The Big Issue Australia #595 - The Secret Life of Trees

KATHY LET TE | TH E RAI N FOR E ST WAR S | SAM PA TH E G R EAT

$9

No 595 6–19 Sep 2019

HELPING PEOPLE HELP THEMSELVES $4.50 of the cover price goes to your vendor

NATIONAL OFFICE Chief Executive Officer Steven Persson Chief Operating Officer Sally Hines Editor Amy Hetherington Chief Financial Officer Jon Whitehead Chief Communications Officer Emma O’Halloran National Operations Manager Jeremy Urquhart

The Big Issue is Australia’s leading social enterprise. We are an independent, not-for-profit organisation that develops solutions to help homeless, disadvantaged and marginalised people positively change their lives.

The Big Issue magazine is published fortnightly and sold on the streets by vendors who purchase copies for $4.50 and sell them for $9, keeping the difference. Subscriptions are also available and provide employment for disadvantaged women as dispatch assistants.

For details on all our enterprises visit thebigissue.org.au.

Principal Partners

CONTACT US Tel (03) 9663 4533 Fax (03) 9639 4076 GPO Box 4911 Melbourne VIC 3001 hello@bigissue.org.au thebigissue.org.au WANT TO BECOME A VENDOR? If you’d like to become a vendor contact the vendor support team in your state.

ACT – (02) 6181 2801 Supported by Woden Community Service NSW – (02) 8332 7200 Chris Campbell NSW + ACT Operations Manager Qld – (07) 3221 3513 Susie Longman Qld Operations Manager SA – (08) 8359 3450 Matthew Stedman SA + NT Operations Manager Vic – (03) 9602 7600 Gemma Pidutti Vic + Tas Operations Manager WA – (08) 9225 7792 Andrew Joske WA Operations Manager

Major Partners Allens Linklaters, Corrs Chambers Westgarth, Clayton Utz, Fluor Australia, Herbert Smith Freehills, Macquarie Group, MinterEllison, Mutual Trust Pty Ltd, NAB, PwC, Qantas, Realestate.com.au, The Ian Potter Foundation, William Buck Marketing/Media Partners Adstream, C2, Carat & Aegis Media, Chocolate Studios, Getty Images, Realview Digital, Res Publica, Roy Morgan Research, Town Square, Yarra Trams Distribution and Community Partners The Big Issue is grateful for all assistance received from our distribution and community partners. A full list of these partners can be found at thebigissue.org.au.

The Big Issue is a proud member of the INSP, which incorporates 122 street publications like The Big Issue in 41 countries.

CONTENTS

#

595

COVER STORIES 14 TREES ARE PEOPLE TOO

The wonderful way that trees talk, listen, share and generally do everything better than humans.

17 THE BIRTHING TREES

A look at sacred Indigenous birth practices – in trees.

18 READING THE TREES

Making a home in a new country opens up a whole new world of nature.

19 VALLEY OF DECISIONS

Recovery and rejuvenation in the wake of a devastating bushfire.

20 FOREST GUMPTION

THE BIG PICTURE A historic look at how a group of hippies saved a stand of ancient rainforest – and started a movement.

FEATURES

24 LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF

Life, love and smashing the patriarchy with Puberty Blues author Kathy Lette.

26 HOW TO MAKE A BIRD’S NEST

When a failure of personal grooming turns into a creative kind of craft.

29 VENDOR TOUR GUIDE

Big Issue Korea vendor Yeong-su Moon guides us through the streets of Seoul.

30 FRONTIER FRIGHT

New film The Nightingale confronts colonial atrocities.

32 ROAD TO GREAT

Sampa the Great has a new album, and loads of swagger.

35 ALL AT SEA

Meg Mundell on her futuristic book that deals with very present-day issues.

40 TASTES LIKE HOME

Bean and Vegetable Soup from the kitchen of Two Good.

REGULARS

THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A FOREST, ESPECIALLY A REDWOOD FOREST. PHOTO BY GETTY

04 ED’S LETTER, YOUR SAY 05 MEET YOUR VENDOR 07 STREETSHEET 08 HEARSAY 11 MY WORD 12 RICKY 13 FIONA 36 FILM

37 SMALL SCREENS 38 MUSIC 39 BOOKS 43 PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT 44 PUZZLES 46 CLICK

ED’S LETTER

YOUR SAY

GOOD THINGS COME IN TREES

BIG LAUGHS

THE FIRST TREE I loved was a silver birch.

I’m looking at it now, still standing strong in the front-yard of my childhood home some 160km away, thanks to the wonder of Google Maps. She is huge, more than twice as tall as the compact weatherboard, the lowest branches now too high off the ground to get a decent foothold. But back then, at the turn of the 80s, we would clamber to the highest possible boughs, staying up there for what felt like hours.

One time, I slipped, my stomach tumbling over itself until I landed on a lower branch, winded but exhilarated.

The second tree had a hidden V-shaped branch the perfect size for an eight-year-old to comfortably spread out on; the third was my nanna’s bountiful feijoa tree, ripe with fruit that we’d eat straight off the branch; the fourth, a giant beauty of a jacaranda. And so it goes. Trees have that magical hold on our hearts, our imaginations. And that is what this edition is all about: the secret lives and mysteries of the plants themselves.

Trees hold enormous cultural and spiritual significance, from the Bodhi Tree to the sacred Djub Wurrung birthing trees in western Victoria (page 17). Trees are also, of course, integral to the health of the planet – a recent report claims that planting billions of trees could essentially halt the climate crisis. In Big Picture, we revisit the Rainforest Wars, which began with the 1979 fight to preserve the rainforests at Terania Creek, in northern New South Wales. The blockade was the first time Australians physically defended a natural resource, and the action continues to inform environmental protests 40 years later. Says photographer and protestor David Kemp: “I just thought, we’ll lose it all. They’re the lungs of the Earth, we see that now they’re burning the Amazon.

We can’t keep doing this.”

Amy Hetherington, Editor

Thank you Big Issue for your magazine and for all your vendors doing the work of spreading words, smiles and humanity! I don’t often buy it, but today *had to* because of Uncle Jack Charles on the front cover [Ed#594]. Thanks to the new vendor at Paddington Central Shopping Centre, Brisbane (sincerely sorry I didn’t catch your name). Really, truly LAUGHED out loud at ‘The Great Game’ by Vin Maskell and ‘Hanging on the Telephone’ by Ricky French.

Jo V, Brisbane, Qld Ed – Hi Jo, your new vendor is the lovely Stephen W.

waiting for Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace to come out on Blu-ray. But, best of all, a seller benefited from my purchase.

Declan Keeghan, Boronia, Vic Whenever I walk through Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall, there’s a Big Issue person to sell me a mag.

I love them all, but my favourite is Frank who works outside Myer in a wheelchair. Frank embodies the spirit of the true Aussie battler because he doesn’t let anything hold him back.

I take my hat off to you, mate! You’re a star and thanks for a great read.

Rosemary Macindoe, Parkville, Vic

As winner of this edition’s Letter of the Fortnight, Jo wins a copy of Jack Charles’ memoir Born-again Blakfella.

Glen Williams’ story ‘Dance Like Noone’s Watching’ [Ed#594] is one of the most beautifully expressed stories I have ever read. It is a wonderful tribute to Glen’s father, and also to Glen himself as a warm, emotionally intelligent man. Reading this lovely reminiscence both lifted my spirits and brought a tear to my eye. Thank you!

Elizabeth Harrington, Milton, Qld I am an infrequent buyer of The Big Issue, generally only when I am in the city. Yesterday I bought Ed#594 outside Readings bookshop in Hawthorn. For the first time I read every article. I usually scan and get quickly to the books, small screens and music. It cost me. I downloaded two songs (mentioned in Glen Williams’ article), will buy Born-Again Blakfella, marked some movies to see and I’m

The writer of next edition’s Letter of the Fortnight will win a copy of Meg Mundell’s new book The Trespassers. See our interview on p35. Simply send your thoughts, feedback and stories to submissions@bigissue.org.au.

KATHY LET TE | TH E RAI N FOR E ST WAR S | SAM PA TH E G R EAT

COVER #595

$9

No 595 6–19 Sep 2019

HELPING PEOPLE HELP THEMSELVES $4.50 of the cover price goes to your vendor

PHOTO BY GETTY; TYPOGRAPHY BY CASEY SCHUURMAN ON INSTAGRAM @CASEYSCHUURMAN

THE BIG ISSUE USES MACQUARIE DICTIONARY AS OUR REFERENCE. MACQUARIEDICTIONARY.COM.AU

» ‘Your Say’ submissions must be 100 words or less, contain the writer’s full name and home address, and may be edited for clarity or space.

MEET YOUR VENDOR MIKHAEL SELLS THE BIG ISSUE AT WODEN TOWN SQUARE, CANBERRA. I WAS BORN in Ukraine. I lived in a small town about 500km from Kiev, close

“THE MONEY I MAKE SELLING THE BIG ISSUE REALLY HELPS ME OUT.” – MIKHAEL

to the city of Vinnytsia. I’m Jewish. Life in Ukraine if you were Jewish was bad. I was the only Jewish person in my school and Ukraine was a communist country – communism is really bad for Jewish people. It was when we were part of the Soviet Union and you weren’t really allowed to leave the country but if you did get the chance to leave, they didn’t let you back in. After Gorbachev became president, he changed everything – all the Jewish people left and went to Israel, America, Australia…

I left school after 11 years, and as soon as I turned 19 I left for Israel. I lived there for 10 years. I was in the army as a truck driver. I also worked on the Lebanon border bringing in products. It was a little bit dangerous but I didn’t see too much conflict. After the army I worked as a truck driver.

I liked it in Israel. It was hard leaving my parents and older sister in Ukraine, but it was a very bad situation – there was nothing to do in Ukraine, no jobs, it was very bad. Now it’s a little bit better.

When my parents moved from Ukraine to Sydney, I came over here too. My older sister also came over.

I’ve been in Australia for 15 years now. I stayed in Sydney for a year but had an argument with my parents and I decided to go to Canberra. I’ve been here ever since. I now call my parents often for a chat.

I have a son but he’s in America. When I was 18 I married, but we divorced after a year. After we broke up, I left for Israel, so I haven’t really been in contact with my son or my ex-wife. He tracked me down, but we’ve seen each other only in photos and on Facebook. He’s 22 now.

One day I’ll go and visit him.

I was working as a house painter and had an accident.

I fell off a ladder and hurt myself pretty badly; I broke a hand and a leg and now I can’t go back to house painting.

It makes it very hard to find work.

I like selling The Big Issue. I started about two years ago, when I was begging. I’ve made some good friends among the vendors. It’s definitely a community. I usually sell with my wife Salvina – we met in Sydney.

I’m homeless at the moment, so the money I make at The Big Issue really helps me out. I’m sleeping on the streets with my wife. It’s been pretty cold out there. I’m basically waiting for housing – I’ve been on the housing commission list for a year now.

I got my dog, Ganjibus, a year-and-a-half ago. He is a staffy.

The reason I’m having a bit of trouble now with housing is because no-one likes the dog too much. I was living somewhere but they wouldn’t allow him; people in my block started to complain, so I left.

For now, I’ll keep selling The Big Issue. It helps a lot. And when selling The Big Issue you meet some good people and you can have a good chat. interview by Anastasia Safioleas photo by Sean Davey

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

5

STREETSHEET Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends A BIRD TOLD ME

I was on my way to church There I saw a bird on its perch The bird said to me Shall I sing a song for thee I said sure, love will win That’s my song all birds should sing So then I went on my way Feeling happy and very gay I felt then I had to pray Ronnie sells The Big Issue on Eagle St, Brisbane.

DON’T HOLD BACK

City2Surf is one of my biggest days of the year; I even dream about it. After my ankle surgery in December, I didn’t know if I could do City2Surf this year.

I decided on the morning to buy a bunch of Gatorade and take it to the team – I wanted to look after my Big Issue family even if I couldn’t participate. Chris in Vendor Support told me there was an empty spot in the team, so I decided to try. Today I’m tired and sore, but it was fun, and the surgery didn’t stop me.

When I crossed the finish line, I felt so much satisfaction. If you have a chance to do something in life, just dive into it!

Jacob S sells The Big Issue at Bathurst and Pitt Sts, Sydney.

PHOTO BY ALAN ATTWOOD

THIS IS MY STORY

My name is George and I’m 69 years old.

I was born in Cairo, Egypt, and I moved to Melbourne when I was three years old. I have a younger brother, Roland, and two older sisters, Silvia and Jean.

When I was growing up my hobbies were keeping fit and pigeons. My father raced pigeons back in Cairo, so that’s how I got into pigeons. When I was 28, I got into body building. I trained six days a week and maintained a healthy diet of meat and vegetables. I would eat eight

It is with much sadness that we bid farewell to Paul who passed away recently. Paul was a pioneer. He was the first vendor to be signed up to sell The Big Issue in 1996.

He was badge Number 1, but generously gave the number away to our first female vendor, so he became Number 4. That was Paul: he was very caring and thoughtful.

He looked out for more vulnerable vendors, taking them out for a meal or visiting them in hospital. He was a proud vendor and would always pass on his selling skills to the new vendors, offering advice and tips.

Paul’s strength was his customer service, sparkling blue eyes, warm smile and a chat for everyone – he established a loyal following of customers in the early days at Parliament Station, and then for many years outside Readings bookshop on Lygon Street, Carlton. The love of Paul’s life was Kylie – they met when they were much younger and reconnected at The Big Issue office over 15 years ago. Paul will be greatly missed by staff and the vendor community.

Gemma Pidutti, Vendor Support Manager, Melbourne.

pounds of meat per week and eight egg whites per day. I enjoyed body building because it was a good way of keeping fit.

Nowadays, I’ve slowed down a bit and try to keep active by going for walks. I enjoy being involved with The Big Issue as it’s a good way to meet and talk to new people.

It’s also good to earn some money.

George G sells The Big Issue on Station St, Fairfield, Melbourne.

NO REGRETS

Freeing myself from boredom Empowered to not fall down Empowered to grow in time Living in the moment Invisible most days No regrets Giving myself space I need Sarah sells The Big Issue in Northbridge, Perth.

FEELING LUCKY

Getting back into selling the magazine as I have just got out of jail. Found it took two to three weeks to get back my selfmotivation and feel much better. Now to get back to saving so I can obtain my

scaffolding certificate and go back to a full-time job. Lucky The Big Issue is here as a back-up plan.

Adam R sells The Big Issue at various locations in Sydney.

WOULD IT HURT

To say a nice word Instead of tirades and insults Would it hurt To be nice To say a word of encouragement Don’t get downhearted Remember broken dreams are never started So, say nice things Be generous when you can Help someone today With a good deed Maybe a meal, food or even a bus ticket Would it hurt If you can’t at least, be nice Daniel K sells The Big Issue at Waymouth St, Adelaide.

» All vendor contributors to Streetsheet are paid for their work.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

7

HEARSAY WRITER RICHARD CASTLES

» CARTOONIST ANDREW WELDON

I’VE GOT GREAT MELODIES, AND THE WORDS ARE ALL PROFANITIES. Neil Young on not wanting to write songs anymore because he believes big technology companies and low-quality streaming are killing music.

– The New York Times Magazine (US)

EAR2GROUND Teacher: “Can you put the word ‘radish’ in a sentence?”

Boy: “The party was totally radish.”

A young school boy, overheard by teacher Eleanor of Neutral Bay, NSW.

8

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

“I believe my celebrity and also the fact that people recognise me – especially the police recognise me – is something that can protect the people.”

Denise Ho, a famous pop star in Hong Kong, on why she has been on the front line of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

– The Age “[He] was like saying, ‘Your journey from rags to riches.’ And I was like, ‘Do you have to make it so Dickensian? I never wore any rags.’ People do love that shit, I know.”

Noel Gallagher on what the “inevitable” Oasis musical will be about, according to a Broadway producer he spoke to. Noel insists the musical will be called Live Forever, and he “will go and see it once”.

– The Sun (UK) “The reason why robotics couldn’t go into this domain before is the existing robots that can navigate through a blood vessel were too large in diameter.”

Yoonho Kim of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a tiny robotic “worm” he created with colleague

Xuanhe Zhao that can wiggle its way through a model brain. The worm is made out of a polymer with tiny embedded magnetic particles, allowing it to be directed with a magnet. It is hoped the worm could eventually be used to make brain surgeries less invasive.

– New Scientist (UK) “One line of bad code, as simple as that, one line of bad code. If you make one mistake and you have a line of bad code in there and it hits this line of bad code, depending on what it’s doing or where it’s at or numerous other instances, it could just decide this is what it’s supposed to do.”

Doll collector Brick Dollbanger (as he calls himself), on his fear that coding errors could lead sex dolls to commit violent acts, including strangulation.

Along with being built of stronger materials than humans, badly coded sex dolls might just decide to do what they want. Hopefully, they come with an emergency shut down button – if you can find it in the heat of the moment.

– Daily Star (UK) “That’s the sound I remember most. I was aware of birds but I

PHOTO BY GETTY

“It’s uncontrollable, this thing with the children. Wherever you dig, there’s another one.”

Archaeologist Feren Castillo on the discovery of what is believed to be the largest single mass child sacrifice in history. So far, 227 victims, aged between five and 14, have been unearthed near Huanchaco, Peru. The children of the Chimú civilisation, prominent over 500 years ago, appear to have been buried in wet weather facing the sea, suggesting they were sacrificed to appease the gods.

– BBC News (UK)

wouldn’t know which bird was which. In some ways, I’m probably not that observant. Maybe I had my head more in books. But yeah, they were the birds I remember most vividly, swooping and screaming.”

Singer-songwriter Paul Kelly on the sound he remembers most growing up in Adelaide – the “quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle” of magpies. ‘The Magpies’, adapted from a poem by a Denis Glover, is one of the songs on his latest studio album, Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds.

– The Guardian (Aus) “I was so surprised I almost dropped my syringe.”

Musician Nick Cave on being told by his girlfriend PJ Harvey in 1997 that she wanted to break up with him. Answering fan questions on his website The Red

Hand Files, Cave wrote that, “Deep down I suspected that drugs might have been a problem between us, but there were other things too… ” – The Guardian (UK) “Sound is very powerful. It connects us to people and to places. The sounds we hear can evoke different moods and feelings and remind us of experiences we associate with those sounds.”

Principal audiologist at Hearing Australia, Emma Scanlan. A survey conducted by the organisation found that a laughing kookaburra was the sound that most represented Australia, the song ‘I Am Australian’ was the most “Australian” song, and the favourite sound from childhood for people over 50 – the enchanting music from a Mr Whippy ice cream van.

– The Senior (Aus)

“There’s all this culture connected to these ingredients, and we want to pay that forward; we feel like that’s the baseline moral obligation for someone working with Indigenous ingredients in Australia… Otherwise it’s just colonisation continuing. I fear that we see a lot of tokenism in this space. People don’t want to commit to getting to know the culture of the ingredients – the stories, the people connected to them, the language, the culinary uses of them.”

Restaurateur Ben Shewry on the chef’s responsibility. Shewry’s Melbourne restaurant Attica, which serves up produce including crocodile, emu, wattle, desert lime, black ants and bunya bunya nuts, was named restaurant of the year at the 2019 Gourmet Traveller awards.

– The Guardian (Aus)

» Frequently overhear tantalising tidbits? Don’t waste them on your friends – share them with the world at submissions@bigissue.org.au

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

9

MY WORD

THURSDAY NIGHTS Susan Biggar belongs to a mothers group with a difference.

A FEW MONTHS ago, the young-lovecomplicated-by-illness film Five Feet Apart hit the cinemas. It’s the story of two young adults living with cystic fibrosis (CF) who fall in love but are challenged by the risks of cross-infection, forcing them to stay a certain distance apart from each other. I’m generally a sucker for tear‑jerkers, happy to pay for a cathartic cry in a darkened cinema. But I have steered away from it so far; though the movie is fiction, both the distance rule and the emotional rollercoaster of life with CF are far too real for me – and my group of mums.

It has been more than 10 years since our first Thursday night mothers gettogether. No-one can recall the exact year – was it 2007 or 2008? – but we can identify it by certain defining features of the time. Jon was healthy and playing soccer; Murray wasn’t thinking about a transplant; most of our kids weren’t old enough to even date, much less marry or have babies; they were all still at paediatric hospitals. Coen was already doing it tough and Genevieve was singing, riding horses, and so alive.

We meet in small cafes – on occasion the owners have asked me casually “How do you know each other?” They’re assuming a benign response, such as “through a mothers group”, or “we went to school together”. Maybe work or even church. I don’t quite know what to say or how to explain the meaning of these relationships. That we’re helping each other steer through the chaotic world of nebulisers, nasty infections and Medicare rebates? That we share frustrations with clinic wait times and the challenge of blindingly expensive “miracle drugs”?

That we meet to help each other cling to the slippery hope we all depend on?

CF is complicated, unpredictable and infuriating. It is a genetic condition, passed down unwittingly by mums and dads, and impacting most importantly on our kids’ lungs.

One Thursday night, years ago now, I poked at my pumpkin risotto while listening to Sue unpick months of confusion and frustration of watching her son’s lung function slide without an identifiable reason. Another month, a different Thursday, and we’re laughing as Lisa describes how her then-young son – who, like everyone with CF, needs a high fat diet – is the only kid at the birthday party ignoring the party pies and nuggets to munch on carrots and apples. There’s more wry laughter over food battles with schools and zealous “healthy lunch” teachers. My own trick for getting extra calories past teachers was to take the wrappers off Mars bars and cut them into little pieces to be less easily identified as verboten in the lunchbox.

A few years later we all sit silent around the table, heartbroken, as Dawn replays a conversation from earlier that week with the medical team of her 14-year-old son Coen. He needed a new set of lungs urgently. She didn’t know, the doctors didn’t know, how long he could wait. The lungs arrive in time, just in time, celebrated with tears, hugs and relief.

They gift him with unexpected years.

But, equally unexpectedly, five years later Dawn is having similar conversations with the medical team and our Thursday nights are heavy and frightening. Tragically, there are too many unfixable problems this time and no transplant can pull Coen through.

Transplants aren’t always successful; we knew this from watching Genevieve survive 14 months only to get an infection

that she couldn’t overcome. Taking her in the prime of life, as CF does far too often.

Even though CF can have devastating outcomes, its impacts vary enormously between people – and over time. So, most of us mums experience weeks, months and years where our kids are healthy, not in hospital, not needing antibiotics, when the worry recedes. Over years of Thursdays we have celebrated boyfriends becoming husbands, great ATARs, intrepid international travel, dream jobs, first homes. Murray and Jon both went on to have transplants, marry and have babies. Last month there were more hoots of joy at the arrival of another baby from that generation. Normal, healthy milestones. At times, our conversations are ordinary, even pedestrian; we could almost be that group of school mums.

Almost.

For my family, the camera is rolling on this film and – thankfully, knock-onwood, fingers crossed, prayers offered – most of the footage makes me smile.

It lacks the heaviness of the Hollywood version. Two of our three sons, now 23 and 20, have CF. Of course, we hold the future gingerly, maybe the way everyone should, given life’s unpredictability. But the fear and uncertainty usually sit in the background. Because the foreground – today, tomorrow, next week and next month – is full of possibility and hope.

Through it all, our monthly Thursday nights roll on. No kids allowed, because of the infection risks, as Five Feet Apart makes clear. But what keeps our kids apart, will just keep drawing us mums together.

» Susan Biggar is a Melbourne writer and author of The Upside of Down.

See susanbiggar.com.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

11

RICKY ARE YOU A cat person or a dog person?

Are you an animal lover? What do those questions even mean? I’m beginning to realise that often when people say they love animals, what they’re really saying is they love cats and dogs, or one or the other, and possibly horses and maybe chickens (hi, Fiona!) or rabbits and guinea pigs. Are you one of these people, and do you notice anything missing from that list of animals?

Our increasing disconnection from native animals is something I worry about. Ever since I started writing articles about nature, ecology and ecosystems, I’ve been awakened to our misguided interaction with the natural world. It’s become my woke moment.

I have some very nice, compassionate, intelligent and apparently environmentally conscious friends who make a big deal of showing their love for animals by fostering kittens, or rehoming rescue dogs. Some raise money for animal shelters that care for sick or mistreated animals. It’s hard to criticise any of this, because their hearts are in the right place, even if their brains are not. A reasonable person might ask where the concern is for the plight of our native animals, especially the ones who are the victims of these animals we love so much.

Australia has the highest rate of mammalian extinction in the world, mostly thanks to invasive species such as cats and foxes. A recent report says that 22 native mammal species have been driven to extinction across northern and central Australia due to invasive species.

Yet cats are celebrated everywhere we look, purely (I assume) because they are so damn beautiful, and because it’s notoriously difficult to domesticate a corroboree frog.

It’s reasonable that we pick and choose which animals we save and which we condemn, but we don’t always pick and choose the right ones. Often the worst culprits are people with seemingly the best intentions. The Animal Justice Party might sound like it would have the best interests of animals at heart, but it depends on the animal. It proudly sides with high-country

12

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

“Cats are celebrated everywhere we look, purely (I assume) because they are so damn beautiful, and because it’s notoriously difficult to domesticate a corroboree frog.”

feral horses over native animals whose habitat the horses are churning up. Never mind that the native animals have evolved in this ecosystem for millions of years, in a rare pocket of Australia that has never been permanently inhabited by people or their domestic animals until 200 years ago.

It’s not just an Australian problem. In New Zealand the SPCA (they dropped the “royal”) opposes the use of 1080 poisoning of rats and stoats on animal welfare grounds. It seems they would rather condemn thousands of native birds and their chicks to violent, bloody deaths in the teeth of these relentless rodents. Go for a walk in New Zealand’s bush, especially in the North Island. The bush is silent, because the birds are dead.

New Zealand’s record on extinctions of native animals is as shameful as Australia’s, but there are signs the government is trying to put things right, with its pledge to make the country predator-free by 2050.

Some people say quolls would make great pets, but I think most people would say, “What’s a quoll?” Our disconnection from nature probably comes through ignorance, maybe through city living.

I’m often horrified by how smug my newfound wokeness has made me, but I can always console myself with the knowledge that I’m just as guilty as everyone: I have a cat and a dog, and I do bugger-all to help native animals other than write articles about them.

One of my favourite lines on the subject came from a bird-watcher I interviewed years ago in the Kimberley. I’ve written about it before and I will again, because it’s always stayed with me. As he stood transfixed, watching fairy martins dart around on the far side of Sir John Gorge I asked him why he was so into birds. He turned the question back on me.

“How could you not be interested in the world around you?”

» Ricky French (@frenchricky) is a writer, musician and animal guy.

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND

Beastly Problem

FIONA

Indecent Exposure IN RETROSPECT, I must have worried my parents ragged. I was single so long they abandoned the pretence of asking if I’d met someone, and turned instead to critiquing my career choices. Any achievement, be it stand-up, radio, a writing gig, or directing a show, was met with one question, and they asked it ad nauseum: “But are you getting paid?” Tragically, the answer, mostly, was a big fat “no”. Arthur and Norah, war veterans who’d known struggle-town and rationing, were unimpressed by my explanation that whatever I was up to “was a really cool gig”.

They were also unmoved by my unpacking of the mechanics of “the scene”, explaining that “no-one gets paid to do community radio”. Or that working for free is how you establish your name. Or that stand-up comics get paid in beer from the rider unless they’re headliners, it’s how you get stage-time. Or ABC radio don’t pay for guests. Or that although a fifth of Australian authors write as their full-time occupation, only five per cent earn the average annual income.

Or that 40 per cent of shows in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival lose money, so making a few grand on my first show was an outstanding result.

Or that it was a co-pro. Or it was speculative. Or that there’s a joke about the Edinburgh Fringe festival, which is “How do you leave the Edinburgh festival with £10,000? Start with £20,000.”

My parents and I had what you might call competing philosophies. They didn’t understand that I was being paid in something better than money: leading a creative life. I didn’t understand that the life I love is in fact a chimera and a giant fucking Ponzi scheme. The artistic ladder of success, in almost every way, precludes financial security. There are 83, at a minimum, reasons for this, but at its heart is this: creatives, on the whole, value the act of being creative, the outcomes of living an artistic life, over money. As a result they (we) are hilariously easy to exploit. It’s the

“My parents and I had what you might call competing philosophies. They didn’t understand that I was being paid in something better than money.”

classic “fish in barrel meet gun” scenario.

We’re desperate for opportunities to work, to get better, to form communities, for affirmation, and – and this is key – to keep our practice up between paid gigs. There are few full-time positions for any kind of artist; we are constantly hustling.

There is neediness and vulnerability built into the business model, and there are consequences. One of these is that creatives, of whatever stripe, are constantly offered gigs paid in “exposure”. This can reach giddy oxymoronic heights. A friend of mine was recently offered a full day of teaching an empowerment workshop for women, and asked to do it for free. There’s a blind spot there the size of Vatican City.

The current vibe seems to be that if you expect to be paid for your craft, you’re some kind of exploitative bastard. There’s a Twitter feed called “For Exposure”, which collates the outrage from those who’ve had their offer of “exposure” rejected. “Just because you made the video doesn’t mean you’re the one that should profit from it.” “It’s not skill. Anyone can do it. It’s not work, PERIOD. It’s offensive for him to ask for money. It’s disrespectful.” “You want a FEE to work for the second biggest brand in Ibiza??”

And on it goes. Meanwhile arts funding is cut again, streaming services give musicians a portion of a cent per play, and job insecurity in the performing arts has led to anxiety running at 10 times the level of the general population, and depression symptoms are five times higher.

We will, of course, continue to create regardless. But remember, if you’re asking someone to work for exposure, that exposure – to the elements – is something people die from.

» Fiona Scott-Norman (@FScottNorman) is a writer and comedian who’s going for broke.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

13

COVER STORY

TREES

Trees Are People Too THE FILTERING OF SUNLIGHT IS ONE OF MANY MIRACLES IN THE FOREST, ANOTHER BEING THAT BEAUTIFUL FRESH AIR, CAUSED L ARGELY BY THE TREES THEMSELVES.

14

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

For thousands of years the human imagination has figured forests as mysterious, as the place of secrets. But what if the biggest secrets the trees have been keeping are their own?

Secrets about how they live, how they organise, how they communicate with each other and with other creatures.

Michael Epis probes the roots of these majestic plants.

O PHOTO BY iSTOCK

N THE SAVANNAHS of Africa, the spiny, prickly acacia tree is a common sight, as familiar a mark on the landscape as the gum tree is in Australia. Giraffes nibble the leaves and flowers of the acacia – no mean feat, as many acacias sprout thorns to deter diners.

Some four decades ago tree researchers noticed a strange thing. Once the giraffe had taken a few mouthfuls from a tree, it would leave and start munching down on another tree. But not the nearest tree – the giraffes would go 100 metres or so away. Closer observation revealed that the giraffes moved in one direction only – upwind. Why? The researchers went to work and found an amazing thing. The tree knows that it is being eaten – and it does not like it. It has already embedded thorns in its flowers as protection, but the giraffe has evolved to handle that. So the acacia has developed a second line of defence – within minutes of the giraffe’s meal beginning, the acacia detects that it is being eaten, and pumps foul-tasting and potentially deadly toxins into its leaves to rid itself of the marauding forager. Then the acacia goes one better. It also emits a gas into the air (ethylene), which warns neighbouring acacias that there is a hungry giraffe in the hood. The other acacias detect the scent and immediately begin pumping their own toxins, denying the giraffe her meal. The giraffe by now knows this game – so she heads upwind, away from the warning scent, and the whole cycle begins again. Would it be stretching the point then, to say that trees can smell and trees can communicate with each other? That they have a Neighbourhood Watch system?

AFRICAN TREES ARE not alone in their capacity to defend themselves. European beeches, spruces and oaks all have similar abilities – although these guys are not as nimble as the African acacia.

For example, when a caterpillar climbs aboard

a beech and starts to devour a leaf, the tissue around the damaged part of the tree changes, and sends out a signal to the tree, saying “hey, we’re under attack”. This is actually an electrical signal that travels at the very slow speed of almost one centimeter per minute. What’s the rush when you can live to 1000 years old? It takes the tree an hour or so to respond – but what a response! The beeches, spruces and oaks first do what the acacia does – send a toxin to spoil the caterpillar’s meal – but they don’t bother to warn the other trees.

They have something else in mind. The trees have detected the saliva of the insect, deduced from the saliva that it is a caterpillar, and then pumped out pheromones into the air telling other predatory critters “hey guys, there’s caterpillars over here”.

Elm trees and pine trees, for example, send the message to wasps, which descend on the caterpillar and lay their eggs inside it – eggs that will devour the caterpillar from the inside out. So if these trees can tell which insect is having a nibble from the saliva, one could argue that trees can taste.

NOT ONLY DO they taste, trees feed each other.

Arborist and author Peter Wohlleben, who manages a forest in the Eifel mountains in Germany and wrote The Hidden Life of Trees, noticed the phenomenon in his work. Trees he had “girdled” or “ringbarked” – removing a metre of bark around a tree in order to kill it, by preventing the leaves sending water and sugar to the roots – had not died.

The trees were still living, even growing. How? Once the conundrum had presented itself, the answer became clear: other trees were feeding it, sending the stricken tree their own water and sugar. In a forest they do this via their interweaved roots. And they can keep on feeding the dead tree for centuries!

TREES CAN ALSO communicate via great webs of incredibly fine spirals of underground fungi that link the trees together, including to species other than their own.

These fungi are amazing. A teaspoon of soil contains many kilometres’ worth of fungal filaments, if stretched out. Research has shown that all trees in THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

15

The relationship is reciprocal: dead trees feed themselves back to the forest, nurturing any number of ants and slow-developing immobile beetles, which in turn are food for the fungi, which of course help the trees. Dead trees lying on the forest floor have an important role to play too. Indeed, one-fifth of the planet’s animal and plants species rely on dead wood.

BY BUNCHING TOGETHER, trees shelter each

16

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

BY CLUMPING TOGETHER trees create their

own climate. Wohlleben cites a plantation forest of pines, planted in poor, sandy soil, in which pines do better than other species. A few beeches were planted as well, so as to avoid the pitfalls of a monoculture. Then a strange thing happened – the beeches changed the environment. Their leaves fall every year, which created a humus on the forest floor that stored water. The air in this forest became moister, because the beech leaves reduced the wind, which in turn reduced evaporation. More water on the ground and more water in the air meant the beeches prospered – and outgrew the pines. One could argue this makes trees smarter than humans: they create a climate to help themselves live, while we destroy ours.

TREES SHELTER OTHER species too. Apart from feeding the fungi, trees are of course home to birds, and again the reciprocal relationship benefits both: the birds get a home, and in return they carry seed and pollen from tree to tree to help trees reproduce. And that’s not to mention insects and spiders sheltered by the trees – researchers sprayed pesticide into one tree in Bavaria to find out exactly who lived there.

The answer was 2041 insects and animals, from 257 different species. That’s social housing.

PHOTOS BY GETTY & iSTOCK; DIRECTIONS TREE PHOTO BY JUSTIN MCMANUS

THE FUNGI AND THE TREE ARE SHARING SUGAR, AS THE TREE SHARES IT WITH OTHER TREES.

a forest photosynthesise light – turn light into sugar – at exactly the same rate. Given each tree gets a different amount of light, of rain, and is rooted in soil either more or less rich, that makes no sense – unless the trees are sharing the food to make sure everyone gets the same. Which indeed they are, thanks to the fungi. Here we see that trees have a social security system. The fungi are a lot like optical fibre for human societies; indeed the fungi forest system has been dubbed the “wood-wide web”.

The fungi-tree relationship is a beauty. The fungi strip the soil of heavy metals, which harm trees, and the fungi absorb bacteria that can kill trees.

In return, the fungi are rewarded with sugar, which the tree can spare. It’s such a good deal the fungi realised it made sense to link the trees – which means it can siphon some sugar off when the trees feed each other. It’s like nature’s equivalent of a goods and services tax.

So why would trees feed each other? For the same reason human societies have developed social security systems. The forest works best when everyone is well – a dead tree, falling over, endangers the others. A fallen tree also thins the forest, and trees like to bunch up together so that their enemies – storms and high winds – are weakened. United we stand, divided we fall.

Trees will even feed a tree that has died, delaying its collapse as long as possible.

other. They also shelter their young – in northern hemisphere forests, saplings are burnt to death if their “parents” standing alongside them fail to catch 97 per cent of the available sunlight. Other advantages accrue: little sunlight means trees grow very slowly to start with. Slow growth means their woody cells are very small and contain minimal oxygen – making them flexible and resistant to storm damage. It also means they resist fungal invasion more easily, and compartmentalise wounds more easily when attacked. Plantation forests – where the commercial imperative is to grow and harvest a tree ASAP – run into these pitfalls very quickly. And the lone tree standing all by itself – most likely the result of a bird dropping a seed – inevitably doesn’t grow as big or live as long as its brothers and sisters in the forest, who benefit from each other.

ALTHOUGH TREES DON’T seem to see, they do seem

to understand that other beings do; the changing colour of leaves are often a visual clue to the birds and the bees. Willow trees, for example, are either male or female, so need to mate with each other.

Would it be stretching the point then, to say that trees can smell and trees can communicate with each other? That they have a Neighbourhood Watch system?

They flower at the same time. They need bees to fertilise one another, but the bee must visit the male first, then the female. So the male willow turns its flowers yellow, which attracts the bee, who thereafter visits the female willow, whose flowers have remained a less conspicuous green.

THE

AN ANCIENT DIRECTIONS TREE AT THE DJAB WURRUNG CAMP.

THERE IS MOUNTING evidence that trees can

hear. Research from the University of Western Australia shows tree roots can tune into sound when seeking water; if there is not enough moisture in the soil, the roots listen out for vibrations of running water and then grow towards the sound.

Tree trunks also start to vibrate themselves when they are denied water. The vibration, of course, makes a sound – and it might just be that the trees are screaming, both warning other trees and crying out for water.

SO THE NEXT time you see a tree just standing

there, think again. That tree can smell, taste, touch, use visual signals and probably hear.

It can communicate with other trees and cooperate with them, sharing its food and water.

It looks after its young, cares for the dead, and offers itself up to the forest when it too dies.

by Michael Epis, Contributing Editor

BIRTHING TREES

FOR 800 YEARS, the grandmother tree has stood sentinel. A river red gum, more than 30 metres tall, with a diameter of more than seven metres.

A hollow has been carefully made with fire in her base. It’s a safe place for generations of Djab Wurrung women to come and give birth. It is estimated that thousands of babies have come into the world in the hollow of this particular grandmother tree. She is a sacred birthing tree, found on women’s country near Ararat, about two hours west of Melbourne.

“Trees sustain us with their generosity,” wrote Professor Jakelin Troy, director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research at the University of Sydney in The Guardian. “The hard bark creates our houses, soft paperbark wraps our babies, stringy bark twists into fishing lines and cords, water carriers are carved from knots, leaves and fruits are our food and medicine, and roots and branches become tools that make our lives easy.”

This can be seen in the area around this grandmother tree – centuries of culture writ large in bark, boughs and bush. There is the grandfather tree, who entangles his roots with the grandmother tree under the soil. There are directions trees, sprouted from a mix of a seed and a baby’s placenta. From that time on, the tree becomes a physical place of spiritual guidance for the child. There are canoe trees, where

Djab Wurrung people have removed bark to make a canoe without having to cut down the tree.

There is a fierce battle going on in this sacred place – between traditional owners and those with plans to widen a section of the nearby Western Highway.

For this to happen, trees will be cut down. The grandmother tree is protected, but the grandfather tree, directions trees and many others are not.

Amanda Mahomet is an Arrernte woman who has been living for 18 months at the site with her child and husband, Zellanach Djab Mara, a Djab Wurrung “lore man”. She spoke to us from the site, where she is organising activists and steeling herself against being evicted by police. For Mahomet and her family, this is about more than one road, or one tree.

“Just know that I stand here for all, especially future generations,” she said. “If mother earth is sick, that means we’re all sick. We are a reflection of her.”

It remains common practice in Australia to offset logged trees by simply planting new ones. But this misses the important, long-lasting connection that trees have with the people around them; the history absorbed in their limbs; their active role in culture.

“First Peoples worldwide have fundamentally and always understood trees to be community members for us,” wrote Professor Troy. “When we destroy trees, we destroy ourselves. We cannot survive in a treeless world.”

by Katherine Smyrk, Deputy Editor

READING THE TREES

Ashley Kalagian Blunt had to learn about trees all over again – and it was much more fun the second time around.

ON MOVING TO Australia, I discovered I was tree-illiterate.

What surprised me wasn’t my lack of arboreal knowledge, but how much that lack perturbed me. Walking through Glebe, an inner suburb of Sydney and my new home, I found myself lost amid anonymous greenery. The trees reminded me that I was a stranger here.

Back home, my tree literacy was garden variety. As a primary student on the Canadian prairies, I’d had to collect leaves, glue them to paper, and draw and label the trees those leaves were once part of, like the most boring CSI episode. But the exercise ensured that my adult self knew Canada’s willows, oaks, elms and cedars.

What I didn’t realise, until my husband and I left Winnipeg for a new life in Sydney, was that this knowledge mattered.

That I could picture a cluster of redwoods, or direct a friend’s gaze up the branches of a birch. That if someone yelled, “that spruce is coming down”, I knew which way to run.

In every animal alphabet book of my childhood, K was for kangaroo or koala. So on our arrival, Steve and I supposed we knew something of Australia. We were more literally correct than we realised. Our knowledge of the country’s natural diversity was as sophisticated as a child’s alphabet book.

Take kookaburras. I knew of them, but this did nothing to prepare me for their wondrous, bounding laughter.

The first time we heard them, on a walk in Victoria Park, I mistook the sound.

“Monkeys!” I tugged on Steve’s sleeve as I scanned the branches of nameless trees.

“Australia doesn’t have monkeys,” he said.

“The English didn’t import them for sport?”

He frowned, less certain.

Later I discovered that kookaburra laughter is integral to jungle scene-setting in numerous Hollywood movies, from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Jurassic Park. At some point, a producer decided kookaburras sound more like monkeys than monkeys themselves do, and the Aussie birds have been creating jungle ambience in American blockbusters ever since.

I got hooked on the birds first. I’d long considered birdwatching a hobby for people who couldn’t find any wet paint to entertain themselves. In hindsight, this is because Canadian birds are, to be honest, dull. Winnipeg’s avian soundtrack ranges from the crow’s grating caw to the more distinctive chick-a-dee-dee-dee, with generic twitters in between.

In Australia though, the birds refused to be ignored. Their neon rainbow plumage and dawn-to-dusk trilling captivated me. Listen to our madcappery, they called. Are we capuchins?

Pterodactyls? A time-travel sound effect in a cartoon?

What sublime creatures were making these unfathomable,

18

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

hypnotic sounds? We pondered their taunting mysteries, often hearing birds we couldn’t spot, as if the trees themselves were calling to us, inviting us to scrutinise their foliage.

I asked around, but every conversation went the same way.

Me: “I heard this bird, it was like wooo-ooooo wooooooooo. Do you know it?”

Australian: “That sounds like an ambulance siren.”

Me: “Yeah, but more lyrical. Like The X-Files theme, but a bird?”

Australian: “Was it a currawong?”

Me: “What’s a currawong?”

Likewise the trees. I once would have said that a tree is a tree is a tree. While I could distinguish Canadian trees, I was accustomed to them, like television re-runs. Some trees did put on a colourful show during the three weeks autumn lasts on the prairies, and then dumped their leaves in a frostinduced panic. The evergreens, though spruce, pine and cedar – they looked the same all year. They weren’t even trying.

Australian trees demanded our attention, proving themselves as vibrant and remarkable as the birds. In this way, I learned it was bottlebrush and red flowering gum that burst into bloom like fireworks. That the distinct scent tingling like a nasal rinse came from the floral puffs of golden wattle. That the rust red branches, gnarled into unpredictable shapes, were Sydney red gums.

Years on, the trees still force me to stop and stare, to contemplate the twisting protrusions of grevillea flowers, the patterns scribbled into scribbly gums. To pull out my pocketsized Trees of Australia and start flipping pages.

“C’mon,” Steve calls, metres ahead of me. He’s not interested in developing his tree literacy. A tree is a tree is a tree. Though even he has his exceptions, like the annual purpling of the jacarandas, which we look forward to more than Christmas.

At the top of Glebe Point Road, where it gives way to the foreshore, two Moreton Bay figs stand sentinel. These leathery-leafed giants never flare into joyous bloom or drop all their bark like a striptease. Like the evergreens I wrote off in my childhood, they stand more or less the same all year, quietly adding another few centimetres.

Still, I was thankful when I stumbled on their name in my pocket guide, because I will talk about them to anyone who will listen. How their branches arch, brushing the ground, creating a private world you can step inside. How standing in their dappled shade fills me with a special joy.

» Ashley Kalagian Blunt (@AKalagianBlunt) is the author of My Name Is Revenge.

VALLEY OF DECISIONS

As people struggle to know how to recover from a disaster, nature has its own way of coping, writes Daniel Oakman.

MR B HAD always lived there. Long before we arrived to make a home on the Bega River, he had built his own. His was a simple affair; a busy temple to blue that drew an annual parade of female admirers. You see, Mr B is a satin bower bird, that most industrious and enterprising of creatures.

A year ago, a firestorm devastated Tathra, a small town on the south coast of New South Wales. Our house survived, but the forest understorey on our block did not.

We wandered over our blackened land in a daze, and wondered what happened to Mr B. Save for a few blistered blue pegs, his bower had been incinerated.

As shocking as the torched landscape was the silence.

The glorious cacophony of birdsong that normally greeted every day was gone. It was eerie, disconcerting, like watching a film without a soundtrack. That silence was soon broken by the sound of machines.

for restoring our patch. The she-oaks that attract the yellow‑tailed cockatoos to this region have no defence against fire. But we left their burned trunks and fallen limbs as perches and shelter for smaller birds.

In the aftermath of disaster there are decisions to be made, action to be taken. Residents who lost homes must decide to stay or go. For sale signs continue to appear, a grim combination of underinsurance and a reluctance to go through the difficult task of rebuilding in the ashes.

The non-human world also must make its choices.

Trees decide which of their damaged limbs will be severed from the supply of nutrients in the quest for survival.

The more mobile must decide whether to look for better habitat or remain and make a new home. For some, the fire provides a feast. Fire-ravaged land belongs to the raptors, and they were the first to arrive seeking prey with nowhere to hide.

PHOTOS BY iSTOCK

As shocking as the torched landscape was the silence. The glorious cacophony of birdsong that normally greeted every day was gone.

Trucks, chainsaws and industrial mulchers were the new sounds of the valley. A kind of mania swept over the town, born of a deep urge to erase the physical reminders of trauma as quickly as possible.

Mostly the Australian bush cries to be left alone following trauma. Many native trees slip into a selfpreserving coma, seemingly dead, but instead slowly preparing to live again. In the rush to “get back to normal”, this can be a risky strategy for the tree.

An arborist pronounced our much-loved Angophora tree to be dead, but we declined the offer to have it removed. Months went by with no signs of life and we reluctantly conceded that he was right. Then, after almost nine months, tiny buds of epicormic growth broke through its charred bark. The Angophoras’ tremendous capacity to store water had provided the necessary life-support to survive not just the blaze, but the rainless months that followed. Today, it bursts with new growth.

We resisted the overwhelming impulse to erase. While our decision to “do nothing” was greeted with incredulity by some, it became something of a guiding principle

A year on, the machines have fallen silent. The avian symphony has returned. Scorched earth has given way to carpets of bracken, wattle and native grass. New land owners can be seen pitching tents on charred land, planning new homes and learning the subtle features of their blocks.

It has been a difficult year; a year of replanting and ecological repair. And weeding, endless weeding. For weeds, like the raptors, thrive in an ecosystem weakened by fire. Then, slowly, a forgotten feeling begins to come over us – hope.

A few weeks ago, on an unusually still morning, we heard something. Listening again, it was that unmistakable pattern of squeaks, chirps and trills, those key notes to our old soundtrack. As we had done many times before, we placed a blue bottle top on the garden table. An hour later it was gone.

» Daniel Oakman is a writer based in Tathra, NSW. His latest book, Oppy: The Life of Sir Hubert Opperman, was published last year.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

19

THE BIG PICTURE DAVID KEMP

FOREST GUMPTION

The 1979 battle to save the Terania Creek rainforest sparked an environmental protest movement.

20

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU XX JAN –XX JAN 2018

THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

“I’VE NEVER EXPERIENCED anything like it,” says photographer David Kemp, talking about three weeks in 1979. More specifically, he’s talking about the logging blockade at Terania Creek in northern NSW, where he and his partner and their 20-month-old baby camped with 200 others to help protect a stand of virgin rainforest marked for logging. There was no power, no phones. They had to make their own showers, toilets and kitchens. Kemp explains that this was the culmination of five years of work.

“The people in the Terania Valley had been lobbying the state government to protect that little patch of undisturbed rainforest from logging and had had no success,” he says. “They tried the normal bureaucratic way. This was the last resort.”

The call for help was put out, and people from all over came to put their bodies on the line for the sake of the trees.

Kemp was an amateur photographer, and decided it was important to document what was going on.

“It was something I knew how to do.

And I had the right equipment. I bought a half-dozen rolls of 400 ASA film, the fastest film you could get, because I knew it was going to be dark in the forest. If we didn’t have that, a lot of that memory, that collective memory, would be lost.”

The protest has since been deemed the first time Australians defended a natural resource by placing themselves in front of the bulldozers and police. It’s considered the spring-point for environmental action like the Franklin River Dam protests in Tasmania in 1982, and even the anti-coal seam gas blockade in Bentley, also in northern NSW, just a few years ago.

“They’ve now dated one of the trees at 1600 years old,” Kemp explains.

“And it was going to be 12 weeks’ work for the sawmill. Twelve weeks’ work…

That’s all it was for them to destroy that valley.” Joining the protest was always a no‑brainer for him.

“I come from Adelaide, which is the driest state in the driest continent. And when I came up here, it was just another world. And they were logging it. And I just thought, we’ll lose it all. I mean, they’re

the lungs of the Earth, we see that now they’re burning the Amazon. We can’t keep doing this.”

After a month of blockading, the logging was called off at Terania Creek.

Ensuing blockades in the area – later dubbed the Rainforest Wars – resulted in NSW Premier Neville Wran declaring a moratorium on logging of rainforests in the state. Eventually the area was turned into what is now the World Heritagelisted Nightcap National Park.

On the 20th anniversary of the protest, Wran remembered: “There is no doubt that Terania Creek was a milestone in the history of conservation in Australia.

When I retired from politics, I was asked what I regarded as the Government’s greatest achievement. I had no hesitation in responding that it was saving the rainforests on the north coast of New South Wales. Whilst I am proud of what we did, my only regret is that we did not do more.”

by Katherine Smyrk (@KSmyrk), Deputy Editor THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

21

22 ANCIENT AN THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU VICTIM XX JAN –XX JAN 2018

L AYING DOWN THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

ABOVE NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE TO LOGGING, WITH A GUITAR

TOP RIGHT A LOAD OF BRUSH-BOX LOGS HEADED TO THE SAWMILL

BOTTOM RIGHT PROTESTORS AND POLICE CAN GET ALONG

LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF

K ATHY LETTE

LETTE LOOSE Kathy Lette shocked her parents and neighbours with her debut novel at 19 – and she hasn’t let up. Here she talks politics, penises and Puberty Blues.

I WAS A surfie girl from 13 to 15 but once I

realised boys were disproving the theory of evolution and evolving into apes, I became very political. By 16 I was going through my hippie phase – I was hugging trees and sitting upside down in the lotus penetration position saying “I Ching”. Then I discovered Germaine Greer. Where I grew up, Germaine Greer was slang for beer. We thought the way to be feminist was to be as sexually voracious as the men. The men were laughing all the way to the sperm bank because they didn’t have to pay for it! We were a little bit confused.

I was a top student, but I was bored by school. I couldn’t believe they spent all that time teaching you to talk and then would tell you to shut up. I hated my school, Sylvania High maximum-security school. I ran away to a commune much to my mother’s horror, because she’s a teacher. If my daughter left school at 16, I’d be mortified. But I’d also come through that sexism of those surfie boys and if I think about it now, I had post-traumatic stress disorder. It was incredibly sexist, all that tribal initiation on the beach and in the back of the panel van. It was brutal. When you’re a teenager you have no objectivity about what’s happening to you, you think it’s normal to be treated like that.

When Puberty Blues came out [in 1979 when Lette was 19], we went from obscurity to overnight notoriety. My parents were horrified by the book. Mum

24

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

PHOTO (R) BY DAVID BARTHO/FAIRFAX

recently told me she got so many calls from people saying, “How dare you raise a disgusting daughter like that.” They got hate mail, death threats… And my father was really upset, I was out of the will for a little while. It was pretty traumatic.

My father didn’t talk to me for a few years.

I wasn’t allowed home. But then I rang one day and he asked, “How’s your car?”

It was his way of saying hello. And then the next time I rang, he was like, “Why don’t you bring the car over.” He checked the tyres and he did the oil. It was like he was saying, “Okay, you’re welcome back.”

It’s amazing how impactful Puberty Blues is. It’s so astringent and pungent but it punches way above its weight. When I’m walking around London, nearly every day some Aussie kid will call out to me, “Go get me a Chiko Roll!” or “You’re dropped!” [laughs] It’s a really good feminist book about sisterhood. That sticking together with your female friends is the way to conquer the world. All my books are written to celebrate female friendship. I always say that women are actually human Wonderbras – uplifting, supportive and making each other look bigger and better.

That’s the motto I live by.

I would tell my 16-year-old self that nobody can make you feel inferior unless you let them. Don’t be in awe of bullies or braggarts or male chauvinists. Then I would say to myself it’s pointless telling jokes about chauvinist pigs if you then go out with them. So, I would do something about that because it is a man’s world still – we don’t have equal pay, we are getting concussion hitting our head on the glass ceiling and we’re supposed to clean it while we’re up there. Just be feminist, feisty and fabulous at all times. Put on your bulletproof bra and don’t let any man ever try and put you in a box.

It’s a great male myth that women aren’t funny. I think [men are] terrified about what it is we’re being funny about. They presume we spend the entire time talking about the length of their members. That’s not true, because we also talk about the width. But when you go on a girls’ night out you have to be hospitalised from hilarity. Anthropologists say women laugh more often than men

in all cultures on the planet, especially when they’re in all-female groups.

Our humour is more confessional and cathartic, and we strip off to our emotional underwear in about 3.6 seconds. It’s very honest and hilarious.

My dad Merv worked in optic fibre so we called him Optic Merv.

He was a footballer for the Bulldogs [NRL club]. He was a good looking, strong, gorgeous guy. He wanted four sons, but he got four daughters who he loved by the end. We had a very traditional upbringing. But once I got taken hostage by my hormones at 13 and it was all about boys, [my parents] just despaired because I went completely off the rails – the boys were all older and I was climbing out the window at night, running away. I was one of those crazy teenagers, “Attila the Teen”.

The biggest surprise of my life was childbirth and motherhood.

Who knew?! There was so much information about what to do when you’re pregnant but nothing about what comes next. Of course, when my daughter became a teenager and got taken hostage by her hormones, it was revenge. My mother must have been so thrilled to see me going through what I did to her. Living with a teenage daughter is like living with the Taliban – you’re not allowed to laugh, dance, wear short skirts…nothing. But I don’t think anything prepares you for that overwhelming love you have for them.

Nobody tells you how boring [having kids is]. I used to be so bored I could see my plants engaging in photosynthesis. Getting a yeast infection was a change of pace. The first day my son went to school, I was at the school gate and there were mothers crying. I was like, “Are you insane? This is the best moment of your life. You get your life back.” [Kids are] the greatest love affair of your life and also the ultimate curse.

I moved to London [in 1988] because I fell in love [with human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson]. I wouldn’t have otherwise.

I didn’t like the English. I was also furious with what happened to Gough Whitlam.

And they were very condescending about Australians. It took me a while to realise how much they didn’t like me

KATHY WITH GABRIELLE CAREY, CO-AUTHOR OF PUBERT Y BLUES, AT THE BOOK’S L AUNCH, 1979.

because they don’t speak English, they speak euphemism. So when they said, “Australians are so refreshing,” I thought that meant they really liked me, but what they really meant was “Rack off you loud mouth colonial nymphomaniac.”

When I go to schools and give talks to teenage girls, I always say to them, men are physically stronger but women are more verbally dexterous. This is your great gift. Never go out without a couple of one-liners up your trouser leg because if you’re in a group and a man is being rude or trying to put you down, you can turn it around and make people laugh at him – you completely neuter him and take away all of his power. I teach them to give quip-lash.

I would also say to women, don’t wait to be rescued by a knight in shining Armani.

Stand on your own two thongs. Get on with your life and your career and do what you want to do. And think big. You no longer want a man’s seat on the bus, you want his seat on the board. I also say throw out the bathroom scales. If Mother Nature had wanted our skeletons to be visible, she would put them on the outside of our bodies. And never have cosmetic surgery. Love the face you’re in. I call it facial prejudice. Women get judged on our looks in a way men don’t. It’s better to be witty than pretty, because looks are a diminishing asset while wit gets sharper and sharper. interview by Anastasia Safioleas (@anast), Contributing Editor » Kathy Lette brings her stand-up show Girls Night Out to Sydney and Melbourne in early November.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

25

STAGE SEVEN: FOM O

You don’t want to get out bed and so you don’t. Everyone is having the best time doing stuff and you can’t.

STAGE EIGHT: S L IDING DOW N

Time to tackle the ball of knots, which has now become as big as your fist.

You massage conditioner into it while you binge on Netflix; your leg, like a businessman in a suit, is taking up most of the couch. You try picking that knot out with a comb. It will be while you are doing this, in a Netflix-distracted way, that you will slide into your childhood.

Margaret Linley brings you the perfect craft project this winter: an intricately woven bird’s nest. Made out of your own hair.

STAGE ONE: T H E BEGINNING

Start with a snapped patella, surgery and bed rest. That’s it. It will all just happen from this solid start.

STAGE TWO: A BOT H E RING

A small tangle of hair will grow each night as you toss and turn in your sleep, rich with prescription-drug-crazy dreams.

As the tangles tangle, you become the princess and the pea, bothered by some elusive thing.

STAGE THREE: DRE AM FOD D E R

In a hint of what it is to become, the knot is big enough to be a speed hump in the night, and you will find it incorporated into the convoluted narrative of your dreams. You wake late each morning, your knee throbbing, your day stretching ahead of you, and an entire other life having been lived in the darkness.

in your teeth. You try to hide it with ingenious combing. Can people see it?

STAGE FIVE: D I S G U IS E (W IT H A R OYA L T W IST )

You reach for your silk scarf the next time you go out – the beautiful one, shot through with gold thread, the one you got in Tangier. Just like a child with an empty box can transform herself into an astronaut, so you – with creative styling – can become a Moroccan princess.

While you’re out you will hear someone say – about you, not to you – that you’re looking “quite good, all things considered”. You have tied the scarf wrong and they have read the scarf wrong.

And just like that, you’re you again.

Unglamorous you, ridiculous you. Not a cancer patient fighting the fight, like they thought. Just silly you, getting closer to a complete bird’s nest.

STAGE SIX: ARE YOU EV EN T HER E?

STAGE FOUR: PARANOIA

On those occasions when you leave the house – after the tedium of showering with your bound and braced leg wrapped in a garbage bag – you will notice the growing tangle is now the hunch on your back, the wart on your nose, the spinach 26

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

Get used to sitting in your wheelchair, just below the bridge of words that float over you at the cocktail party, that barbecue or exhibition opening where everyone is standing. You’re still wearing scarves, but in such a subdued way no‑one even notices.

You’ll see your mother as a soldier called up to the front line on hair-washing days.

A wrangler-of-knots who will approach the mission of detangling your hair with a mix of braggadocio and steeliness.

You’ll notice that, despite having two working hands, she opts for the one‑handed approach to thwack the brush into the middle of a knot and then lean on that brush until something gives way: your neck, her arm, the knot? Never her resolve. Like any good arm wrestler, she relies on strength, perseverance and mental fortitude.

You’ll notice there is no conditioner in this revisited scenario. And you’ll wonder, was there no conditioner anywhere in the world or just no conditioner in your house? Is your mother – miserable in her marriage, miserable in her stay-at-home life – eschewing it in favour of the battle?

You hear her now: “Keep still while I get this bird’s nest out.” Thwack.

And you’ll notice your father takes charge after your mother has tallied up too many victories. He’ll insist on a pudding bowl haircut. Because it’s hard to get tangles in inch-long hair he says. Maybe with a short back and sides you more closely approximate the boy he wants rather than the houseful of girls he has.

STAGE TEN: AC C EP TA NC E

Congratulations, you’ve successfully made a bird’s nest. You go to the bathroom, check in the big mirror using a hand mirror to see the nest. You. Have. A. Bloody. Big. Bird’s. Nest.

ILLUSTRATION BY @LEMONCHICKENPORFAVOR

HOW TO MAKE A BIRD’S NEST

STAGE NINE: R EG R ES S ION

HOW TO DESTROY A BIRD’S NEST STAGE ONE: MOV ING ON

You decide Something Must Be Done.

You can’t find the good scissors; when was the last time anyone saw the good scissors?

STAGE TWO: RE MOVAL

The blades of the second-best scissors gnaw at the bird’s nest. It comes away in your hand and there’s something else.

What is it? What is this mess reminding you of? And then you remember. The boarding kennel people handing you a plastic bag when you arrive at the end of the week. That holiday you took, back then. And you see, inside the bag, a tangle of thin black string.

“Well,” says the keeper of the kennels, pointing to one of your dogs, “it was in her stomach and she coughed it up.”

“Oh my god, this is a worm,” you say, as you peer at it. “The vet? You took her to the vet?” You want to know.

“Yes indeed,” the kennel keeper tells you. “The vet determines your dog has eaten a tennis ball.” The keeper of the kennel tells you it has been in her stomach for “quite some time”. He puts the emphasis on the quite so you

understand the tennis ball was eaten on your watch.

STAGE THREE: R ECYC L ING

You put your own bird’s nest in the compost. It will be your science experiment. Will a bird’s nest ferment like the vegetable scraps already in there? Or will it be unchanged by the processes at work? How does a bird’s nest disappear completely, you wonder?

STAGE FOUR: N EG AT IV E S PAC E

Your patella is knitting together “as well as we can hope for”, the surgeon tells you. He will add, “for someone of your age”. You will force a smile and stay steady while he removes your staples.

He will tell you that you’re off the painkillers and you won’t be sure if it’s a statement or a question. Either way, you nod yes, and decide you’ll just have one more before you put the packet away.

You go home and feel the space where the bird’s nest was and ring the hairdresser. The next day, you’re off the meds and have a short back and sides, which is “very flattering”, they all agree at the salon, for “someone of your age”.

» Margaret Linley is a writer and journalist. You can find Margaret, her storytelling events, her novels and her anthologies of published columns at bigwordofmouth.com.

A small tangle of hair will grow each night as you toss and turn in your sleep, rich with prescriptiondrug-crazy dreams.

VENDOR TOUR GUIDE

SEOUL Street secrets revealed by the people who know them best.

COURTESY OF INSP.NGO ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL GRAY-BARNETT

YEONG-SU MOON WAS born in Gimpo,

a city not far from Seoul. He has been working for Big Issue Korea as a vendor for almost 13 years, selling magazines in front of Sindorim station in Seoul. He is famous for always having a smile for people he sees on the street.

01 / BEST EATS

The Yeon-seo Market in Eunpyeong-gu has various sections, such as seafood restaurants, traditional Korean snack shops, street foods etc. Choose what you want! There is also alcohol and lowpriced Anju (the pub food we Koreans traditionally eat with an alcoholic drink).

It’s a very popular place. The market is totally open, so you can make friends with people sitting in the chair next to you.

02 / LUCKY STREET

Rak-hee Street (Lucky Street) is known as the “Silver District” because most of

the customers are elderly silver-haired people. This friendly place is full of cinemas showing 1960s movies, cafes selling traditional Korean tea, toilets accepting elderly people as priority and photo shops that specialise in funeral photography. Even the font size on billboards is bigger than normal. Next to this district, you will find the street of traditional Korean houses called hanok.

The area has small alleyways, so bringing a car is not a good choice. The traditional buildings coexist with a modern vibe.

04 / HOT SHOPPING

Deoksugung Palace is one of five royal palaces of Korea’s last dynasty (the Joseon Dynasty) remaining in Seoul. Located at the corner of Seoul’s busy downtown intersection in Jung-gu, Deoksugung Palace is famous for its elegant stonewall road. There is a scary legend that couples who walk on this stone road together always break up. Nevertheless, this is a good place to escape from the busy city life and release stress.

Every day is a good day to visit Seoul.

South Korea has four seasons, which are each beautiful in their own ways. But I can say autumn is the best season to visit.

There are lots of festivals in autumn, such as the Seoul International Fireworks Festival in October, the Fall Foliage and some music festivals. And the weather is nice: not windy or cloudy, and perfect for travel by bike. Have a picnic in the park next to the Han River. It’s awesome.

03 / MUST-SEE

Dong-myo Market in Jongno-gu is attracting young hipsters these days.

There are various old-fashioned stores and vintage clothing shops on the street – and it’s cheap! The best part of this place is buying rare antique items you’ve never seen before, such as dolls, old cameras, uniquely designed toys and retro games.

Buying these items makes me feel like I’m visiting the lives of people who owned this item in the past – like time travel!

05 / WHEN TO VISIT

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

29

FRONTIER

FRIGHT

CL AIRE (AISLING FRANCIOSI) SEEKS REVENGE

The Nightingale is a film about colonial Tasmania that refuses to look away from the atrocities. Film Editor Annabel Brady-Brown talks to the film’s stars about what it’s like making something so raw, confronting and important.

30

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

“THERE’S A WAR on, you know?” snaps a grizzled convict, rifle in hand, early on in The Nightingale.

Jennifer Kent’s follow-up to The Babadook (2014) is garnering praise globally for its honest portrayal of colonial Tasmania. Some viewers will turn away from its bruising history lesson, but for others it will prove urgent and eye-opening.

“How Jen wrote this film is so amazing,” says newcomer Baykali Ganambarr in an interview with the film’s key cast. “Not sugar-coating it, just being really honest and telling the rest of the world, this is what the Indigenous people of Australia went through – the massacres, the Black War, everything.”

Most audiences know all about the British convicts who were transported to Australia, with Tasmania (then Van Diemen’s Land) considered the most

hellish outpost of all the penal colonies.

Less discussed is the Black War. Lasting from approximately 1824 to 1832, the frontier war between the Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples and the invading Europeans is understood today as an act of genocide, which almost wiped out the state’s Indigenous population.

This terrible chapter of history provides the backdrop to Kent’s thoughtful and often brutal revenge tale, confronting a very different type of horror to that of The Babadook.

“She’s like, ‘This actually happened, this is real, let’s own this,’” agrees IrishItalian actor Aisling Franciosi, known for The Fall. She gives a fiery performance as the titular nightingale, a young Irish convict named Claire who is forced to sing for her master Lieutenant Hawkins (Englishman Sam Clafin, Me Before You) and his soldiers, including Sergeant Ruse

(Australian Damon Herriman, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood).

In this case, “owning” history also means not shying from the abuses of power – especially those suffered by colonial women, who were outnumbered in Tasmania eight to one. An embittered man, Hawkins denies Claire her rightful freedom. He also repeatedly rapes her.

The opening scenes are upsetting to watch – some audience members walked out of screenings at the Sydney Film Festival – but they powerfully establish the lay of the land, and the lot for those at the bottom of the barrel.

And when Hawkins and his men commit an act that’s sadistic, even for them, Claire is hell-bent on revenge. Unable to trail the soldiers to Launceston alone, she hires an Aboriginal tracker named Billy (Ganambarr) to be her guide through the wilderness.

“I knew when I read it. Ten pages in I thought, I’m going to fight to the death for this role,” said Franciosi.

She cites the authenticity of Kent’s script as key. It was “the most incredible script I had read probably ever in my career”.

“With The Babadook too, but I think with this film especially, her stories resonate so well because they are written with so much truth,” she adds.

“Truth ripped off the page.”

To get the story right, Kent researched rigorously, seeking out psychologists, trauma specialists and historical experts. Costumes were made with weaves and dyes from the time, and cast members were asked to read books to prepare, including Robert Hughes’ gritty chronicle of the penal colonies, The Fatal Shore.

“She was completely uncompromising on the important things – the authenticity of the story, actor performance… Because she feels so passionately, as I think we all do, about why we’re telling this story.”

“She’s all about integrity, really,” agrees Herriman. “She’s like the classic director who could be offered the next Star Wars to direct and she’d say no.”

Most important of all the collaborators was Jim Everett, a

Plangermairreenner elder and the film’s Aboriginal Consultant. From the first draft onwards, he worked across many aspects of the film, and together with the Tasmanian Aboriginal community.

His role included teaching Ganambarr the dance of the Mangana, the blackbird.

“Jim and this other bloke, Craig Everett [Jim’s nephew], choreographed the Mangana dance. I obviously got it quick because I’m a dancer,” laughs Ganambarr, a Yolngu man hailing from Galiwin’ku, an island in north‑east Arnhem Land, and a dancer with the

at him as “boy”, just like the other white colonisers. So starts an uneasy alliance between two people who’ve lost everything and who really hate the English. If there’s any room for grace in The Nightingale, it lies in their moments of mutual understanding and exchange – “watching these two broken souls come together”, as Clafin describes their journey.

Negotiating the disturbing nature of the material and working in freezing conditions, it was always going to be a gruelling shoot. Plus, Kent is known as an uncompromising director.

It’s just being really honest and telling the rest of the world, this is what the Indigenous people of Australia went through.

Djuki Mala company. He performs the ritual dance in proud, balletic movements in a scene that acts as temporary salve, rupturing the film’s sustained sense of dread.

He also worked with language consultant Theresa Sainty to learn palawa kani, a composite of the languages once spoken by the different Aboriginal nations within Tasmania, lost through the impact of colonisation.

He grins: “It was kind of hard, but at the same time it was easy.”

“He speaks five languages!” Franciosi interjects.

“For me, speaking palawa kani and representing their mob from Tasmania, that brings me such joy and pride,” he says. “When I met the local Indigenous mob there in Tassie, they were really proud and happy. Everybody can’t wait to see [the film].”

Ganambarr’s magnetic performance – his first on screen – has been singled out. He was awarded Best Young Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his sensitive portrayal of Billy, a young Letteremairrener man whose family have all been killed or driven away by the colonisers.

Billy has no interest in working for any more “white devils”, but agrees to help Claire, who in turn barks

“She is very, very particular about what she writes and how she wants to see it on screen, and particular with the actors as well,” says Herriman.

“She feels very deeply about the stories she’s telling.”

“Whilst we were filming there were days where I hated her,” says Clafin, “only because she has this incredible ability to push you to your limit, and I’m so so grateful for her. She saw that potential, and she would push you over that hurdle. That’s why I think the film is so moving and real, because she made us feel those things.”

Kent’s commitment stems from her furious understanding that the cruel logic of the colonial mindset and its violence – perpetrated against Indigenous people, women, the natural environment – flows to the present.

“Things have progressed but there is still a problem,” says Clafin. “The fact that we’re talking about it, the fact that these films are being made, shows we are moving forward. To be a part of something like this is to be sharing it with the world, because it is a history few people have been wanting to talk about.”

by Annabel Brady-Brown (@annnabelbb), Film Editor » The Nightingale is out now.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

31

ROAD TO 32

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

With the release of her third album, Sampa the Great is certainly living up to her name.

SAMPA THE GREAT is a name that demands confidence. But for the Zambian-born, Botswanan-raised emcee – real name Sampa Tembo – the journey towards greatness is ongoing.

Calling Australia home since 2014, Sampa burst onto the music scene one year later with The Great Mixtape.

Fusing hip-hop, funk, jazz and soul with ease, the Melbourne-based Sampa has become a significant voice in the local music community. This was highlighted with 2017’s Birds and the Bee9, which won the peer-voted Australian Music Prize. Experimenting sonically with soundscapes and poetry, Sampa used the record to lay bare her creative exploration of identity.

As a live performer Sampa has grown to become an extraordinary force. While

sessions,” Sampa remembers of the recording process. “On that level, I was like, this is way different.

“But not hella different to the other sessions, especially BB9, where you’re super vulnerable, you’re talking about issues that affect us. But this one was really the naked truth. Now we’re not scared to say anything; this is where we are.”

Already dropping the first hints of The Return in singles ‘Final Form’ and ‘OMG’, Sampa has unleashed a beast of musicality. A rallying sense of strength permeates both songs and their music videos, filmed on Sampa’s latest trip back to Africa.

The videos are a marriage of the traditional and the contemporary, displaying a creative aesthetic bursting

GREAT PHOTO BY BARUN CHATTERJEE

I’ll show you where me came from and I’ll show you where me is going.

This is solid. This is who I am, guys.

supporting the likes of Lauryn Hill and Kendrick Lamar on their Australian tours, she developed her own impressive headline presence. Her talent has long been considered a powder-keg just waiting to detonate, something that hasn’t escaped her.

“Everyone can feel it, they can feel the difference,” Sampa says. “They can feel the growth. It’s something else. The whole band can feel it as well.”

This month, Sampa is preparing to introduce the sounds of her new album, The Return, a powerful, confident statement of intent spanning 19 tracks.

“We were breaking down in the

with vibrant colours and texture – and even her own parents. Whether it’s through dancing, kicking up dust or contrasting a stripped-back setting with beat-up cars and wild fashion style, Sampa the Great reintroduces herself in a new light.

Reengaging with her homeland and bringing her music to Zambia for the first time was a daunting experience, she says.

“We were all excited, obviously,” she remembers. “We were preparing the venue [for filming] and I met one of Zambia’s finest rappers, Chef 187.

And we’re just talking about how he

used to spend the first half of his career wishing he was doing what I’m doing, and I spent the first half of my career wishing I was doing what he’s doing.

There was that realisation. I could, with all my mind, wish that my career started somewhere else, but there are many people wishing the opposite.”

EVEN NOW, AS Sampa’s star is rising in Australia and international attention is turning her way, that desire for connection and a platform back home is something that has remained.

“It’s still a thing,” she says.

“I experienced a small, minor sense of displacement whereas some of my friends can’t go home to South Sudan.

That made me explore the idea of what ‘home’ is to me – and all these different answers came out in this album, with the conclusion that home is also yourself.

The body. Your soul has made a place in this body which is your home. How do we live with that, how do we deal with that without the culture that we’re from?

How do we deal with this one, first of all?

“As much as I still feel imposter syndrome, I am learning things and Australia has provided a lot of opportunities and avenues that I can bring home and help people back home with.”

Navigating themes of self‑satisfaction, embracing one’s identity and exploring a connection to a culture you’re not living in every day, The Return is equal parts love letter to Sampa’s heritage as it is a touchstone of the artist she is today.

“With The Return, it’s no longer a question of finding myself and who I was,” she says. “It was like: this is me.

I’ll show you where me came from and I’ll show you where me is going. This is solid. This is who I am, guys. Anything after this is just growth.”

by Sose Fuamoli (@Sose_Carter) » The Return is out 13 September. Sampa the Great tours 3 October-2 November, including the Lost Lands Festival.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

33

ALL AT SEA

PHOTO BY JOANNE MANARITI

The past meets the future when a boatful of UK migrants sails for Australia in Meg Mundell’s dystopian drama.

FOR A BOOK that’s set in the future yet calls back to Australia’s colonial past, Meg Mundell’s second novel The Trespassers is disturbingly timely.

Depicting the mounting plight of a boatful of UK migrants bound for our shores in the wake of a crippling pandemic at home, it’s a powerful page-turner with an equally compelling moral compass. We feel for the characters and in turn feel more deeply for the refugees being turned away in real life, here and abroad.

From corrupt corporations to a blimp reading “Keep Australia Clean”, the book reads as an up-to-the-minute fable about history repeating itself. Mundell actually started off trying to write a purely historical novel, but became so caught up in research that the need for accuracy began to feel restrictive.

“I decided to put it into this future so I could still research but have a bit more imaginative freedom,” she says. “I started to bring in my own experiences as an immigrant, and my own observations of how Australia treats different types of immigrants.”

Mundell came here from New Zealand with her family in the mid‑1990s, also travelling by sea.

But this book was primarily inspired by the real-life case of the Ticonderoga, a clipper that arrived in Victoria in late 1852 carrying nearly 800 migrants from Scotland. Typhus broke out among the travellers, including many children, leaving around 100 dead.

That ordeal is the subject of Mary Kruithof’s historical tome Fever Beach, which Mundell says, “really sparked my interest”. Mundell was working as a research assistant and found herself fascinated by the tragic true story.

“A lot of people died – a lot more than in my book – and that resulted in the creation of the quarantine station at Point Nepean,” she observes.

The Trespassers follows Mundell’s 2011 debut novel Black Glass, as well as short stories and a digital anthology she edited. Earlier she had served as Deputy Editor for The Big Issue (1999-2003) and a freelance journalist. “It can be hard to make a living as a journalist these days, and it’s even harder to make a living as a novelist,” she admits with a chuckle.

“So I really haven’t moved in a sensible direction. But both involve creating a story that other people can hopefully get stuck into and relate to.”

Like her first book, The Trespassers is told through multiple voices. In this case, Mundell swaps between a Scottish nurse and singer named Billie, a newly deaf Irish boy named Cleary, and an English schoolteacher named Tom. All seek better fortunes in Australia, but when infectious sickness hits their ship, the suffocating atmosphere quickly turns to violence and paranoia. The three characters eventually converge, as in a Venn diagram, and each one’s perspective tells a crucial facet of the story. It’s arguably Cleary’s telling that hits the hardest, since he sees things through a nine-year-old’s eyes and tends to internalise more on account of being mute – and thus ignored by the adults.

Though she didn’t conceive it for that reason, Mundell acknowledges the importance of a child’s perspective – and, in Cleary’s case, a silent witness. “In the early stages of writing the book I had a

child [myself],” she says, “and that helped me connect with that part of ourselves we never lose. Because he’s so little and vulnerable, it emphasises the vulnerability of the [other] people.”

Along the way come clashes between the different cultures under the umbrella of the English commonwealth, and various characters wrestle with their uninspiring lot in life. Though the setting is in the future, many of the hardships and prejudices that manifest can be traced back to Australia’s founding and even well before that.

If a story about disease and migration sounds bleak, Mundell balances that grimness with an action-packed pace, down-to-earth humour and plenty of Scottish and Irish slang, which was heaps of fun for her to research.

“The Scottish [slang] is brilliant… Just incredibly inventive,” she beams. “I had to take some of it out because I was going overboard.”

That said, the book still took its toll on Mundell, who juggled the writing and research with her day job in academia, as well as parenthood and editing a nonfiction collection – due out in October – written by people who have experienced homelessness. As with Black Glass, which featured two characters without homes, the new collection brought her back to her days absorbing the life stories of Big Issue vendors.

“There’s always an element of collaboration in these things,” Mundell says. The stories she heard didn’t leave her – they stuck around and emerged in her work. Maybe they’ll reach even more people still, with just as much impact.

by Doug Wallen (@wallendoug) » The Trespassers is out now.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

35

FILM ANIMALS 

TEEN ROMANCE, ANIME STYLE.

ANNABEL BRADY-BROWN > Film Editor FOLLOWING THE WHOPPING success of Your

Name (2016), Japanese director Makoto Shinkai delivers Weathering With You – a teen romance for a world gone bananas. Like the best Studio Ghibli films, this anime has moments of whimsy that warm the cockles of one’s heart: for example, a school of puddle-like fish who fall from the rainclouds and disappear if touched by humans.

Delicate images like this delight any generation, but there’s a strange poetry to the storytelling that slides the film toward a mature audience. Hodaka is a 16-year-old runaway who makes it to Tokyo armed with a copy of Catcher in the Rye and not much else. The city is in the midst of a rainy season that soon becomes the longest on record, and his angst and longing sync to the eternal drizzle. Then he meets Hina, a “sunshine girl” with powers over the weather.

Their friendship sets in motion an endearing adventure that swings from business ventures and unrequited love, to police chases and flash-flooding. This is no call-to-arms for the Anthropocene – the environmental message can be frustratingly vague, lacking the urgency of a film like Princess Mononoke (1997) – but the images are assuredly consoling. At a time when Disney is scrambling to reboot its canon as CGI and live-action animations, there’s something deeply affecting about the traditional hand-painted frames here. The details of city life are meticulously captured and bathed in magic-hour light, and there’s even a cute little cat named Rain.

36

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

A bleary-eyed, energetic romp through the streets of Dublin, Australian Sophie Hyde’s follow-up to 52 Tuesdays (2013) is a precise film about the messiness of codependent relationships and the pushpull of eking out a living versus following one’s dreams. Here the relationship is between two friends, Laura (Holliday Grainger) and Tyler (Alia Shawkat), women hovering around the big three-O, who work as baristas in the day and spend their nights doing, well, whatever the hell they want. Their shared love of clubs, booze and kicks begins to fracture when Laura falls for a pianist who seems to have his head screwed on straight – a trait that stirs Laura’s growing irritations about her own ambitions, but only needles Tyler’s resistance to change. A smart take on the complexities of contemporary feminism, friendship and personal evolution, Animals feels lived-in and authentic. A rare exploration of the morning after that follows a decade of mutual hangovers, mercifully without judgement. KATE JINX

THE FAREWELL 

For a film about deception, The Farewell is strikingly honest. A title card tells us it’s “based on an actual lie” – one that thirtysomething writer Billi (Awkwafina) reluctantly follows, when her Nai Nai/grandmother’s terminal cancer diagnosis is concealed from the matriarch by her own relatives and doctors. “In the East, a person’s life is part of a whole,” Billi’s uncle lectures her when she expresses doubt – “It’s our duty to carry this emotional burden.” As the family returns to Changchun to see Nai Nai one last time under the pretence of a wedding, the big lie is broken down into its most intimate details: the silent sobs of a groom unable to hide his grief; Billi’s anguish as she reckons with her own instincts that defy Chinese tradition (with Awkwafina proving her dramatic chops). By doing so, The Farewell eschews heavy-handed moral judgements in favour of something much more nuanced – an acceptance of the grey area between truth and lies, between cultures. It’s subtler, but no less aching. MICHAEL SUN

ANGEL OF MINE 

An extreme close-up of a middleaged woman “putting on her face” – aka applying make-up – signals that Angel of Mine will examine its themes – grief, aging and social expectations – from a feminine point of view. Though it ticks some of those boxes, there’s a hole where its heart should beat. Australian director Kim Farrant joins the dots on this psychological thriller about a bereft mother, Lizzie (Noomi Rapace, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), who’s obsessed with the memory of her lost daughter. It’s similar territory to Farrant’s previous film Strangerland (2015) and may have benefited from better performances, such as Kidman gave there. Angel of Mine is awkward as it takes the well-trodden path between mental illness, eroticism and shame – one that’s further hampered by embarrassing dialogue (“He feels your darkness, Lizzie”).

Screenwriters Luke Davies (Lion) and David Regal rely heavily on “mother’s intuition” to justify every turn. An interesting story sleeps inside this cold chrysalis, but never gets to spread its wings. AIMEE KNIGHT

SMALL SCREENS SHRILL

REASONS NOT TO DIE

Based on Lindy West’s memoir of the same name, Shrill traces the author’s outline and colours it with a broader story about finding community, love and self-acceptance.

The tagline for West’s book was “Notes from a Loud Woman”, and the TV adaptation shows how her on-screen avatar Annie (Aidy Bryant, Saturday Night Live) learned to turn up the volume. In the space of six tightly written episodes, Annie finds a political voice after learning the morning-after pill doesn’t work for women over a certain weight; writes a blistering piece for the paper after her exercise-obsessed boss tosses fatphobic comments her way; struggles to find the right place between “hook-up buddy” and “boyfriend” with the annoyingly endearing Ryan (Luka Jones); and confronts her demeaning internet troll IRL. Bryant brings warmth and silliness to what, in a less skilful comic’s hands, could threaten to dip into melodrama or self-pity. It’s a joy watching Annie pull her weight without losing a pound of it.

Now on SBS Viceland and SBS on Demand. BRODIE LANCASTER

The debut podcast from Australian journalist Sam Ikin is a personal narrative described as “live coverage of a mid-life crisis”. After abandoning the career that shaped Ikin’s entire identity, he separated from his partner, went into debt and lost all his belongings in a flash flood. He was also approaching the same age at which his father died from his own hand. Being fired from a new job was the catalyst Ikin needed to give podcasting a serious go. Reasons Not to Die considers what it means to be courageous, to follow your passion and to resist getting badly burned out by large corporations. In the first episode, Ikin interviews Mystery Show host Starlee Kine about making what iTunes dubbed the Best Podcast of the Year – and what happened when it got cancelled.

RNTD is compelling for how it magnifies and celebrates everyone’s vulnerabilities and failures. Ikin doesn’t spare himself, either. For fans of Gimlet Media’s StartUp and Mailchimp’s Going Through It, this is full of sponsorshipfree epiphanies on mental health and creativity.





YEAR OF THE RABBIT  Would Mindhunter work if it was set before the advent of psychological profiling? What’s SVU without its (questionable) forensic science? A police procedural with a difference, Year of the Rabbit puts modern crime tropes to work in Victorian London, where the difference is: there is no procedure. But there is an alcoholic detective, Eli Rabbit (Matt Berry of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace), who’s regularly beset by his exhausted boss, crooked politicians, an ambitious “lady copper” and other figures typically seen in American crime stories. Created by British writing partners Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley (awarded for their work on Veep), Rabbit drinks from the same well as The Naked Gun, only the scripts here are littered with cockney witticisms. After all, Victorian London gave us the gruesome broadside papers that prefigured the true crime genre. When it seems like murder shows have nowhere left to go, they return to the scene of the crime. Now on ABC iview. AIMEE KNIGHT

NATHANIA GILSON

AIMEE KNIGHT > Small Screens Editor AHEAD OF THE annual Emmy Awards, screening later this month on Foxtel, I’m catching up on some of the nominated shows lingering on my “To Watch” list. While I’m sure they’re all impressive, there are some titles I haven’t yet found myself in the mood for – HBO’s Chernobyl (also on Foxtel) and Netflix’ Ozark spring to mind. Most nights of the week, I’d rather watch a comedy, and although many of this year’s nominations sit at the darker end of that spectrum, not one has disappointed.

From Russian Doll in its first season to Veep in its last, the Outstanding Comedy Series nominations are packed with hilarious, challenging and fascinating shows. The related performance categories are similarly rich with worthy contenders, and I’m especially keen to see where the chips fall for all the incredible women shortlisted.

Carry-over champ Rachel Brosnahan is up for her second gong as the titular housewife-turned-comedian on The Marvelous Mrs Maisel (on Prime Original). She’s nominated alongside her highness Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who

STREAMING

TELEVISION

PODCAST

MRS MAISEL: MARVELLOUS, NO MATTER HOW YOU SPELL IT.

ruled from 2012 to 2017 and is vying for one last statuette for Veep. Then there are underdogs Christina Applegate (Dead to Me) and Natasha Lyonne (Russian Doll), who brought unlikely levity to their Netflix binges about grief.

This is to say nothing of Insecure’s Issa Rae nor Better Things’ Pamela Adlon, whose semi-autobiographical shows (on Foxtel) weren’t nominated, but will reward viewers.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

37

MUSIC TOM CRUISE. HE IS NOT A SHIP.

BETTER IN BLAK THELMA PLUM 

After releasing two popular EPs, Thelma Plum has taken her time making her first record, Better in Blak. It’s paid off. Over a catchy beat and with her gorgeous woozy warble, the title track recounts her experience of being caught on the receiving end of online hate. Thelma draws herself up to the full height of her power to let her detractors know their efforts to strip away her vibrancy and humanity have failed. Her mellow vocals pair with the treacly voice of Gang of Youths’ David Le’aupepe on ‘Love and War’, a meditation on the treatment of Aboriginal children in the Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre. ‘Made For You’ was co-written with Paul Kelly and features the wailing guitar of Paul McCartney (yes, that one). But these co-signs don’t draw focus away from the richness of Thelma Plum’s intensely personal and impressive work. Better in Blak is a fully realised portrait of a young artist who’s endured the ugliest parts of the world and reconciled them with the most hopeful parts of herself. BRODIE LANCASTER

SARAH SMITH > Music Editor I STILL FEEL a little too young to be holidaying

on a cruise ship. In recent times I’ve watched in horror as friends and their children were forced into extended family vacations at sea – like a slightly nauseous Christmas lunch that can never be escaped.

As it turns out, I’m a little behind the game.

Apparently cruise ships are one of the hottest things in music.

The details on the origin of the “music cruise” are sketchy, but sometime in the late 90s bands started playing on ships. The last decade has seen a boom in these shows on the high seas, with everyone from the Backstreet Boys to Lucinda Williams and Weezer getting in on the action.

Never ones to shy away from a branding opportunity, Gene Simmons and co have perfected the KISS Kruise experience. Setting sail in Miami, the five-day trip is a veritable KISS-topia, where more than 2000 fans gather to dress up like KISS, party like KISS and watch KISS perform, twice.

Admittedly, that sounds like my idea of hell.

But there are more “subdued” offerings afloat, like the inaugural Boaty Weekender recently put on by Scottish indie rock stalwarts Belle and Sebastian. Their Very Grown Up festival included sets from Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub and the Buzzcocks. And, just to make it all the more cushy, it also featured wine-tasting sessions with Yo La Tengo, a baby disco with Camera Obscura, yoga with The Vaselines plus cinema, karaoke and meditation sessions. All aboard!

38

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

SEASONS CHANGE SUMMER FLAKE 

“Even though I’m not a mind reader, I know something isn’t right,” sings Steph Crase on her third album. This ache continues throughout the album, a yearning for something that feels just out of reach. But if existential dread sounds this lovely, who’s complaining? Those familiar with Summer Flake know Crase’s signature style — big, jangly hooks, heaped vocals and a keen sense of melody — but she injects subtle differences into each song. First single ‘In the Dark’ is a gloriously fuzzy slice of pop perfection, while ‘Domino’s’ lilting licks call to mind the legendary American Football. Crase’s vocals lend a dreamy quality to the tracks, sounding equally confident over spare instrumentation (the deliciously slow ‘Don’t Let Me Down’, with an almost Spanish guitar sound) as they do atop meatier layers (‘Try Me Now’). A veteran of the Australian indie scene, Crase continues to carve out her own niche within it, creating work that has all the hallmarks of the genre but still feels distinctly individual. GISELLE A NGUYEN

ANAK KO JAY SOM 

For a generation too young to have experienced 90s guitar music firsthand, the current wave of American indie is thrilling. Prodigious multiinstrumentalist Melina Duterte, who has been recording in her bedroom under the name Jay Som since her teen years, has mastered the immediacy and versatility of the pop guitar riff. Anak Ko navigates multiple strains of emotion and tone while maintaining coherence.

It’s a darting dance between classic introspective indie and smooth ballroom grooves. Duterte’s lyrics and melodies frequently enter into a conceptual repetition at their climax: “Why won’t you try to be anyone else?” she pleads on the brooding ‘Peace Out’. It’s an opportunity for reinvention that for a person in their twenties is equal parts enticing and daunting. A sense of indecision returns on the breezy cruise of ‘Devotion’. Glowing in the sunset, Anak Ko is immersion in the beauty and pain of youthful transience. CHARLIE MILLER VINYL

CD

DOWNLOAD

BOOKS THUY ON > Books Editor DIVERSITY ARTS AUSTRALIA recently released a report called Shifting the Balance; a survey of 200 of Australia’s leading arts organisations, government and funding bodies, festivals and prize panels. The results were dispiriting to say the least; culturally- and linguistically-diverse (CALD) Australians make up a tiny number across the leadership level of every arts sector including dance, music, screen, opera, theatre and literature.

While CALD Australians make up 39 per cent of the population, more than half (51 per cent) of the organisations surveyed had no CALD representation at any leadership level. As Beverly Wang, writing in The Guardian says, “That means more than half of these organisations have no creative directors; no senior executives; no CEOs; no awards judges; no board members; no board chairs or deputy chairs from a migrant background.” The literary and publishing industry fared better than the others, with a whopping 14 per cent culturally diverse representation among leaders.

As a woman of colour myself I am lucky to have judged several times at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. But I shouldn’t have to be an anomaly to the rule. Powerbrokers across the arts boards should really pay attention to these abysmal figures and try and rectify them.

IT SOUNDED BETTER IN MY HEAD NINA KENWOOD 

The turmoil, joy and melancholy of late adolescence are sensitively drawn out in Nina Kenwood’s debut novel. It’s the underlying goal of every contemporary YA author to accurately convey the teenage struggle to adjust to the world around them and Kenwood has risen to the occasion and achieved this with apparent ease. Natalie, the narrator, is struggling with her parents’ impending separation and some awkward changes to her friendship circle. Her incessant selfdoubt is grating at times, but such is the inclination of teenagers; the characters feel like people who could inhabit the world alongside us, rather than mere mirages of humans. Fraught with anxiety and insecurity but peppered with sparkling humour and electric dialogue, the portrayal of Natalie’s struggles with self-image, future worries and accidental love is heartwarming to read. Kenwood has achieved the almost impossible: the quintessential YA voice. LUCI WHITELAKE

THE 117-STOREY TREEHOUSE ANDY GRIFFITHS AND TERRY DENTON 

Fans of these ever-popular tales about an author, an illustrator, their ridiculous inventions and a multi-layered treehouse will have high expectations for this book – and Griffiths and Denton duly deliver.

Beginning with a mere 13 storeys on the original treehouse back in 2011, every year the dynamic duo adds another 13 levels, so now we are up to 117. What hijinks await the reader this time round? Among other curiosities, there’s an underpants museum, a tiny horse level, a kite-flying hill and a much-needed treehouse visitor centre (complete with penguin-powered flying tour bus). Lucky this is not a book series with diminishing returns. Denton’s black-and-white pictures are sprawled all over and Griffiths’ stories of their misadventures are as silly as ever. The springboard for this one, though, is what happens when Denton, normally the artist, decides he wants to take over the narrative and the ensuing (further) mayhem that follows. THUY ON

DOWN AND OUT IN PARADISE LUKE WILLIAMS 

Downtrodden Australians seeking solace in Asia may be an established cliché, but Luke Williams gives it new life in this unflinching, unflattering travel memoir. Opening as he descends into Kuala Lumpur while coming off crystal meth – an addiction that inspired his first book – Down and Out in Paradise explodes out of the gate with a dizzying procession of sex, drugs, drinking, depression and late-night conversations. “Life in Bangkok was liberating like a trap,” he writes, and within the first 30 pages he is describing half-naked bartenders in explicit anatomical detail. Penniless and far from home, Williams shoplifts from 7-Elevens before finding himself a part of Pattaya’s sex industry, acting in a bizarre DIY movie. From there he moves on to Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, to name a few, documenting his life across three years. Alternately reinforcing and upending Aussie-abroad tropes, this book is noisy and indulgent. Many readers will find it hard to sympathise with the author. But in his own frenzied way, Williams eventually seeks redemption. DOUG WALLEN THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

39

“

Soup is a dish that every culture shares: it warms us from within.

“

TASTES LIKE HOME

Two Good’s Angie Prendergast-Sceats

Bean and Vegetable Soup Ingredients

50ml olive oil

Serves 6-8

1 large brown onion, finely chopped 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped 1½ tablespoons smoked paprika 1 tablespoon dried oregano 600g butternut pumpkin, peeled, seeded and diced into 1cm pieces

MAIN PHOTO BY PETRINA TINSLAY; PORTRAIT BY ZO ZHOU

Method Heat the oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 6-8 minutes or until soft. Add the garlic and stir for 1-2 minutes or until fragrant. Add the paprika and oregano and stir for another 2 minutes or until fragrant.

Add the pumpkin and stock and bring to the boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes or until the pumpkin is just starting to soften. Stir in the kale, green beans, corn, chickpeas and borlotti beans. Cook for another 10 minutes or until the pumpkin and green beans are tender. Season to taste. Remove from heat, stir in the parsley, then ladle into bowls and serve with crusty bread.

1.75 litres vegetable or ham or chicken stock

400g tin borlotti beans, drained and rinsed

4 kale stems, stalks removed, leaves thinly sliced

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

170g green beans, ends trimmed, cut into thirds

½ bunch flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked and coarsely chopped

250g fresh or frozen corn kernels 400g tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed

Angie says…

My grandmother lived in the country and I lived in the city. Every time I would visit, she would welcome me with a big bowl of hot soup that she’d been cooking all morning, so the delicious smells filled the house. Sometimes it was pumpkin soup, sometimes it was a hearty lamb shank and barley soup – there were many varieties. In that humble bowl of soup was all her love and affection, so to me, making soup for the ones I love is endowed with these same memories and feelings of being welcomed home.

Soup is a dish that every culture shares: it warms us from within, and can be made with simple and inexpensive ingredients.

Soup is one of the first dishes I teach as part of Two Good community cooking classes. It was also what started the Two Good journey. A jar of soup bought by one person, so another less fortunate could enjoy one too.

A good soup in your repertoire is key to becoming a good home cook. This soup is a simple vegan and gluten-free recipe that I often make with different seasonal vegetables. It’s an extremely comforting bowl that is perfect when you’re feeling under the weather. It’s also great made with smoked hambone stock as the base with the meat tossed through. Or try it with chicken stock and torn meat stirred through.

Always make a big batch and freeze some for those cold winter nights when you don’t feel like cooking.

» Two Good Co provides food, support and training to survivors of domestic violence; twogood.com.au.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

41

LORIN PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

REBEL WITHOUT A NOISE HERE IS THE NEWS: everything is awful, and you can’t even

trust that. Nope. You can’t trust the news, don’t be silly.

That’s not where we are anymore. You can’t trust history either. Or the future – nobody has predicted anything correctly since, what, the war?

There is, in fiction, a concept known as “the unreliable narrator”. We are at the mercy of an unreliable narrator, drunk on power, spewing out overblown characters and unlikely plots, lurching from dystopian horror to biting satire so rapidly that some of us are feeling a little unwell.

And at the hands of such a tyrannical narrator, what are we to do? How to stay alert, and kind, and engaged, and forgiving, and empathetic, and brave against the pull of this narrative tyranny?

The answer? Rebel. Quietly if you want to. In your own way. Resist the pull. Break the rules.

KIDS ARE REBELLING all the time. They’re upside down,

they’re pushing buttons labelled DO NOT PUSH, they’re asking far too many questions. I went into the city a few years back and there was a Year Seven kid who had literally handcuffed himself to a pole in the middle of a school excursion. Up to you how far you want to take your rebellion, I’m not going to judge. You do it your way. A friend of mine told me she did a series of cartwheels alone in the local park a few weekends back and – at the age of 40 – she had people coming up to her to talk about it for the next 20 minutes.

She found it hard to leave. Rebellion is bold and exciting and interesting and people find it freeing to have permission, so go: do a cartwheel on your own as a grown human adult.

Not up for cartwheels? A fake hip and arthritis in your left wrist? Fine. Sing. There’s a bloke near where I live who has perfected the arms-crossed while cycling with a straight back move, which he deploys while singing opera at the top of his lungs. “Piccalo, Piccalo, Picaaaaalooooo” he booms, and again, everybody looks up, and nearly everybody smiles, and all he did was sing a little song on his bicycle like we all did when we were seven.

Talk to the person on public transport who nobody wants to talk to.

Spend time in nature. Disconnect from the shouty monologue and hear the insects. It’s always a good thing when the loudest things in your day are insects you can’t see, in a place that smells of the earth.

Sometimes it’s good when there’s a little thing happening that’s quietly lovely, to concentrate your whole mind on it and think: this little thing right here is just absolutely splendid.

The other day, I was at a public park that had a lake in it, and I was talking to someone – a friend, about a work-related problem. We were right into the nitty-gritty of it, she said this, he said that, and as we were talking, a waterbird took off from the water’s edge. The lake was muddy and reedy and messy and the waterbird was scrappy and unexceptional but it flew quite low and, followed by its mate, did that great thing waterbirds do where they putt-putt along the surface of the water with their feet as they fly, splitting the lake in half with a great line that gets wider the further they are from it, and my friend stopped – mid-word – and said “hang on”, her hand on my arm, and we watched the birds until they were up in the sky and off, the lake dividing behind them like two cells quietly splitting. My friend looked at me, smiling.

“Absolutely splendid,” she said.

Some of the best rebels are the quiet helpers. The volunteers. The tree planters. People who are nice to old people and quietly resistant to nastiness.

Or you could handcuff yourself to a pole in the middle of the city when your class is on the way to an excursion at the library and really mix things up for everybody. Totally up to you.

This has been a Public Service Announcement. Rebel against the dominant paradigm. Promote the tiny moments of excellence and take from the stream of unhinged horror only the impetus for quiet rebellion against it. Be your own reliable narrator, and try, wherever possible, to notice the birds.

» Lorin Clarke (@lorinimus) is a Melbourne-based writer.

Her radio serial, The Fitzroy Diaries, is on ABC’s Radio National. You can also find it on the ABC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

43

PUZZLES

BY LINGO! TREE In Old English, about a millennium ago, a tree was not only a large woody plant, but also referred to anything made from a branch or the trunk of a tree, such as a pole, a beam or a spear. When some older Christian texts refer to Jesus being crucified on a tree, they don’t mean he was nailed to a leafy plant, but that the cross was fashioned from wood. As English spread to new places with new flora, what counts as a tree has expanded over time.

Trees as metaphors for the relationship between different species, or languages, or even our family is an invention of modern science, with the earliest references in the late 1700s.

» by Lauren Gawne (lingthusiasm.com) SOLUTIONS

5 4 8 3 6 7 1 9 2

1 3 6 7 8 2 4 5 9

8 9 2 4 1 5 6 7 3

4 5 7 6 9 3 2 8 1

1 The Fly (1986) 2 Plant 3 Transformers (1986) 4 Feet 5 Spencer Tunick 6 Harvard University 7 Lindy Chamberlain 8 Corned beef, Swiss cheese and sauerkraut 9 Insect repellent 10 Steve Smith, David Warner, Cameron Bancroft 11 Fossils 12 Alan Jones 13 Canada 14 Tom Gleisner 15 Bishop 16 Brazil 17 Bottlenose dolphins 18 Neville Bonner 19 Men 20 Five

6

5 9 3

7 2 1 9 5 4 8 3 6

Puzzle by websudoku.com

CONTRIBUTORS Film Editor Annabel Brady-Brown Small Screens Editor Aimee Knight Music Editor Sarah Smith Books Editor Thuy On Cartoonist Andrew Weldon

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

ENQUIRIES Advertising Simone Busija on (03) 9663 4533 sbusija@bigissue.org.au Subscriptions (03) 9663 4533 subscribe@bigissue.org.au Editorial (03) 9663 4522 editorial@bigissue.org.au The Big Issue, GPO Box 4911, Melbourne, VIC 3001 thebigissue.org.au © 2019 Big Issue In Australia Ltd

All rights reserved.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.

PUBLISHED BY Big Issue In Australia Ltd (ABN 61 071 598 439) 227 Collins St Melbourne VIC 3000

PRINTER Printgraphics Pty Ltd 14 Hardner Road Mount Waverley VIC 3149

CARTOON BY ANDREW WELDON

4

1

20 QUESTIONS

3 6 9 8 2 1 5 4 7

6 4

1

8

6 9

2 8 4 1 7 9 3 6 5

2

3

5

6 7 5 2 3 8 9 1 4

7

4 3

8

SUDOKU

9 1 3 5 4 6 7 2 8

9

4 6

EDITORIAL Editor Amy Hetherington Deputy Editor Katherine Smyrk Contributing Editor Michael Epis Contributing Editor Anastasia Safioleas Editorial Coordinator Lorraine Pink Art Direction & Design Gozer (gozer.com.au)

44

7

ACROSS 1 Except 4 Car phone 9 Canary 10 Pawnshop 12 Propound 13 Billyo 15 Somnambulism 18 Condemnation 21 Enough 22 Supplier 24 Palpable 25 Ensign 26 Repeated 27 Branch DOWN 1 Escapism 2 Consommé 3 Persona non grata 5 Adam 6 Pencil sharpener 7 On hold 8 Employ 11 Anybody 14 Plump up 16 Division 17 Entrench 19 Temper 20 Roll-up 23 Flee

6 2 8

CROSSWORD

Puzzle by websudoku.com

SUDOKU » by websudoku.com

CROSSWORD » by Chris Black 1

2

3

20 QUESTIONS 4

9

5

6

7

8

16

17

10 11

12

13 14

15

18 19

20

21

22 23

24

25

26

27

CRYPTIC CLUES ACROSS

The answers for the cryptic and quick clues are the same.

1. Pete spent $90 inside bar (6) 4. Chaperone almost damaged antiquated communication device (3,5) 9. Grant catches an avian creature (6) 10. Shawn broke into Pop’s hock joint (8) 12. Advocate against Euro in Britain? (8) 13. Very much love Joel at first (6) 15. Sleepwalking stranger summons a limb (12) 18. Canned motion suffered strong criticism (12) 21. “Adequate one” rejected with expression of disgust (6) 22. Meal interrupted by leading legacy internet provider (8) 24. Friend & assistant’s bulge, oddly visible (8) 25. Standard part of men’s ignorance (6) 26. Regurgitated off deer pate (8) 27. Farm supporting Primary Business Department (6)

DOWN

1. Mass replaced with epic fantasy (8) 2. Study French battlefield soup (8) 3. Unleashed Spartan onager on unwelcome guest? (7,3,5) 5. Driver in Hollywood commercial with a top model (4) 6. Writing assistant crashed her prince’s plane (6,9) 7. Hanging on the line? (2,4) 8. Commission recreation of virtual polymer (6) 11. A New York figure, doesn’t matter who? (7) 14. Good dog to put on weight (5,2) 16. Princess has perception and detachment (8) 17. Lodge topless gent (French) (8) 19. Puppet emperor conceals state of mind (6) 20. Arrive with fruit snack (4-2) 23. Heard little insect run (4)

QUICK CLUES ACROSS

1. Excluding (6) 4. Outdated communication device (3,5) 9. Bird (6) 10. Place to get loans (8) 12. Put forward (8) 13. Very much (6) 15. Sleepwalking (12) 18. Opprobrium (12) 21. Sufficient (6) 22. Provider (8) 24. Tangible (8) 25. Banner (6) 26. Recurrent (8) 27. Fork (6)

DOWN

1. Daydreaming, perhaps (8) 2. Soup (8) 3. Unwelcome person (7,3,5) 5. Eve’s partner (4) 6. Sketcher’s tool (6,9) 7. Waiting (2,4) 8. Wield (6) 11. Unspecified person (7) 14. Fatten (5,2) 16. Department (8) 17. Establish (8) 19. Mood (6) 20. Fruit snack (4-2) 23. Beat it (4)

1. Which film had the tagline: “Be afraid, be very afraid”?

2. Do pineapples grow on a tree, plant or vine?

3. What was the last film Orson Welles was in before his death in 1985?

4. With which part of its body does a butterfly taste?

5. Who is the American photographer best known for organising large-scale nude shoots?

6. Which university was recently ranked best in the world for the 17th year in a row, according to research organisation Shanghai Ranking Consultancy?

7. A dingo took whose baby?

8. What are the three key fillings in a Reuben sandwich?

9. Where do you find DEET? 10. Name the three Australian cricketers who were suspended in 2018’s ball‑tampering scandal.

11. What does a palaeontologist study?

12. Who said Prime Minister Scott Morrison should “shove a sock down” the throat of NZ PM Jacinda Ardern?

13. Which country has more lakes than the rest of the world combined?

14. Who is the host of TV’s Have You Been Paying Attention?

15. Which chess piece can only move diagonally?

16. Which country is the world’s largest producer of coffee?

17. Western Australian town Monkey Mia is famous for which animal?

18. Who was the first Indigenous member of Australia’s Parliament?

19. Are men or women more likely to be colourblind?

20. How many stars are on the flag of China?

» by Big Red

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU 6–19 SEP 2019

45

CLICK WORDS BY MICHAEL EPIS » PHOTO BY GETTY

Peter Fonda and family, 1949

DESPITE BEING BORN into Hollywood royalty, despite acting in at least one film a year for more than 50 years, and despite a Golden Globe best actor award for his role as a widowed beekeeper in Ulee’s Gold (1997), Peter Fonda will forever be remembered for one thing: Easy Rider.

The film shadowed his whole life – which ended last month at the age of 79 – as both gift and curse, which he embraced in equal measure. Even by his own accounts, his excessive indulgence in narcotics mirrors the goings-on in this classic violent American road movie, which came at just the right time – pitting free, libertarian, hippie America against conservative, backwoods, violent America. The image of Fonda sitting atop his California-style chopper was one he never outgrew; you sensed he never really wanted to.

The 1969 film touched a nerve. Its violence – which results in the deaths of the characters played by Fonda, Jack Nicholson and (seemingly) Dennis Hopper – prefigures the violence that brought the hippie dream to an end that year, firstly with the Manson murders within a month of its release, then the killing of Meredith Hunter by the Hells Angels bikies at Altamont that December.

It is a dark film – the LSD they are given by a hippie hitchhiker turns into a bad trip. And there’s no getting away from the fact the lead duo are drug dealers, an insidious business that soon wrought its own havoc. The finger of Fonda – co-writer, lead actor, producer – took America’s pulse. Hollywood took note.

All of that is a far cry from this idyllic family shot, with (from left) his mother Frances, half-sister Frances, actor

father Henry and sister Jane. But this shot is itself a far cry from reality – a year later his mother was dead, of her own hand, in a mental institution. The children were told she had had a heart attack. Thereafter she was never mentioned again.

“After that, no-one ever talked about Mom. No-one seemed to miss her. It was almost as if she had never lived,” Peter wrote in his memoir Don’t Tell Dad (1998). “Jane and I never went to a funeral or service for her; I didn’t know where she was buried.”

The next Christmas, Oscar-winning actor Jane recalls, “Peter filled a chair with presents and a letter for her.

He couldn’t stand that there was no acknowledgment of her. He was such a sensitive, sweet, vulnerable kid.”

» If you need help, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

NEXT EDITION OF THE BIG ISSUE ON SALE… 46 THE BIG ISSUE X MONTH – X MONTH 2017

FRIDAY 20 SEPTEMBER