Honi Soit: O-Week, Semester 1, 2015

HONI SOIT

Profiles of a Sex Worker

A New Poem from Clive James Freedom Rides, Fifty Years On Pop To Popism, Full of Hot Air

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The editors of Honi Soit and the SRC acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. Honi Soit is written, printed, and distributed on Aboriginal land. If you are reading this, you are standing on Aboriginal land. Please recognise and respect this.

We acknowledge both our privilege and our obligation to redress the situation as best we can: to remember the mistakes of the past, act on the problems of today, and build for a future for everyone who calls this place home, striving always for practical and meaningful reconciliation.

Contents 4: News

Max Hall on the station at Victoria Park.

Joanna Connolly on strife at the Redfern Tent Embassy.

6: In Too Deep

Tim Asimakis is undercover with pick-up artists.

7: Ongoing

Isabelle Comber and Anonymous give their

accounts of sexuality online.

8-9: O-Week Special

Honi Soit on advice we’re obliged to give.

Patrick Morrow on the USU’s Corporate Culture.

10: Profile

Clive James gifts us an original poem and an

interview .

18-19: First-Person:

Riki Scanlan, Elle Triantafillou, and

Anonymous tell their stories.

11: Shareeka Helaluddin on Dear White People.

20-21: Arts & Culture

Alix Sanders-Garner dredges Pop To Popism and 12-15: Freedom Rides

Imogen Gardam questions the lack of female

Honi Soit records the story of the 50th Anniversary representation in film.

Freedom Rides.

22-23: Mary Ward on How To Ride a Bus for Two Hours.

16-17: Shit, Eat, Fuck Gronkwatch on a USU Cabcharge Scandal.

Honi’s guide to the best amenities on campus.

29-31: The Garter Press makes a triumphant return.

Editorial T

ypically, these O-Week editorials are meant to restart the conversation about Honi Soit.1 They’re usually written by someone burdened by a particular dislike of the past editors, and are by and large composed of a middling kind of rebuttal-cum-prospectus; a vapid attempt at excising the past while setting the table for the future…

The challenge we’ve set for ourselves this year is to represent the same kaleidoscope of experience in our paper as you will experience in your time at university.

Our prospectus, if we have one, is to present with fidelity as many voices we can find. Last week, a number of people found our website by googling “Honi Soit join”, and to any 1. “What conversation?” opines loudly the person who reads the newspaper as a means of raising their blood pressure.

of you thinking the same: please do.2 We’re open for consultation in our offices beneath the Wentworth Building on Wednesdays between 11am and 1pm, or you can email us at editors@honisoit.com. We’ll publish anything on the proviso it’s good.

As for our logo, we’ve gone with a snake eating itself,3 which, depending on your view, means either: That Honi, for all its O-Week promises of revolution, is a broadly recurring variation on a theme—same but kind of different, ad infinitum; or: 2. Admittedly, we also got found by “does crystal meth have magnet or electricity in it”, no question mark.

3. It previously devoured an Ibis, but is still hungry.

That just as the snake will never devour its own head, the newspaper won’t—can’t!—exhaust its possibility.4 Over the holidays, our printing press liquidated, our offices were closed for renovation, and we received a not-insignificant number of legal threats. It’s February now and we’re still here: new printers the same, if a little more expensive; offices the same, if a little more nicely painted; legal threats still steadily coursing in. Things I thought would scuttle us have sailed by. Same, but kind of different, right?

Peter Walsh 4. You could probably also say something about the snake shedding its skin each year, which, I imagine Honi does as well, but even entertaining this metaphor makes me want to beat myself up.

Credits Editor-in-Chief: Peter Walsh Editors: Tim Asimakis, Joanna Connolly, Alex Downie, Dominic Ellis, Sophie Gallagher, Samantha Jonscher, Patrick Morrow, Alexi Polden, Rebecca Wong, Lisa Xia

Cover art: Pattern generated from the art of Steve Yeowell, in 2000 AD Showcase #31, October 1, 1988.

Contributors: Marley Benz, Isabelle Comber, Evelyn Corr, Max Hall, Imogen Gardam, Shareeka Helaluddin, Andy Mason, Luca Moretti, Alix Sanders-Garner, Riki Scanlan, Elle Triantafillou, Lauren Pearce, Mary Ward

Artists/Illustrators: Bryant Apolonio, Stephanie Barahona, Phoebe Corleone, Samuel McEwen, Monica Renn Puzzles: Zplig

Disclaimer: Honi Soit is published by the Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney, Level 1 Wentworth Building, City Road, University of Sydney NSW 2006. The SRC’s operation costs, space and administrative support are financed by the University of Sydney. Honi Soit is printed under the auspices of the SRC’s directors of student publications: Christopher Warren, Serena May, James Rusiti, Ilya Klauzner, Charlie O’Grady, and Alison Xiao. All expressions are published on the basis that they are not to be regarded as the opinions of the SRC unless specifically stated. The Council accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of any of the opinions or information contained within this newspaper, nor does it endorse any of the advertisements and insertions.

letters

A Letter To My Past Self Lauren Pearce writes for those who didn’t come from feeder schools - and for those who did.

Lauren,

you’ve ever done.

You never belonged here. You never will.

We need to get one thing straight: your life is going to suck for the next six months.

You’re going to be the student from a public school in every single one of your classes. And you’re going to hear stuff that’s going to surprise you. I’m sure people don’t really mean to be like that.

Some of my highlights were: the student who asked me if Macquarie Fields was near Macquarie University, and why I didn’t just go there; the telling “oh” noise people made when I would explain where it actually is; and that one young woman from Mosman who smiled pleasantly and asked me “but why are you here?”

You’ll get to the end of semester and get average marks for the first time in a very long time. And you’ll wonder what it’s all for. Why drive yourself half to death just to disappoint the few people who thought you would be great?

Why indeed.

Don’t do that.

You’re going to storm right out of there.

And then you’re only going to come in to uni for class, spend as little time on campus as you can. You never needed a social life anyway. Your life is hard enough as is without some toff dragging you down.

Being the first person in your family to go to university is hard. Travelling 40km each way to get to university is hard. Insomnia and anxiety are hard. Working two part time jobs to pay for it and still having no savings, no means of moving out, is hard.

Students often find their first semester to be their worst. You’re no exception. The trains don’t come anywhere near often enough. To get to that 9am tutorial, you’re going to have to get up at six. And you won’t get a seat. Don’t even think you’ll get a seat. Always travel in peak hour, that will minimise your trip. Don’t leave your readings for the morning before because it’s too hard to focus on crowded trains.

Things get harder from there. Somewhere between class, three hours of commuting time, and assignments, you’re going to have to work. Don’t get too attached to sleeping. Like, really don’t. I mean, yes, I know that you’re no stranger to hard work, but just hauling yourself out of bed in the morning is going to top anything else

You’ll think about dropping out. Or transferring to a university easier to get to, where no one, including yourself, would ever have to question your right to be there. You’ll be comfortable. You might even be happy.

Life is hard. But it’s also wonderful. Over the next three years you’ll meet amazing people, become the Vice-president and then President of a certain little Society, hold in your hands the first issue of a literary journal you helped establish, watch a play that you’ve written come together before your eyes. You’ll work harder, stay up longer, cry, laugh, and love like you never have before.

It’s not going to feel like it for the next little while, but at this moment, you are precisely where you need to be. One day, the life you’re living and the sad, angry person you are now will be unrecognisable.

You’re just going to have to trust me on that one.

Lauren

A Message from the SRC’s Sexual Harassment Officer Monique Newberry on consent.

Consent is an agreement to participate in an activity. It is non­binding and always necessary. If you're participating in a sexual activity with someone then consent is absolutely necessary and can be revoked at any time. So if you change your mind or start to feel uncomfortable after you've given consent, it's okay to say no. You don't owe sex to anyone, and anyone who feels you owe them sex isn't worth your time.

like that?” are just some examples.

Consent also isn’t something that is just given once. It’s an ongoing process, which means that an important part of ensuring consent is regularly checking in with your partner. This doesn’t have to be awkward.

There are so many ways to check in with your partner. “Are you enjoying yourself ?”

“You look uncomfortable, are you okay?”

“How far did you want to go?” “Do you

It's important to remember that if someone is really intoxicated (slurring their speech, vomiting, having trouble standing or walking) then they are too intoxicated to give consent.

You can also let your partner know how you feel. "That feels really good, keep going." "Mmm yes." "I don't think I'm ready." "I'm not sure." But remember, you shouldn't feel obligated to speak up; anyone participating in a sexual activity has the responsibility to establish active consent from their partner(s).

So check in with your partner and have fun!

Thoughts courtesy of reddit. com/r/usyd user ggqq:

B. Eng (Civ)/B. Des Arch ‘14 If you have thoughts, please email editors@honisoit.com

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news

Train Line Makes Next Stop at Victoria Park Redfern might soon have itself some competition. Train correspondent, Max Hall reports.

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ictoria Park may play host to a new train station, as the State Government decides where to build a stop between Central and Sydenham. The station would link two arms of a proposed ‘Sydney Rapid Transit Network’, giving students on the planned north-west rail link and Bankstown train line direct access to the University.

The proposed network would extend the $8.3 billion North-West Rail Link into the city, via new tracks connecting Epping and Chatswood and a second harbour tunnel. All planned services would run without a timetable. Instead, trains will run approximately every five minutes on the new lines. Conversion of all existing infrastructure between Sydenham and Bankstown to be compatible with single deck trains would accompany the construction of an underground rapid transit track between Central and Sydenham via a new station. Victoria Park and Dank St in Waterloo have been identified as the two possible locations for

this station.

Which option the Government will favour has been the subject of intense lobbying by the University. USyd Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence has met with Premier Mike Baird to lobby for the train station in recent weeks (Honi speculates that a substantial number of chummy firstname jokes were made). Further meetings have been held with the state Transport and Planning Ministers, as well as the Treasurer.

Honi Soit understands that the University is arguing that a train station so close to campus would increase enrolments from the Hills District and the Bankstown and Lakemba areas. Spence has said that the proposed station “would make it much easier for staff and students from the north-west and south-west of Sydney to access the University,” suggesting that “it would be a catalyst for the creation of a vibrant knowledge-based precinct”.

Questions around a University area

only now becoming “knowledge-based” aside, students would likely benefit from improved disabled access that is currently not provided at Redfern Station.

Funding for the project is not yet certain. If re-elected at the State Election in March, the Liberal Government will fund the network by privatising 49% of the state’s electricity infrastructure. Opponents argue that this policy is not substantially different to the privatisation models that contributed to Campbell Newman’s dramatic loss in the recent Queensland election.

What the construction of a station would mean for Victoria Park—particularly the pool, pond and significant amount of open space—is unclear.

The decision is likely to be made by the end of 2016. Construction is scheduled to begin by 2018 with the new lines in operation by 2023.

Backgrounder: Redfern Tent Embassy Joanna Connolly updates on the struggle for The Block.

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or nearly nine months a group of dedicated protesters have made their home in the small green oval between Eveleigh Street and Redfern Station.

Known as the Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the camp was erected last year as a protest against the planned commercial development of Redfern’s iconic parcel of land known as the ‘The Block’ Painted above the Embassy is the declaration ‘Sovereignty Never Ceded’.

Four decades ago, that reality was partially recognised on the Block when the Whitlam Government provided the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) money to buy homes in the area, vesting formal legal ownership of the land in the group.

Securing The Block was an early step in the urban land rights campaign and the area became a powerful symbol of community and resistance. In 2004, it was the scene of substantial protests following the death of 17-year old Thomas Hickey, an Aboriginal boy killed after being impaled on a fence while fleeing from police.

Today however, as Redfern’s small bars and $19 haloumi and avocado brunches

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reach saturation point, the Block has become prime real estate. The financial implications have not been lost on the AHC. Last year, the Company announced the Pemulwuy Project, a $70 million undertaking that will see the existing housing demolished and the land re-developed into a ‘mixed use site’, including social and affordable housing for 62 families, as well as a gymnasium, commercial and retail space, a gallery and student accommodation.

Legally, the Company owns the site. Yet the concern amongst the community— most of whom are excluded from the AHC, whose membership is capped at 100—is that no affordable housing will actually be provided for Indigenous people. Private investors have signed up to fund the construction of student housing and commercial and retail space, but no money has been raised for affordable housing. Neither the NSW nor Federal governments are offering to back the project. Protesters fear that the AHC is more interested in profit than community welfare and, despite what the brochures say, the Block’s existing tenants will be

evicted and left out in the cold. Hence the Tent Embassy.

The past summer has seen tensions rising around the protest movement.

Just before Christmas, and then again in February, organisers sent out frantic alerts, urging supporters to the location to defend against what they feared would be imminent eviction. No eviction attempts were actually made on either occasion and police denied they had ever been planned.

Then last Friday occupants were served an eviction notice informing residents they had ‘no permission, express or implied, to be on the site’ and had until Monday Feb 23 to clear out. Signs were erected declaring the AHC the owner of the site and that trespassers would be forcibly removed.

By the time this paper goes to print, the Monday eviction deadline will have passed.

Whatever happens, it is unlikely that the bitter struggle over the land will be over.

The AHC’s Project is far from a done deal, and the Tent Embassy protesters will not give up the fight any time soon.

Choose Your Own Adventure A story started by us and continued by you.

I

t’s O-Week and you’re wandering down Eastern Avenue. Well, not wandering so much as slithering among a squishy cavalcade of bodies trying to avoid the rain, your shoulders brushing against shoulder-length holiday hair, grease, and sweaty t-shirts.

A man who smells like Axe Body Spray asks if you’re interested in paintball and you are not. He takes off his Ray-Bans, looks deeply into your eyes (his eyes welling with Monster Energy Drink scented tears) and says “please, I live off commission”, but paintball is for bogans and you only do charity online. You walk off.

The cruelty with which you dismissed that man finally tipped your Karma scale into the negative and, almost immediately after, you felt a musclebound hand first tap, then drag you by the shoulder into a decrepit space behind Carslaw.

You look around to see you’re in a nest of neck-tattooed, no-necked, necktiewearing postgraduate Law students.

“Welcome, outsider”, says one, demurely.

They begin to chant the phrase ‘outsider’ in a macabre unison, to what sounds like the tune of Avici’s “Levels”. From the throng, their leader emerges wearing a leather cloak, which almost covers his Schoolies 2009 singlet, bearing a ceremonial glass water pourer.

“Hit this fat bong or we’ll kill you”, he says, gravely.

What do you do?

Email a sentence or two detailing your next move to editors@honisoit.com and the finest entry will become the jumping off point for the next chapter. Don’t forget, you can go back and correct prior mistakes if you so desire.

FREE

RAPID HIV TESTS Please tell reception if you want to book a Rapid Test

Sexual Health Check-ups See the specialists Show your Student Card and everything will be Bulk Billed.

Comic by Bryant Apolonio

www.tspc.com.au

in too deep

Leave Your Fedora at the Door Tim Asimakis attended a free pick up artistry course and wants his money back.

It’s actually good to go up to women taking photos of themselves and offer to take a photo for them. You can have fun with the camera, perhaps just zoom into one of the girl’s boobs and just take a photo of her boobs. Pretend like you had no idea how that happened, make them laugh and try again.

- Damien Diecke, Sincere Seduction

M

y intentions were always journalistic, but I was still ashamed enough that I used a false name when I signed up for Damien Diecke’s free seminar, How To Find, Approach, Charm & Date The Hottest Girls. Damien, head coach at the assuredly named School of Attraction, is a pick up artist, one of those people we’ve talked so much about since Julien Blanc came to Australia to teach audiences how to commit acts of sexual violence.

While Julien Blanc was fringe enough to have his tour cancelled and his visa torn up, the School of Attraction exists firmly in the mainstream. Its website features glowing reviews from GQ, the Sydney Morning Herald, and Channel 9 below a glossy banner promising ‘no-sleaze dating & pickup courses’. But with coaches choosing to go by the titles ‘Friend-Zone Hacker’ and ‘Night Charmer’, I didn’t have high hopes for my evening of dating advice.

Those hopes plunged lower still when I arrived. The dulcet tones of Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines masked the awkward silence as sixty odd attendees filed into the seminar room.

After an uncomfortable wait for latecomers, the session opened with a testimonial from ex-student Ryan.

Standing gingerly at the front of the room with one too many buttons undone on his good shirt and all the confidence of a year seven debater, he read his speech off painstakingly cutout paper palm cards. “You may find it surprising,” he began, with a clumsy hint of a sly wink, “but I used to be a nerd in high school.”

I didn’t find it that surprising.

*** When ladies are drunk, they get a case of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). One minute you’ll be talking to them, the next minute they’ll be distracted by the shiny disco ball.

- Damien Diecke, Sincere Seduction *** Looking around the room, the youthful, fedora-sporting neckbeards I’d been expecting were nowhere to be seen.

Instead I was presented with ugly (by all conventional standards), mostly middle-aged (the average person was the wrong side of 40), lonely men. It seemed inevitable that some of them would continue to be lonely at the end of the course, some might become happier, and others would likely use the lessons learned from the School of Attraction to make women unsafe.

Sitting beside me was James.* His jeans were horribly stained, though not in the cool way jeans used to be stained in 2004, and behind his ear sat a big glob of face cream where nobody had bothered to point it out to him.

In our brief conversations he explained how depressed he’d been feeling lately. At one point in the seminar we

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were told to congratulate ourselves and a huge grin spread across James’ face as he copied down the instruction in block capitals. I wondered if he knew that the School of Attraction reserved the right to reject students with mental health issues.

*** It’s no harder to approach a girl if she is sitting even though it can seem more intimidating (though it is harder to check out her ass).

- Damien Diecke, Sincere Seduction *** It wasn’t until pick-up pro Damien Diecke took control of the PowerPoint presentation that the ultimate villain of this piece was finally revealed. He was attractive and confident enough I guess (his career would presumably have been much shorter were he not), but his confidence felt laboriously learned. Each point was punctuated with a forced tricolon as this over-practiced Cicero spewed fortune-cookie misogyny at the eager crowd.

“Make her feel like she had to work to get you to like her.”

“A man’s ideal day is one in which he can do anything he wants. A woman’s ideal day is one her man has planned for her.”

The word consent was never mentioned. I felt the tiniest flash of hope when Damien told his cohort of future pick up artists to be honest about what they wanted, and to walk away from women who didn’t want the same things as them. Sadly, this was only important as an aid to prevent men from picking up the “wrong woman”, the woman with nothing going for her except her looks. Nothing suggested that it was because women were human beings deserving of even basic respect.

As the night wore on, women being everything and anything but human beings became a recurring theme. Women were lie detectors.

Women were oranges on a super market shelf.

Women were prey (as are straight men in a gay bar, apparently).

*** Touch her hand. It is one of the most sensitive places on the human body. If you don’t think touching a hand is sexual, try gently placing your hand on top of another man’s and see how weird it feels.

- Damien Diecke, Sincere Seduction ***

It took almost two hours for Damien to deliver his lesson in degrading others, interspersed as it was with generic Cosmo dating tips. At every point his students were depressingly diligent. How to make eye contact bled into how to smile bled into how to talk bled into how to secure a number bled into how to date.

And then, abruptly, the advice was complete and Damien Diecke transitioned to salesman. For less than a cheap holiday you can take control of yourself ! Roll up and change your life! Your quest to be better begins today!

Multiple payment options and gold-plated satisfaction guaranteed or your money back!

I was meant to feel inspired so as that I’d hand over $3,450 for a further 13 weeks of coaching. But watching a quickly growing queue of people reaching for their credit cards in worship of their new saviour just made me sad.

Unreasonably sad for myself, sad for the men who were about to pay to learn how to better degrade women, and sad for the women that they would turn into survivors.

With the session ending and Damien struggling to close the deal, he offered me a free copy of his best-selling book, Sincere Seduction: Using honesty and integrity to attract women. Bussing home alone I made the mistake of thumbing through it. The cover displayed that very title, painted onto a sign held aloft by Pinocchio, whose enlarged nose was nothing if not a testament to his dishonesty and insincerity.

I was too tired and too disheartened to try to decode what it was supposed to mean.

ongoing Ongoing is a space to give ideas time to develop. Every few weeks we’ll choose a theme and dedicate this page to exploring it. It’s a space not just for stories, but for discussion; if you have a story or want to develop on the theme in any other way please email us: editors@honisoit.com

CYBER SEX Chains and Whips in Cyberspace Isabelle Comber went looking for a seedy underbelly, what she found was a close-knit community.

“I

’m thinking about writing an article about fetishes.

Have you ever gotten involved with it?” I asked the guy I was seeing. He smiled and leant in, “Why do you ask…?”

After I clarified that I wasn’t proposing a rendezvous, we began discussing the topic and his previous partners.

“How did you know they were into it?” I asked. “They were bad girls,” he responded, slowly nodding.

There are many problems with the way this guy thought (he’s dumped now) but the conversation still made me wonder. If one wishes to engage with kink and BDSM in a consensual and meaningful way, how can one go about it?

As a relative outsider, I wanted to pursue different ways of thinking about the community of kink, and stumbled upon fetlife.com. Fetlife is a global social networking site similar to Facebook for the BDSM and fetish community.

Users have a profile and can join groups, chat to ‘friends’ and seek event pages, all about kink.

Emma* was introduced to Fetlife through her boyfriend a few years ago. “It’s so open and accepting to all kinds of people. Plus, however weird you may feel you or your interests are, there’s thousands people into the same thing, and weirder stuff.”

Fluid identity is key when joining. You can choose from myriad sexual orientations and gender associations.

Whilst the online sphere can often be a male-dominated space, this arena seemed more neutral. I signed up as a cis-female bisexual.

Flicking through profiles, elements of kink that would have never be discussed in my social circles lay at my fingertips. I learned a lot from simply viewing member profiles. Before, I had reduced this world to BDSM, ‘subs’ and ‘doms’, neglecting other practices like ‘slavery’, ageplay and animal-play. It was hard to imagine people being able to connect with others who shared these interests outside of the online sphere.

“Being treated like shit, or dressing as the opposite gender, or acting as though you’re an animal/family members/ baby... Some people aren’t okay with admitting that stuff to themselves, let alone others,” said Emma.

You can find literally any kind of fetish on here, and most members address their personal fetishes proudly. One of the first pages I found was a 22-year-old pansexual gender queer, whose profile picture showed them unashamedly anally fisting themselves. They belonged to several groups that linked them to likeminded people with a ‘fisting’ interest locally and around the world.

This member had the capacity to live their fetish online as part of a global community, and interact with the local site to meet up or attend events in the physical world. Though while everyone is accepted, community involvement is imperative, and illegitimate or detached members are under the scrutiny of others.

Emma described the discrepancy between her pride in kink, and the times when members had doubted her commitment, as difficult. “On the other hand, much like any other community anywhere, people get very cliquey.”

It was this commitment to the community of kink, along with the honesty and openness that I saw in members that pushed me to cancel my membership to Fetlife. Most members are serious about fetish and protective of their community. My fetish-less student journalist vibe urged me to leave, but has also encouraged me to return if a fetish were to develop. Far from characters, members are real people engaging in kink and fetish, humanised but not normalised.

“I don’t think BDSM communities feel the need to be normalised or accepted.”, says Emma. “I would say that most BDSM people, especially Fetlife users, are perfectly fine with their world being a little out of the ordinary.”

I Know What You Want Lyra Talise is a student and a sex-worker. These are the online profiles she uses and the clients they attract.

The girl with the single mind: This is me. I’m a bubbly girl with no discernible identity, a university student studying… well, something. My name is exotic—like my skin!—but not specifically exotic. It’s pretty and easy to type, and easy to forget.

Like me.

You’ll message me because you like what you see. Which is two photos of my breasts. They tell you that I have lingerie, and that I have nice breasts.

I have nice breasts!

You’ll meet me, because I’m a bubbly exotic university student with nice breasts, who will charge you $250 to go down on me for an hour, and promise to enjoy it.

I will enjoy it—of course!

I’ll enjoy it to the tune of $250.

(Unless you’re really good. Then I’ll enjoy that too.)

The girl with the overheating brain: This is also me.

This time, I’m a sexy, submissive university student. I’m still studying…something. But it’s obviously real because I’ve been working really hard. Really hard. So hard my brain is overheated, and I need a break!

(Winky face.)

Specifically, a break where you, a naturally dominant man, tie me up, or spank me— or one of us dresses up like a schoolgirl. Or all three.

And even more specifically, a break where each hit or restraint puts me that much more over $250.

The photo is nice, but sort of immaterial. You’ll message me because I’m a prim well-spoken girl with a dirty mind.

You’ll meet me because I promise to enjoy being called a slut by a stranger.

And I will enjoy it! You’re paying for it, after all.

The real deal (no, seriously): This is also me. It’s just that this me is a lot more… well, me.

I’m not an escort, I’m a courtesan. I don’t provide sex, I provide companionship. I’m intelligent and sophisticated, and if you tell me your favourite street in Florence I’ll tell you mine. I’m a university student, and I’m doing real majors at a real university, and Honours in a real subject.

I even have a thesis, and I’ll tell you just enough about it (over a bottle of champagne) that you find my maturity arousing.

When we get into the bedroom, I’m your loving girlfriend (or, for an extra $150, your obedient submissive). And it’s authentic, because I stipulate that the money I took from you is for my time and not my services. It’s a donation, not a payment.

A non-negotiable donation starting at $450 for an hour of my time.

What can I say? I’m worth it.

About me: When I’m not playing your sophisticated dinner companion and sensual lover, I’m wearing granny panties and sports bras under yoga pants while procrastinating instead of doing university work. I found myself in the murky and fascinating world of sex-work at the age of 19. I stick around for the alcohol. *Names have been changed.

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o-week

Things We’re Contractually Obliged To Tell You A quick and dirty guide to university.

Accumulated quasi-wisdom Google “[name of textbook] + pdf ” to avoid buying textbooks, or photocopy the ones in the library.

Faculty camps are fun, but be warned: hacks will try to recruit you into their political faction.

The University offers general bursaries of up to $1000 for students in need (as long as you haven’t failed a subject) and nobody applies for them. They can be used for buying textbooks, and paying bills and rent.

You’re not obligated to stay in your degree or at university.

Don’t be afraid to switch degrees, defer, or drop out.

There’s nothing to stop you from returning later.

Know the census date (March 31). Also, find out about your faculty’s simple extension policy. Trust us.

The campus medical service is in the Wentworth building.

They are discrete and bulk bill students. Counsellors are also available.

Gender neutral bathrooms are available downstairs in the Holme Building and in the SRC offices in the Wentworth buildimg. There is also a unisex bathroom in the US Studies Building.

Cheapest...

Booze: In happy hour, Hermanns sells $3.50 Boags schooners, Chardonnay, Cabernet Shiraz and bubbles. In general, alcohol is always cheaper off campus.

Meal: Sign up for VegeSoc in O-Week, and take advantage of their weekly unlimited lunch for $5. On their off-days, you can get pide from UniBros ($4.50) or a pasta of the day from Courtyard ($6.80~ on ACCESS). Greek society also offers $2 kebabs every second Wednesday. Food gets cheaper towards the end of the day, especially at Miso Honi (4pm give-away!... Name, no relation) and Azuri (though see our coverage of their salmonella scandal in 2014). Bringing food from home? Microwaves are available in Fisher, Wentworth, and the Wom*n’s Room in Manning.

Movies: You can buy cheap Dendy tickets from the International Student desk on the top floor of the Wentworth building, where there are also a large number of pool tables. The library also has a huge film collection, so you can rent anything for nothing.

Gym: At $13.80 per week including classes, Victoria Park Pool Gym is better value than the Sydney Uni gym, which your SSAF fees are already paying for....

Off-Campus The Forest Lodge Hotel offers the cheapest student jug for $9 and student pizzas for $10, even if half the bartenders don’t actually know about the student deals.

Looking to get off campus? A shuttle bus leaves from Fisher library at night to take you to Redfern.

Campus security will give you a lift to a local station if you ask (sometimes).

If you sign up to eduroam you get free wifi on every University campus.

The best lunch specials along King St are cheap Japanese at Hikaru, $5 lunches at Thariffic and Rowda Ya-Habibi’s kebabs, which are all more than worth the travel.

‘Parking spots’ are a social construct, however there are SOME theoretically illegal spots that go unchecked by local inspectors.

If you need somewhere to sleep, speak to the SRC. STUCCO, a housing co-op on Wilson St, Newtown, offers crisis accommodation for students in need. The SRC can also help with emergency loans, and offer caseworkers to untangle bills.

Despite the crippling social anxiety Monica felt at the mere thought of even saying hello to that random dude who sat two rows in front of her in chemistry lectures, after eight weeks she decided to give the middle finger to the negative voice in her mind and concluded that this dude would definitely be much better company at lunch than those filthy, lunch-stealing ibises.

Illustration by Monica Renn.

8

opinion

Human Resources Patrick Morrow is a friend, foe and face of the University of Sydney Union

E

very OWeek the University of Sydney Union is bullied into a charade. Increasingly stringent budgets tear what is fundamentally an organisation for students between providing and advertising the services that make the institution worthwhile, and increasing commodification of its members. The trade-off is pretty clear: there’s no such thing as a free breakfast.

Principal sponsorship of OWeek in 2014 was a $27 500 partnership. The Co-op Bookshop and Iglu have this year wrangled top billing rights, while Bacardi, Boost Mobile, V and Wonderground have joined up as major sponsors (last year, an $11000 privilege). In all, 41 stallholders (the SRC included) have bought their space.

These sponsor stalls, like the others, ostensibly showcase the university experience. Though they are less representative of the best of the university than many of the free stalls. Investors are the only groups with roaming and spruiking rights; the only groups with access to double width and open stall space; the only groups advertised individually; and the only groups with the most accessible and salient stall locations.

This, they say, is your Union. This is your university.

Sydney University Sport and Fitness pay

extra for the special display of their boat (also worth getting used to), while at $385 per week, Iglu offensively claims to provide affordable student housing on every spare inch of advertising space in the postcode. So many of the event’s affiliations feels like a disgusting rort for the superwealthy, made worse by Iglu’s offer of a complementary Access Card and 1 weeks’ free rent as “a cool way to top up your piggy bank”—presumably a comforting thought as you haemorrhage the price of a laptop every week for rent for god only knows how long. These partnerships with the Union reflect a gross trend—an urge towards the immediately profitable over what’s best for the student body.

funding comes from cash from Bacardi and V and the Commonwealth Bank and Iglu, it seems necessary to reiterate that it is still, at least by name, a union.

For while there is nothing inherently wrong with advertisement, every stall in corporate hands contributes to a false equivalence between what actually builds the incredible student experience at Sydney, and what merely funds it. It is disappointing given the incredible lengths to which the Union has gone to creating profitable spaces that also serve the needs of students—as in the case of The Refectory, Courtyard, and (depending on whom you ask) Laneway.

Those who run the Union undoubtedly have the best interests of the students in mind, but dollars do not ultimately constitute the student experience.

These endeavours reflect a willingness to stumble out of the clumsy post-VSU fiscal pubescence with students on top, but while such a significant portion of the USU’s

It would be stupid to think of the USU as malicious. Howard’s butchery of compulsory student unionism placed unprecedented pressure on universities and student groups to provide the same services, to more or less the same number of students, with a fraction of the means.

OWeek’s blatant monetisation is an awful symptom of it.

That’s not to excuse the degree to which the USU has sold itself, just to explain it.

dignity mustn’t be short-changed for cash.

I have benefited so much from the best parts of the USU and you ought to do likewise. My fondest memories are owed to its truly student-driven infrastructure and it remains one of the only vehicles for vaguely independent student projects.

But if its financial sustainability comes at the expense of our independence, it will ultimately be to no end.

There are so many projects and programs that the Union runs brilliantly to a profit. without deferring to reckless affiliations and commodifying students If the idea of a for-profit Union is not negotiable, we should all take great pains to make sure it makes money responsibly.

Exorbitant festival headline acts, sponsored funches and eating competitions, and every tier of non-student management are all minor sums that stack up—especially when they are used to justify the increasing infringement on student independence.

Students need respect and autonomy as much as plump coffers. The resourcefulness and passion of those who, without remuneration, build the best parts of this institution cannot be overstated, and this

This is literally the first image on the first page of the USU prospectus.

Dollars and Sense How to get (almost) free travel on your Opal card.

L

ast year our beloved minister for transport issued a challenge to each person in the state. Gladys said that when it comes to Opal, “I want people to beat the system”. Hold tight baby, because with concession Opal cards available it’s time to meet that challenge. But before we can, we need to know how Opal works.

Firstly, you’ll never pay more than $7.50 a day for public transport or $30 per week.

Secondly, once you’ve made eight “journeys” the rest of your travel is free for the week. (What is a journey? For our purposes, a journey is completed after you tap on and off at two non-CBD rail stations on different lines.)

So, how do you get eight journeys (and free travel) as cheaply and quickly as possible?

Importantly, they stop counting journeys after you hit your daily limit ($7.50). With concession tickets at $1.05 (bus) and $1.69 (train fare) for a 1-zone ride, that means you can’t reach 8 journeys in a single day (anything over $7.50 won’t be counted).

You’ll need two days to beat Gladys’ baby.

Cheapest: Reach eight journeys by catching a bus less than 3km and waiting an hour. Do it before a lecture. If you’re heading out for lunch get the bus there and have a drink on Gladys.

Lodge hotel, show them this story, and spend the savings on a couple of their finest student jugs (you’ll actually be a dollar short, but hey, who’s counting?).

Quickest: The quickest method involves tapping on at Macdonaldtown station but don’t get on the train, it is faster to walk to Erskineville station (450m away, and on a different line), and tap off there. Repeat in reverse. You’ve clocked in a fraction of the time it’d take you on the train. Cost: $9.50 if it’s all done off peak and $13.60 if done during peak.

Obviously this doesn’t save you much if you live in the city, but if you’re travelling from far away this could save you around $17 a week. Then head over to the Forest

So you’ve cheated the Opal man...

Illustration by Stephanie Barahona

9

profile

Clive, Unveiled Clive James pens an original poem for Honi and sits for an interview with Luca Moretti.

Clive James began his Arts degree at the University of Sydney in 1958, where he was literary editor of Honi Soit and directed the annual Union Revue. Soon after graduating he left for England, where he established himself as a newspaper columnist, poet, comic, television personality and memoirist. In 2010, he was diagnosed with multiple terminal illnesses, but has continued to publish poetry and criticism. Here, he talks with Luca Moretti about his life, mortality and the Barry Spurr scandal.

LM: In Unreliable Memoirs, you refer to your undeveloped taste at university, but also to days at Manning spent reading Ezra Pound. Is this account of your immaturity a fabrication?

CJ: It’s the truth, although it’s also true that I was insufferably bumptious, especially on literary matters: the less I knew, the more confident my pronouncements.

Ezra Pound was certainly a forerunner there; but I was also constantly engaged with T.S. Eliot, who was much less given to shouting from the rooftops; and if anybody influenced my general stance on poetry, it was Eliot. I left him out of the Manning House scene in Unreliable Memoirs because he was less fun than Pound to write about. Even on a petty scale, history gets distorted by whoever narrates it.

LM: I got the impression from Unreliable Memoirs that you did not consider Sydney University to be world class. Is that a fair conclusion? And did it lead you to read off the course?

CJ: No, I thought at the time, and still think now, that the Arts faculty at Sydney University was responsible, comprehensive and impressive. I was just a bad student, and when I got to Cambridge I was a bad student again. There is something in me that ensures I will always read off the course. The only thing I can plead in mitigation is that I pursued my extracurricular reading with diligence. Unless the book was a set book, I knew all about it. In Cambridge I would sit in the coffee shops for hours reading Wittgenstein. Unfortunately the examination paper was full of questions about Jane Austen, and there is a limit to how much you can say about Pride and Prejudice just by quoting the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

LM: Following the Barry Spurr controversy, some have questioned his recommendation that the national curriculum should place a greater emphasis on the Western Canon. Do you agree?

CJ: I’m first of all concerned that someone can have his e-mails read against his wish.

My second concern is that a man in a position of responsibility should be so dumb as not to realise it might happen. My third concern is that he inadvertently provided exactly the kind of ammunition that would help his opponents to blow holes in a good case. There should indeed be a

10

Photo File The photographs in the manila folder Are all of me when I was strong and bolder, But now I’m old, and illness makes me older, And winter’s coming and the nights grow colder.

This photograph is me when I was swimming At Inverell and sent the pebbles skimming Across the river. Now my eyes are brimming Because my arm aches and the light is dimming.

And in this one my wave of hair is showing The gleam of Brylcreem, and my mother sewing Has told me that I am a sheik, and going To stun the girls when I have finished growing.

And here I am as the high school debater.

A Cicero with an accelerator, I talked too fast but I got better later.

Lucky that pimple didn’t leave a crater.

The snaps of me when young are less narcotic, I think, than those in which I look robotic, Decked out by fame in various exotic Bad hats and a fixed smirk that grew sclerotic.

I finished growing and the years went flying, But there is no time now to waste time crying, Although these pictures prove, beyond denying, That once I was alive and not just dying.

Indeed because they show the treasure gleaming Of good health I was granted beyond dreaming, These constant posturings need no redeeming: They are the substance. I am just the seeming.

The world I conquered is a tide retreating, And with my maker there will be no meeting, But look at this and see how time is fleeting: Here, I am one year old. My heart is beating.

Time to pack up this packet and forget it.

The past would overwhelm me if I let it.

The clock ticks like a bomb. I didn’t set it.

Let’s just say there’s a deadline and I met it.

greater emphasis on the Western Canon.

Without that, there will be no ways and means to assert the importance of any other kind of canon. There is undoubtedly such a thing as an indigenous tradition of poetry, but there is no such thing as an indigenous tradition of literary criticism.

LM: In Poetry Notebook you write about ‘moments’ of delight in reading poetry that are crucial in both experiencing verse and understanding the forms of poems. What are those moments?

CJ: All I know about the conception of the poetic “moment” is that it might be closely allied to the urge to shout “Eureka!” after having realized something explanatory about the level of the bathwater.

It’s as intuitive, as sudden, and finally as inexplicable, as that. But every poet lives for it, even the ones to whom it has never really happened. Usually the moment hits us in the form of a single phrase, which is probably the way that it hit the poet. I often get the picture of these particles wan-

dering in space, streaking into the Earth’s atmosphere, and hitting some poor bastard right in the head. Dryden called the moment “the hit”. Inspiration is almost always described later as an impact, and not as an evolution. I could go on forever, but only if you promise to read my book again.

Really, to the extent that I understand the question, the answer is in there.

LM: You have advocated for the role of intellectuals who are not academics. It has been said that it’s now nearly impossible to pursue a living as a freelance literary journalist; does the metropolitan critic have a future?

CJ: He never had one, really. Only the great Edmund Wilson managed to pursue the career of literary intellectual without holding down an academic post, and he ended up owing a fortune in taxes. I payed for my own career as a serious writer by going on television. My family flatter me by proclaiming their confidence that I would have made a living just from writ-

ing prose, but my own opinion is that we would all have ended up living in a lean-to instead of a house.

LM: You left Sydney for England in 1962.

What is your relationship with Australia?

CJ: I never set out to curry favour with the land I left, but I suppose it was inevitable that my book Unreliable Memoirs should sound like a love letter. It was indeed written out of love, and I suppose the eventual effect of the book’s wide acceptance among ordinary Australians was to persuade even the intellectuals that I was still closely engaged with my homeland, even if from a distance. Nowadays I am engaged with it more closely than ever. Even though I won’t be going home, I follow every moment of the excitement on the web, and when Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard write books attacking each other I am grateful that the Australian secondary school system exposed me to the battle between Sohrab and Rustum. Thus Matthew Arnold foresaw a clash of titans.

LM: During your illness you have been remarkably productive. What do you think about mortality? Has illness given your work greater significance?

CJ: I’m not sure my work has been given greater significance by my illness but it has certainly been given greater scope. For me, fading energy and fading light are a new subject: once, I could run a mile in the blazing sun, and now I can totter only a few feet at a time, and always towards the shadows. But while I can remember my strength, I could never have foretold my weakness; so really the reservoir has deepened of what I can write about. Next March, Picador in London will be publishing a collection of my recent poems, under the title of Sentenced to Life. I think it’s my best book; but then, all writers think that their latest is their best. Of this much I am sure, however: the book is full of things I couldn’t have written when I was young and strong. There is no young man’s version of what I am writing now.

So really I am in the position of talking with the authority of someone who has been somewhere, like an astronaut who has been to the moon. Apart from bravery, fitness, a science degree and the ability to fly, the main difference between the astronaut and myself is that he got back. I won’t be getting back from this. But I am glad to have made the voyage.

arts & culture

Sandstone Bigotry Shareeka Helaluddin reviews the toothless, but necessary, Dear White People.

D

ear White People, the title in itself is unambiguous in its target audience and purpose, unsettling and provocative with just three words. At times the film is as commanding as it is witty, centring the experiences of black students in a predominantly white institution, parodying the elite and privileged lives of rich white kids. Despite this, I expected so much more from the film; it fell far short of what the trailer set up. The film was no doubt entertaining, but Dear White People seemed to be made for white people, turning the potential for a brilliant satire on racial tension into something palatable and accommodating to the white gaze it intended to subvert in the first place.

The film follows the lives of four black students grappling with their identities in the fictional Winchester University, a prestigious, mostly white Ivy League school.

Sam White is a film student and revolu-

tionary-in-training. She’s the president of the Black Student Union (BSU) and hosts a radio show called ‘Dear White People,’ dropping truths like, “Dating a black person just to piss off your parents is a form of racism.” Arguably the best aspect of the film is the dialogue, especially Sam’s, even if it is sometimes delivered through long, lecture-like speeches. There is a constant supply of savvy and relevant critiques on race, even if it is sometimes wrapped in a whole lot of pop culture references.

Sam generates hate from many students, including archetypal rich kid Kurt (“sometimes the hardest thing to be in the American work force is an educated white guy”). Sam runs for president against Troy, who maintains the facade of an overachieving—non-threatening—black man to gain favour with the college ‘elite’. Then there’s Coco, who has erased any association to her impoverished past in Chicago

What ensues is a violent clash between those at the party and the black students protesting it (and rightfully so).

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The event is widely reported yet quickly diffused and sparks little change; culminating in a message of moderation. Despite all the race talk in the movie, there is little critique of the systematic racism that allows such parties to happen and the racial inequity that is sustained at Winchester. You could nod in agreement or laugh out of sadness as bigotry, microaggression, and outright racism are exposed and contested unabashedly. Yet, the plot lines become neatly aligned and largely unchallenging.

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more about their necessary socialisation into the system. An opportunity is missed to explore how oppression is resisted, and to criticise racism without forfeiting coherent story telling.

The experiences seen in Dear White People will be somewhat familiar. This is the lived reality of so many students. The brunt of institutionalised racism and insidious racial tensions will resonate with those who often feel isolated and frustrated in glorified sandstone universities, not uncommon at the University of Sydney. It dismantles the myth that a tertiary education makes

“It dismantles the myth that a tertiary education makes you more socially conscious or ‘aware’ of diverse experiences...”

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and craves mainstream success via reality TV. And Lionel, a slightly awkward black gay man who is “too white for the black kids, and not black enough for the white kids”. All these subplots eventually collide in the final scene, which sees the white campus elite throw a blackface ‘Hip-Hop’ themed costume party. Guests are invited to “release their inner Negro” and the racial problems plaguing the University are made stark.

Because of the structure of the film, characters aren’t explored as well as they can be. At points I almost felt like I was watching an extended pilot of what could be a really great series.

The subplots aren’t developed and turn nuanced characters into a list of ‘issues’. Characters become tokens of representation but, unfortunately, not much more. It would have been great to further explore Sam’s experiences as a mixed-race woman, or Lionel’s experiences as a Black gay man and dealing with these intersections. But the film becomes less about the characters, and

you more socially conscious or ‘aware’ of diverse experiences, instead illuminating how such institutions are often founded on inequity and perpetuate power and privilege.

Dear White People may not be as radical as people hoped, but it is nonetheless needed, and no less important. It provides some solace and catharsis through the occasional chuckle, but perhaps more significantly, it leaves lingering a dialogue about the nuance of racial oppression. This is the debut of filmmaker Justin Simien, who is afforded the rare opportunity to address race on his own terms and portray multiple stories of people of colour. This almost never happens, especially in mainstream channels of communication. There’s a lot going for the film, but it misses opportunities to risk controversy and ignite progress, perhaps disappointing the legions of fans in the blogosphere who helped crowd fund Simien’s concept trailer into what was hoped to be an incendiary film.

Throughout the film racist truths and the reality of being “a black face in a white place” are distilled, but it remains mostly entertaining, while foregoing a genuine engagement with race politics.

11

freedom ride

Freedom Ride Redux Andy Mason, Evelyn Corr, Marley Benz, Max Hall, and Samantha Jonscher

12

freedom ride

In 1965, 29 University of Sydney students, led by Charles Perkins, set off on a road trip around NSW. Their aim was to expose and report on the inequalities and segregation suffered by Indigenous Australia. Perkins was the University of Sydney’s first Indigenous student, and on the trip aimed to end the segregation in towns that forced Aboriginal people to sit on ground in cinemas, to be served through back windows in pubs, to be treated in separate hospital wards—or not at all. In 2015, in a co-ordinated effort led by the University and SRC president Kyol Blakeney, the Ride’s 50th anniversary was honoured by re-enacting the trip. On February 18th, 27 students from the University of Sydney, along with staff, media and some of the original Freedom Riders set off on a five day trip, retracing the original Ride’s route, stopping in Dubbo, Walgett, Moree, Bowraville and Kempsey.

130 students applied for the 30 spots. Blakeney and Co-Vice President of the SRC Madison McIvor chose students for their passion and their willingness to listen and to learn. Things were a little bit different to what they were fifty years ago. In 2015, students attended community forums, Q&A sessions and nightly free, community concerts, featuring performances from Paul Kelly and Troy Cassar-Daley. The 2015 bus was equipped with air conditioning and the trip was funded generously by the University; we received warm welcomes from the communities that we visited. In 1965, the Riders were met with violence wherever they wenr, were run off roads and held meetings in dingey pubs; sleeping on the bus or in community halls.

In Honi’s 1965 original coverage of the event, it was reported that “Perkins himself was in fact denied entrance to the Moree baths after he admitted that he was part Aboriginal”. Today, things have changed but they are still not right. Entry to the Moree Artesian Aquatic Centre is expensive for disadvantaged members of the Moree community, Aboriginal or otherwise—$8 for an adult and $6 for a child (entry to the Sydney Olympic Aquatic Park is $7). That’s $34 for a family of five. We were met with stories of covert racism, unemployment, incarceration, short life expectancy, sickness, drug addiction and lives without options. Formalised segregation may be gone, but the Indigenous community is still suffering.

The 2015 Ride’s intent was to honour the 1965 Rides—both by celebrating what they did, but also by once again endeavouring to report on the reality of rural Indigenous Australia and the inequalities that still exist and their still very real struggle. In this spirit, Honi has tried to tell as many stories from the trail as space permitsand where possible in the words of people themselves. These are all stories that still need to be heard. SJ.

Cheeky Colli Bastard: Rapping in Walgett

Halfway through our interview Michael Graham stops me mid-question. “We might just see what these kids want,” he says, grinning slightly. I juggle phones and cameras as five young boys climb all over him, posing for photos and shaking his hand. In the background of each snap is the Walgett Showground and a stage where Troy Cassar-Daley is playing for a

crowd of several hundred locals. Graham (stage name MC Boomalli) is a proud Gamilaroi man whose rap music tackles local social issues with a maturity and complexity that belies his nineteen years.

Opening for Cassar-Daley and Paul Kelly, Graham takes to the stage with confidence and three old mates from Collarenebri Central School (located a hundred kilometres north-east of Walgett). In the course of two songs and some banter with the crowd, he manages to cover land rights, the Stolen Generation, and welfare dependence, noting that his people have “survived invasion, segregation, and the Act”. Delivered over an unusual hybrid of didgeridoo and synths, such heavy subject matter does not dampen Graham’s energy on stage, where he swaggers between his microphone and those of the backup artists. The crowd chants for another song—he ducks off the stage, has a quick word to the sound guy, and jogs back, arms outstretched.

Graham and his fellow members of The Colli Crew got their big break 5 years ago, courtesy of a youth program called Desert

Pea Media. “They came out to the school for Harmony Day and wanted to make a track,” Graham tells me, having shooed his admirers away. “So we got one laid down and it’s been going good ever since.”

Graham speaks confidently, identifying “peer pressure, as well as drugs, alcohol and kids not going to school” as central issues faced by his small community. He suggests that both adults and children should try and be role models.

“If kids see adults doing the bad stuff they think it’s okay, like fighting, drinking, and drugs as well. It circulates. It starts and goes round and round until it’s caught in this big tornado where everyone is doing it. It’s happening frequently and it’s just not slowing down. It’s building up.”

As for the music anyone who gives a midsong “shout out to Mabo and Charlie Perkins,” nominates Drake as his favourite rapper, and visits his old school the following morning with the Freedom Ride deserves all of the attention he is getting.

Graham will be performing at Sydney University on the 20th of March. MH.

Things People Told Us About five years ago they shut down MASH—Moree Aboriginal Sobriety House, no warning. It helped peoeple, I worked there for eight years as a councillor, black fellas used to come from all over the area for help. Now we have Ice, we need it more than ever.

- Leah, Moree I work as a highschool teacher, for kids with disabilities. We have a great Aboriginal Health Service here, but the kids don’t make it to me usually. This year had 13 kids in it in year 7, now there are 3.

Parents can’t afford to keep their kids in school, its hard when they have so many other health concerns.

- Falena, Dubbo I’m just so overwhelmed to see the Freedom Ride come through Dubbo. I didn’t understand when I was growing up. I now realise that I was born before ‘67 when we were only counted as cattle and sheep.

- Ros, Dubbo These young kids just have to get out, I tell them that all the time, that they should dream of other things. I talk to them about my travels as much as I can, I want them to know that there is a world bigger than this one.

- Denis, Walgett I have degrees in law, teaching, and management and even I can’t get a job. I know how to talk to white men, I know how to sit around the table. I know how to keep myself from getting locked up. All that and I cant get a job here.

- Danella, Moree We are the ones that hold our destiny.

We are the ones that have to live with our conscience. We can’t say that we are responsible to what happened to me and my people before the massacres on this land, because we’re not. It happened before we came along. But, we are guilty if we continue to live and let other things happen like it did before - Auntie Mavis, Kempset

13

freedom ride

Driving With Lyall Lyall Dennnison was born in Moree and lived there until he moved to Sydney at the age of 21 to work for the State Premier.

At the evening concert in Moree, he approached students and offered to show us around. After taking one carload around, I was lucky enough to get a spot in his second tour.

W

e start by driving to Top Camp.

Lyall grew up here. Now though there are only eight houses left standing in disrepair. The others are completely burnt out. To quote a fellow student on the tour, “it was fucking dire”.

“When I was here it was run perfect, they aren’t now and you can see the difference.”

Gesturing to his left, he points to an empty, overgrown lot. “The school used to be there, just an Aboriginal school up to year six—there was also an oval. This would have been the teacher’s house, next to the oval”. As we drive he points to other landmarks along the way; “I grew up here. That was the manager’s house, that was our pool we looked after—now look at it”. The pool is in bad shape—empty, graffitied and full of rubbish. “No money to look after it.

The men on the mission, my grandfathers, built it themselves.”

“We loved the school, it was our school, we had black teachers and learnt our language.

We learnt our language, we all got along.

I mean we didn’t know any better, about discrimination and racism, we thought it was great. That is where the church was, I used to hate going—every Sunday we would go and my mother would make me have cod liver oil.”

Lyall gestures to where the church had been. All that’s left is that empty, overgrown lot. We turn around and drive back into town, passing a group of houses in similar state to those on the reserve.

“See those houses over there? Those are all housing estates, you know who lives there?

Black fellas. Still black fellas living together, it’s not a mission but it’s not much different. We always cop it—the bad things.”

It starts to drizzle. We pass the oval that had hosted the concert. The grass had certainly seen better days and the facilities were in disrepair.

“That’s the concert is the black fella oval, that’s where the Moree Boomerangs train.” They won the 2013 Rugby League Grand Final. We drive past. Not far down the road is another field. This one is lit bright by floodlights, the grass is green and they have a nice looking club house.

“Now that’s the white oval—look at those lights! We don’t have any of those.” It’s the home of the Moree Boars.

We drive on. Lyall points out additional points of interest, family homes mostly.

We drive through Bottom Camp, another ex-mission—it looks much the same and Lyall explains that the way Aboriginal people are made to live in ghettos means they end up colliding. “Our people make up a lot of people here, but when elections come around all of the groups put up different candidates”. Then we come to the RSL. “We have an Aboriginal person on the board now, we have had a few on the board. Of course we couldn’t have even gone in back in the day, back when Charlie Perkins came through. I was in the reserve for five years, not sure why I went, it was the thing to do at the time. My grandfa-

Talking to Auntie May Auntie May is the Elder in Moree’s Top Camp reserve, an ex-mission.

She has lived there all her life.

How was Top Camp before 1969?

When we had a manager, everything was done properly. We had a school, a church, a pool, an oval. We had men’s business and women’s business, we had community. And we had a good manager; a black manager, he looked after us. It was bad when he left.

How are things now?

Moree is worse now—much worse. This place was never like this when I was a kid.

It was always clean—you would never get glass in your foot or anything like that. Society changed, funding is gone and nothing is coming in. I wasn’t even consulted at all for the Freedom Ride commemoration. They said invitation only at the door and Elders were locked out— the radicals would have gotten angry and

14

gone in. There were seven or eight people who were left outside. Now, there is nothing here for kids to do, here nowhere for them to go. We had things, good things and then they were gone, they didn’t even tell us they were going to be gone.

What do kids do during the day?

They go to school in town. Parents send them everyday but they aren’t doing well.

The schools push kids through and out the door. I can only speak for my grandchild— he is gone from school and he can’t read.

They just gave up, they didn’t educate him, they can’t be bothered to teach them. I can only speak for my grandson but I think the school gave up and pushed him through. SJ.

thers were in the war and when they came home from the war got nothing, they weren’t allowed in.”

Not far from there is the school. “You know what I was saying about the school on the mission? That was only up to grade six. So after that we came to this white school. You see these old buildings up the side? I don’t know what they do now, but top to bottom they were A-F—they were the classes, they were ranked, G and H up the back was where all the black fellas were, even if we were smart enough we weren’t good enough to be in A, B. So we copped it again. Now we have a lot of Aboriginal teacher’s aids in schools, so that’s changed, that’s good.”

We drive on again. “This is Moree’s big new police station”. It is large and well lit, clearly new. “You won’t see any white people in there.” It opened in 2013 and is the biggest in North West NSW. Out the window we see an outdoor picture theatre. It’s abandoned now. “This is where the picture theatre was, we had to go in last, the white people went in first, then us and we sat up the front, on the floor. We always missed the trailers—the shorts in those days—because we had to come in last. When it was time to leave, we had to wait until everyone else had left and then we had to go out the back door.

We loved the Saturday matinee—to see Batman and Robin. I mean if we didn’t go do that what else would we do?”

As we drive on, the houses start to change, the lawns get larger, the houses larger, everything just nicer. “This is West Moree, not many black fellas around here. It’s different isn’t it? Right here we had a centre called MASH, Moree Aboriginal Sobriety House. It’s not going now. We try to look after our own problems, we try to help our own but they took this away. The Ice is here now. Heroin is bad here too and there isn’t anywhere around to help.”

Lyall slows down and pulls into a laneway.

There are fences on two sides and at the end is an embankment. “We had a shooting about 30 years ago, before I left. He was my wife’s cousin, name was Cheeky McIntosh and he was over at mine about half an hour before he got shot. To get home from the oval, we had to walk this way, down this laneway. 3 or 4 of them were walking home and when they got about halfway down the lane, some cars came and blocked one entrance. Two white guys with guns waited at the other end. You can see—they were completely trapped. So that night a big riot started, when they declared that boy dead. He was 18 or 19. Two white kids shot a black kid and went away for manslaughter.”

A few blocks away on our way back the oval where we started, we slowed down again in front of the shop front. “See that big fish and chips shop? The mayor owns that, her father was leader of the Liberal National party. I left here when I was 21, I never moved back.” SJ.

Locked up on Racial Lines In Orana Juvenile Justice Centre, 99% of the inmates are Aboriginal. Indigenous youths represent only 5% of young Australian people. Yet 39% of the young people in the juvenile justice system are Aboriginal.

At the Centre, I heard some of the adults telling the kids not to waste their opportunities. But what opportunities are they wasting? Australia is failing these boys. The people I spoke to expressed their concerns about young people showing up to school high on Ice. They talked about the potential drugs have to ruin lives at a young age. The more people I spoke to the more it became clear that these boys come from towns where there is nothing to do.

They aren’t in juvenile detention simply because of something they did, but because they have been failed at every level. Why finish school if you know there isn’t going

to be a job waiting for you? Why believe in yourself when you have systematically been shown that you, your people and your family are not good enough? MB.

Special Memories On our final night of the trip, Vice Chancellor Spence, flown in for the day, grabbed his wife for a passion fuelled waltz to Paul Kelly and Troy Cassar-Daley’s Freedom Ride. Quick to find the camera, he swung his wife round and round until he spun wildly out of control, into a student, knocking her in the eye. He himself fell to ground while the dance continued around him and the camera wandered away. The assailed student is reportedly fine.

freedom ride

Reserve Life the final section of the road connecting houses on the mission was resurfaced.

Just outside Walgett is Gindie reserve. In the dry heat of Thursday afternoon we were able to speak with local Elders and find someone to take us there. Anne Dennis, a Councillor of the New South Wales Aboriginal Lands Council, crammed four students into the back of her car and crossed the bridge of the Barwon River towards the reserve.

Gindie was once an Aboriginal Mission in which the local peoples of Walgett were confined under the supervision of a white manager. In order to leave the mission and enter the town an Indigenous person had to seek permission and justify their need.

Today twelve homes stand on the reserve, which is owned by the Land Council, collectively housing one-hundred and fifty people. The entrance to the reserve is marked by a sudden end to the smooth road from Walgett. Because the Council owns the land, Walgett Shire Council is unable to maintain the roads beyond the boundary. They have gone without resurfacing for more than twenty years.

Last year, after visiting the reserve and hearing that the school bus often became bogged in the rain, NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli intervened, and

Once there, Anne introduced us to Uncle Clem and Buddy. The two Gindie residents explained that legislation prevents land councils from taking on debt for any reason. Walgett Land Council manages sixty-seven houses in the area but earns little to no income. No money is available for even the most basic maintenance of the run down and patched residential buildings. The community owns a shed, which is home to several computers—the only internet connection in Gindie—and a mural by local school children depicting the history of the area.

Anne wants to bring TAFE courses in construction to the reserve and stresses the need for local jobs to end welfare dependence in the community. She tells us of one house where a family of thirty is forced to share three rooms. At the other end of the reserve, four single elderly men live in a rundown house surrounded by the shells of burnt out cars. While we talk, Anne comments on ephemeral funding, the bureaucratic complexity of grant applications, and the inattention of government at all levels that perpetuates their situation. In recent months the Walgett Shire council denied the Gamilaroi people access to one of their sacred sites, a weir in the Barwon River.

No explanation for this decision was given. MH.

A Voice of Dissent Original Freedom Rider Barry Corr chose not to join the 2015 Freedom Ride reenactment.

Looking back I realise that all actions often have unintended consequences.The momentum of the 1967 referendum was lost as the Vietnam War shifted the focus of activism away from Aboriginal issues.

Citizenship did not bring about equity in education, employment, health or housing.

It opened the door to years of chronic alcohol abuse and cultural disintegration.

Aboriginal affairs has been reduced to a number of celebratory milestones while Aboriginal communities slip further behind. John Howard was able to use the 1967 referendum to legislate against Aboriginal people in the Hindmarsh Bridge Act in 1997.

The activities of Student Action For Aborigines in 1965 and 1966 used Aboriginal communities in rural

NSW as a platform to fight a national campaign without taking on board the consequences for those communities. My work in Aboriginal education, ironically in Aboriginal drug education, took me across rural NSW where I learnt of the often subtle and ongoing discrimination that Aboriginal individuals and communities suffered after supporting us during our visits.

When I got on that bus in 1965 I don’t think I realised the cultural implications of reciprocity that I was entering into.

Somewhat wiser; and eternally grateful to those Aboriginal people who have guided, enlightened and taught me that I’m just one of the mob; I will not be memorialised, appropriated or mythologised.

The Thin Blue Line Police are an ever-present part of life in Walgett. They can be seen walking down the street, in the pub, at a corner shop.

They turn up at the school most days. By far the largest structure in the town, the police station, includes multiple shiny sheds, a large office building, and an imposing radio tower. The tower strikes me as demonstrative of society’s warped priorities when it comes to Indigenous people. Aboriginal community programs and organisations are constantly subjected to intense bureaucratic scrutiny regarding the benefits accrued by previous funding and forced to justify their continued existence.

Aboriginal land councils, Aboriginal legal services, and Aboriginal health services play out cut-throat politics as they compete for a limited and always-threatened pool of resources. The police, by contrast, seem to get whatever they want. The town of Walgett now boasts 70 officers, a high number for a town of only 2200 people.

The fact that money seems to flow so easily for some things, but not for others, speaks volumes. New highways, bridges, and police stations simply appear out of the ground as if by magic, while Gingi has fought for years to get its new road, with no solution on the horizon. Why are things so easy on the one hand, and so difficult on the other? It appears to me as if an invisible boundary still marks Indigenous Australia off from the rest of the country, a thin blue line keeping us apart. AM.

On Going Forward Unlike her father Evelyn Corr chose to attend the 2015 reenactment of the 1965 Freedom Ride.

Perhaps a little more so than most, the Freedom Rides have always been of particular significance to me, as the daughter of one of the original 1965 riders.

The desire to continue what my father had begun was certainly a strong motivation for my application to join, but I don’t think I could ever describe how much I wanted this for myself. This journey went beyond a moment of historical, cultural, or even personal significance for me as a young Aboriginal woman; it was a chance to my privilege, my education, and my passion to help my people.

During this trip I bore witness to realities I have never had to face. I was alarmed just how ingratiated a fear of the police was in these communities. In Walgett, we watched some young children playing on the grass, shoving and laughing, only to be accosted by an older girl who told them that if they couldn’t behave, the police would come and take them away.

Still, these children were proud; proud to be staying in school and learning their language, dances, and culture from the Elders. The Elders had plenty to teach us, as well, like the importance of giving people space for memorialisation, even when it can be frustrating as a young person who wants to look towards the future to keep the work going. Reconciliation is a process of healing, and although there is a place for anger, mourning, and resistance, there

must also be a space to acknowledge how far we’ve come.

It was always going to be a difficult task to measure the outcomes of this trip. I feel as if the event brought a lot of joy to these communities, particularly to the Elders, who were immensely grateful for the changes brought about by Charlie Perkins and the original Freedom Rides. The job is not done, however, and the gap continues to widen. For the original riders, this was an act of commemoration, but for myself and the other students, it was a call to action. We all came to create change, give agency, and demand justice, and what we heard and saw carried a heavy emotional toll. It is lucky, then, that we had such a wonderful collection of students, brought together by a leader who accepts nothing but what is right. They are the kind of people you spend long bus trips with discussing Indigenous rights or gender inequality or Gaza or Ferguson, and even at the end of the day, after a few drinks, when we’re all gathered in a hotel room, mucking around, they will never put the fight away. The anger and desire for change doesn’t disappear when the laughter arrives or when the bus ride ends, and I am honoured to have met this wonderful group, so determined to continue the job.

This trip has been, I think for all of us, a most incredible beginning. EC.

15

Always a line, second rate banter on the walls, and it perpetually smells like someone has shat in a lunchbox and left it in the sun. The walls of the Eastern Ave bathrooms (lower level) are a treasure trove of mixed romantic advice that you probably never thought about/didn’t particularly want to know.

7. Ladies Carslaw

The kind of yellow-walled, cracked-paint shambles of a room—evokes the aesthetic of prison. You’ll feel perennially as if there are feet looming outside the stall, which means the same solitude you have using the bathrooms at a concert.

6. Ground Floor Badham Building

Bad only insofar as it no longer exists, this now-defunct domicile was a tworoomed, one-bathroomed gender-neutral exemplar. This toilet had both a lockable antechamber (mirror, faucet) and another lockable bathroom, which offered a tall rectangular window outlook over the Quad. A point of pilgrimage for voyeurs and public masturbators, the bathroom was sealed up and cemented over, presumably as part of the university’s commitment to open plan collectivised learning and six-stall ‘bathrooms’ where shit sticks from the floor to your feet.

5. Fisher Level 6 (R.I.P)

The cubicles open perpendicular to the urinals ensuring the policy of transparency and corporate disclosure that the business school prides itself on extends to all facets of life.

4. Merewether Men’s

There are lovely toilets in Old Teacher’s College and it’s important that no one ever finds out about them because then they’ll be ruined.

3. Old Teachers’ College

The Gender Neutral bathrooms near the Radio Room are kept in fine condition, with hand towels and separate stalls. It’s also a genuinely quiet place on campus during semester, so fine for meditation.

It’s perfectly silent and food is strictly forbidden, so take a packet of crisps and make unblinking eye contact with an increasingly irate Fine Arts student while you crunch them loudly.

14. Schaeffer Fine Arts Library

A campus favourite among Hermann’s patrons and hungry engineers, UniBros offer the cheapest meal on campus ($4 Pide on ACCESS), as well as the best kebab in the immediate radius of campus. The meatboxes are the lifeblood coursing through the inky veins of this paper.

13. UniBros

A refreshing source of student-oriented cuisine, Courtyard offers a particularly cheap pasta of the day ($6.80 on ACCESS) as well as boutique beer tasting paddles that are decent value if you go halves with a friend. Courtyard always catches the best light, with a plentiful supply of chairs and tables to liaise on.

12. Courtyard

The crown spire overlooking the kingdom of culinary degeneracy that is Wentworth (except for UniBros), this cafe is as stale and unprofitable as the deadend space between streets it is named after. Hey jerks, this isn’t Melbourne—we call them alleys here.

11. Laneway

Honi approved. Located a five minute walk from Footbridge, the Flodge offers $9 Student Jugs and $10 Student Pizzas all day every day (kitchen shuts at 9pm), along with daily specials, wifi, and a lovely smoking courtyard. Also has a Pool Table and Street Fighter Arcade Machines.

10. Forest Lodge Hotel

A proving ground for intellectually combative law students and debaters alike, the quality of banter in the line rests somewhere between beige and excruciating.

The fresh baguettes are expensive and not that good, nor does Taste reduce the price when the baguettes are pre-made and wilting at the end of the day. The Iced Coffee is nice, but also premade. There is an app, though, which lets you order your coffee in advance and pick it up when it’s ready, which is fine for students training themselves for the next portion of their life, which I imagine will be billed in fifteen minute intervals.

If you’re ever feeling frisky after a frolic on the field, the heritage-listed roundhouse can satisfy all your needs. Formerly used as a teaching space where horses and cattle were displayed for students to learn anatomy, you can now unleash your inner animal and become an expert in the anatomy of your special someone

21. Round House

The majority of the buildings shut down around here and, as long as you’re cagey, you can avoid any interruptions from staff. Tips: 1) Do it in proximity to the door, so you can react quickly to it being opened, and 2) Wear at least sixty percent of your clothing.

20. Literally Any Tutorial Room After 5pm

Nothing compares to wallowing in the collected drippings of chicken, beef, doner, and allowing the whole ghastly mess to clog you and your partner’s pores, a blackheadburstingly good time.

19. Grease traps, UniBrothers Kebab

Get hot and heavy in the stacks; get romantic among the true Romantics. But have some respect and keep it down.

18. Fisher Level 8

Don’t you fucken dare.

17. The Honi Soit Offices

Thespians beware! Often I’ve entered this hallowed haunt in search of theatre making only to witness another kind of cooperative pantomime. Sneak in during the day and make love amongst the costumes.

16. The Cellar Theatre

9. Taste

2. Downstairs Holme Building

These double-doored confessionals of cum know how to keep a secret—they’re soundproof. You can even book using the online Fisher booking system, if you’re a pedant and schedule intercourse in quarter-hour blocks.

The West Germany of Campus eateries, your ACCESS means nothing here. Still, great food and coffee, though during Rugby season you’ll find yourself beset on all sides by twitching muscles and sweat-absorbing lycra.

For the early morning poo, following a healthy number of coffees. It allows you to take the quiet walk from Redfern, continuing along Abercrombie rather than crossing at the Shepherd St lights. There is also a shower there if it has really been a rushed morning.

15. Fisher Media Rooms

8. Ralph’s Cafe

1. Ground Floor of the Business School (Men’s)

Always a line, second rate banter on the walls, and it perpetually smells like someone has shat in a lunchbox and left it in the sun. The walls of the Eastern Ave bathrooms (lower level) are a treasure trove of mixed romantic advice that you probably never thought about/didn’t particularly want to know.

7. Ladies Carslaw

The kind of yellow-walled, cracked-paint shambles of a room—evokes the aesthetic of prison. You’ll feel perennially as if there are feet looming outside the stall, which means the same solitude you have using the bathrooms at a concert.

6. Ground Floor Badham Building

Bad only insofar as it no longer exists, this now-defunct domicile was a tworoomed, one-bathroomed gender-neutral exemplar. This toilet had both a lockable antechamber (mirror, faucet) and another lockable bathroom, which offered a tall rectangular window outlook over the Quad. A point of pilgrimage for voyeurs and public masturbators, the bathroom was sealed up and cemented over, presumably as part of the university’s commitment to open plan collectivised learning and six-stall ‘bathrooms’ where shit sticks from the floor to your feet.

5. Fisher Level 6 (R.I.P)

The cubicles open perpendicular to the urinals ensuring the policy of transparency and corporate disclosure that the business school prides itself on extends to all facets of life.

4. Merewether Men’s

There are lovely toilets in Old Teacher’s College and it’s important that no one ever finds out about them because then they’ll be ruined.

3. Old Teachers’ College

The Gender Neutral bathrooms near the Radio Room are kept in fine condition, with hand towels and separate stalls. It’s also a genuinely quiet place on campus during semester, so fine for meditation.

It’s perfectly silent and food is strictly forbidden, so take a packet of crisps and make unblinking eye contact with an increasingly irate Fine Arts student while you crunch them loudly.

14. Schaeffer Fine Arts Library

A campus favourite among Hermann’s patrons and hungry engineers, UniBros offer the cheapest meal on campus ($4 Pide on ACCESS), as well as the best kebab in the immediate radius of campus. The meatboxes are the lifeblood coursing through the inky veins of this paper.

13. UniBros

A refreshing source of student-oriented cuisine, Courtyard offers a particularly cheap pasta of the day ($6.80 on ACCESS) as well as boutique beer tasting paddles that are decent value if you go halves with a friend. Courtyard always catches the best light, with a plentiful supply of chairs and tables to liaise on.

12. Courtyard

The crown spire overlooking the kingdom of culinary degeneracy that is Wentworth (except for UniBros), this cafe is as stale and unprofitable as the deadend space between streets it is named after. Hey jerks, this isn’t Melbourne—we call them alleys here.

11. Laneway

Honi approved. Located a five minute walk from Footbridge, the Flodge offers $9 Student Jugs and $10 Student Pizzas all day every day (kitchen shuts at 9pm), along with daily specials, wifi, and a lovely smoking courtyard. Also has a Pool Table and Street Fighter Arcade Machines.

10. Forest Lodge Hotel

A proving ground for intellectually combative law students and debaters alike, the quality of banter in the line rests somewhere between beige and excruciating.

The fresh baguettes are expensive and not that good, nor does Taste reduce the price when the baguettes are pre-made and wilting at the end of the day. The Iced Coffee is nice, but also premade. There is an app, though, which lets you order your coffee in advance and pick it up when it’s ready, which is fine for students training themselves for the next portion of their life, which I imagine will be billed in fifteen minute intervals.

If you’re ever feeling frisky after a frolic on the field, the heritage-listed roundhouse can satisfy all your needs. Formerly used as a teaching space where horses and cattle were displayed for students to learn anatomy, you can now unleash your inner animal and become an expert in the anatomy of your special someone

21. Round House

The majority of the buildings shut down around here and, as long as you’re cagey, you can avoid any interruptions from staff. Tips: 1) Do it in proximity to the door, so you can react quickly to it being opened, and 2) Wear at least sixty percent of your clothing.

20. Literally Any Tutorial Room After 5pm

Nothing compares to wallowing in the collected drippings of chicken, beef, doner, and allowing the whole ghastly mess to clog you and your partner’s pores, a blackheadburstingly good time.

19. Grease traps, UniBrothers Kebab

Get hot and heavy in the stacks; get romantic among the true Romantics. But have some respect and keep it down.

18. Fisher Level 8

Don’t you fucken dare.

17. The Honi Soit Offices

Thespians beware! Often I’ve entered this hallowed haunt in search of theatre making only to witness another kind of cooperative pantomime. Sneak in during the day and make love amongst the costumes.

16. The Cellar Theatre

9. Taste

2. Downstairs Holme Building

These double-doored confessionals of cum know how to keep a secret—they’re soundproof. You can even book using the online Fisher booking system, if you’re a pedant and schedule intercourse in quarter-hour blocks.

The West Germany of Campus eateries, your ACCESS means nothing here. Still, great food and coffee, though during Rugby season you’ll find yourself beset on all sides by twitching muscles and sweat-absorbing lycra.

For the early morning poo, following a healthy number of coffees. It allows you to take the quiet walk from Redfern, continuing along Abercrombie rather than crossing at the Shepherd St lights. There is also a shower there if it has really been a rushed morning.

15. Fisher Media Rooms

8. Ralph’s Cafe

1. Ground Floor of the Business School (Men’s)

first person

Fetishising Trans Bodies Riki Scanlan

M

y cheek itches in the heat. Sweat beads minutely form on the dozens of black whiskers grown a little past stubble. But this irritation is minor when set against my distress at being whiskered when I feel my body should be unwhiskered. This is dysphoria: the distress that transgender people experience at being misgendered or having a body or behaviour that we do not identify with.

Dysphoria may be triggered by many different things for different people. In my case, one of those triggers—a relatively mild one—is facial hair.

Absurdly, I do not shave regularly—I am far too lazy. I set very mild and frequent dysphoric episodes against a few minutes of effort. I am, by and large, happy with this. I have control over this. *** At university: a ticket machine spits out tickets to keep us in line, like a butcher at a supermarket. The receptionist has no idea about special consideration or supporting documentation. I know that university bureaucracy is unfailingly poor at educating staff about its own functions.

It extracts money but knows little about

identities. The receptionist asks someone else to help me. I cringe at every use of male pronouns in reference to me. I have no control over this.

why incessant apologies are bad, two of awkward conversation, and two minutes before they pronoun me male again. This is not control.

***

***

On a roof we walk on the bolts, else the metal bends. We watch lightning fork from distant clouds, white-blue illuminating the shifting heaves of droplets over Botany Bay. An industrial glow hazes from the horizons towards the night above our heads as if the commerce of Sydney is the air we breathe. At night you can’t escape the city’s commercial luminescence, except by gazing at lightning.

I am at an after-party for a formal ball.

I am pink as if from the workbook of a Disney princess animator. I attract all eyes and all ire. It’s crowded. I sidle through drab heterosexuality. A woman taps me on the shoulder, asks for a dance—I oblige, happy to dance—and she whispers, “I know you live down the road.” She fetched her friends and I left with mine. Elsewhere, a man muscles me off a dancefloor. A woman tries to flip my dress and see what’s under it. Another woman insists I follow her instagram—her photo stream unveils a magisterial ability to conform to a condensed and pulped version of beauty standards: beach-bottle-blonde. I pity her.

We ruminate on racism and on privilege and on conservatism. I run my hands through my hair and pull and twist at the tips before reaching blindly behind for water to drink—a moment of panic.

Dysphoric panic. Not at any particular person or particular thing but at the overbearing air. I have no control over this. *** I am in a conversation. It takes two minutes to interrupt, another two to explain, two to rebuff the apologies, two to explain

She treats me as a play-doll—while men glare and muscle at me. Multiple women beckon or cat-call or dance with me. I am a sexual fetish. I leap on a stage and dance, billowing the long sails of my pink satin dress. I dance above, away from the crowd til the beat stops, the house lights burn on,

and the club seems awkwardly shaped.

The architecture of a club in ordinary light clunks from dance-floor to tables to bar. Any sense it has vanishes with the darkness.

We go to the park and rest on the grass. People ask us the occasion for the costumes. I am tempted to say that the occasion is me. This is just me. In the dark of the bar, I was invincible—people fawned and people fetishised and I let them. I gazed at lightning, I fucked power and let it flow how I wished. People fetishise trans bodies as sexual freaks, as novelty. But if I wish to take the structures of fetishisation or oppression and turn them to my own advantage, then I may do so. I have autonomy over this. *** On Monday morning I shave three days growth away. I grab my phone and tap Instagram open. Beach-bottle-blonde girl has posted: “Had an amazing weekend out, dancing with some trannies.”

I have no control over this.

Ten Days Elle Triantafillou

I

t’s January and I have ten days in between houses. I stay at my mum’s place, which is not the house I grew up in, but a different one. I try to organise my things and decide which to give to charity and which to sell and which to throw away. I drive to Big Bargain and buy three plastic tubs. One is for arts and craft supplies, one is for nostalgia1 and one is for clothes that I don’t wear right now but which I imagine I will someday give to a daughter.

I get an email from Joel, who lives in Sandpoint, Idaho, USA. I met him in May last year. He was my ride from Selma, a small town in southern Oregon, to Seattle.2 He says that he is well, even though it is winter and he is thinking about spring.

The email has a romantic tone.

1. E.g. birthday card from ex-bf with the words “you impress me” written inside, zip-loc bag containing string friendship bracelets that were ceremoniously burnt at the end of year twelve, as well as ashes from the burning and a tissue, etc.

2. We organised the ride after I posted an ad on the rideshare section of craigslist which is a pretty common thing to do in the US.

18

He says things like: “Deer are starting to loose [sic] their antlers, so tramping around in the snow leads to treasures” and “I hope you're well, my dear…”. I say “dear/deer” over and over in my mind and the words lose their meaning. *** Joel picked me up in a silver truck (read: ute) with a nice dog called Riley in the back. Riley kept jumping into the front of the truck and onto my lap because I was sitting in his seat. Joel laughed and told Riley to stop but he wouldn’t so I laughed too. We decided to drive along the Oregon coast instead of the highway. It would take maybe five more hours but it was meant to be beautiful. At one point I had no idea what Joel was saying because I realised that I liked him. We decided to camp on a beach a little further up the coast. I called Greg in Seattle to tell him that I wouldn't be arriving until the next day. Greg said that was O.K. We saw a sea lion in the waves. We admired the way the wind had eroded the sand in weird formations and felt like giants walking over Utah canyons.

We pitched a tent and slept on the beach,

even though there was a sign that said not to. We lay naked, covered in cold sand and sleeping bags and smiled at each other. We woke up before six. The drive took longer than it should have. We stopped for coffee twice. We kept talking even though we were both tired and the conversation could have been better. He asked if people ever told me I was pretty. He wanted to make sure they did, and if they didn’t, he wanted to make sure I thought so. We stopped at a gas station in the outskirts of Seattle. We leant on the front of the car and Joel said something like this is the city, this is what you love. I gave him Greg’s address and he Google Mapped it but we got lost anyway.

I felt hungry in a nauseous way and asked if he’d ever gotten frostbite, if he’d ever been in a car accident. The answers were no and yes. We found Greg’s house and Joel got my bag out of the car. He told me it was heavy and I said that I knew. *** The house is too big for me. I stand on my tiptoes when I brush my teeth to see myself in the mirror. I tell my mum that the house was built in a man’s image and

I don’t like it because it makes me feel self-conscious. She gets upset. I apologise and take down the Christmas tree.

I eventually reply to Joel’s email. I tell him I have ten days in between houses; that I’m staying at my mum’s place and it’s pleasant. I say that in the mornings I have been swimming in the river and that in the evenings I have been running in the park amongst the ferns and eucalypts. I do not tell him that the river is the Georges River and that the only time I swim there is in the morning.3 I also do not mention that I’ve only done two out of the thirty runs on the 0to5k app and have not yet committed to the version you have to pay for. I hope my email also has a romantic tone. I bcc: Julia to see what she thinks.

3. At other times of the day the water has brown foam in it which worries me and the slimy ground is exposed and disgusting. Even when the tide is high I lower myself in and start swimming immediately without ever touching the bottom.

first person

Fetishising Trans Bodies Riki Scanlan

M

y cheek itches in the heat. Sweat beads minutely form on the dozens of black whiskers grown a little past stubble. But this irritation is minor when set against my distress at being whiskered when I feel my body should be unwhiskered. This is dysphoria: the distress that transgender people experience at being misgendered or having a body or behaviour that we do not identify with.

Dysphoria may be triggered by many different things for different people. In my case, one of those triggers—a relatively mild one—is facial hair.

Absurdly, I do not shave regularly—I am far too lazy. I set very mild and frequent dysphoric episodes against a few minutes of effort. I am, by and large, happy with this. I have control over this. *** At university: a ticket machine spits out tickets to keep us in line, like a butcher at a supermarket. The receptionist has no idea about special consideration or supporting documentation. I know that university bureaucracy is unfailingly poor at educating staff about its own functions.

It extracts money but knows little about

identities. The receptionist asks someone else to help me. I cringe at every use of male pronouns in reference to me. I have no control over this.

why incessant apologies are bad, two of awkward conversation, and two minutes before they pronoun me male again. This is not control.

***

***

On a roof we walk on the bolts, else the metal bends. We watch lightning fork from distant clouds, white-blue illuminating the shifting heaves of droplets over Botany Bay. An industrial glow hazes from the horizons towards the night above our heads as if the commerce of Sydney is the air we breathe. At night you can’t escape the city’s commercial luminescence, except by gazing at lightning.

I am at an after-party for a formal ball.

I am pink as if from the workbook of a Disney princess animator. I attract all eyes and all ire. It’s crowded. I sidle through drab heterosexuality. A woman taps me on the shoulder, asks for a dance—I oblige, happy to dance—and she whispers, “I know you live down the road.” She fetched her friends and I left with mine. Elsewhere, a man muscles me off a dancefloor. A woman tries to flip my dress and see what’s under it. Another woman insists I follow her instagram—her photo stream unveils a magisterial ability to conform to a condensed and pulped version of beauty standards: beach-bottle-blonde. I pity her.

We ruminate on racism and on privilege and on conservatism. I run my hands through my hair and pull and twist at the tips before reaching blindly behind for water to drink—a moment of panic.

Dysphoric panic. Not at any particular person or particular thing but at the overbearing air. I have no control over this. *** I am in a conversation. It takes two minutes to interrupt, another two to explain, two to rebuff the apologies, two to explain

She treats me as a play-doll—while men glare and muscle at me. Multiple women beckon or cat-call or dance with me. I am a sexual fetish. I leap on a stage and dance, billowing the long sails of my pink satin dress. I dance above, away from the crowd til the beat stops, the house lights burn on,

and the club seems awkwardly shaped.

The architecture of a club in ordinary light clunks from dance-floor to tables to bar. Any sense it has vanishes with the darkness.

We go to the park and rest on the grass. People ask us the occasion for the costumes. I am tempted to say that the occasion is me. This is just me. In the dark of the bar, I was invincible—people fawned and people fetishised and I let them. I gazed at lightning, I fucked power and let it flow how I wished. People fetishise trans bodies as sexual freaks, as novelty. But if I wish to take the structures of fetishisation or oppression and turn them to my own advantage, then I may do so. I have autonomy over this. *** On Monday morning I shave three days growth away. I grab my phone and tap Instagram open. Beach-bottle-blonde girl has posted: “Had an amazing weekend out, dancing with some trannies.”

I have no control over this.

Ten Days Elle Triantafillou

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t’s January and I have ten days in between houses. I stay at my mum’s place, which is not the house I grew up in, but a different one. I try to organise my things and decide which to give to charity and which to sell and which to throw away. I drive to Big Bargain and buy three plastic tubs. One is for arts and craft supplies, one is for nostalgia1 and one is for clothes that I don’t wear right now but which I imagine I will someday give to a daughter.

I get an email from Joel, who lives in Sandpoint, Idaho, USA. I met him in May last year. He was my ride from Selma, a small town in southern Oregon, to Seattle.2 He says that he is well, even though it is winter and he is thinking about spring.

The email has a romantic tone.

1. E.g. birthday card from ex-bf with the words “you impress me” written inside, zip-loc bag containing string friendship bracelets that were ceremoniously burnt at the end of year twelve, as well as ashes from the burning and a tissue, etc.

2. We organised the ride after I posted an ad on the rideshare section of craigslist which is a pretty common thing to do in the US.

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He says things like: “Deer are starting to loose [sic] their antlers, so tramping around in the snow leads to treasures” and “I hope you're well, my dear…”. I say “dear/deer” over and over in my mind and the words lose their meaning. *** Joel picked me up in a silver truck (read: ute) with a nice dog called Riley in the back. Riley kept jumping into the front of the truck and onto my lap because I was sitting in his seat. Joel laughed and told Riley to stop but he wouldn’t so I laughed too. We decided to drive along the Oregon coast instead of the highway. It would take maybe five more hours but it was meant to be beautiful. At one point I had no idea what Joel was saying because I realised that I liked him. We decided to camp on a beach a little further up the coast. I called Greg in Seattle to tell him that I wouldn't be arriving until the next day. Greg said that was O.K. We saw a sea lion in the waves. We admired the way the wind had eroded the sand in weird formations and felt like giants walking over Utah canyons.

We pitched a tent and slept on the beach,

even though there was a sign that said not to. We lay naked, covered in cold sand and sleeping bags and smiled at each other. We woke up before six. The drive took longer than it should have. We stopped for coffee twice. We kept talking even though we were both tired and the conversation could have been better. He asked if people ever told me I was pretty. He wanted to make sure they did, and if they didn’t, he wanted to make sure I thought so. We stopped at a gas station in the outskirts of Seattle. We leant on the front of the car and Joel said something like this is the city, this is what you love. I gave him Greg’s address and he Google Mapped it but we got lost anyway.

I felt hungry in a nauseous way and asked if he’d ever gotten frostbite, if he’d ever been in a car accident. The answers were no and yes. We found Greg’s house and Joel got my bag out of the car. He told me it was heavy and I said that I knew. *** The house is too big for me. I stand on my tiptoes when I brush my teeth to see myself in the mirror. I tell my mum that the house was built in a man’s image and

I don’t like it because it makes me feel self-conscious. She gets upset. I apologise and take down the Christmas tree.

I eventually reply to Joel’s email. I tell him I have ten days in between houses; that I’m staying at my mum’s place and it’s pleasant. I say that in the mornings I have been swimming in the river and that in the evenings I have been running in the park amongst the ferns and eucalypts. I do not tell him that the river is the Georges River and that the only time I swim there is in the morning.3 I also do not mention that I’ve only done two out of the thirty runs on the 0to5k app and have not yet committed to the version you have to pay for. I hope my email also has a romantic tone. I bcc: Julia to see what she thinks.

3. At other times of the day the water has brown foam in it which worries me and the slimy ground is exposed and disgusting. Even when the tide is high I lower myself in and start swimming immediately without ever touching the bottom.

arts & culture

Brainwashed by Technicolor Alix Sanders-Garner attended the NSW art gallery’s headline exhibition and realised that everybody can be an artist.

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ffences committed under the influence of adolescence might include P-plate pileups, pregnancy scares, Lynx-scented dance-moves, or all three at once. Mine was buying a book on Andy Warhol. Three, actually. Hardly consequential, but I remember it with the disdain and bemusement others might reserve for a bibulous hospitalisation or nearly-criminal record. But why?—is the ‘Pop art’ for which Andy served as sovereign not so “popular, witty, sexy, and glamourous” as artist Richard Hamilton claimed? I held a hope or two, descending the escalator to the floor it consumes entirely, but was neither aroused nor amused by the onslaught of primary colours it sustains over 1600 square metres.

Before I discourage the Pop postulant totally, I must enforce that Pop to Popism is very much worth seeing—for reasons extraneous to the works themselves. If you are not vain, and would like to enjoy yourself earnestly, I cannot recommend you go. Only those with a taste for charting the devolvement of cultural values and forms into their current state, which is also a taste for masochism, should make their way. Alas, there is carrion aplenty to feed this sorry breed of culture-vulture, but circling these ruins affords a prospect of unique deliciousness.

If you found yourself wondering in what decrepit universe “popular” is a superlative, the answer is our own. This exhibition illustrates the story of how that happened, for Pop art sees the long paroxysm of the avant-garde anæsthetised by capitalismas-cultural-ambience. Its mute gesture is to ‘recontextualise’ non-art and low-

art to re-assign or nullify cultural value.

The averageness of Warhol’s intelligence couldn’t have permitted anything more pretentious than art of and for today in the barest sense; his ambition to “be a machine” made him ventriloquist of his vapid civilisation. To generalise, any contemporary art that isn’t dismissed as nostalgic is merely a restatement of Warholian Pop. But enough of Andy; there are other gods in the pantheon.

Australian gods.

Indeed, in the first room, beside the Brit Richard Hamilton’s 1956 foundational collage, you can let off a patriotic “oi, oi, oi!” at the sight of some passable stoner art by sixties Sydney collective the Annandale Imitation Realists. They call it “neo-primitive funk and junk.”

But who am I to judge? True Pop art— the shiny sort uncultivated by Oz artists with counter-cultural ambitions—is the end of judgement. Warhol said “Everything is art.” This post-modernism opens stupefying vistas of equivalence where even antitheses are possible: Pop is subversive, Pop is complicit. Significance is nannied by essays of can’t. I interrupted two Swedish girls feigning deep scrutiny of a Lichtenstein to ask them if and why they liked the art. They’d like it much more if it were “explained a lot more by a guide.” Poor things.

In the absence of such a doctrinaire chaperone,the glib pamphlet,citation cards, and website explain everything away. Case in point: the exhibition’s most artistically regrettable renderings of private-parts were Vivienne Binns’ 1967 ‘Vag Dens’

Everyone can be an artist. Produce a can and submit it to editors@honisoit.com

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and its pendant ‘Phallic Monument.’ Yet Popism’s swish online portal attributes the critics’ outrage to their inability to “cope with the idea that a young woman created such blatantly sexual works. Perhaps they felt threatened by an image that showed there was more to women than...perfect housewives.” Popism certainly promotes the idea of Pop art as ‘sexy’ but the result is an opaque, asexual weirdness. Nursed on a sour cocktail of British and American blood, it assumes an attitude you’d expect from the furtive Googling of a fifty-yearold. Its primary manifestation is guilty smuttiness. Eros makes an entrance only to don pleather thigh-boots, as in Allen Jone’s 1972 mounted sculpture ‘Secretary’, or to strew garlands of genital caricatures.

Sexual difference is trumped up to such exhausting high-voltage that we get either Tarzans or bimbos to-be-sold-separately.

Desire is usually a failsafe theme, but you can barely taste it here. But this is only Pop’s honest faith, for we see before us our era of Mr Grey and his fifty shades of the same dull, commercial colour. Time— that other thematic heavyweight—is the reality Pop latches onto. Time passing, in the most prosaic sense. Its mood, and the whole mood of Pop culture, seems capable of seeing life only as a dumb cavalcade of discrete decades, a factory-model of history and experience—the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, flit by with their inventions and events like item-numbers on the assembly line. This ‘paved the way’ for that, here ‘broke ground’ for there, ad infinitum. The mood of mechanical action is so pervasive that no one giggles even when Pop art is praised with such neutralities as “defining” and “recognisable.”

Exiting through the ample gift-shop, you might wonder if the exhibition is indeed over. That the curator did not exploit this hilarious ambiguity is beyond me— why not exhibit consumer art amidst consumer goods? Connoisseurship of this sort of thing relieves boredom; earlier in the exhibition I laughed when I saw, amid these icons of infinite reproduction lauded for their very ubiquity, a warning not to photograph anything lest copyright be violated. Rightly so, for there are fortunes to defend. At auction a Warhol can rake in a profit at least double that of an Old Master. The salary of newish gallery director Michael Brand suggests this phenomenon extends to art-people as well as art-works. The ironies issuing from venue might be greater here than the commercial galleries in which this art first appeared. Pop has graduated not only as a market leader, but as a cash-cow grazing the hallowed halls of museum-galleries, effectively keeping them solvent with its surface appeal. No finer parable for ‘progress’ could be desired.

Pop to Popism allows us to see Pop art and Pop culture for precisely what it is: the harrowing flatness of a plebeian rococo. One you can instagram from the café set up smack-bang-Sydney-style in the middle of it all. Resurfacing to the atrium, we are farewelled by a print of Warhol’s face and the words “Pop art is for everyone.” Happily except yourselves from that category, dear reader, or languish forever in the freezer aisle.

Illustration by Samuel McEwen, who is actually an artist.

arts & culture

Sidelining Women in Film Imogen Gardam is sick of dealing with dicks.

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t’s Oscar season again, which means we can expect the usual—the dresses, the glamour, the breathless predictions and detailed analyses and the near universal celebration of men and male stories (and among these of course, white men prevail).

This year has delivered a line-up even less diverse than most, with all of the Best Director nominees—Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Richard Linklater, Bennett Miller, Wes Anderson and Morten Tyldum—being men, and all Best Picture nominees featuring male protagonists. Across all nominations, 102 were male and 25 female. Either the Academy is incredibly oblivious to achievement if it doesn’t come with a penis, or women are grossly underrepresented in the film industry. Or both.

The film industry has a gender problem.

This is not exclusive to Hollywood by any means, and in the Australian film industry we find a similar story—at times more so, given the industry is so much smaller, leaving less room for women to squeeze in amongst all that incumbent privilege. And this is not the sole battleground for equality within the industry—there are many, many groups that are kept off our screens or shut out of the industry. As this year’s Academy nominations prove, if you’re not white and male, good luck. As 51% of the population, however, and 52% of film-going audiences, women are woefully underrepresented both on screen and off.

Last year’s Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) data showed that only 15% of films starred women, while the Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film in San Diego reported only 7% of the top 250 grossing films released this year were directed by women, which itself represents a 2% drop over the past 17 years. In other words, gender equality in the film industry is right where it was in 1998.

How does this disparity translate to the Australian industry? Statistics are a little thinner on the ground, and somewhat out of date, but they paint a familiar picture.

In 2008, the Australian Film Commission reported that 14 out of 93 directors (15%) credited for a feature film between 2003 and 2007 were women; 57 out of 161 producers (35%); and 30 out of 144 writers (21%).

The problem is essentially two-fold. To begin with, women working in the industry struggle to get projects developed, funded, distributed and recognised. Ava DuVernay’s Selma struggled to find funding and a studio after its first director Lee Daniels dropped out. In addition to this, women on screen, when they do appear, are rarely

given any sort of characterisation beyond their function to male protagonists—the love interest, the mother, the sister, the daughter. The cause of the problem is essentially the same (hello patriarchy, my old friend), and one is the solution to the other.

Better representation behind camera is the key to better representation on screen.

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found the positive flow-on effect in family films in particular—an important battle ground for normalising gender roles—where the presence of one or more female writers on a film resulted in 10% more women and girls on screen. A female director meant a 6% increase. It’s worth noting that the same report also observed that a higher percentage of female characters in family films were shown in “sexy, tight or alluring attire”—24% to the male 4%—or with “exposed skin between the mid-chest and upper thigh regions” 18.5% compared to 5.6% for men. This is in family films alone—one can only imagine how the statistics would read in less PG rated genres.

Meanwhile, a female Academy member recently observed to the Hollywood Reporter that Patricia Arquette (star of Boyhood) must regret being filmed over 12 years and congratulated her on not getting cosmetic work done in that time—as if women aren’t allowed to, you know, age.

In Australia, the Natalie Miller Fellowship is one of many groups working to address gender inequality in the film industry, and to advance women in film, with the specific mission of nurturing and supporting women into positions of leadership. As such, they provide funding of up to $10 000, annually, to a woman working in the screen industry to help further her professional development. Now in its third year, the Fellowship was named after Natalie Miller, who is the owner of film distributor Sharmill Films who remains the only woman in Australia to establish and run her own distribution company.

Recipients of the Fellowship have used it to undertake courses at Harvard, Oxford, and to attend the Women in Leadership program at the UNSW Business School.

The inaugural recipient, Rachel Okine, has recently been announced as the new ‘Vice President, International Productions and Acquisitions’ at StudioCanal.

Perhaps, in true Hollywood insider style, one solution is mentorship—women helping women where possible, and taking responsibility for diversity on their own projects. Producer Liz Watts, speaking at

a Natalie Miller Fellowship event in July last year, explained that The Rover, a very male-heavy project featuring one female character with any significant dialogue, employed female department heads in every area of the film. For Watts, who came up through the industry in the boys club that is the camera department, it is important that her own company, Porchlight Films, addresses the “gross underrepresentation” of women where possible. At the same event, Rachel Okine argued that one of the best ways to address the disparity was executive training and mentoring, saying that “every time you move up the ladder, you have to make sure you are pulling someone up behind you”.

There is, of course, the opposite approach —asking and working with men to improve equality. Elizabeth Broderick, the Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner, has taken this approach with her Male Champions of Change program, which involves directly approaching CEOs and chairs from large corporations and institutions to improve gender equality in their own companies. The Male Champions of Change program recognises that if those who hold the power and keep the gate are male, then they need to be part of the conversation. According to Broderick, the first person she approached for the program was Glen Boreham, who was at the time the chair of Screen Australia, the premier national funding body.

Like many industries, there are multiple factors at play in shutting women out of the film industry. Childbirth and childcare is an oft-touted excuse for not advancing women, or trusting them with positions of influence or responsibility—how do you know they’re not going to disappear to reproduce suddenly? There is an argument to be made for the suitability of the film industry to family life, with the project-by-project structure of many positions allowing women to pop off and pop one out. Those women who do, however, tend to find the door closed to them when they return. In the 1970s, Screen Australia allowed for childcare to be included as a line item on its budgets for projects applying for funding. Once again, the industry has gone backwards, rather than forwards, in enabling gender diversity.

is 77% male and 94% white, with an average age of 62. The films they choose to laud make perfect sense in this context, and are rarely representative of the most exciting, innovative or quite simply good things happening in cinema currently. It is easy, and often done, but should be avoided. In dismissing out of hand one of the most prominent accolades in cinema and in the industry itself, certainly the most highly publicised, we dismiss those it ignores, allowing the institution a free pass to continue to validate an already privileged group and firmly shut out more diverse voices. To write them off is to refuse to hold the Oscars to a higher standard.

And it is only reflective of the industry as a whole.

The picture is not completely bleak for the Australian film industry, and it is certainly brighter than that offered by Hollywood.

This year’s AACTA Awards celebrated Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, awarding it Best Screenplay, Best Direction and a joint win for Best Film with Russell Crowe’s The Water Diviner. John Curran’s female-starring Tracks was also nominated for Best Film, while Sophie Hyde’s 52 Tuesdays was nominated for Best Screenplay. The latter is not only directed by and starring a woman, but also explores (albeit problematically) the experience of gender transition. There is hope yet.

That said, the highest grossing Australian film of 2014, the aforementioned The Water Diviner, features a veritable boys’ club of a production team and only two female characters, both of whom are defined and characterised strictly within the bounds of their relationship to the male protagonist, as wife and love interest separately, the former only existing on screen long enough to die and make way for the latter.

Rusty’s sepia-toned tale of the ANZAC spirit beat out Wolf Creek 2, another bastion of well-written female characters, for the top spot. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Artwork by Phoebe Corleone

In the furore around this year’s nominations, it is easy to dismiss the Oscars as pure fluff and glitter, a masturbatory exercise in self-congratulation and back-patting that has no bearing or relevance on cinema at large, out of touch with audiences and rarely rewarding truly good art. The Academy voting body, after all,

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gronkwatch

Board Directors Under Fire for Abusing Cabcharge Privileges This week in GronkWatch, Alex Downie and Dom Ellis uncover the University of Sydney Union’s very own expenses scandal.

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niversity of Sydney Union Board Directors were last week asked to return their Cabcharge cards after it was revealed that several directors had allegedly abused their Cabcharge privileges.

While the total number of Directors involved is unclear, Honi understands that Director Liam Carrigan is the worst offender. It is alleged that he took 27 cabs and cost the USU over $500 in January alone. In context, that’s the equivalent cost of about seven one-year ACCESS cards in less than a month.

The feat is particularly impressive given that the USU was on holiday until the 5th of January and that, as a former Board Director tells Honi, January is the period with the fewest Union events.

Under current regulations, Board Directors are only entitled to ‘free’ cabs—subsidised by student money—for travel to or from Union duties outside of business hours; when pre-existing commitments will make directors late for union duties (or vice-versa); or in otherwise urgent situations approved by the President or Honorary Treasurer. Directors sign an agreement to abide by those conditions before they receive their Cabcharge credit cards.

Honi understands that the Board has not yet formally discussed Carrigan’s charges, but can confirm that the Directors were all asked to hand over their Cabcharge cards on February 17th. USU President Tara Waniganayaka was unable to confirm whether Liam will be forced to reimburse the Union. It is possible that Carrigan will

also be subject to a censure motion from other Board Directors.

Speaking to Honi, Carrigan claimed that the charges were necessary because he lives in the Northern Beaches, saying that it costs him up to $80 to get home from the University by cab in peak hour. He also said that he had already emailed Human Resources about the matter and intended to pay back any charges that fell outside the rules. Carrigan has provided a full statement in response to the article, available online.

As Honi understands it, the Board will now revert to the previous ‘paper card’ system, where Directors have to ask Human Resources for individual trip cards, meaning they effectively have to ask the permission of their own staff to get home.

The controversy comes as Carrigan’s fellow Grassroots member and board director Ed McMahon spearheads a campaign to subsidise ACCESS cards for disadvantaged students. Despite McMahon and others wanting to implement universal free access, they were only able to implement a limited subsidy scheme because of the Union’s strapped finances.

Carrigan recently co-authored the Union’s new transparency policy. Speaking in favour of the policy, he told Honi: ‘the board shouldn’t live in an ivory tower’.

This story went to print on Monday. For more updates, check out honisoit.com

How to Spend Two Hours on a Bus (Without Defrauding Anyone) 1. Read a book.

Despite popular belief, studies have shown that the homo sapiens retain ALL of its literacy skills while sitting on public transport.

2. Listen to music.

Two hours is a long time. Luckily, even the financially crippled in our society – such as, say the members of the board of a student union affiliated with a Group of 8 university (and not one of the shitty ones) – can afford a $55 iPod Shuffle, which will provide 15 hours of audio-based entertainment.

3. Talk to your fellow passengers.

Even if you are worried about a potentially unsavoury encounter with one of your fellow outer-suburban residents (we hear the businessmen on their way back to the beaches can get pretty rowdy along the Parkway), striking up a conversation with the chap next to you can help those hours (just the two of them, it’s not like this a guide for those hundreds of students doing a three hour commute to and from the Central Coast or the Lower Blue Mountains for uni or anything – let’s not get crazy) fly by.

4. Write a tongue-in-cheek listicle for your student newspaper about riding a bus for two hours.

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what’s on

What’s On? (On Campus)

What’s On? (Off Campus)

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src officebearer reports

These pages belong to the officebearers of the SRC. They are not altered, edited, or changed in any way by the Honi editors.

President’s Report Kyol Blakeney writes his report from the fiftieth annivrsary of the Freedom Rides.

“We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we return home.”

-Aboriginal Proverb

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o doubt the above proverb is seen as a guide for how to live one’s life in the heart of many Aboriginal people.

In the past week I have taken this saying quite literally. I have just returned from the 50th Anniversary of the 1965 Freedom Ride, which was headed by the late Uncle Charlie Perkins.

During my journey, with a group students and staff from our uni and many of the original Freedom Riders, we passed through Dubbo, Coonamble, Walgett, Collarenebri, Moree, Bowraville and Kempsey to not only celebrate the achievements of the Freedom Ride but also to reflect on what has changed, what hasn’t and what still needs to be done in these communities to shorten the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

I had the opportunity to sit and talk

with local members of the community; to observe, to learn, to grow, and to love.

I learnt about the positive and negative changes they had experienced and engaged in discussions about what we can do, as young university students, to help. I found that many still face discrimination in these communities based on their race in the present day such as life long bans to children as young as age 7 in the Moree Swimming Pool to the low standard living conditions on the Ginghi Mission, which has just 12 houses for up to 90 people. I learnt about the low rate of employment

opportunities in Dubbo and Walgett, and the little amount of youth services available to the people in Bowraville and Kempsey. All of these things have one main common factor; they are all predominately Aboriginal communities.

be sure to check out our handbook that has literally everything you need to survive uni, including the awesome collectives that can help you get involved in the things that matter on campus.

you the same SRC goodness we’ve been providing for the past 87 years. We’ll keep you updated.

I strongly encourage you to take a look at the articles from pg 12 of this issue of Honi for more details and contact me if you want to get involved in creating change in our country as we pass through before returning home.

General Secretaries’ Report Chiara Angeloni & Max Hall wrote this frantically on a bus.

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t’s O Week, you’re probably drunk, you’ve mistakenly turned to the middle of Honi Soit (great publication by the way) and discovered the shining light in the dark depths of the University – the beacon of hope that is your Students’ Representative Council. We’re your General Secretaries for the year. Essentially, that means we are responsible for taking care of the money and making sure that you know who we are and what we can do for you. How can we make that happen?

stall on Eastern Avenue and you can collect the fruits of our summer labours in the form of a sweet showbag (mmm, dat calico). Inside, you’ll find a ‘How to Uni’ guide we put together over the break, and the Counter Course Handbook courtesy of your Education Officers. As for the former, somewhere between the sealed section and delicious recipes, you should definitely check out the forty-odd pages of advice on starting uni and making Sydney life great.

Well, make sure you swing by the SRC

Also, if you’re getting an ACCESS card,

On a slightly more boring note, remember the Student Services Fee you’ve just paid during enrolment? That cash is put in a nice little pile, some of which funds the SRC, its activism and free casework and legal services. Right now we’re working (read: wrestling) with the other student organisations for the money to bring

If you’re interested in getting involved in your SRC (you won’t regret it!), keep an eye on these SRC pages in Honi for regular updates from us and the other SRC Office Bearers, and helpful tips from our great casework team. Alternatively, feel free to shoot us an email (general.secretary@src. usyd.edu.au) with what you’re passionate about and we can point you towards the collective or department for you.

Wom*n’s Officers’ Report Xiaoran Shi and Subeta Vimalarajah.

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reetings feminists, allies, men’s rights activists et al. We are humbled and excited to be your wom*n’s officers for 2015. I (Xiaoran) am a law student with an arts degree who has been told she’s a mix between Jane Lane and Daria, although I’m beginning to question whether comparisons to angsty fictional teenagers are really all that flattering. I (Subeta) am also a law student and my greatest achievement/the point at which my life changed was when a waitress on King St mistook me for MIA. Forget about us though, this is about Wom*n’s Collective and the year of activism, creativity and knowledge ahead.

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WoCo is a radical, autonomous, feminist space open to all who identify in whole or in part as a wom*n, trans or nonbinary person because “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Audre Lorde – we really need to find a new quote, we use this one a lot). We’ll be meeting on Thursdays at 1pm, starting from March 5 in the Wom*n’s Room in Manning, level 1. If you’re interested in getting involved, hit us up on our email, usydwomenscollective@gmail.com or on the Facebook group, Usyd Wom*n’s Collective.

Unfortunately, we were both away over the holidays but aided by dodgy wi-fi

(and Eastern European dial-up), talented collective members and friends, we’ve put together some goodies for our O-week stall, including T-shirts designed by the amazing Elizabeth Mora, as well as printed canvas “show bags” with a mixed CD, badge, vagina activity book, educational zine, DIY wheatpasting poster, flashcards of useful terms, our activist handbook, Growing Strong and more inside.

Speaking of which, the WoCo annual publication Growing Strong was also born over the holidays. Come celebrate with us at the launch on March 7 at the 5 Eliza ballroom in Newtown! There will be live music and good food, so look out for more

details soon.

Collective is also going to the Mardi Gras Film Festival screening of “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry” on March 3. It will be our first collective “field trip” for the year and a great opportunity to meet your fellow feminists.

Lastly, don’t hesitate to say hi or ask questions if you see us around! We promise that future reports will be less a list of things we did over the summer.

Until then, Xiaoran & Subeta

src officebearer reports

These pages belong to the officebearers of the SRC. They are not altered, edited, or changed in any way by the Honi editors.

Ethnic Affairs Officers’ Report Eden Caceda, Kavya Kalutantiri, Lamisse Hamouda and Deeba Binaei.

H

together to ensure the empowerment and self-determination of ethno-cultural people on campus and outside of campus.

At the beginning of 2014 the Autonomous Collective Against Racism (ACAR) came

Last year we ran our “I, Too, Am Sydney” campaign to highlight the racism and prejudice faced by many students at our uni. It was a great opportunity to give a voice to those students whose experiences aren’t always heard. We carried on with ACAR Honi Soit, where we took over this rag and curated an amazing edition full of articles, poetry, art and comedy, all created by autonomous students of colour. Some of these works became received massive

i there! Our names are Eden, Kavya, Lamisse and Deeba and we are honoured to be your Ethnic Affairs Officers this year as we continue to represent and fight for the equality of those who identify as a person of colour, a person from an ethno-cultural background, an Indigenous person and/or as someone marginalised by white supremacy. We stand for the liberation of these people and believe that it is important that we are represented appropriately.

exposure and others allowed first time creators to dabble in writing new work.

Currently we are working with members of the University community on the upcoming Racism. It Stops With Me campaign that will launch at the end of March, a project we are very excited about. Likewise, this O-Week, we have created our first ever ACAR zine. The new quarterly booklet will continue to provide our members with an creative outlet that we aren’t always given. ACAR would like to thank Whitney Duan for assisting in this editions creation.

We hope to continue the great traditions of last year and are excited to work with the SRC in the capacity of Ethnic Affairs.

This collective hopes to operate not only as a space of activism and political organizing, but also as a support space where all racially marginalised people can share their experience. We see racism and its effects as diverse and we are determined to work as a collective to make visible the different ways racism manifests in people’s lives and how we can end it.

Queer Action Collective Report Charlie O’Grady.

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e’ve come into 2015 firing on all cylinders, and we couldn’t be more excited to commence another year of activism within QuAC and Queerkats!

which is undergone alone. We hope that new students in 2015 will feel comfortable to find support in students who have already walked those difficult roads.

The queer officers have worked through the summer break to establish some new initiatives for queer students on campus. We’ll begin the year with the reestablishment of our Buddy System—an opportunity for new LGBTQIA+ students on campus to be paired with a more experienced QuAC member. Beginning university as a queer student can be a daunting experience, and frequently one

Preparation has also begun for this year’s Pride Festival, held in week four of semester one. We’ve put a focus on providing workshops for this year’s festival, as the ones we ran last year received such a positive response. We believe a focus on education and the sharing of skills and experience is vital to fostering a strong queer community on campus—we can have no activism without a foundation in

a willingness to learn from others.

We’re also pleased to announced that we were able to contribute some funds at

the end of last year to the Redfern Tent Embassy. We believe it is so important to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land and to,where we can,support queer members of the Indigenous community.

We were also able to contribute some of our budget so that several members of our collective could attend a recent conference at University of Woollongong called “Cultured Queer/Queering Culture: Indigenous Perspectives on Queerness”, in the first of many steps we intend to take to ensure that QuAC and Queerkats are never places in which POC experiences of queerness are erased.

too. We are your link to your SRC so don’t be shy, come Holla at us. You now have the opportunity to bring up your issues to the SRC! So make sure to take up this advantage and all of the SRC services.

campuses • Fighting for the small things such as longer facility hours (e.g. libraries, practice rooms, studio rooms) and more frequent shuttle buses

This year we will be: • Providing frequent meaningful consultations to your campuses • Bringing the SRC to you and ensuring that you get acquainted with your President and Executives • Delivering caseworkers and legal services to your campuses so you don’t have to make the trek out to Camperdown • Expanding Union events to your

Contact us via email on inter.campus@ src.usyd.edu.au. You’ll also be seeing us around on your campus daily. So come say hi!

We are so proud thus far of the achievements and growth of our non-cis male collective, Queerkats. Queerkats was begun last year in order to provide a safe space for those whose experiences of sexuality also intersected with gender inequality. We held several events last year, including an Art Party and zine launch, and cannot wait to see the exponential growth of Queerkats in 2015.

Intercampus Officers’ Report Jason Kwok, Mary Osborn, Mary Ellen Trimble, and Fiona Lieu.

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here’s more to USyd than just Camperdown. We have nine other campuses and thousands of proud USyd students who don't call the sandstone halls of the Quad home. Are you one of these students? If so, the Intercampus Department is here for you. This year we're going to do things a bit differently.

Keep an eye out for us at your campuses because we’ll be around frequently as your representatives of the University of Sydney Student Representative Council. In previous years we feel that student services have been an exclusive Camperdown privilege. Despite the good work of many student activists, we want to ensure that all students, regardless of location, have

the ability to access the amazing services that their SSAF pays for too. Get fired up SCA, Mallet, Cumbo, Con and Camden kids because we are thousands strong, we are proud Usyd students and we love our university, and it’s about time we got some of that sweet lovin’ back.

Our vision, our plan for 2015 is to make your SRC more accessible, more available, and more accountable to you, students of satellite campuses. Your campus should not determine your access. For the first time in too long, your Intercampus officers are Intercampus students, we study with you and we are familiar with your problems because they are our problems

Xoxo Your Intercampus Officers for 2015, Jason, Mary, Mary and Fiona

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SRC caseworker help

Welcome to the Big House…

Well, not in a prison kind of way, write the SRC Caseworkers...

It doesn’t matter how big your school was, it was not as big as this place. This place even has its own postcode, which makes it even bigger than the Rooty Hill RSL. Even the satellite campuses are many times bigger than most high schools.

So whilst adjusting to this change can be exciting and challenging, it can also be down right horrifying.

The workload here is significantly higher than for most high schools. There is less individual direction and increasingly larger class sizes. The onus really is on you to stay focused and do lots of work to learn all of the required information.

Most students will tell you that you don’t have to do the readings before tutorials or read all the resources you list in your assignments. What they won’t tell you is that this is an extremely stressful way

of not doing very well at uni. Being full time at uni is definitely more work than being a full time worker. We don’t mean to alarm you, we’re just telling it like it is.

But don’t despair, there are ways to make it work for you.

Studies have shown that if you don’t make some sort of attachment to the uni by about week six you’ll find it very difficult to be successful in your degree.

What do we mean by attachment? Your attachment may be that you’ve met some other people who like the same hobbies as you, so check out all of the different clubs and societies available through the Union. If you get the chance, go through the O-Week stalls so that you can meet them face-to-face and join straight away.

If not, you can also find them online and go along to a meeting.

Your attachment may be your love for the subject material. Take the time to complete at least the required readings so that the lectures make sense to you.

Attending classes is compulsory for a reason, so save the socialising for another time. Most people say that doing the

Ask Abe SRC Caseworker HELP Q&A Dear Abe, I’ve attended all of the sessions and stalls available at O week. I was wondering if there was anything else I needed to know to be able to do well at this degree.

Just a Little Bit Dear Just a Little Bit, I’ve seen lots of different types of people go through uni and I reckon there’s a bit of a recipe for success.

Attend all of your classes and do all of your readings. This sounds like more work than just bluffing your way through tutorials, but you’ll actually pick things up much quicker and have a better understanding of the material.

Assessments and exams will also be easier to prepare for and you will score better marks. Most importantly you are less likely to fail anything, meaning you won’t have to repeat a subject.

Check out the Learning Centre courses as soon as you can. Some people say they have no time to do these extra courses, but actually putting in the time for them now will save you heaps of time later.

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Generally speaking, people who get help from the learning centre will improve their marks by one grade. That is, if you had got a pass for that assignment you’d probably get a credit with the Learning Centre’s help. Check out their website too, they have great modules on referencing properly, time management and a bunch of other topics.

Deal with any problems you have during the semester WHEN THEY HAPPEN. Talk to SRC HELP or someone in the faculty to get whatever it is you need.

reading before attending the class (not to mention paying attention whilst you’re there) makes the exams a lot easier.

Your attachment may be as simple as meeting a new friend or potential new partner. This is always exciting.

Remember to have (safe, consensual) fun, but don’t neglect the main reason you are here. You are now a University of Sydney student. Embrace it like you would a blossoming new romance.

Remember that most people feel just as nervous and out of place as you do – even the students that have come to USYD already equipped with friends from high school. The best thing that you can do is to try to be yourself, be open to meeting new people and having new experiences, and know that if you ever need to talk to someone, USYD has a free counseling service.

Another area of difference to high school is the increase to your own personal freedom. The University prefers to treat you as an adult. You are free to make your own decisions about alcohol

Abe’s answers can provide you with excellent insight and helpful tips for surviving as a student. To ask Abe a question send an email to: help@src.usyd.edu.au

Living in Sydney is increasingly difficult for anyone on a limited budget. Where you live needs to be affordable so you’re not spending more than 10 – 15 hours a week working (for a full time student) to be able to support yourself. It needs to be stable, so you are not worrying about whether you’ll have somewhere to live next week, or whether your flatmates are going to pay their rent. It needs to be appropriate. Some students we have met were sleeping on a balcony in the middle of winter and not getting very much sleep…probably not the best idea they’ve ever had. Exhaustion and illness does not a good student make. Having trouble with accommodation? You guessed it; the SRC can help you out.

Always remember that you are not alone here. There are lots of people willing to help you settle in. The trick is to ask.

WE’VE GOT YOUR BACK If You Have A Legal Problem?

We Can Help For FREE!

Fines Motor Vehicle Accidents

Most of all allow yourself to have fun.

This should be an awesome time of your life.

Abe

and other drugs, and sexual activity. If you have questions about anything to do with these feel free to contact the SRC. We can always point you in the direction of reliable and non-judgemental information.

Immigration Criminal Charges Debts ...and more We have a solicitor who speaks Cantonese, Mandarin & Japanesee

法律諮詢

法律アドバイス Level 1, Wentworth Bldg, University of Sydney p: 02 9660 5222 | w: src.usyd.edu.au e: solicitor@src.usyd.edu.au | ACN 146 653 143

Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

This service is provided to you by the Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney

supra

SUPRA President’s Report Supra President, Timothy Scriven, welcomes all new postgraduates to campus.

Dear Postgrads, SUPRA is an independent student association, run for postgraduates, by postgraduates here at the University of Sydney.

SUPRA is here to represent your interests, and connect you with other postgraduates.

If you’re having trouble with legal issues, we provide a free legal service, and if you’re having trouble with academic appeals, exclusion, harassment & bullying, tenancy, welfare, scholarships, fee-refunds and much, much more we provide a free casework, advocacy and advice service.

We’re constantly campaigning to and lobbying the University and the government for the rights of all postgraduates, coursework and research, domestic and international. We participate in protest movements on a variety of issues which affect postgraduates- from student housing, to same-sex marriage, to struggles for University Staff conditions, to the fight against fees for research degrees.

We organise social events, including Wine & Cheese and Coffee Afternoons each month, as well as a women’s coffee event

and many equity events. These are a great way to meet other postgraduate students at Sydney University, and to breakdown the isolation of postgraduate life. We also make a variety of wonderful publications including a calendar, a postgraduate survival guide chock full of handy hints, a thesis guide, a weekly newsletter full of useful information and a variety of leaflets on many topics that affect postgraduates.

We can do more if you get involved. Come along to some of our great O-Week events described elsewhere on the page, come to our fortnightly postgraduate education action collective meetings, come to one of our wonderful social events. Get active and get involved. Consider running for council or becoming an office bearer. It’s a great way to get experience in representation, advocacy and governance. More importantly it will give you an opportunity to make a positive difference.

So come along, visit our stall or offices, and have a chat.

Kind regards, Timothy Scriven, SUPRA President

Postgrad O-Week 2015 Wednesday

Thursday

Wednesday Pancake Brunch Wednesday 25 February 10am-12.30pm, SUPRA Offices

Women’s Network Morning Tea Thursday 26 February 10:30am, SUPRA Offices

Come get your O-Week started right, and enjoy pancakes fresh off the grill, meet other Postgrads, and learn about how you can get involved with SUPRA.

The Postgraduate Women’s Network hosts Coffee, Cake and Chat every two weeks, to give you the opportunity to meet fellow postgrads.

Visa Information Session This event is in collaboration with PostThursday 26 February graduate Education Action Collective 3pm-5pm, Carslaw Lecture (PEAC!), and they will be present to tell Theatre 373 you more about how they help Postgrads.

We’ll be dishing up pancakes from 10am12:30pm. Come get them while they’re hot.

Seminar – Welcome to SUPRA Wednesday 25 February 5pm-7pm, SUPRA Offices Once a month, SUPRA offers evening seminars on a variety of topics from how SUPRA can help you to how you can survive your future as a Postgraduate. Come to this session and get engaged with the SUPRA team as they give you tools to manage aspects of your postgraduate life.

Tea and light snacks will be provided.

O-Week Stall SUPRA has a stall in the O-Week fair from Wednesday to Friday. Come visit us and get information to help you on your postgraduate journey.

SUPRA Offices

Are you an international student or friends with an international student who has questions about visa rights and migration opportunities to Australia? Please join Visa expert Aristotle Paipetis of Visa Lawyers Australia (VLA) who will break down visa rights and the law in plain English. You can stay for questions and meet the VLA team, who host consultations at the SUPRA offices during the year.

Queer Postgrad Drinks Thursday 26 February 4pm, Hermann’s Bar Whether you’re new to Sydney Uni or you’ve been here for years, if you’re a postgrad student then come along to Queer Postgrad Drinks, hosted by SUPRA. There will be a small bar tab and some nibbles, so come on over and meet some like-minded postgrads during O-Week 2015.

Friday

SUPRA BBQ Friday 27 February 2014 5pm, SUPRA Offices Celebrate a tradition at SUPRA and join us for a BBQ lunch at the SUPRA Offices! Enjoy some lovely food, meet other postgrads and learn about the SUPRA community so you can get your year started on the right foot. We cater for vegans and a variety of dietary needs so we hope to see you there!

SUPRA is an independent representative association providing advice, advocacy, support and representation to the postgraduate students at the University of Sydney.

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puzzles

Cryptic

Across 1 Disallow someone’s arguments again Perhaps don’t speak? (8) 5 Found the reason for dissolved trio leaving at the start (6) 10 Bitter derision of new mascaras without a... (7) 11 ...void above the ‘American’ ring? (7) 12 Done before expected, just like a British nobleman? (5) 13 Wildly dither about abstract art “Inferior!” (5-4)

Target Not Grouse: 10 Grouse: 20 Grouser: 30 Grousest: 40

A H R R B O N E T

14 Resentment for his grand remodelling believe in it’s interior? (4,8) 18 Praise to demonic man is mad (12) 21 Takeover acted out quietly at sea (4,5) 23 Expect eight - heard a week at first before (5) 24 Erode Pangaea tin to bare contents (3,4) 25 Father, a member of Idol’s first half of two, removes bounds and gives a personal belief (7) 26 Initiated mobsters without ecstasy are like ad people (6) 27 It is in Columbia discharged are prized (8) Down 1 Rewritten story about earth’s first mollusc (6) 2 Wrong actions strangely rose with R&R (6) 3 Unoriginal book; Ye Anger hides (5-4) 4 Fixed changes to indie exclusive - grey PS4 perhaps? (7,7) 6 Admitted to being possessed (5) 7 Evil people are found in villas all around (8) 8 Restructure denies Socialist Party’s leaders to distribute (8) 9 Indications of materialisation succumbs in the end (14) 15 Appear to take pleasure in consuming a replica perhaps? (4-5) 16 Crime ace breaks something found in a cone case? (3,5) 17 Developed into a set on horseback (8) 19 Enjoyment from inflicting pain and initial suffering on deformed maids (6) 20 High and in shape? Second at first? (6) 22 German thanks cold and damp half of the EU? (5)

Answers available next week at honisoit.com

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Quick

Across 1 W here clothes may be kept (8)

Down 1 Australian marsupial (6)

5 Go by (6)

2 Let (6)

10 Staff controller (7)

3 Long line of foolish statements (9)

11 Adrenaline, for example (7)

4 End hostilities (4,3,7)

12 Sports enclosure, often filled with tigers (5)

6 Text of a song (5)

13 Characteristically (9) 14 Bend it Like Beckham (the book), for example (12) 18 In the room the women come and go.

Talking of _________ (12) 21 A monocle perhaps? (9) 23 Writer of Charlotte’s Web (5) 24 Very strong (7)

7 Formally declare (8) 8 Him, her, you, and me (no-one missing) (8) 9 Broadway, for example (8,6) 15 Five dollars from my mummy every week, for example (9) 16 Nigel Thornberry’s catchphrase (8) 17 Varied (8)

25 Just touching (7)

19 80% of voting students voted YES to ___ from fossil fuel (6)

26 Small racer (2-4)

20 Beat (6)

27 Done again (8)

22 Pavarotti, for example (5)

Sudoku

Gentle breezes carrying airborne pox

The Garter Press

Issue I (a new era)

Editorial

Broadsheet format and moral courage will withstand the fires that people flesh cannot

EVERY LETTER OF THE LATIN ALPHABET HIDDEN WITHIN!

HORRIBLE GARTER PRESS FIRE DEEMED PERFECTLY NORMAL

Many have noted the incredible improbability of every pro-tabloid contributor, editor and board member of The Garter being killed in the same fire, but I would urge those compelled to make the observation not to try and politicise an immense tragedy.

For this catastrophe is a poetic reminder of the incredible tenacity of the broadsheet.

Were the victory for the noble, age-old form not so inextricably tied to the terrible loss of life of many brilliant newspaper contributors, I would celebrate it more extensively.

As for those who are no longer with us: may their obituaries be as their DISGUSTING tabloid aesthetic would demand – short, and crowded with disgusting images and advertisement.

Regrettably, and newly powerfully yours, Amanda Huntingslow (Executive Editor, The Garter Press)

Government Appoints New Minister for Appeasement of the Dreadful Spectres from the Land of Ice and Snow

The Federal Government has received bipartisan support for their decision to appoint Janine Frostworn to the new cabinet position of Minister for the Appeasement of the Dreadful Spectres from the Land of Snow and Ice.

It is with equal parts heavy heart and morbid enthusiasm that I pen this introduction. I only wish I could say it was a pleasure to take the renowned position of executive editor of The Garter Press, but to do so in light of recent circumstances would be callous.

Executive editor of four years, Dolores Pellicer, passed away peacefully in another, unrelated, fire.

Proudly the price of a quart of milk

Political correspondent Johnathan Trout politically corresponds

Dear Readers, old and new,

As you will all, well and truly, be aware by now, the fire that ravaged The Garter offices at the beginning of this year birthed a devastating list of casualties. These people were consummate professionals and represented some of the finest talent in the industry. The loss of the likes of Maisy Snuffington, Hercules Pickleyton, Climpton Cadbury and Davey “PunchyPunch” Boxcar will be quietly mourned.

Australia’s Most Trusted Newspaper, refusing to bow to the cowardly will of the tabloid

Firefighters have described the blaze as “Almost definitely [...] an accident” The fire that destroyed The Garter Press building was highly suspicious, but not definitely malicious, a police inquiry has revealed today.

According to officials, the blaze which destroyed the publication’s Castlereagh Street headquarters wasn’t necessarily “the result of premediated and meticulously distributed incendiary devices throughout the office.” Investigators also discovered incendiary devices, centralised around The Garter’s main boardroom, with accelerant on every floor, but stated this was not necessarily how the fire started.

“It is, however extraordinarily unlikely, entirely within the realms of possibility that something other than the incendiary devices and accelerant sparked the flame...” investigators admitted.

The fire started (and it could well have done so without human intervention) at around 11pm on the night of January the 5th. At the time of the blaze, the office was entirely empty of employees notwithstanding a collection of senior Garter reporters and editors who had been assembled for an emergency editorial meeting regarding the future format of the paper, sources report.

Deputy Police Commissioner Brenda Notatokenczic said “while a lot of signs point to malicious intent, no, the inquiry

could not 100% rule out the possibility that the fire was an accident.”

“We are encouraging anyone with information about the [possibly unremarkable] incident to come forward.”

The January 5 fire killed a total of sixteen staff and occurred just two weeks after executives and boardmembers of The Garter Press announced plans to convert Australia’s oldest broadsheet to a tabloid format. All those who perished in the blaze were in favour of the change.

Due to the tricky nature of ontology, officials cannot know for sure if there is any connection between the fire at The Garter Offices, and another fire that, on the same night, took the life of former executive editor Dolores Pellicer in her home. Flying in the face of decency and doubt, police are treating the incident at home with the same, exacting degree of scrutiny as they are the blaze that swept through the main offices (too much!).

In her inaugural address, Frostworn avoided the pitfall less skilfully negotiated by many of her colleagues, by underpromising, and stressing the need to priorities: “Something I’ve learned in my time as Minister is that there will always be more things to do; always more goals to strive for; always more passions to pursue, always more Dreadful Spectres in the crevasses.”

But Frostworn is not without her detractors. Independent Senator Brett Hedges declared the creation of the position “a distraction” pandering to “low polls, rather than good policy ideas.”

Frostworn denies the claims, at press time stating “I know that some people have reservations about my appointment and concerns about the post, but the frost beasts can sense fear, and they can commandeer the forms of your loved ones to get what they want.”

When asked what her first move would be in the new position, the minister’s aims were a little closer to home: “I’m really looking forward to just getting involved, and agreeing upon a safeword with each of my family members, in the event that the Dreadful Spectres attempt to bewitch them with magicke puppetry when winter falls upon the lands.”

The inquiry has taken nearly two months due to instances of missing evidence, fruitless lines of questioning, and a uniform lack of testimony from current Garter employees.

In a final rebuke of her critics, Frostworn, directly addressing Hedges, stated: “You’re not going to remember the detractors. What we, and indeed the whole country will remember is being a part of a great team, and the Unhinged Demonic Mouths, Shouting Into the Frozen Air that we vanquished.”

This is the first issue of The Garter Press to be published since the fire devastated the media outlet in January.

How iwll we cope without our subediotrs? read more on page thgree

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The Garter Press HARD HITTING NEWS

Each Feather in White Kid’s Headdress Awarded for Instance of Being a Huge, Stupid Arsehole Borrell Millington is just glad to be out of the spotlight

A study by anthropologists at the University of Manchester has discovered that every feather in the headdress worn by local white man Cody Harrington was a trophy from an instance where he was a gigantic arsehole.

The revelation came during The Rainbow Serpent Festival in January where, when faced with allegations of cultural appropriation, Harrington shouted “mate, I’ve earned these bad boys. Bein’ a top tier legend, mate.”

The ensuing survey discovered that the earliest of Harrington’s feathers must have been awarded at a regional psytrance festival where he declared that he had a spirit name—Dancing Horse—after which he went on to take three ecstasy tablets and grope a woman he did not know.

When asked about his warbonnet, Harrington declared “mate, you can’t just ask me about shit like a headdress. Symbols mean different things to everyone and these are, like, my symbols now.”

Harrington went on to say that there was something “deeply spiritual” about a gathering of predominantly white youngadults, together in the “pursuit of oneness” just “having a real good time” and not wearing shoes.

The number of feathers in Harrington’s headdress suggest he is the biggest dick of his immediate circle of friends, a title which, Harrington explained, “just shut up, mate. Why are you giving me such a hard time? It’s heaps rude.”

Lenah Dunham Called “Fat” on Twitter; She Responds in the most Incredible Way!

It is believed the police were called after neighbours overheard an altercation in the man’s fifth-floor home.

A media team from the Cambridge University Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics has today revealed that Stephen Hawking, renowned theoretical physicist and bestselling author, fucked the beginning of space-time.

Professor Hawking, in a statement released this morning, confessed that years of experimentation and inquiry had resulted in “a strange intimacy with the beginning of the fabric of the universe as we know it.”

“I glimpsed the beginning of the universe.

It was staggeringly beautiful. To see those first, truly fleeting, truly momentous moments in the history of everything was profoundly affecting. Then I fucked it.”

At press time, In the face of growing public disbelief, Hawking passionately asked reporters, “Can you honestly say that, knowing what I know, having seen what I have seen, you wouldn’t have done the same?”

Commonwelath Bank to Offer No-Fee, Some Money on the End of a Fishing Line Smart Access Account Fisher Payton breathes pennies and speaks the language of the cash elves

The pair had previously conversed on social media.

The Commonwealth Bank has released a new Some Money on the End of Some Fishing Line Smart Access Account. CEO Ian Narev has described the account as “an exciting turn for struggling, first-time home owners, and account holders with bad credit history.”

Ms. Dunham is expected to appear in Kings Criminal Court on March 4.

“What happens is we tie a comically large wad of money on a difficult to see string.

Police are alleging that Ms. Dunham, who works in the entertainment industry, stabbed Mr Yates with a kitchen knife she brought to the scene.

Who can really claim to know space?

Staff from Professor Hawking’s experimental laboratory confirmed the truth of the claim, shaking their heads and stating “we’re heaps jealous.”

A 28-year-old woman has been charged with murder following a death in a New York apartment building last week.

Lena Dunham, of Brooklyn, was arrested at the scene when police found the body of Jonathan Yates, 47, also of Brooklyn, at his residence with several stab wounds to the chest and genitals.

Hawking: “I Fucked the Beginning of Space-Time”

Something transparent, usually fishing line… You want a good length of it lest they get too near,” Narev said in a release this morning.

“We dangle it in front of the unsuspecting customer, then when they go for it, the boys and I give the line an almighty tug and it comically scuttles just out of their reach!

It is a lot of fun. My favourite jape, for definitely.”

Narev has described the program as “a trial product”, ahead of the scheduled release of a Pennies-Glued-to-the-Floor savings scheme to debut in late October this year.

“We will spit on them when they try and pick it up.”

Photo Feature: Starling Flock Flies in Formation, Spends Evening Spelling Swearwords Slimy Leech. Nature writer.

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Anoraks and ornithologists alike were last week amazed by an incredible display of natural synchronised beauty. A flock of nearly seventeen thousand starlings (a species known for their displays of coordinated aerobatics) was spotted over Loch Ness, in Scotland. The daring aerial display lasted more than half an hour before they started spelling rude things.

note that this kind of novel murmuration is unprecedented. They are often made up of more than one species of starling, and sometimes from more than one family of bird. This reflects their roosting habits.

Instances like these are known as murmurations by specialists, though many

Observers are agreed that all the birds present must have been very naughty.

The most elaborate manoeuvre involved an entire sentence, which read “eat shit, dickheads.”

The Garter Press VERY VALUABLE OPINIONS

You’re a Piece of Shit and You Don’t Deserve Love and Neither Do I Letters in Love with Lynette Hutchinson

Dear Lynette, Another Valentine’s Day has been and gone, and nobody expressed interest in me. I am beginning to worry that I may never find love. What should I do?

Regards, A Little Lost Dear “A Little Lost”, Young people often ask me what the secret to a successful love life is and I often think what the little shit ever did to think they deserved love in the first place.

There is a perception within the wider Australian community today that younger generations are entitled and, as it turns out, that perception is entirely accurate. The annual absurdity of Valentines Day rolled around recently, and naturally it was as tedious as it was odious. It passed without a blip on my radar, or in my heart, or in my undercarriage, and at this point I expect to hear little shrieks and moans from the reader, “Oh poor Lynette didn’t get any on Valentines” well of course I didn’t, and nor should I and nor should you.

Love, like all emotions, is an entirely ridiculous affair that only ever sets us back.

You certainly could spend your Friday nights tarting yourself up in the hope that a man looks twice at you without wincing and maybe one day he’ll marry you and have children with you and then leave you for the mutton-dressed-as-lamb hairdresser three doors down, or you could stay in with an episode of New Tricks and a packet of chips.

Top Ten Simpsons Episodes That Would Be Improved by a Celebrity Appearance So called “culture writer” B Twilly Wigs reviews some of his favourite, drivelling television serials The Simpsons is a show that has managed to force its way into the zeitgeist like few other sitcoms, and fewer still animated programs. The beautiful characters that constitute Springfield are among the best written to be found anywhere on television. The franchise is known for the ease with which it integrates big names into its storytelling (Smashing Pumpkins!

Lady Gaga! Sarah Silverman! Anderson Cooper!), but, let’s face it—not every episode gets it right!

10. The Mysterious Voyage of Homer This one is a classic. It really reminds us of the depth of the love between Marge and Homer, and how central that sentiment is to the family dynamic. But rather than meeting a CELEBRITY GUEST marriage counsellor (imagine David Bowie! They could have done a three-part arrangement of Heroes!) Homer goes to the chilli cook off, eats the insanity pepper, and all we get is some crazy atacama desert allegory and a talking Coyote! Willie Nelson totally could have been there!

9. Bart’s Girlfriend In this classic, Bart falls in love with the Reverend’s daughter in a plotline that teems with celeb potential. There could’ve been some great shots of God in heaven (Lovejoy is a reverend, after all!) hanging out with celebrities alive and dead! Why don’t we meet the rest of the Lovejoy family? What if Jessica’s grandmother was Madonna? Huh? What about that? They could’ve done so much with it!

8. Oh Brother Where Art Thou?

So we’re finally introduced to someone in Homer’s family other than also not a celebrity Abe Simpson. He’s a millionaire, he’s an inventor, he’s a genius. If only I

Who does?

7. Lisa’s Substitute Ms Hoover has a psychosomatic illness and they need a ring in. While they go for the soulful Mister Bergstrom who teaches Lisa she is great for who she is, you know who else is good at doling out moral lessons? The Beatles! Why not get them to sing the theme song at some point? Or a different song? Don’t need Bergstrom jamming on the guitar when you could get The Beatles to do one of their number one hits! Gosh!

6. The Principal and the Pauper Okay, so it’s revealed that Seymour Skinner is a fraud. That means we can either retroactively make him a big dumb nobody (like, say, Armond Tanzarian!

Zing!) or reveal that Seymour Skinner was JAMES CAMERON making a FILM! or DAVID BOWIE recording a NEW ALBUM! Get it together The Simpsons!

5. The Last Temptation of Homer Nevermind Mindy, imagine the chaos that could have been caused if a well known celebrity had visited the power plant! What shenanigans Homer might have gotten up to with Cindy Lauper, or Margaret Thatcher! Think unsexy thoughts—about Thatcher!

4. Homer the Great Hello! This one writes itself ! You’ve got a clandestine group like the freemasons with all the big personalities of Springfield involved! Why not put a big name celebrity

at the top of the organisation! Imagine what a great job Ian McKellen would have done running the Stonecutters! “Who rigs every Oscar night?” Ian McKellen could have!

3. Stark Raving Dad Everybody loves the episode where Homer is institutionalised and Bart proves himself as a wonderful brother. But just imagine how MUCH BETTER it would have been if the ACTUAL Michael Jackson had moonwalked into shot and then sung a song from his latest album! The image is incredible! Nobody believed that Leon Kompowsky was a star. Michael Jackson is, though! C’mon Groening!

2. Lisa’s First Word Hypothetical question: you’ve got the opportunity to do a flashback show, do you a: populate the world with known characters from the franchise? or b: jampack it with timely eighties celebrities who can bring the house down with messages about their latest film or album?

The answer is so obvious! Plus, imagine the high-power celebrity name that could have been nursing Maggie as she said her first word! ACDC! Or David Bowie.

1. Every Episode with Sideshow Bob Okay, so it’s a bit of a cheat, but I think number 1 goes without saying! The character who is most desperately crying out for a celebrity cameo is SIDESHOW BOB! In EVERY episode Bob is in he sings BEAUTIFUL classical musical songs and operas, and he NEEDS a doubles partner! What about Sideshow David Bowie?! Huh?! How about Sideshow David Bowie! SIDESHOW DAVID BOWIE!?

PUZZLES AND OBITUARIES

I spent years shoehorning myself into dresses that honestly did me no favours, I only wish I had my mother there to tell me how pathetic it was (she couldn’t, of course, she was working on the missions in South America and had little time for the 12 of us back at home). “Love,” she used to say, “is like air. Very few deserve it and it cannot be earned. If you think about it too much it will disappear. Don’t ever let yourself think you need it, only the weak do.”

It was one of the last things she ever said to me and by far one of the most profound.

I would weep for the hoards who believe they deserve love, but I haven’t the time to.

knew one single celebrity who was those things?! Oh wait! I know so many of them I could vomit! Richard Branson is Homer’s long lost brother! Or Steve Jobs is Homer’s long lost brother! Or Bill Gates! He’d be great on The Simpsons!

G The Garter wishes to express deepest sympathy for the recently deceased, as well as their friends and loved ones:

10 - It’s meaningless 20 30 -

Emma Balfour William Edwards Dominic Ellis Sam Langford Patrick Morrow Astha Rajvanshi Michael Richardson Sophia Roberts Cam Smith Peter Walsh Mary Ward

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