ($1.85AUD) with a desperate shopkeeper. You can watch them creepily flirt with young waitresses, too defenseless to turn down the advances of the ‘wealthy’ Australian.

On a larger scale, the Bali Bogan has helped contribute to a growing list of ecological and social issues for the island.

Beyond the serious social issues that the Bali Bogan has added to, the island has been plagued with controversial developments such as Tanjung Benoa, a literal rubbish mountain, and a water shortage. Whilst some Bali Bogans choose to trample offerings and pee on sacred temples, others have contributed more indirectly to island issues such as the reclamation of Benoa Bay. Located in Southern Bali, the bay is home to critical mangroves and multiple sacred sites. And now, it would seem, re-development to support the booming tourism industry. Social movement, Tolak Reklamasi, rose in resistance and is fed by the frustrations of the angered Balinese community. Tolak meaning reject and Reklamasi meaning reclamation – the movement fiercely rejects the development of the Benoa Bay area. Some would argue that the Tolak Reklamasi movement is a fight for sustainability rather than inherently linked to tourism.

At its core, it is the tourist dollar longing for another resort and another cheap Bali fix that drives the development

of Tanjung Benoa. On the other hand, a literal rubbish mountain has grown and the beaches of the island are suffocating under rubbish. Bali’s rubbish issue stems from poor management, but the actions of the wasteful tourist have undoubtedly contributed to this crisis.

The sheer arrogance of the Bali Bogan was highlighted most recently when volcanic activity from the island’s Mount Agung volcano grounded flights and left thousands of Australians stranded. The powerful and temperamental volcano forced the evacuation of locals to temporary safe zones in neighbouring regions. Meanwhile, whilst evacuees were forced to return to dangerous areas daily to tend to their cattle and crops, Australians sat safely in the comfort of Ngurah Rai International Airport.

Ah… The poor Bali Bogan, forced to wait another day for a flight, or to hop onto a bus to neighbouring Java for a flight before returning to their safe, comfortable lives in Australia.

How… inconvenient? Not a peep to be heard or a prayer to be seen on Facebook for the individuals who may lose their homes, livelihoods and lands in the event of a major eruption. One can’t help but to shake their head at the irony: the same individual who heads to Bali to exploit local women, binge drinks their way through the alleys of Kuta and disrespects sacred sites, are the same individuals who complain about losing Australian culture to disrespectful migrants. The same individuals who holler “Love it or Leave it” and strap Aussie flags to their backs to protest ‘disrespect’ from foreigners are the same people who are plunging an island into collapse and crisis.

Tourism in Bali is a double-edged sword and it is important to recognise that tourism is not inherently the issue.

Tourism is fundamental to a healthy Indonesian economy contributing more than $US 55 billion annually of which Bali is responsible for half. The empty ghost town streets of Legian and Kuta immediately after the 2002 Bali Bombings were indication of the dire straits Bali would be in without tourism. The issue is the tourist, including the Bali Bogan.

The new generation, the Pemuda, or ‘youth’, will continue to take to the streets and scream “TOLAK!”. They will not lay idle whilst tourism and greed deprive them of their culture and tradition. It might be true that the larger social and ecological issues facing the island are a larger, complex beast for the Indonesian government to solve, however, the Bali Bogan has undeniably contributed to these issues.

The Bali Bogan who critiques foreign aid expenditure and screams “Stop the boats” must become more aware of their contributions to the island’s shortcomings. Otherwise, in my opinion, the only solution is simple. Turn back the Bogans.

by Cassandra Ngurah

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ON THE SPIRIT OF SYDNEY I first started thinking about Sydney’s identity after several months of being a member of the meme group called New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented Teens. While initially starting as a fairly jokey place, the page has since generated much discussion on urbanism and transport. Similar groups that are more localised have since popped up, like the meme page dedicated to the T1 North Shore and Northern Line or Comparing Japanese and Australian railway systems.

Personally, I think these movements risk indulgence in a pretty shallow notion of the place, based on its nightlife in areas which have been gentrified for decades — that particular sense of cultural belonging only feels relevant to the young and middle-class. The attack on one kind of commercialism for the defence of another can’t sustain itself if it’s always based on different options for where to spend money.

Here in Sydney, the new generation of young adults emotionally investing in the place due to moving into the workforce have a new way of viewing their city.

There are other searches from less commercially minded Sydneysiders happening: Look at Western Sydney, where a culture has emerged formed by its characterisation against the rest of the city, by entities such as literary movement SWEATSHOP. Also notable is the SHH Centre for Hybrid Arts in Parramatta, where the battle for a cultural spirit became very real recently when the Parramatta City Council attempted to evict the owners, leaving notices of termination and sending Independent Locksmiths & Security to the

See, for instance, the proud city-centric pride of ‘KEEP SYDNEY OPEN.’ Drawing battle lines against property developers in the defence of commercial sites such as the Cross and its bars, the Keep Sydney Open movement is interesting as an example of Sydneysiders assuming a city spirit.

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studio, where they performed what the police deemed an act of breaking and entering, damaging several locks and the property of the owners. This happened despite the rent for the studio being paid. A motion went up at a recent Town Hall Council meeting to extend the stay, which was carried.

Renditions of Sydney in pop culture are centred on the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. See, for instance, Pacific Rim, which tells of a global unity against an alien threat. The sequence depicting the destruction of a giant wall built to protect Sydney Harbour makes sure to include a shot of both icons, even if, as multiple people who have watched the film have noted, building a wall where it is in the film would mean it is far from the mouth of the harbour.

There’s also The Matrix, where Sydney stands in for the featureless city landscape that constitutes the titular digital world. It’s interesting that the Wachowskis wanted a generic metropolis and decided on Sydney, clipping out (most of) the icons like the Opera House. What does it say about a city that its only globally notable traits are the ones we put on postcards?

Drawing on Sydney’s lack of understanding itself is the satirical newspaper The Betoota Advocate. The Sydneysider in its satirical articles is a very particular character: A property investor, generally, or a wowser, contrasted against the more casual, less restrained Queenslander, in articles like ‘Brisbane man says ‘Sorry Mate’ 72 times in Sydney nightclub’ or ‘Prince Harry Told To Quiet Down By Baby Boomer Property Investor While In Sydney Pub.’ In Jonno Revanche’s Kill Your Darlings essay ‘The Golden Land: Writing the millennial Sydney fantasy,’ which inspired this essay, , the author characterises their experience with Sydney as one with tied up in its mind-boggling size:

What all this is really about is the question of what we talk about when we talk about Sydney, when we imagine where it’s going to go, and more specifically, what the alternatives are to a Sydney defined by consumption, both in the sense that developers are consuming our city to create properties very few can actually afford and the sense that the young people of this place seek to regain just as much of a commercial element to the city, but one open to us – which is understandable, but raises the question of how limited activism is if it’s only done for this cause.

It would be morally destitute to not recognise that the city’s development was only made possible by the violent theft of colonisers, who identified the Indigenous people they came across as Eora – a word used by the Gweagal clan who encountered the first settlers and attempted to explain who they were, using a word which means ‘from this place.’

What most call Sydney had nearly thirty separate language groups.

The progression from a buildup of online resentment at the corporate masters of the city to a realisation that it does not have to be like this is not an obscure thought experiment; the struggle for the soul of the city is one we live through daily, whether we’re dissatisfied with the steady destruction of our public transport, starving to pay our rent, or we’re wondering what there is to do here for fun at night.

Now, youths are developing a different sort of consciousness of the city as a place than has come before, illusory as it might be, and that’s a good thing, because it allows us to recognise that it doesn’t have to be the chrome-and-glass corporate playground its current masters seem to want it to be.

by Cameron Colwell

“What I most often take away is a sense that the city is just dizzyingly big, and mostly disappointing – it promises so much and yet speaks unto no-one, as lonely to natives as it is to transplants.”

I suspect the loneliness Revanche speaks of has a fair amount of overlap with my sense of Sydney as a place that craves to fill a hole where a sense of itself should be.

Millennials now fill this particular void with memes: While I doubt many of the posters would think of themselves as urbanists, the awareness, wry and ironic as it might be, is an interesting one. The young are not happy with their city. Its definition and resentment from the street: a meme about a miniature hamburger’s price or a YouTuber making jokes about coming to terms with never being able to own a house are the new versions of angry street graffiti, which has now been commodified and perhaps shaved off its edges in Sydney with the establishment of council-approved ‘street art’.

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IN THIS BOGAN SKIN

APRILL MILES EXPLORES THE MARK OF THE UNSOPHISTICATED

The end of my last relationship started over something small and simple. It was a thought that had been roaming around my head for years. I wanted to get a tattoo. I finally gave myself permission to do it and started madly google-ing images of what I imagined would be driven into my skin, two magnificent ravens encircled by the runes that would bear their names, Huginn and Muninn. They happily reminded me of the ravens that have for some reason or other, been a fixture of every place that I’ve ever lived. In the Hunter they would hop around my backyard in winter, cawing loudly at each other.

In Sydney I walked past them everyday to get to classes, watching them scavenge through brown paper bags, hot on the scent of muffin crumbs. Or maybe they would be chasing away an Ibis, triumphantly flapping their jet black wings at the backs of those dreaded bin birds.

Huginn and Muninn were Odin’s ravens, and said to fly all over the earth everyday to bring back news to the All-Father. I imagine them perching on my own shoulders; Huginn - knowledge, whispering secrets in my ears and Muninn - memory, making the connections between all the disparate morsels of knowledge. I decided to talk to my then partner about this idea.

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The conversation went something like this: “I really want a raven tattoo.”

“Oh no, no, tattoos are tacky. I don’t think I would want to be with anyone who has tattoos,” he says this with a wrinkled face. The kind that babies make when they try to eat a lemon for the first time.

“I don’t think they’re tacky. Besides, both my parents have tattoos.”

“Yeah. That’s because they’re bogans.”

The last sentence ends the conversation entirely and I seethe about it for months. As I fill my phone with pictures of ravens and my instagram feed with tattoo artists, I cannot help but tell myself that I am not a bogan, not at all. But in a way that sentiment might be right. Maybe my parents are bogans. But what does being a bogan even mean?

Calling someone a bogan is usually taken to be a bad thing.

A bogan is defined as a person whose speech, attitude or appearance are unrefined and unsophisticated. This is pretty vague and subjective, but to a lot of people unrefined and unsophisticated can amount to a person covered in patriotic tattoos. When I think about my parent’s tattoos, they may be ‘unsophisticated’ because they are simple. My father has three, the first of which has been there since long before I was born. It is a chain wrapped high around his left bicep, circling underneath the skin marked by the smallpox vaccine that betrays his age and international origins. Years of surf and sunburn turned it into a dark greenish-blue. When I was 13 he got a celtic cross on the right side of his chest and two years later followed it with a celtic knot. The chain makes my father strong in my mind, with arms like a lumberjack that can lift me onto his shoulders and create beautiful carpentry from hard red wood. My mother’s are more secret and I didn’t even know they were there until I was 10. There is one on her back that I hardly ever see, a cheeky throwback to years spent with friends chasing the next rock concert and wishing that Monday would never come .The other is a slender blue feather that sits on the left side of her chest.

I see it peek over the tops of her favourite dresses and it reminds me of when she is happy, free to do whatever she wants, to fly wherever her heart takes her.

with tattoos are marked with symbols that seem to have little to do with what is seen as Australian bogan culture.

For example my father’s celtic designs are drenched in Anglo-European traditions, his cross an echo of the religious symbols tattooed on the arms of the aristocracy during the 18th century. This reminds me of his love of classical music which has blossomed into yearly trips to the opera. My mother’s slender blue feather to me symbolises her taste for high fashion clothes, her wardrobe a favourite hiding place of mine as a child when I would dive into a jungle of ostrich feathers and bespoke leather pants. I decide that if this is what it would be like to be associated with bogans, a group of simple people with hidden interesting lives, then that is fine.

I finally settle on another norse symbol, a vegvisir. It is a small rounded intricate stave, the lines and curves supposedly carved into ships to ask the gods to steer them safely to their destinations no matter how bad the storm or how dead in the doldrums. Essentially it means that you can never get lost and this makes me feel warm and safe. On a hot December day I lay down on a table covered in cling wrap, watching a woman carefully pull a long needle out of plastic wrapping.

“Alright, breathe in and then I’ll start.”

Later that night as my perfect wound weeps under a layer of cling wrap loosely taped to my shoulder blade, my ex lets me know that this tattoo is only special if I don’t get another one.

He says, “I don’t know if I want to stay with someone who gets lots of tattoos,” and what I hear is that he doesn’t want to be with a bogan. My simple design seeps into my simple shoulder blade and my father texts me saying that it looks “fucking awesome”. Almost a year to the day after getting my first tattoo I break up with my ex in an unsophisticated and simple way and start planning my next tattoo.

by Aprill Miles

It is possible that the association of tattoos with bogans stems from the practice in many parts of world of branding criminals with tattoos. This practice is old enough to have been recorded in Greece in 450 BC where criminals were given tattoos which were called ‘stigma’. Later in the 8th century the Yakuza of Japan developed irezumi tattooing using sharpened bamboo to implant ink under the skin in response to the forced prison tattoos bestowed upon them with words like dog or pig. This has led to the famous, or infamous, tradition of modern Yakuza members being covered and marked by extensive tattoos. English convicts arriving in Australia were also heavily tattooed, usually not because of forced tattooing but the association still holds. While an association with criminality may lead to an association as unsophisticated, many of those ‘bogans’

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THE VERONICAS A RETROSPECTIVE

It’s 2006. I’ve just badgered my mum into getting me a copy of the Veronica’s debut album, The Secret Life of...

Since that fateful point of purchase, there was not a single day that year where it wasn’t playing on repeat.

I scored a checked tie and ripped tights from Jay Jays. I took selfies on my crappy 2006 webcam. This is as close to punk as my 11-year-old self has ever gotten. I was full on, all-lyrics-memorised, photos-on-my-wall, obsessed with The Veronicas.

It’s 2014. I’m looking into the eyes of a person who has loved me, wholeheartedly and without reserve, for the past three years- basically a lifetime, when you’re in your teens- and I’m struggling to find the words to tell them that I’ve fallen out of love. Words stick in my throat, and The Veronicas’ lyrics come floating back to me from a recess in the back of my mind.

I’m scared and I gotta find out how to speak my mind / without metaphors and rules and rhymes / I wish I was Born Bob Dylan / Had all the words to speak my feelings.

The Veronicas became the soundtrack of my life- connected, somehow, every time I experienced one of those moments that sticks with you.

The upfront nature of the way the duo sang about their emotions always struck a chord with me. As an impressionable youth, the Veronica’s were an integral part of growing up- so much so that even now, over a decade later, I still know all their songs by heart; they still come back to me, at times when I need something familiar to hold on to.

Listening to The Veronica’s early music that I loved so much was one of those things- soothing, familiar, but never boring.

It was a source of strength.

When Jess came out, it was the strangest feeling of Solidarity for me. I wasn’t sure how I was feeling- but here was a woman I had basically grown up with, living her life in a way I only dared to think about. She became a queer icon for me. I lived with a quiet sense of a feeling I can only describe as, ‘If she can do it, so could I.’ While I would say that their 2014 album, The Veronicas, was by far their strongest musical feat, The Secret Life of... has such nostalgic value for me that I will physically fight anybody who wants to challenge me on saying that it isn’t the greatest of the great. I am blinded by sentiment, and I refuse to change this.

Hook Me Up felt strangely processed; I didn’t really feel for the party vibes, feeling that it was lacking the rock and roll ‘oomph,’ which their first album had in spades. But as much as I didn’t have the same obsessive love for Hook Me Up as

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I did for their debut album, there’s no denying it has some serious bangers. Put on any of those songs at a party, even now, a decade after release and people lose their fucking MINDS. It’s beautiful to observe.

Their 2014 self-titled album was an unexpected delight for me. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed them until they came back to their airwaves, dropping down some serious fire with new tracks that I was addicted to almost instantly. The thing I love the most about The Veronicas was how diverse their sounds were; comparing the sleek synth bass under the song, ‘Did you Miss Me? (I’m a Veronica)’ to the country twang of the guitar riff for ‘Sanctified’, was fascinating – it felt like they were really letting loose with their sound, being experimental. Songs like ‘Line of Fire’ have well-roundedness and strength in the sound that I just fucking adored. All of their songs were gorgeously unique from one another. They genuinely were ‘back with a vengeance’, and it was fucking incredible.

‘Sanctified’ has a special place in my heart. The song has a gorgeous hook, opening with that country-gospel sound, which only gets better as it builds to a heavier but gorgeously sustained, full bodied rock beat. And those gospel vibes flowing through over the top in the vocals? Oh, Daddy, Yes. Their more recent releases, such as the 2016 single ‘On your Side’, had a more low-key beat which was super enjoyable.

The music video, written and directed by Ruby Rose, the then-partner of Jess, is indisputably a gem. The scene where Ruby Rose hits out at a guy who has been harassing them both? Perfect. Beautiful. Incredible stuff that speaks to my soul. The song has verve to the extreme, and the music video doesn’t shy away of depictions of hardship, being quite explicit in its representation of drug use and visual description of what it’s like to love someone with substance abuse problems. ‘In my blood,’ also has a hella funky beat, and that sleek, signature Veronicas’ sound.

The Veronicas music has lasted. They have managed to transcend becoming a hallmark of mid-noughties punk-pop, and become a staple of pop music in our collective consciousness, in a very beautiful way. At present, I live in hope for the day they drop their next album, and the soundtrack to my life can continue with fresh beats. Hurry back to the airwaves, Veronicas. I can’t wait to see you come back with a vengeance, again.

by Georgia Drinan

CREATIVES

UNTITLED I met him on the train that day on my way to Sydenham. He was flickering through pages of a book and looked up at me as I entered; an indecipherable expression plastered on his face.

If ever time stood still for me, it was at that moment.

I recollected how his deep-set eyes were always like windows to his soul; his very self, laid bare in them. But now, he stared at me with a different pair of intense eyes which seemed to veil his true self.

I took a seat just across him, took my phone out and sent a text to my best friend 9000 km away who was possibly entangled in deep slumber; “He’s in front of me”. He shifted uneasily in his seat and closed his book nervously tapping his fingers on it. I watched as sunlight hugged his auburn skin etching the creases sketched across his face with deep hues.

Beneath those layers of time and space, I knew he was there. The boy in the bee patterned jersey who always confused the Fleming’s hand rules. My best friend forever and the love of my life. A stray lock of hair fell over his eyes and he noticed me staring at him as he raises his hand to fix.

I flushed at the warmth of his gaze and immediately looked away. I plugged in my earphones, tapped on shuffle and ‘Beautiful Freak’ by Eels flooded in.

I smiled unwarily only to catch him looking at me with a look of surprise.

Seconds passed like dominoes toppling over in a line building an invisible impassable divide between us brick by brick.

The train, however, chugged on, blind and oblivious, irrespective of its passengers and their untold stories.

With the song still flooding into my ears, the whole scene seemed like a backdrop to our classroom, where he scribbled intricate circles on my notes and hummed the same song, enchantingly off-tune.

As we talked for hours about enigmas and forever, we slipped briskly into an intimacy from which we never escaped.

At least, I never did.

The train halted with a jerk as the guard announced we reached the destination.

I look across to find the seat in front empty.

My heart sinked as I snapped out of my reverie.

He wasn’t there.

Three degrees and hundred kilometers away, he was probably on a train, reading a book, thinking about a girl from university.

My phone buzzed as I received the reply from my best friend. “Tell him he owes you a dance”. Turns out, the past is always your past even if you forget it, it remembers you. I smiled, kept my phone in my pocket and got off the train.

I’ll tell him the next time I see him.

by Anika Reza

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MY COUNTRY AN ADAPTION OF DOROTHEA MACKELLAR’S CLASSIC POEM The love of burning asphalt

Core of my heart, my country!

Of steaming, waving tar

Her bogan insults fly

Of fast and painful running

The borders remain sealed tight

Towards the inside bar

We see the ‘skippers’ die

Strong love of gleaming tinnies

But too soon the ABC

Beads streaming down the side

Will pick a new topic

I know and can’t but share it

And our guilt for the fleeing

My love is Aussie pride

Will no more leave us sick

I love a sunburnt country

Core of my heart, my country!

A land of growing pains

Land of the mighty coal

Of Malcolm compromising

For the savaged, pillaged earth

Of capped refugee claims

It pays us back threefold

I love her drinking culture

The miners and the FIFOs

I love her apathy

Toil hard through every day

Her white pride and her banter

The true blue Aussie heroes

The bloke run land for me!

Or so the corporates say

A history of mate-ship

An iron-hearted country

Of battles never won

A deeply confused land

Inspires a type of courage

All those who have not known her

Seen clearly in no one

You will not understand

Myths spun throughout the ages

For behind its strong bravado

Meant to inspire us all

And beyond its fallacy

Instead leaves us questioning

The land down under’s buggered

Their dusty echoed call

And they don’t want to see

by Katelyn Free

CREATIVES || 53

POETRY BY THE GROG DOG (PUBLISHED WITHOUT PERMISSION)

Clive Palmer, according to Wikipedia, is ‘an Australian businessman, former politician, and poet’.

In business, he owns vast deposits of iron and coal; although at the moment his company, Minerology, is not operating or producing profit. As a politician, he scraped into federal parliament by a margin of 7 votes, and set a legacy for himself by being the MP with the worst attendance rate – he only rocked up for 64 per cent of parliamentary sittings. The party he founded, the Palmer United Party, was deregistered this year (although he does intend to shoot for federal parliament again this year…).

In 2013 he announced he was going to pour millions upon millions into creating a replica of the Titanic that he planned to sail from England to New York, but that project sank. He did manage to make a dinosaur park called called ‘Palmersaurus’ full of animatronic Jurassic beasties, but attendance rates are poor and the park has been called ‘The Saddest Place on Earth’.

So what’s left for us to celebrate about Australia’s most bizarre, coal-hungry conglomerate of contradictions and corporate greed? His poetry of course! He actually headed up the 2015 Queensland Poetry Festival with an anthology he penned at age 26, but he’s also been serving up cracking stanzas on his Facebook page, a selection of which are shared here for your enjoyment.

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‘TIM TAM SPLIT’

‘GROG DOG’

Tim Tam Split

Dog on the grog

Split a TimTam

Kanine martinis

Insert Banana

Shaken not stirred

Rap in a crepe

Licked not drunk

Put between two TimTams

Makes him fart a lot.

Ice Cream Surrounded by Whipped Cream Watermelon sauce Cherry on top.

‘A RECIPE’ Mint Slice Pizzas.

‘BLACK DOG’ Black Dog Black Dog Bark Bark

Baste pizza dough with watermelon sauce.

Cover with mint slice Bake for 10 minutes Cover with whip cream Serve to moon dog #mintcreamheaven

White moon White moon Shine Shine Mother But I never left you

‘GROG DOG II’ Dog on grog Lifesaver Serves Australian Community

‘PLASTIC PUMPKINS?’ Woolworths?

A new grid A new dog Support him

Coles?

Coles?

Woolworths?

Woolworths?

Coles?

‘UNTITLED’

Woolworths?

Licking lips

Coles?

Swelling hips

Plastic

Nips, tips.

Pumpkins?

Elvis.

Sips, rips Bangkok.

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ART BY DANIELLE WIGSTON

REPEAT OFFENDERS

IT’S NOT JUST ME Jonathan Messer

One of the strongest ways in which our views of people are shaped is by the media, whether it’s our opinions of groups that have different experiences to us or when we are looking for explanations of our own thoughts and feelings.

This is why positive and accurate media representation is so important, particularly for minorities and marginalised groups, because it has such a dramatic influence on the understanding and empathy of others, and the self-worth of members of the group. The idea of representation is the foundation of It’s Not Just Me, a documentary about four transgender men that was featured at this year’s Mardi Gras Film Festival.

It’s Not Just Me follows Simon Millington, David Birt, Logan Ward, and Max Mustard, each for a period of their life ranging from a day to a year. Simon and David are both shown towards the beginning of their medical transitions as they start receiving testosterone injections, and their stories are documented with periodic interviews and footage of their lives filmed over the course of a few months. Alternatively, Logan films a few months of his own life with a GoPro, rather than being filmed professionally, and Max is filmed over a single day as he follows his normal daily routine. All four stories are integrated into a single film that shows what life is like for young Australian trans men, from the ups and downs of relationships with family and partners, to everyday hostility and discrimination.

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After watching the film, I had the opportunity to talk to David and director and producer Jonathan Messer about their thoughts and the process behind the film. It’s Not Just Me is already unusual due to its intriguing conception, as Messer actually created it for his PhD on a tiny budget of just $4000. He had the idea to create a documentary about trans men when he was researching his original idea that was based on the representation of trans women and discovered that there was next to no media that accurately portrayed trans men. With this new angle, he found Simon, David, Logan, and Max through a Facebook group for trans men in Western Australia. David explained that it was this lack of representation that encouraged him to participate: “I liked the idea of it for the simple fact that there was nothing like that available to me at the start of my transition. I felt so horribly alone, so the idea of doing the documentary and having it available for other people, that was one of [my] driving forces.”

The different styles used to film the four stories allow for each story to convey a very different perspective on living as a trans man. While Simon and David’s parts are filmed in the same way, they focus on different issues faced by the men, with Simon’s story built around his relationships with his partner and family members, while David’s focuses more on the hostility he faces from the broader community.

As Logan films his own life, we see a much more intimate view of his daily life and interactions with his partner and

friends. Max’s story, with an average daily routine and no conflict, is just as important, as Messer told me: “That’s his story and that’s what he wanted to share with the world because that’s his normal life.” The idea that trans men are already some of the people we all interact with day-to-day is often overlooked because of the drama infused into the limited existing trans-focused media, and Max’s story challenges that standard view.

While the stories all show different areas of the trans experience, a constant throughout the film is the music.

During a Q&A session after the film, Johannes Luebbers talked about how he and his fellow composer, Alice Humphries, approached their task. “[We] tried to find musical materials that reflected the nature of the story and the thematic ideas of transition and change,” he explained, and I feel that this definitely came through in the film. The music is heard best in Logan and Max’s stories because they talk less than Simon and David, but the music ties together all four parts. The emotion conveyed through the music is especially noticeable in some of the more serious scenes and really adds to the empathy towards the men in their tougher moments.

allowed to do whatever we want to be happy.”

Despite starting out with such a small budget, It’s Not Just Me has already had its fair share of success. It won ‘Best LGBT Feature Documentary’ at the 2017 Atlanta International Documentary Film Festival, and has been picked up by SBS. It is now showing on SBS’s free online streaming service, SBS On Demand, where it can reach far more people. From here, hopefully a much larger audience will be able to view the film and gain a more accurate, positive, and empathetic view of trans men than the limited pre-existing media has shown. It is both a valuable resource for the trans community and a well-made and engaging film. I can’t recommend it strongly enough and would advise anyone with a spare hour to go and watch it!

By Ashton Love

An important part of the production of the film comes from how Messer went about creating it, starting with a key goal: “The idea was to go to the trans guys and give them the opportunity to tell their own story.” While already shown through letting the trans men choose which parts of their lives were filmed and how they were filmed, this creative control extended into the editing room, where they were given a huge say in what made it into the final cut. Not only is It’s Not Just Me a much-needed addition to the small assortment of media about trans men, but also a guide on how to be a helpful and compassionate ally to the trans community. Messer is using his position to boost trans voices, rather than speaking over them, and he clarified, “I feel really grateful to be able to speak as a part of a national conversation, but it’s actually not my story.” The whole project was created as a successful effort to help trans men tell their own stories.

Going forward, Messer is working on a new project with Simon, following his next journey of having a child with his partner. He is also working on a feature film starring multiple major characters with diverse genders and sexualities, although he says that these communities are not his only focus: “I don’t see myself solely as a queer filmmaker. I don’t ever want to pigeonhole myself.” I asked David what his plans are, and he wants to continue his work with theatre. He also talked about his interest in drag and how he intends to keep challenging the masculine gender roles that are a particularly strong pressure for trans men. “[There’s] a sort of a stigma for trans men doing quite feminine things and … not everyone’s going to be extremely masculine. There is no one set man. … We are

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BOOKS

UNF*CK YOUR FINANCES

PROMISING AZRA

by Melissa Browne

by Helen Thurloe

I’m terrible at saving money. I buy avocado on toast most mornings because I enjoy feeding the stereotype that I have no control over my life or finances. When I saw this book at the store, I thought to myself: Why would you spend money on a book to sort out your finances, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of trying to save money?. However, this actually translates to: I have a spending problem I won’t admit and I desperately need to get it together.

I was originally apprehensive to delve into Promising Azra, a novel which claimed to provide a realistic depiction of life for Muslim migrant families in Australia. Too often have I seen Western pieces of literature that completely butcher the concept of Pakistani culture, and I am left to flick through the only form of representation that this subcontinental culture has: soap operas.

After some deliberation, I purchased the book. And oh boy, I’m glad I did. I liked this book because it was real. It tells you how it is and it doesn’t fuck around with wishy-washy bullshit. This book forced me to reconsider my avocado toast, and I actually took a lot of the advice on board – particularly the 30-Day Financial Detox, which I am currently undertaking (whether I’ve been successful or not is classified information).

Browne’s approach to talking about money is different to the standard book about getting your finances together.

She consciously acknowledges that talking about money is a difficult and often terrifying thing to do for most people.

Typically, money is a taboo, never to be discussed. This book takes the taboo nature of your finances and flips it into something you can understand and use in your daily life to effectively get your shit together.

I also loved the humour throughout this book, and I particularly enjoyed Browne’s writing style. It was fresh, and felt like a good friend was talking to me (is that weird?).

After reading this, I feel like I’m ready to focus on what I value, pursue my goals and get my finances together – if this is something you need to do, gwwo buy this book immediately then maybe treat yourself to some avocado on toast for being so committed to fixing your life up.

by Amanda Burgess

Helen Thurloe’s novel, however, was an extremely well researched and mirrored reflection of the reality of growing up in an Australian environment while living in a culturally restrictive migrant family. The protagonist, Azra, is a high school Chemistry whiz who has dreams of studying science at university. Her life is turned on its head when she is “promised” to an older man in her home country, without her consent.

The story is beautifully constructed and the characterisation of Azra, her supportive father, and her repressive mother are extremely well executed by Thurloe. It raises questions about the idea of an Australian identity, one of “freedom”, colliding with the influence of subcontinental culture. The novel examines the collision of religion with a secular society, and the twisted way in which cultures remould religious beliefs, particularly Islamic, to suit their ideals.

When Azra tries to exercise her Islamic and legal right to reject the marriage being enforced upon her, she is pushed into a web of cultural complications, with her authoritarian uncle pressuring her and her family to fulfil the promise and marry off Azra forcefully, or risk losing their newly established business.

The novel very cleverly deals with a universal, topical issue of the epidemic of forced marriages in a niche Australian environment, with subtle nuances apparent in Azra’s behaviour compared to her family’s, due to the influence of her higher education and rejection of cultural barriers.

Ultimately, after consulting with religious and legal sources, Azra learns of her rights as an Australian and as a Muslim, and makes a momentous decision about her fate, taking back control of her life. Without spoiling it too much, this is a book I would highly recommend to people from all walks of life. It’s a quick read, but really has a profound impact, and incites a lot of reflection about the consequences of culture and the influence of the environment around us.

by Juwariya Malik

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FILM

JUNGLE Greg McLean Jungle sounded really exciting when I first heard of it. The film was shot in Queensland and it featured Daniel Radcliffe – and who doesn’t love seeing him continue to break out of only being known for playing Harry Potter? Turns out, Queensland is beautiful, and Radcliffe can act. But the film stinks.

Greg McLean’s Jungle is a survivalist film set in Bolivia, 1981. The protagonist, Yossi (Daniel Radcliffe), convinces two new friends to explore the jungle with him. And yet for 50 minutes Radcliffe didn’t need to survive anything, and all I had for entertainment was some awful, forced drama between the three friends. Plus, Radcliffe’s Israeli accent wavers between kind-of-accurate and non-existent. Which reminds me – the dialogue is abysmal, too.

In a couple of scenes I surprised myself with genuinely relating to the characters. I saw Yossi miss a rescue plane, and the despair in his face was so real I could feel it, and the film’s score synchronises perfectly with him at that moment.

I enjoyed a peaceful shot where Yossi observes a gentle tortoise, or a moment of wonder where Yossi spins around amongst hundreds of butterflies. In these moments the film excels, but they’re so rare that I was simply bored for most of the film.

At least the scenery was pretty.

by Jarred Noulton

“We are the cancer. We deserve to disappear, seriously.”

Huh? Is this a meme? If only the dialogue was less laughable, I might actually appreciate the theme of preserving nature.

The film tries to create tension with music, but rather than building slowly to thrill its audience, music blasts from nowhere to jar your senses. I actually quite liked the film’s score, but the way it was integrated into the film just hurt my ears. I liked the cinematography too, which has wonderfully vibrant colours and gorgeous Aussie landscapes, but sweeping panoramas sometimes took the stage where I felt the story should have had more focus.

I spent a lot of this film yelling out plot holes and continuity issues – which made me feel like I was watching a B-grade film. Maybe if I was watching with mates this film would have been less traumatic of an experience, and we might have laughed at it. In one scene, Yossi and Kevin were ‘attempting’ to reach the shore of a river on their raft, and yet both were paddling the same way. Uh, no. That’s not how you turn. (I said it more impolitely the first time).

Repeat Offenders || 61

MUSIC

JOHN SHARP TORO The Native Cats Tasmanian post-punk pub rockers shine hard in The Native Cats’ new album, John Sharp Toro. Where to even get a foothold on talking about this album? It’s a collection of oddities, each of them truly original and thoroughly listenable, that sells itself as a ‘queer thriller puzzle box’.

It’s a Great Weird Album Of Our Time with an anchor point in the permeating personality of lead singer Chloe Alison Escott. Not to indulge too much in the personal, but according to the album’s description “Chloe Alison Escott read Nevada, spun out into an unplanned gender crisis, then finally transitioned, changed her name and became one of those true authentic selves you hear about on the news.”

As a result, the band’s long-planned fourth album was transformed into a half-formed project into a queer artistic wildcard.

After coming to know the lead singer through Twitter, I was pleased to find the same blend of pithy observation and cutting emotional insight in her lyrics as I have in her comedy work. Wry and specific, the band manages to deftly weave longing and irony together: “I wanna be your type, I wanna be your type, I wanna be your seven word ideal,” Escott sings, in Lang Crawford’s strong evocation of a nighttime encounter at a bar.

The lyrics are synchronised elegantly with the daring riffs of bassist Julian Teakle and kept to rhythm with the drum-work of Sarah Hennies. Every precise mood across John Sharp Toro’s wide gamut is met in perfect complement, no matter how obscure or specific it might be. The sound is what makes it pleasurable, and it’s the lyrics, the personas that Escott takes on in her specific brand of clever bravado

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that makes the album truly memorable. Picking highlights is a difficulty: the titular track comes to mind, though. A belligerent queer anthem, it’s a grimy, sarcastic swipe against hetero-conformity maintained with an eerie, almost otherworldly soundscape.

At times the album’s lyrics sound like excerpts from a manifesto on establishing a stable sense of self. I don’t mean to get into clichés of looking at queer art as a presentation of the psyche of the owners because this has little in common with much, except for thematics, of the bands that come to mind on hearing that reductive label. In fact, influences defy any sense of predictability: picking a random track from the album, you’re just as likely to get a reference to Serenade, James M Cain’s underread 1937 novel about a bisexual opera singer for whom the album is named after.

This ‘take anything from anywhere’ approach is maybe best exemplified in ‘Nixon Nevada.’ Its named for the two cultural artefacts the singer was consuming while dealing with her transition: Imogen Binnie’s trans coming-of-age Nevada and Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland: The Rise Of A President And The Fracturing Of America. The former is a seminal novel that’s the object of an in-joke as the go-to read for trans women coming to terms with their gender, and the latter is, well, a historical work on President Richard Nixon.

Overall, I can’t recall an Australian album that’s so brazenly avant-garde and thoroughly fun to listen to. In John Sharp Toro, The Native Cats have loosed a wild knockout.

by Cameron Colwell

H O R O S C O PES

ARIES

TAURUS

GEMINI

Mercury is in retrograde and… OH MY GOD IT’S CRASHING INTO THE EARTH!!!!!! You may experience severe, crushing pain and be cast into The Abyss this month.

Have you ever tried psyllium capsules?

They make your poo an absolutely treat to squeeze out.

When your Aunt says she’s into watersports, she isn’t talking about Jet Skiing.

CANCER

LEO

VIRGO

Eww. Whatever you do; just don’t.

Every choice you have ever made was prescribed by the almighty Hypnotoad.

Today was your first day ever making your own decisions, but you decided to sleep in all day and ate raw noodles as a meal. What the fuck?

Have you ever? Ever felt like this?

How strange things happen, when you’re going on the piss!

LIBRA

SCORPIO

SAGITTARIUS

Did you know if you take your age, minus it by ten, add 12, and then minus 2, it adds up to your age again! Crazy how maths works.

International Men’s Day is on November the 19th. Shut up about it.

When people offer you a mint, they’re not being generous. It’s because you have doo-doo breath.

CAPRICORN

AQUARIUS

PISCES

Everytime you walk outside, everyone’s acne clears up, their marks change from a pass to a HD, and their colitis stops ruining their jeans on the daily.

Keep living your truth.

Move over Liberal and Labour student clubs, the bees are entering politics.

Vote 1 for the queen.

You’re a cane toad! Thanks for destroying the ecosystem you fucker.

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