Trouble February 2019

trouble 164

NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA Love & Desire

Pre-Raphaelite Masterpieces from the Tate Until 28 April 2019 Love & Desire explores the themes of love, desire, romance, betrayal, faith, nature, science, religion, society, rebellion, the femme fatale and the celebrity of the ‘rock-star’ artists of the 19th century - the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE John William WATERHOUSE, The Lady of Shalott 1888, oil on canvas, 153 x 200 cm. Presented by Sir Henry Tate 1894 Tate, © Tate, London 2018 | Edward BURNE-JONES, Perseus and Andromeda 1876, oil on canvas, 152.2 x 229.0 cm. Elder Bequest Fund 1902 Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide | John Everett MILLAIS, Ophelia 1851-52, oil on canvas, 76.2 x 111.8 cm. Tate collection presented by Sir Henry Tate 1894 © Tate, London 2018 | Ford Madox BROWN, Work 1852–65, oil on canvas, 137 x 197.3 cm. Purchased 1885 Manchester Art Gallery | John BRETT, The British Channel seen from the Dorsetshire Cliffs 1871, oil on canvas, 212.7 x 106 cm. Presented by Mrs Brett 1902, Tate, © Tate, London 2018 | William Holman HUNT, The shadow of death 1870–73, oil on canvas, 214 x 168.2 cm. Gift of William Agnew 1883 Manchester Art Gallery

The NGA is open 10am-5pm daily (closed Christmas Day), Parkes Place, Parkes ACT

CONTENTS

LOVE & DESIRE PRE-RAPHAELITE MASTERPIECES FROM THE TATE

National Gallery of Australia ...................................................................

SEASON 2 - PREVIEW

Deep Trouble ..........................................................................................

MR TODD GOES TO FLORENCE

Inga Walton .............................................................................................

HIGHWAY BODIES: ALISON EVANS

Social Work .............................................................................................

FEBRUARY SALON

Freaking Sweet ........................................................................................

THE QUEEN MUST DIE!

Ben Laycock ...........................................................................................

02 15 16 24 28 42

COVER: Lucas IHLEIN, Kim WILLIAMS, and community collaborators, Legumes growing at the Mackay Regional Botanic Gardens, April 2018 (detail). Photo by Jac Kotze. Image courtesy of the artist and Watershed Land Art Project. Shapes of Knowledge, MUMA, Monash University Museum, Ground Floor, Building F, Monash University, Caulfield Campus, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East (VIC), 9 February – Saturday 13 April 2019 monash.edu/muma Issue 164 FEBRUARY 2019 trouble is an independent monthly mag for promotion of arts and culture Published by Trouble Magazine Pty Ltd. ISSN 1449-3926 EDITOR Steve Proposch CONTRIBUTORS Dr Mark Halloran, Inga Walton, Ben Laycock, love.

FOLLOW on issuu, facebook & twitter SUBSCRIBE at troublemag.com READER ADVICE: Trouble magazine contains artistic content that may include nudity, adult concepts, coarse language, and the names, images or artworks of deceased Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. Treat Trouble intelligently, as you expect to be treated by others. Collect or dispose of thoughtfully.

DIS IS DE DISCLAIMER! The views and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the publisher. To the best of our knowledge all details in this magazine were correct at the time of publication. The publisher does not accept responsibility for errors or omissions. All content in this publication is copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without prior permission of the publisher. Trouble is distributed online from the first of every month of publication but accepts no responsibility for any inconvenience or financial loss in the event of delays. Phew!

Season 2 - PREVIEW with Dr Mark Halloran

PODCAST

In Season 2 Deep Trouble gets deeper. First we meet the impressive Benjamin Gilmour to talk about his Academy Award nominated film Jirga. Originally scheduled to

shoot in Pakistan, Ben and his small crew were forced to re-locate after the Pakistan Secret Service blocked production. In Afghanistan the filmmakers found themselves in a very real location, with very real people, and set about filming guerilla-style, with hand held cameras and untrained actors, some of whom were ex-Taliban fighters themselves. Next we grope around in the deep, dark waters of the internet with moral philosopher Dean Cocking, talking about his book, Evil Online (Wiley Blackwell, 2018). Then Prof Mehmet Olzap comes in to talk about the history and philosophy of Islam; Professor Jenny Graves tells us of the evolution of the ‘gay’ gene and the genetics of transgenderism; Anglican priest and director of Christians in Science, Dr Rev Chris Mulhein, has a great chat as regards the philosophy of science and climate change. Whew! Are you tired yet? We still have Julian Schnabel, director of the Vincent Van Gogh biopic At Eternity’s Gate, plus the delightful author Carmel Bird coming in. We have covered some bases, haven’t we?

Deep Trouble Season 2 rolls in March/April 2019. Listen to all of the Deep Trouble interviews we’ve run to date at troublemag.com or look for us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Mixcloud, etc.

MR

TODD

GOES TO FLORENCE

by Inga Walton

> Geoff TODD, Forest 2009, acrylic on canvas, 168 x 183 cm.

Collection Peter Kelly, Melbourne.

Trouble congratulates Geoff Todd on his appointment as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Australia Day Honours list for “significant service to the visual arts as an artist and sculptor”. We published a version of this story a decade ago in BIG Trouble issue 64, December 2009/January 2010.

“Because of my nature, my expectations are rather low!”

In the cavernous rooms of what was once the old Terminus Hotel in Ararat, renowned artist Geoff Todd has been completing three large-scale works in time for them to embark on a protracted and expensive journey to Florence. “I think to accept an invitation one should give the exhibition a serious go and be seen for real, represented by major pieces that really do reflect the artist’s oeuvre.

This can cause a few logistical problems – not the least being that the paintings have to be freighted stretched,” he remarks dryly.

Todd was one of a dozen Australian artists selected for the seventh Biennale Internazionale dell’Arte Contemporanea di Firenze in 2009, when this interview took place. “My connection with Italy began with the solo exhibition L’amore della figura (1998), at Museo dei Bozzetti, Tuscany,” says Todd, “organised by Professor Guiseppe Cordoni. I am assuming that this may have attracted the attention of the jury deciding on which artists to invite to the Biennale this year. There seems to be a distinct Asian focus as well, with major artists from China as the main exhibitors. My long association with Indonesia and exhibiting regularly there, in Hong Kong and in Singapore may also have influenced the selection panel.”

While the organisers of arts events at this level no doubt want to look as inclusive as possible, for artists in the Australasian region participation requires a substantial logistical investment and a certain amount of fortitude. “While the realities of our technological world and the internet offers much, and is assuredly partly responsible for me being noticed, it also creates anxieties,” Todd believes. “Because of my nature, my expectations are rather low! On the one hand we can see a huge art exhibition of a particularly high standard being mounted, but also (what I hope is) cynical argument about it online from some past or previously ignored artists. It can make one of shaky confidence, wondering if the Biennale is little more than just another ‘Art Fair’,” he admits.

Mr Todd Goes to Florence / Inga Walton

“I am, however, keen to find positive elements in the Biennale, and will be heading over to Florence to make the most of the experience. David Hockney, Christo and most recently Gilbert & George have been major exhibitors in the past, so I assume some level of artistic rigor is there.”

Since his début in 1969, Todd has held over one hundred solo exhibitions throughout Australia and further afield to England, Austria, and France, with countless invitational and group shows. The abiding preoccupations within his practice are landscape and female form. For Todd, the landscape – whether it be the baking heat of the Northern Territory, or the tropical humidity of Southeast Asia – acts as a framework for cultural exploration and mutual understanding. The female figure, in its many guises, is a potent and mysterious representation of shared humanity, commonality of experience, and the life force. In his works, the figure is not divorced from the landscape, as if it was some sort of imposed or transient entity, but exists as an integral part of it.

“I see the landscape as always sensuous, sometimes erotic, but most of all liberating, even in its many extremes. These qualities stimulate creative thought ... essentially the honesty of earth and sky allows me to think without boundaries,” Todd observes.

Todd is also known for the strong focus on social justice and activism which permeates his work, whether it be the perceptive and ongoing studies of indigenous communities, Collateral Damage (2004-05), which focused on displaced persons and civilian victims of conflict, a tribute to Australian VC winners (1995), and the bullet-ridden Floral Tributes (2007) series, which commemorated Australian war dead. Todd’s controversial ‘blood paintings’ (2001) were a response to the September 11 attacks. They consisted of a suite of nude women holding infants and young children – otherwise tender maternal scenes – depicted in his own blood.

“This touches on a point that occupies my thinking a lot, the obligation of the artist to reflect on or respond to the times. An artist needs to be moved sufficiently to do something,” Todd maintains. “It really must be an internal ‘burst’ to be effective for the artist, the driving force. I find myself outraged by an issue and immediately set to work with this

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inspired conviction. Having done these works at a time of extraordinarily high energy and stimulus, I then don’t know what to do with them when finished.”

A lengthy friendship with the QC representing convicted drug trafficker Scott Rush led to Todd travelling to Bali’s Kerobokan Prison in 2008, where he was permitted to paint and draw Rush with his Nigerian cellmate, Emmanuel Ihejirika. “My sadness in coming to terms with the ambience of the death tower environment was overwhelming, but the spirit of these two boys was inspirational,” Todd recalls. “Scott and I discovered a mutual interest in art, especially drawing. He has an eye toward cartooning, and together we discussed ideas and medium. I see the ‘Death Sentence’ works as a tribute, one that will perhaps inspire Scott’s artwork, once he is given a (hoped for) reprieve from the firing squad.”

In tackling such emotive and ‘raw nerve’ issues there is always a dilemma that the work might be viewed as exploitative. “Within my heart I know there is no contrivance, chasing controversy or seeking attention, but I am not sure how one can avoid this misinterpretation being made quite often in the public arena,” Todd laments. “I would by very hurt if the works were ever dismissed as a (media) stunt, so usually I hide them at home and in my work spaces, and regretfully admit a sort of defeat in terms of displaying them to the outside world.”

Maintaining the focus and vitality evident in his work is a process for which Todd deliberately seeks isolation, eschews trends, and divorces himself from the often self-referential concerns of the ‘arts industry’. “I’m forever grateful for those meditative years in Arnhem Land,” he concurs.

“They freed me from much of the pressure and a lot of the shackles that tend to harness artists in the mainstream art and gallery scene.”

Todd’s immersion in the Territory environment stretches back to 1984, and his time as a craft adviser in Maningrida. “I found the contrast in culture and landscape to inner Melbourne arresting in the most positive and inspirational way,” he remembers. “This led to a freedom and acknowledgement from within me that artistic work is entirely about inspiration, not about trends, design or marketing.” > Geoff TODD, Morning, Rainbow Valley 2008 oil on canvas, 111 x 91 cm. (Private Collection, Sydney).

Mr Todd Goes to Florence / Inga Walton

“You have to be in the landscape to feel, sense, and understand that it surrounds you on a visceral level.”

Integral to Todd’s artistic process are the long stretches of absorption and solitude, driving and painting, furthering his personal connection with the landscape. “I need that time alone, I drive for hours with no music or radio. I was in Arnhem Land working with an Aboriginal guy, Charlie Godjuwa, and he showed me how the landscape is music on long drives: with rhythm, variation, notes, harmonies, a beat. No one needs or wants any other distraction in the vehicle once this is understood.”

Working en plein air provides a necessary haptic resonance. “Sometimes I like to work with the unstretched canvas flat on the ground and pick up the texture,” Todd explains. “You have to be in the landscape to feel, sense, and understand that it surrounds you on a visceral level.” Todd has recently secured a permanent warehouse/workroom in Darwin to better facilitate his outback pilgrimages. “One’s space is so important and to have two of them, separated by 4000 kms of open landscape, is just what I need.

I can drive alone and arrive at either end inspired and ready to work!”

Biennale di Firenze: Spadolini Hall, The Fortezza da Basso, 5-13 December, 2009 - florencebiennale.org | Geoff Todd (AM) - geofftodd.com

> Geoff TODD, White Bahinia and Lilies 2008, acrylic and aluminium leaf on canvas, 152 x 92 cm. Collection Suzanne & Peter McGrath, New South Wales.

Mr Todd Goes to Florence / Inga Walton

HIGHWAY BODIES SOCIAL WORK WITH ALISON EVANS

WHEN ALISON EVANS WAS TEN YEARS OLD they deliberately ran through a puddle of mud to get dirty, and were told by their cousin: “Girls don’t do that – boys don’t even do that.” “Yes, that’s me,” thought Alison1, who now remembers the moment as their first glimpse into understanding their gender.

That understanding has come a long way since those days. Alison Evans now identifies as nonbinary, is co-editor of Concrete Queers, and their first novel, Ida (Echo, January 2017), was the winner of the People’s Choice at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. They have just released their second novel, Highway Bodies (Echo, February 2019), which is a YA Zombie novel that has been neatly described as “a very Australian apocalypse.”2 ‘Are we still doing zombies? Really?’ I hear you ask. Yes, of course we are still doing zombies, I answer, because zombies are so endlessly semiotic. They represent the great fear and desire in us all for the undoing of society’s fabric. They remind us of humanity’s inhumanity, our enormous capacity for violence and ignorance, yet they are not evil3. They are merely mindless, vacant, unintelligible killing and eating machines who, as a community, have taken the lives of many of your loved ones. They are war, poverty, sickness and greed all rolled ito one, and they are good gory fun to kill.

The cool and interesting thing about Highway Bodies is not that it’s an articulate and intelligent read for teens, but that it’s themes are eloquently realised. The characters feel real enough that they can explore issues of gender, or nongender, in a natural way, informed by contemporary queer theory, without surrendering to force. This minority and somewhat politically charged approach to characterisation has a surprisingly strong place in the horror tradition.

FOOTNOTES: 1. My gender didn’t exist in fiction when I was growing up – so I wrote myself into existence, Alison Evans, The Guardian 28/02/17 - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/28/my-gender-didnt-exist-in-fictionwhen-i-was-growing-up-so-i-wrote-myself-into-existence | 2. Marlee Jane Ward | 3. For further discussion of the symbolism of zombies see Zombies in Western Culture, John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro, Filip Miscevic (Open Book Publishers, https://books.openedition.org/obp/4255)

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Which member of your family influenced you the most?

A.E. My mum – she is hard working, resilient, strong, and so funny.

How similar are your political beliefs to those of your family?

A.E. I feel they’re mostly the same.

How do your values differ from those of your family?

A.E. I think I am more aware of queer issues but that is more an awareness thing rather than a values thing.

What do you think is your main purpose in life?

A.E. I want to make the world a bit kinder, a bit softer.

Do you think its ok to lie?

A.E. I think it depends on the context.

Do you think things happen for a reason?

“How do people react when everything they know is gone?”

A.E. Not sure how I feel about this really.

Sometimes I do, but most of the time I just think things are chance and luck.

What beliefs do you have that you think will never change?

A.E. I don’t like to think of things as unchanging. I think it’s important to never get complacent in what you believe and always question everything.

Have you ever come close to dying?

A.E. Not as far as I’m aware!

Alison Evans / Social Work

What do you like the best about your body?

A.E. It is how I experience the world, without it I wouldn’t be able to drink coffee or read a book or take a walk in the bush.

Who is the best teacher you have ever had?

A.E. Too many to list – the primary school teacher who was incredibly passionate about storytelling, the librarians who showed me the best books, the high school teachers who showed me how to write, and how not to write.

Have you ever been lost?

A.E. Constantly.

Why Zombies?

A.E. They’re really an excuse to think about society in general. How the world was before the outbreak, and if characters want to go back to the world, or make something better. How do people react when everything they know is gone? I like to explore stuff like that.

Name your favourite bad movie and why?

A.E. Robot Monster. It’s very silly, and very sincere.

Describe how you identify. What is the best thing about that identity?

A.E. I’m a non-binary bi person. The best thing about my identity is meeting all the other people who share it.

What do you hope for?

A.E. I’m not sure. I would like to be published overseas, I think that would be very fun.

What is stopping you?

A.E. Lots of things: depression, anxiety, being low income, never having enough time. I guess I depends on the particular thing that is being stopped.

Highway Bodies by Alison Evans (Echo $19.99) - alisonwritesthings.com - concretequeers.com

february salon

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Rosalind ATKINS and eX DE MEDICI, Lake Mungo 2017-18, engraved and etched copper, 1/6, 76 x 112.5cm, (c) Image courtesy of Art Vault and the artists. Australian Print Triennial Mungo Exhibition, La Trobe Art Institute, 121 View Street, Bendigo (VIC), until 23 February 2019 - latrobe.edu.au/art-institute ABOVE: Annemieke MEIN, Untitled [Water Dragon], 1979, Textile, 115 x 132cm, Private Collection. Annemieke Mein: New Exhibition, Gippsland Art Gallery, Wellington Centre, 70 Foster Street Sale (VIC), 26 January – 21 July 2019 - gippslandartgallery.com RIGHT: William KENTRIDGE, South Africa, born 1955, The Hope in the Charcoal Cloud 2014, Johannesburg, charcoal, coloured pencil, Indian ink, digital print, and watercolour on pages of Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 160.0 x 120.0 cm; Collection of Naomi Milgrom AO, Š William Kentridge, photo: Christian Capurro. William Kentridge: That which we do not remember, Art Gallery of South Australia, North Terrace, Adelaide (SA), dates TBC, July 2019 - agsa.sa.gov.au

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Mulkun Wirrpanda, Milkarri Recording 2013. Image courtesy of The Mulka Project. The Mulka Project is a digital library and production centre located in Yirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land. It exists as part of the community’s art centre Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre, facilitating the production of audio-visual material and new-media artwork, along with repatriating valuable artworks, texts, images, sounds and videos of Yolngu culture that are stored in museums, art galleries, libraries and universities in Australia and around the world. The artists will be in Melbourne to discuss this unique program. Shapes of Knowledge, MUMA, Monash University Museum, Ground Floor, Building F, Monash University, Caulfield Campus, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East (VIC), 9 February – Saturday 13 April 2019 - monash.edu/muma BELOW & RIGHT: Lisa WALKER, She wants to go to her bedroom but she can’t be bothered, RMIT Design Hub Project Rooms 1 + 2, Level 2, Building 100, RMIT University, corner Victoria and Swanston Streets, Carlton, 29 January – 4 May 2019 - designhub.rmit.edu.au

february salon

PREVIOUS TWO SPREADS: Daniel VON STURMER, Cataract 2019 (installation view). Photography: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery. CATARACT is an innovative new work, constructed of a 9x9 grid of screens that play a series of 81 short videos, capturing small scale ‘events’ in the world. Recorded with an iPhone and featuring a combination of impromptu recordings (as found), with other studio based, (staged) scenarios, the work will present a dynamic array of moments documenting everyday physical processes and occurrences.

Featuring a combination of impromptu recordings and staged scenarios, the work will present a dynamic array of moments that document everyday physical processes and occurrences: spinning, falling, breaking, burning, growing, slowing, starting, stopping - the world is full of happenings, but it is only through selective attention that meaning is found. Anna Schwartz Gallery, 185 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (VIC), 2 February – 26 March 2019 - annaschwartzgallery.com THIS SPREAD: Robbie ROWLANDS, Incremental Loss. Front desk and ceiling cut, Former Union Bank, The National Centre for Photography Residency, 2019. Robbie Rowlands is represented by Blackartprojects. Incremental Loss, commissioned by the Ballarat International Foto Biennale, National Centre For Photography, Mitchell Family Gallery. 4 Lydiard Street South, Ballarat (VIC), 24 February – 10 March 2019 - ballaratfoto.org

february salon

THE

QUEEN

MUST

DIE!

An Australia Day Reflection

by Ben Laycock

I DON’T CELEBRATE AUSTRALIA DAY, because l am a traditionalist. The blackfellas have a long tradition of not celebrating Australia Day, dating back many thousands of years.

It is this ancient tradition that l uphold.

As you may well know, one of our venerable Prime Ministers was an avowed republican, but he vowed to wait for our venerable queen to die of old age before he set about the long and arduous task of establishing The Republic of Australia. While this was very sensitive of him, it could mean we are in for a long wait. Apart from the occasional sniffle she is in rude good health. Many of us may die of old age ourselves before our cherished republic comes to fruition.

She could do us all a favor and abdicate, but she is a bit worried about her darling Prince Charles. Rumor has it he is a bit flakey, always banging on about organic vegetables and renewable energy and hippy shit like that. He could very well declare a republic himself if we’re not careful.

But when she dies, as surely she eventually must, we must be ready to grasp the nettle. Let’s face it, this place needs a total makeover, root and branch.

1. A new date for Oz Day, that doesn’t offend the blackfellas. l suggest May 8 – pronounced ‘maaate’, or even better, the day we declare a bloody republic.

2. A new National Anthem that at least mentions the said blackfellas. l would suggest Waltzing Matilda, but standing on the podium at the Olympics and breaking into a song about a vagabond committing suicide because he was caught inflagranto dilecto with his favourite sheep would make us the laughing stock of the entire world (if we are not already).

3. A new National Flag that includes a blackfella and a kelpie and no union jacks.

4. A strong constitution, because you need a very strong constitution to stomach some of the shenanigans of our national parliament.

5. A Republic, based on true Australian values like barracking for the underdog, because let’s face it, we are a nation of losers and proud of it:

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• • • • • • • • •

The Blackfellas were decimated The convicts were flogged The Eureka Stockade was a massacre Ned Kelly was hung Gallipoli was a disaster The Tazzie Tiger was exterminated Phar Lap was poisoned Gough Whitlam was sacked But we’re still rooting for them all, aren’t we? You bet we are!

We are like an old FJ Holden, limping along on 3 cylinders and spewing out black smoke. We don’t just need a grease lube and oil change, we need to recondition the entire engine, and bog up all the rust, and give her a new paint job (green and gold of course, or should that be black & gold?).

So if Oz Day is destined to be more than an excuse for a piss up and a piss take, it is timely to nail down just what it is Australian Culture? Does it even exist?

And while we are at it, what is culture anyway? Maybe it’s easier to define what isn’t culture. Bar-B-Qs, fishing, surfing, taking the piss, wearing thongs on your feet instead of your crotch, playing sport, this is a way of life, but it isn’t culture.

In fact it could be argued that playing sport is what you do when you have no culture. The Greeks don’t run around all weekend getting skin cancer and acquired brain injuries, do they? No, they have weddings, really big weddings where they sit around inventing democracy and philosophy and shit like that.

The Italians, ditto, more weddings, where they sit around eating pasta made with tomatoes grown in polystyrene boxes in the front yard. The Lebanese have endless weddings, where they sit around inventing cumbers with edible skins.

Culture grows out of the land we live in, much like yogurt. Most of us here in this nascent nation haven’t been here long enough to create a culture, so maybe we should look to those who have, the local blackfellas. We may just find we have a lot more in common than we thought, such as camping. According to the stats, we are the most urbanized society ever invented, huddled together like ginea pigs, clinging as close to the edge of this vast continent as we can possibly get, starring longingly out to sea. But we do love the great outdoors, don’t we? You bet we do! Learned anthropologists have postulated that this is quite possibly due in large part to the influence of the locals, they call them ‘aborigines’. These so-called Aborigines love nothing better than going camping, in fact their entire ‘life-style-choice’ is designed around the ability to pull up stumps and ‘go walk about’. No need to work overtime all year round The Queen Must Die! / Ben Laycock

to afford the airfare and the hotel and the restaurants and the exotic trinkets.

Imagine the freedom of waking up one morning, any morning, grabbing your hunting gear and heading out on an adventure. No 20 kilo packs to lug, food and lodging provided as need be, and when you arrive your relies cook up a mouth-watering feast and put on a real song and dance to knock your socks off.

So we can see that the vagaries of the local climate dictate a nomadic lifestyle, including a life of feast & famine. None of this toiling all season and salting it away for the winter, to be nibbled one morsel at a time. When there was food you ate it all, when there was none, you went hungry. This life of feast & famine is yet another custom adopted and adapted from the locals. With the subtle difference that we have forgone the traditional famine bit, preferring instead, to feast pretty well constantly. In turn we have taught this recent adaptation to the blackfellas, with obvious consequences.

We can see that all true culture is shaped by our surroundings, and the elements of our surroundings that are unique is what will make us, in time unique. The unique climate created by the oscillations of El Nino have created a culture based on camping and partying (safe in the knowledge that it probably wont rain much for at least another few years.)

So what are some other unique aspects of the nature of our nature that is nurturing the unique nature of us?

Well, the place is very flat and very dry and very empty, (having decimated what few inhabitants there were) hence we have large cow farms that sport drovers with RM Williams boots and hats and a kelpie by their side, and feisty women who can ride a bloody horse and crack a whip.

We have more beaches per head than anywhere else except Canada, but most of theirs are frozen solid all year round (know anyone going on a surfing trip to Canada? No, l didn’t think so) Thus has given birth to the surfing lifestyle – driving old Volvos, smoking bongs and eating junk food, getting up early to check the waves before going back to bed, roaming around the country in semi-nomadic fashion (just like the locals) Fishing – Many of you may remember that oft quoted saying from the great Mao Tse Tung himself, that was drummed into us all throughout grade 3 Political History: “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day- teach a man to fish and he will spend every second weekend with his mate, sitting in a dingy

4

in the middle of a lake, getting quietly sozzled. It is a well kept secret that the fish are of secondary importance and it is actually all about contemplating the awesome beauty of the natural world. (the Japanese have a special word for this; ‘shinrinyoku’ – forest bathing) Alas and alak, these embryonic cultural practices have begun to die out before they are fully formed. As we speak they are being guzzumped by new cultural practices like Instagram. (my friend Alex says we should start Consider-agram, where every comment has a 24 hour delay before it can be posted.

In Consider-a-gram it is a real no-no to boast about the great fun you are having, as it tends to have a deleterious effect on those not having an orgasmic experience every five minutes. In Consider-A-Gram we like to post about the truly boring time we are having so no one gets jealous.)

Yet another unique aspect of our way of life generated by the vast emptiness that engulfs us (literally as well as metaphorically) is immigration, immigration on a vast scale. We currently import more people per head than any other country on earth. (not counting refugees of course, because they don’t count).

We may not be the most multi-cultural nation on the planet but we can argue The Queen Must Die! / Ben Laycock

that we are the most successful at it. (Just look at The U.S.A. – now referred to as the D.S.A.) We may be lacking in culture but we are not lacking in cultural choice. This has made us a nation of foodies. A whole new growth industry of people who get very well paid to eat food and talk about it while we watch.

(Back In my day if we uttered a single syllable at the dinner table we got a whack in the earhole.)

So to be an Australian is to be into eating food, strange, exotic food.

We are big eaters, now officially the biggest in the world.

The more we look, the more aspects of our way of life we find that are really quite unique and special, and the deeper we look, we see that these things have sprung from our unique geography. So to sum up l would venture to say that culture is a product of the interaction between geography and time, but most of us have not yet spent enough time here to acquire culture, nor have we spent enough time interacting with our geography or learning from those who have.

Ben Laycock 2019