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Scholarships available for Two 1995 Summer Sessions persons in church ministry June 19-July 7 (Mornings) Experience of God - Francis Smith, S.J. Call or write Christian Women Yesterday and Today - Regina Coli, C.S.J. Rita Claire Dorner, O.P. Liturgy and Music - Michael Joncas, Ph.D. Bannan Hall 339 Presiding at Prayer- John Buscemi Santa Clara University July 10- July 28 (Mornings) Santa Clara Ministry for Peace and Justice - Jon Sobrino, S.J. California 95053 USA Music Skills for Liturgical Musicians - Fred Moleck, Ph.D 408/554-4831 Christian Mystics: Julian, Catherine, and Teresa - Carmina Chapa FAX 408/554-2387 June 19-July 28 (Evenings) Application deadline Synoptic Gospels - Rev. Gerard Sloyan May26, 1995 Spiritual Direction- Pamela Bjorklund, Ph.D. Keyboard Improvisation for Liturgy- Fred Moleck, Ph.D.
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CoNTENTS
4 COMMENT 23 Peter Steele on Christmas in cities, sacred IN MEMORIAM and secular; Pamela Foulkes on m eddling Andrew Stark and Michael McGirr with the language of the lectionary (p6) . remember a face from Sydney's streets. FANFARE 7 24 CAPITAL LETTER THE YOUNG ONES Jon Greenaway asks some Young Liberals 8 about their party's future. LETTERS 27 10 SHAVING DR GRACE'S BEARD CAPE OF DOUBTFUL HOPE Australian women cricketers talk to Tim Jim Davidson finds some of the old Cape Stoney about their hopes of raising the Town in the new South Africa. profile of their sport.
Eureka Street's 13 29 Production editor, Ray Cassin, ARCHIMEDES QUIXOTE has won the 1994 Wall A magazine of public affairs, the arts PETER STEELE and theology Publisher Michael Kelly SJ Editor Morag Fraser You never lznow Production editor Ray Cassin Consulting editor Michael McGirr SJ your luck in Editorial assistant: Jon Greenaway Production assistants: J. Ben Boonen CFC, John Doyle SJ, Juliette Hughes, Siobhan Jackson, Chris Jenkins SJ. a big city Contributing editors Adelaide: Greg O'Kelly SJ Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ Perth: Dean Moore Sydney: Edmund Campion, Andrew Riemer, A n'" THC R>CCNT Rceu,UCAN o 4 EUREKA STREET • DECEMBER 1994 which it has been modelled. In the distance, National Kansas City had only two automobiles, they contrived Airport, from which planes gun up with a manic con to m eet and have a collision: cities do that for you, as stancy that suggests a battle zone, but which is really well as provide the wherewithal for clearing up the the playing out of the local hunger for mobility. At m ess. As you read this, the betting is that at least half an arc from the airport, the Pentagon: and conven a dozen celebrated cities in various quarters of the iently close to it, Arlington Cemetery. Something, so world will be coming up both with triumphs of hu to speak, for everyone. man intelligence and moral vitality and with yet more Which is, I suppose, much of the point not only violations of elementary hope: we will be, once m ore, of this city, but of them all. The archaeologist ferret both in the black and in the red. The mildest brood ing away at the earthed-in corridors of Pompeii or Troy ing on the physical scene in Wa hington m akes for or Jericho is going to find any amount of material reminders of this fact. Warrnakers and peacemakers specific to that spot, but what they all stand for is the sit at adjoining tables in restaurants: the abundant human appetite for variety, museums are shrines of re for options. The city itself is, trieved stability and of inces we have hoped for thousands sa nt chan ge: black mayor of years, a bazaar of alterna splits the photo space in the tives. The preferred yield may newspapers with white pres be quite palpable-brighter ident: outside the glitzed woollens, m ore succulent mall, Georgetown Park, rag peppers-or less tangible-the ged beggars shake their paper flux of opinions, the repertoire cups in front of the bustling of procedures; and access to and well-heeled. this cornucopia i usually reg To all seeming, Christ ulated by many considera mas here will be gone in a tions, som e named and som e welter of materialistic thea not. T he wrong pigm entation, t_re- as if Jesus had a sibling, the wrong accent, the wrong who was a Barbie Doll. I shall cut of one's clothes, the wrong be glad to be elsewhere when distribution of genetic mate this happens. Still, the harsh rial, and streets become cul nesses which will no doubt de-sacs, the m ost urgent fi nd a place in Washington, outbursts inaudible. But the the broil of one set of hopes dream of the city, its modell and hungers in competition ing in the mind before the rea l with other sets, are of course thing is attained or after it has been flooded, bombed the very mirror of the first Christian circumstances. or burned, is a dream of fully-engaged human capaci To be born away from home at the disposition of ty, fully encountered outreach, fully vindicated re an occupying power, and then harried under threat of fl ection. death into refugeedom is not a propitious way to be Hence all the hymns, secular and sacred, to real starting a flourishing life. To proceed from that point, or imagined cities: 'The last time I saw Paris', 'Chica first as a despised provincial, and then as a vexatious go, Chicago', 'Jerusalem my happy home', 'Arrivederci maverick, to the stage where the local authorities and Roma'-sentimentality blurs their reception, but a the military governor think it best to have you tor deep and necessary sentiment mobilises them in the tured to death in public doesn't sound like good train first place. It may or may not be true that 'the unex ing for getting into a Christmas carol. amined life is unliveable', but it is certainly true that As for the city itself, Jerusalem, it is already, in the altogether unenchanted life is unliveable. And the pre-Christian experience, both the oasis of the sacred city is the locus of enchantment. Scarred, filthy, un and the menace of prophets-the fertiliser and the just, tottering-even in extremis it is a kind of talis frustrater of hopes. It may be hard to get a 'proper' m an of human aspiration. Aeneas, fl eeing burning Christmas in Washington : it was damned Troy, carrying his father and trailing his son, is already hard to get one in Jerusalem. headed for the foundation of a successor-city-'The City' as the Romans immodestly called it. In Ameri M IND YOU, WHEN ONE THINKS of how cities either ca, there can be som ething irritating about the con serve hopes or subvert them , it is a good idea not to stant reference to 'our goal' and 'my goal': but to be take them too rapidly on their own terms. N ear the quite without goals is simply to be out of the human centre of Wa hington, the equestrian statues face, gam e. Cities house, and indeed themselves are, so loyally, towards the heart of government: across the many reminders of that fact. Potomac, in Virginia, the horses have a different ori If cities encompass avenues of opportunity, they entation. Alternative views are always possible. Au are also knots of intersections. When, years ago, den, musing on many upheavals of our time, wrote, VOLUME 4 N UMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 5 'It is the unimportant/who make all the din: both God Potomac will still be there, as it was before the blacks and the Accuser speak very softly.' As those words came north, before the Europeans came west, before make clear, just listening to still small voices is no the Amerindians came south. Whatever the shuffling perfect solution-what one may then hear is what on its banks, or on the Seine's, or on the Swan's, that Auden also called 'the oceanic whisper' which says, primal street, the stream, will go indifferently about 'there is no love; There are only the various envies, its business. It may be a reminder to ease back on all of them sad.' But among the repertoire of possibil self-absorption. The Republic of Solitude, after all, ities offered by life in the intricacy of cities is that of does not have much of a future. • having second thoughts. This can be the beginning, and for good, of conversion: but it is at least the first Peter Steele SJ has a personal chair in English at the step towards having ampler views. University of Melbourne. During 1994 he has been Whatever does happen in Washington, or ema visiting Professor at Georgetown University, Wash nates from it, at that deep-winter moment, the ington DC. COMMENT: 2 PAMELA FOULKES Minding our language All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability ... And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, rr because each one heard them speaking in their own language. - (Acts 2:4-6) .1. H E PENTECOST G IFT of hearing the Word of God being', rather than 'man', and the replacement of the in one's own language has been denied to the women exclusive term 'brothers' by the inclusive 'brothers of the Catholic Church by the Vatican's Congrega- and sisters' in the Pauline letters, where the apostle tion of the Doctrine of the Faith. Last month, the con- is clearly addressing a mixed congregation. gregation banned the use in liturgical and catechetical But are we not still hearing the word of God, texts of the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of regardless of the translation? For some women in the the Bible, because of its use of inclusive language. The Catholic Church, the answer to this question must decision came as a shock to bishops' conferences in now be 'no'. The Word of God is not just words on a English-speaking countries. The US bishops had ap- page but something that issues forth in action; this is proved the NRSV text for liturgical use in 1991, a de- the understanding expressed in the first creation story cision confirmed by the Congregation for Divine in Genesis, where God speaks and the world is formed. Worship and the Sacraments. The Canadian bishops The texts read each Sunday become God's word for published a lectionary using the translation in 1992, us as we incorporate them into our lives, when they and work has been proceeding on an NRSV lection- are not only heard but received. ary for Australia. That is why, down the centuries, people of The NRSV is the work of an ecumenical team of different cultures have translated the scriptures into scholars who had been charged with producing a trans- their own languages, so that they might speak direct- lation of the Bible reflecting recent advances in the ly to their particular experience. The ban on the NRSV study of the ancient languages. In other words, the denies women the right to hear the Word of God in NRSV represents the state of the art in biblical trans- language expressing their experience. Language both lation and the ban sets the Catholic Church outside describes and shapes the world, and if only mascu- mainstream scholarship. line language is used to mediate and describe the The translators, sensitive to the awareness of experience of the world and the divine, women have linguistic sexism in contemporary culture, also set no place in the liturgical assembly into which they out to remove the masculine bias of previous English were drawn by baptism. How can women celebrate a translations, which had in many cases restricted or liturgy that refuses to name themz obscured the meaning of the original texts. As well as I find myself thinking of a man standing by providing a more accurate translation, they used an empty tomb in a garden, who announced a inclusive language wherever it was historically and resurrection for all when he called a woman by her culturally appropriate. For example, the translation name (John 20:16). • of the Greek anthropos by the more accurate 'human -Pamela A. Foulkes 6 EUREKA STREET • D ECEMBER 1994 Where there's a Willis, there's a way to go 0 N THE SUUACE, the cont VoLUME 4 N uMilER 10 • EUREKA STREET 7 LETTERS Eureka Street welcomes letters but it is difficult to do this within a I accuse from its readers. Short letters arc community that denies their basic more likely to be published, and equality with m en. The real dilemma all letters 111 8 EUREKA STREET • DECEMBER 1994 significant that Jesus was human than president in 1989, there wa s a prevail that this course makes it easier for gov that he was male! ing sense that truth at last would pre ernments to impose a deli ti ona! taxa Sexi m, against which we protest vail. Under communism, many had to tion in the form of so-callecl 'dividends' and which is named as sinful in the live a double life, telling necessary li es necessitating higher ch arges for serv new Catechism of the Cath olic to survive. Havel's N ew Year's Day ices. Church, is aided and abetted within broadcast in 1990 commented on this John Legge (Th e Age, 18 August the Church. If decisions about who 'contaminated moral environment' in 1994) analyses shortcomings on the does what, and who decides what, are a m emorable and uplifting speech: technical side of the proposed break m ade on gender lines they are unjust 'My cl ea r fellow citizens, for forty up of the State El ectricity Commission and irrational. It is particularly diffi years you heard from my predecessors of Victoria, but he does not consider cult that God is enlisted on the male on this da y different variations of the the fact that two or more levels of prof side, when the Church teaches that same theme: how our country fl our it margin will be included in our pow God is neither male nor female! ished, h ow many million tons of steel er bills. The sa me will apply to water. We need open and honest dialogue. we produced, how happy we all were, Presumably Governments will ex tract The future of young women within the how we trusted our government, and high prices fo r the sa le of these Church is at stake. Indeed, the future what bright per pectives were unfold of our Church is at stake. ing in front of us. I assume you did not GOOV LORD! f\ CHR\S1~t\S T he Victorian Brigidinc Social propose m e for this office so that I, too, Action and Awareness Group would lie to you ... CARD IHA '1 ISI/'r MADE. ou-r Springvale N orth, Vl C The worst thing is that we live in Of RE-G'fCt.e.D PAPER, ANt> (Signed: Brigid Arthur, Marga ret Cass a contaminated moral environment. idy, Lo uise Clea ry, Ma rgaret Fyfe, We fell morall y ill because we became /)()£JW'1" ?t,RPOR.\ A Catherine Kelly, Gee! Lannan, Pat used to saying something different, not IHli V OLUME 4 N UMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 9 F o REIGN C o RR ESPONDENCE JI M DAVlDSON Cape of doubtful hope C '"' TowN " " 10 EUREKA STREET • D ECEMBER 1994 be seen buying a third-class ticket, goes' to m ea n 'she says' and 'he says' Africa during the first eight m onths and some blacks and Coloureds fr e is as common in Grahamstown as in of this year than in Russia or the quently travel fi rst-class. But all this Geelong. And even the old circum United States. Recently a m an was am ounts to a soft ening of the old locution 'bioscope' is now giving way stabbed to dea th in the short distance order, rather than its replacem ent. to 'movies'. In contemporary popular that lay between his car and the A good many whites still impute culture, the appeal of ancest ra l concert he was attending in the Town too much to the glow arising from England-still very much there fo r Hall. People find it expedien t to give their having yielded power with good older generations-is being displaced yo ung boys the money they ask for grace-some are surprised when you by the glitter of Am erica. when parking their cars, because if suggest that fu rther changes, real On e ch ange they don't, there's a good chance and symbolic, must be m ade. Bu t, as that has already they will return to the ca rs to find N elson Mandela wrote in the pre occurred is the them scratched or the tyres slashed. amble to the recently- released draft appearan ce of M os t p eople seem t o h ave Reconstruction Development Plan: white beggars. stories of thefts, burglaries 'Our people have elected us because T here are not or muggings. they want change. Change is what m any, but with they will get. ' The government is the govern SOME SAY THERE HAS BEEN a m ood committed to reducing the national m ent's imple shift since the beginning of the year, debt and to scaling down the public m enta tion of and perh aps th re has. Everyone service, so development for blacks affirm a ti ve knows that a nasty civil war was will depend on a redeploym ent of action there are narrowly averted, and most people existing resources. Whites have been bound t o b e realise that if the new South Africa promised that there will be no further more. Th e sys is going to succeed, then it is up to tax rises, but now that black town tem no longer everybody to m ake it do so. What is ships and white areas have been cossets feckless striking now is the old-fashioned amalga mated there will be som e w hi tes, as it courtesy people often extend to each dram atic shifts in spending. used to do with other. 'Pleasure', someone-of what Man y white South Africans have job reserva tion, which eff ecti vely ex ever community- will say when you perhaps not paid as much attention cluded blacks and Coloureds from thank them fo r inform ation over the to these harbingers of change as they competing for desirable jobs. Older phone. should have done. But then, they white South Afr icans- particularl y Given the relative brusqueness always tended to take things at a if they live in the towns, unchal of Australians in similar situations, gentle pace. In many respects South lenged by the day- to- day practical this led me to ponder the differences Afri ca is s till an old-fashioned ities of rural existence- often strike between multiculturalism in the two country. Religion rem ains an impor one as ineffectual, too accustomed cou ntri es. In tant pa rt of national life-most to having everything cl one for them. Australia, the African s profess som e variety of Encountering the retirees who recogni tion of Christianity-and the press duly ran a commendable charity to relieve diversity h as noted how the Sou th Afri can Broad distress in the black townsh ips, I been encour casting Corporation was reallocating was struck by how easil y they were aged in order its 'Gocl slots'. Many whites dress flummoxed. A request fo r a receipt to ease t h e very pl ai nl y; the m en, despite the for books bough t threw a couple of acceptan ce of hot climate, generally regard hats as them into a fl ap; I ended up writing migrants by the an affectation, and wearing one it myself. Then they had no idea as majority com singles yo u out as a tourist. Many to whether the Post Office sold pack munity; up to a people sm oke, or have 'pudding' with ages or not- m y ringing up to find point, this leg their m eals. Bu t thi s is also a country out was a radical departure. M ean itimates seg of residual sternnesses. Fa thers can w h i le a woma n con tinu ed to mentation. But make arbi trary wills, and go unchal demon stra te her h elpfulness by apartheid gave lenged; condoms in jails are unthink fetching cartons that were three Sou th Africans able. quarters complete. Com pared with a gu tful of any The very accent of English Sou th t h is, t h e you ng are relatively kind of separa- Africa upholds an old order, its resourceful. A group hangi ng about a tism, and ener fractured Edwarclianism eliciting the s uburban caravan park hassl e gy now flows from a coming together. genteel fro m women and a kind of passersby for money, and- being Again, nearly all the cultures of South verbal stru t from the men. But this, hip- try to sell key rings bearing the Africa draw confidence from being at least, is now changing. The young, new South African flag. basic elements in the configuration probably because of the infl uence of T here has been a steady increase of the country (except perhaps new television, are as flu ent in boon in crime rates du ring the past few er communities, such as the Portu speak as their contemporaries any yea rs. Proportionally, many more guese). So to an Australian eye South where: t he use 'she goes' and 'he people were murdered in Sou th Africa seems to be exemplifying V OLUM E 4 NUMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 11 cross-culturalism, rather than mul as the ANC, but this does not pre real for the Coloureds, as for right ticulturalism as we understand it. vent keen point-scoring in debating. wing Afrika ners, is the swarL gevaar, N owhere is this pla in er than A former Education Minister, Piet the danger from the blacks. Others, when watching the South African Marais, asked som e questions of the too, arc flocking to the Cape for that Parliament in session. It is an present minister, Sibusiso Bcngu, very reason: it has always been a extraordinary assembly: one or two about the lack of clear planning place of retirem ent, but now those Cape Ma lays in their w hite caps, (a fair question, executives who can move about arc dignified Zulu men w ith knobbly, one gathers); he beginning to settle there, pushing up polished ebony faces, Natal Indians, was immedi land prices. (Cape Town already has African women dressed flamboyant ately counter the highest inflation in the country, ly in contemporary style and bril eel by a refer and the world's twitchiest taxi liant colours, together with a swathe ence to the in meters.) of Afrikaner Nationalists, ca pped by iquitous legacy It's no t urprising that the re the shock of white hair of General of the former should be an undercurrent of tension Constand Vi ljoen, a (respected ) regime, to ap in Cape Town, and that it should emissary of the right, rigidly sitting plause from the spasmodically erupt. In the one week there in a s tate of coiled ANC benches. I was there late in October, Pan alertness. In a trice the Africanist Congress student activ Speaker, magis ists greeted the 18-ycar sentences YOU REA C H FOR A HANDSET tOtr ans terial in her for the murderers of the idealistic late when people are speaking in blue sari, called yo ung America n Amy Biehl with Afrikaans, as many whites do, or in the house to cries of 'One settler, one bullet''; the any of the African languages. The order. A tight University of C 12 EUREKA STREET • D ECEMBER 1994 side economics can be and are being paraded as another form of libertari anism. 'Create jobs, end restrictions', s >VffiAC m·: ~~~ :!:~=~i~/a ~~ ~:~: evo[otion-., says a large billboard near New lands technology evolves, people lose their skills. They argue, for instance, that television station. 'Stop unfair tobacco l gisla has been responsible for a demise in reading and conversation, that recorded music tion. We want freedom of commer has taken the place of music making and that the telephone has stifled the art of cial speech .' writing letters. Reverse evolution or not, the only thing about which Archimedes Managerialism, with its heart is sure is that technology regularly makes monkeys out of most who try to predict less capacity to reduce everything to its course. itself, could do untold damage in Take letter writing. A decade ago, it seemed self-evident that the teleph one South Africa. Years ago, when visit would triumph over the postal system. Why go to all the effort of writing a letter, ing a farm in the Eastern Cape, I was putting it into an envelope, finding a stamp, and trudging down to the local astonished by the primitive dairy: letterbox, when you can Wt the telephone receiver and be talking to your corre 20 cows were being milked by hand. spondent within seconds? It was soon explained to m e that But therein lies a paradox. Because, far from m aking letter writing redundant, m ech anisa tion technology has led to its rebirth as probably the fa stest growing form of communi had not taken cation in the world. We just call it by a different name-electronic m ail, or e-mail, place because if which allows one to write and store a letter on computer. That electronic m essage it had, 18 peo can then be sent through the international telephone system to another computer, ple would be which will hold it for collection. To collect e-mail, the recipient m erely connects o ut of work. to the computer by telephone and asks to see any incoming m essages. G i ven South But knowing how e-mail works does not explain why it has becom e so popular. Africa's current Despite the excited boosterism of addicted users, one would have su spected e-mail economic prob was devoid of the best features of both telephone and mail- it does not give user lem s, and the the immediacy of a telephone conversation or the solidity and permanency of a contagion of letter. At least that's what Archimedes thought until driven to u se e-mail to keep this diste mper in touch with a globetrotting spouse. of the righ t, Hidden and unforeseen advantages of e-mail began to reveal themselves. For a managerialism start, e-mail tames the time zone. Archimedes finds international phone calls in the name of fundamentally unsatisfying. It is because the people on either end of the phone are efficiency could on different time schedules. There is never a convenient time to ring. If you ring in push unem the midst of the morning hustle to get to work, chances are the person at the other pl oym ent lev- has just put the cares of the world away and settled down with an evening drink. els even higher Under these conditions communication becomes stilted and irritable. Each is forced than the current 40 per cent. to face family or business issues at a time which is inappropriate psychologically. The one bright light is that priva E-mail avoids that. It allows you to communicate on your own terms. You can tisa tion might m ean empowerment choose when in the day you want to think about a particular issue. The m essage you of Africans. If that starts to happen, send arrives almost instanteously and awaits an answer, without intruding at the as surely it mu t, then many whites wrong time. What's rnore, putting what you have to say in writing m eans you have will begin to feel ev n more cast to think about it more, and distil the essence. It also m eans you can build your aside than they do today . • m essage slowly, as ideas come to you. Although e-mail is not free (except to those subsidised by their employers, such Jim Davidson teaches humanities as academics), it is a cheap form of communication- cheaper than telephone and at the Victoria University of even mail. That gives scope to use it for triviality as well as weighty matters of Technology . His Lyrebird Rising, a policy. It also m eans there is no financial pressure to write more than a few lines at study of Louise Hanson -D yer of a time. L'Oiseau Lyre, won the Victorian Finally, e-m ail is a footpath that leads gently to the 'information superhighway'. Premier's Literary Award for non Once you can navigate through the gateways and connections involved in commu fiction for 1994. nication by e-m ail, you are ready to reach out and grasp information from anywhere in the world. And as you do so, you will discover a cyber world of letter writing not letter writing as a 19th century craft, but letter writing in the language of the Counselling 2 1 t century. There are strange messages posted on bulletin boards, scientific and If you, or someone yo u kn ow, could literary journals that only exist i11 electronic fo rm, and conferences or even games benefit from conf idential profess of ch ess that you can tap into. This column is just about to be sent off via e-mail, ional coun sellin g, pl ease phone too, saving Archimedes a hair-raising duel with the Melboume traffic. Martin Pr escott, BSW , MSW, In fact, the only thing dead about letter writing is the pronouncem ent of its MAASW, clini ca l member of the d mise. But that is n othing new. One of Archimedes' favourite pastimes is to read Association of Catho li c Psycho prediction s from a decade or more ago. Rarely are they uncanny, often they are th erap ists. Indi viduals, coupl es and hysterical. • fami Ii es catered for. Tim Thwaites is a freelance science writer. Elwood and Bentleigh, ph (03) 557 8525 VOLUME 4 NU MBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 13 Bearing the burdens of proof T owo•os SE>M TO STR> 14 EUREKA STREET • DECEMBER 1994 Half a story tells no story at all The Australian media sometimes portray the war on Bougainville as a conflict between heroic resistance fighters and an oppressive government in Port Moresby. James Griffin argues that those better acquainted with Bougainville would see it differently. R EPORTING ON T H E WAR in Bougainville contin- plies since 1991. When the PNG government sent the ues to be unbalanced and uninformed. supply ship Cosm aris into Central Bougainville in The last item in this year's final session of the January 1992, it was burnt to the water by the BRA. ABC's Foreign Correspondent was a report by a ven- So much fo r their cooperation . Schooling has long turesome journalist, Wayne Cole, hitherto unheard recommenced in a rudimentary way in areas freed of of as an authority on the South-West Pacific. To be BRA. fair, we were told that the viewpoint was solely that The revolutionary government president, Francis of the rebels and supporters of the Bougainville Revo- Ona, was particularly concerned to blame Australia lutionary Army, but, uncontested as it was, what is for fighting a war the ordinary viewer to think? Such a disclaimer hard- against the Bou- ly compensates for yet another tear-jerking plea for gainville people the rebel cause without any balancing perspective, not which Port Mores- just from Port Moresby but from those Bougainvil- by alone cannot leans who oppose the BRA. And they are almost sure- win. It is true that ly the majority. From what was said- that the PNG one can hardly ex- army violated the recent ceasefire and prevented pect Ona to see attendance at the recent peace conference in Arawa- Australia as being it was difficult to believe that som e previously hard - obliged t o honour core guerrillas turned up and remained unscathed. an obligation to Moreover, several local lea ders came out of the support a state it central redoubt where the most recalcitrant rebels h elped to create, have dug in during the past six years. In particular, a but it should not be certain Theo Miriungem erged, an ex-seminarian, law- beyond m edia ob- yer and former acting Suprem e Court judge, and a servers. If PNG longtime adviser to the BRA leadership. Known to were to be assaulted on its western flank, one can m e personally over 25 years as a man of keen intelli- imagine the cry that would go up to 'support' Port gence and integrity, Miriung chose to suffer fo r Moresby. secessionism with his own people during the block- The sad fac t is that this is not just a war between ade but now realises that peace and rehabilitation Port Moresby and elem ents in Bougainville but a civil should supersede, at least temporarily, full sovereignty war am ong Bougainvilleans them selves. So, even if as goals. there were a convincing case for secession, the gov- Yet in Foreign Correspondent Joseph Kabui, ernment of the breakaway province could not be hand- form er premier and now billed as a deputy leader of ed over to those with guns to use against fellow the interim government, could say that 'any sensible Bougainvilleans. While Chan's peace initiative failed person would be scared t o go the confe rence.' to get the response it needed from the BRA, the em er- Certainly the PNG troops can be ill-disciplined and gence of Miriung and others represents a breach in unpredictable and the rebels had cause to be wary, the hardcore BRA which should be widened. Chan but their ultimate fa ilure to make any gesture of can do this by m aking it clear that he will restore cooperation in the peace process is due m ore to their provincial government as soon as possible and give it convictions that intransigence will bring victory, that control over the copper m ine and other resources. An the PNG government is in dire financial straits and amnesty will also have to be worked out and som e cannot m aintain forces indefinitely, and (correctly) future constitutional convention foreshadowed where that another sympathetic Mamaloni government degrees of autonom y can be canvassed. Chan has would soon be re-elected in the Solomon Islands. alrea dy m ade som e gestu res in this direction and While Cole's report presented the burning of progress can be expected within 12 m onths. villages and infrastructure by PNG troops, it over- Meanw hile, Foreign Correspondent's convenor, looked the fact that the greater part of destruction George N egu s could plan an opening 1995 session was the work of the BRA. Atrocities against individ- with som e balanced opinions on what constitutes a ual have been notorious on both sides. It is a pity right to secede and what legitimacy the BRA has to that Cole did not interview som e ex-BRA supporters talk for its fellow Bouga invilleans. • such as Nick Peniai and Misac Rangai of South Bou gainville, m en who were marked for execution along James Griffin is Professor Em eritus of History, Uni with former MP, Anthony Anugu, in 1992. versity of Papua N ew Guinea. He has been writing Cole also did not m ake it clear that officially the about Bougainville fo r 25 years. He lived in PNG from blockade of Bougainville has been lifted and that are 1968-76, 198 1-84, 1986-90, and has visited Bo ugain as released fro m BRA control have been getting sup- ville 30 tim es. V OLUM E 4 NUMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 15 THE N ATION: 1 JuLIETTE HuG HES ' Even if there were to be aggressive investment in native-forest industries, there is no hard evidence that these industries could be competitive in the world markets opening up in the next five to ten years. Demand for forest products is increasing in the economies of the Asian 'tigers', but so are the sources of raw material available to them. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, for example, a cash-strapped Russia has been selling its native forest at a prodigious rate to the same customers that Australia needs to attract. Japan's demand for pulp or chips from Australian native forests may be in doubt if a $1.4 billion project to exploit Siberia's untouched forests goes ahead, and South Korea 's second biggest industrial group, Hyundai, has been logging in Siberia since 1989. , Spitting c 1ps• /G '""'" ARC uNmumc TRCH'""' who being fraudulently downgraded to end up as want to halt an important resource business. Some of woodchips, h e was told that this was only the them will even resort to sabotage to get what they tip of an iceberg of rorts and inefficiencies. The want.' industry's response was that the practice was not That kind of rhetoric is familiar enough in forest widespread, and that offending companies should lose industry circles. What is wrong with it is not only their licences. But that penalty has rarely, if ever, been the crazy hyperbole, but the fact that it ignores real applied. And some economists and many conserva points of agreement between conservationists and the tionists warn that the logging of native forests, with industry. Both sides, for example, accept that wood or without rorts, has fundamental economic flaws. chipping will always be necessary- it provides too One of the most serious of these flaws is the many essential items to think of doing away with it. incompatibility between native forest logging and The real disagreem ent is over the source and type effici ent water catchment management. A hectare of of raw material, and whether Australia's woodchip old-growth mountain ash, clear-felled, may produce exports will be able to compete with the vast euca $270 worth of woodchips, once. A generation later it lypt and pine plantations in Brazil, C hile, China, may produce half as much [regrowth is sparser, drier Indonesia, New Zealand, Spain and Thailand that will and more fire-prone). be in production before the end of the decade. When According to Read, Sturgess and Associates, con that happens the high er-quality plantation chips will sulting economists commissioned by the Victorian fl ood the world, creating a buyer's market. For some government, if that same hectare is left unlogged it economists, the real issues are about timing. produces more than $6000 worth of water, year after There is reason to believe that investment in Aus year. After logging there is a significant long-term tralian plantations has been hindered because the for decrease in the amount and quality of water produced. est departments in most states effectively subsidise Logged catchments are subject to more intense varia logging of native forests. (Consulting econon1ist Fran tion of rainfall- floods in winter, droughts in sum cis Grey has identified 23 types of eff ective subsidy mer-which som etimes has to be fixed by building a from recent state and federal government commis dam, costing the economy even more. Contamination sions, inquiries and reports.) of the source is also an issue, one well known to the When rural Labor backbencher Peter Cleeland inhabitants of Phillip Island, with its single pipeline was shown a secretly filmed video of high -quality logs drawn from a logged and grazed mainland catchment 16 EUREKA STREET • DECEMBER 1994 that is subject to eutrophica tion (see glossary), and yield' basis, which the South Australian Woods and Young native logs therefore to bloom s of blue-green algae. Forests D epartmen t defines as 'the level at which tim being truck ed out Logging companies say they cannot aff ord to lose ber can be harvested without reducing future yields of East Gippsland. the native forest as a resource. No wonder, say the while providing for the long- term conservation and Photograph: Bill Thomas. conservationists: the combination of risibly low roy maintenance of other forest values.' alties to the taxpayer and log-grading rorts make it By contrast, Victoria's Department of Conserva very unlikely that the timber companies would want tion and N atural Resources admits in its Forest to leave the native forests for quite som e time. They Managemen t Strategy for East Gippsland that native also say that if Australia fails to m ake the transfer to forest logging in the area is not yet sustainable. But it plantation timber now, or at least within the next is claimed to be necessary because business and em couple of years, the inevitable transition to a planta ploym ent in East Gippsland, especially near Orbost, tion-based industry will be much more disruptive depend on logging. There is a proposal for a large pulp to jobs and to production- than it needs to be. mill in the area, but if the pulp mill is built Daishowa Francis Grey says that native-forest harvesting would close its woodchip mill at Eden in southern is losing m oney for the taxpayers. The product is still NSW. Almost as m any jobs would be lost at Eden as being sold, but agro-forestry and timber plantations would be gained in East Gippsland. have been sidelined and jobs are disappearing. The Pulp mills are expensive to build, costing up to m ain reason for the decline of jobs in forest industry $2 billion, and are considered by bankers to be a very has been an increase in autom ation, but it is easy to low-return investment even under ideal conditions. understand the resentment of unemployed timber And Australia has much higher chemical costs than, workers who believe that the environmen- say, the US, which has the world's biggest pulp tal lobby is to blam e. industry. Overseas pulp producers tend to have cheap er finance and running costs, and ban kers have been A T PRESENT, SouTH AusTRA LLA is the only state that nerv ous about loans for Australian pulp mills ever does not log any native fo rest. Its plantations areal since the mill proposed for Wesley Va le in Tasmania most exclusively softwoods logged on a 'sustained was defeat ed by det ermined en vironmental V o LUME 4 NuMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 17 campaigning. So any attempt to build a new mill of world capacity in this country would be extremely costly, and the costs will materially increase through community opposition to the project. Barry Traill, a fo rest campaigner for Environment Victoria, says: 'Green groups have made it clear that we are not against new pulp and paper mills. Howev er, any new mills must have their raw materials sourced from sustainably managed plantations, and they must use the best available clean and green tech nology.' (Germany has banned the building of any more 'kraft' pulp mills. The kraft process is the com monest pulp technology, but the high sulphur con tent of its effluents contributes to acid rain.) The main industry group, the National Associa tion of Forest Industries, contends that old-growth native forests have to be logged to provide high-quality timber for engineering and joinery purposes, and that Ecologically mature forests: stands of trees approaching the limit wood chipping is a useful sideline to the saw log of their life span . These stands are often either not or only slowly industry. But sawmills have mostly been retooled to increasing in biomass and they usually support a high diversity cope with the smaller-diameter logs that come from of plant growth forms as well as a high diversity of plant and plantations and younger native forests, and old growth animal species. is in fact more likely to be woodchipped. And most structures no longer depend on large single beams Eutrophication: the over-enrichment of a body of water with most of the world uses trusses, and the large structural nutrients, (such as fertiliser run-off) resulting in excessive growth timber used in Australia usually comes from Douglas of organisms and depletion of oxygen concentration. fir plantations in New Zealand. Nor are house frames Existence value: the value obtained from the knowledge that an as likely to use sawn timber as they were in the past: asset such as an environmental amenity exists. Include benefits by next year, the steel industry expects to have 25 per from knowing that culturally important resources are protected. cent of the house-framing market. There has also been considerable progress in Externalities: the imposition of costs or benefits on another pro developing plantation products that can replace old ducer or consum er, for which no market transaction occurs; for growth wood in structures and joinery. 'Valwood', example, cost of a water-treatment plant to deal with eutrophi developed by the Department of Conservation and cation, or value of crop damage caused by downstream salinisa Land Management in WA, is processed from 10-year tion. old plantation bluegum. It is a strong, attractive Forest management agencies: departments, commissions or serv material capable of being m ade into high-quality ices charged with the responsibility for managing publicly owned furniture. 'Gluelam', another process using relative forested land primarily for wood production. ly small pieces of wood, is more suited to replace struc tural timber. Hardwood: timber from broad-leaved, flowering tree irrespec But there is still no clear strategy for creating an tive of physical hardness. Includes eucalypts, wattles and most economically viable and environmentally feasible rainforest species. Predominant uses include sawn timber, fine timber industry in Australia. 'Resource security' has paper and railway sleeper production. (Softwoods are coniferous been the industry catchcry; but it is increasingly trees irrespective of physical hardness.) apparent that the only really secure forest resources Kraft: a chemical pulping process that can successfully pulp most are plantations, whose development can be achieved species. T he essential chemicals used are sodium hydroxide and without affecting areas such as water catchments, sodium sulphide. [It produces] strong unbleached pulp. (The bleach with what the Resources Assessment Commission used is usually chlorine-based, which reacts with the pulp to cre ca lls 'externalities'. ate highly toxic dioxins.) Externalities include the depletion of 'bequest' and'existence' values (see glossary), and it may cost Native forest: forest of Australian species, growing on land that the taxpayer a lot more to fix such problems than was has never been cleared for agricultural purposes. It m ay be re earned by development of the resource. Community growth forest or old growth fo rest. concerns about such issues shadow potential invest Old-growth forest: biodiverse forest that has had little or no in ment, creating what is known as 'sovereign risk'. The terference from fire or logging. (see ecologically mature forest ). Industry Commission's report Adding Further Value to Australia's Forest Products (1993) noted that 'the Taiga: Coniferous forests of the Siberian wilderness, habitat of Wesley Va le incident has added about half a unique wildlife and repository of one-third of the world's carbon . Continued p20 18 EUREKA STREET • D ECEMBER 1994 INTERVIEW JULiETTE HUGHES For whom the Bellamy tolls Environmentalist David Bellamy during the East Gippsland expedition in November 1994. Photo: Bill Thomas. What brought you to Australia! woodchip that goes to Daishowa or one of these companies. Really, to learn a lot more about these amazing south-eastern Now why aren't these the banner headlines I see, and why forests, which I saw for the first time 18 years ago. But also don't I see these as stickers in the back of people's cars, say to plead with your government to say 'no' to any more log ing 'Daishowa does away with jobs'? ging in this forest, which is of high conservation value. Be I've never really understood why the green movement cause now we're beginning to look upon it not just as a thing doesn't have a real big go at Japan. If we said [to the Japanese] of interest to botanists and conservationists but as an eco 'We will not buy anything from you until you put your house nomic entity. in order,' they'd have to do something. Because they have The fact is that if rain forest is logged, that turns the one of the dodgiest economies in the world-they can't feed tap off 50 per cent of water that just doesn't go to the rivers themselves, clothe themselves, house themselvesi they de any more. And then there's the fact that if you replace all pend on those raw materials around the world. this with regrowth forest you've got to put in fire breaks I would love to see a list of the Australian names who and look after it, whereas at the moment it looks after itself are making money out of woodchipping and somewhere, ... The more rainforest that disappears, the drier and drier perhaps in Canberra, you could have a monument saying [the land becomes]. So it must be conserved. these are the bastards who took away the heritage of all Australians. Actually put on that the people who are Is part of the problem the fact that the environment often making money, and the people of the government who gets a low profile in government! In Australia, for example, haven't stood up. apart from Graham Richardson the portfolio usually hasn't gone to ministers with much clout in cabinet. The forest industry sponsors advertisements implying that Well, take the United States of America. We all know A1 logging native forest is sustainable. What would you like to Gore is a very good environmentalist, but has he really been say about the industry's definition of 'sustainable'! able to get anything done? Probably quite a lot of the sena They are talking about sustainable-yield logging, and it's only tors are held in power by the logging companies, by the wa sustainable because they use ever more, ever greater areas, ter companies, and it really comes down to this, the common and as they are now finding in Canada and in the western denominator of your investors. USA, the second growth is about half what the first growth I'm chairman of the Environmental Trustee Savings was and then they have to turn around and say 'well then Bank, and I have 21 million pounds of other people's money we'll have to start managing it' ... you end up with the worst invested in what we call environmentally sound [projects]. way of making a plantation. It's much better to go into de We go to meetings of shareholders and ask, 'Wouldn't you graded farmland-and by God there's plenty of that in Aus like to see an environmental and ethical side so you would tralia-and actually plant the right trees. be investing your money in a better future'. That's what Economically, all [logging native forests] does is to keep we've got to find. You see, we haven't got to give up having fewer and fewer people in jobs. The thing I would love to things, but we've got to have a stock market which actually know is, who are the people who make the money? Because does realise that some of its profits have got to go into revi somewhere, somebody must make enough money to think talising [the environment]. it's worth going on. I think deep down they do know they're You've got a chance [with these forests]. As far as I un doing the wrong thing, and they're handing that over to the derstand, you, the taxpayers, are subsidising every ton of future, a very degraded environment to Australia. • VOLUME 4 NUMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 19 From p18 ahead, and South Korea's second bigges t industria] percentage point to the cost of capital for investment group, Hyundai, has been logging in Siberia's Taiga in Australian forestry projects or Tasmanian projects forests since 1989. Hyundai has applied to increase in general ... ' its annual cut to a million cubic metres in the Sikhote The commission also stated that the native hard Alin area of the forest, and has contracts for other wood industry was failing to maintain productive areas as well. capacity. Its report quoted Forest Use, a 1991 So how are the problems of the native-forest government survey prepared by the Ecologically industry being dealt with? In the states, government Sustainable Development Working Groups: 'In the agencies whose job it is to balance the demands of present environment, the native hardwood industry industry with the requirements of conservation have in Australia is characterised by low levels of often been compromised in this task by departmen investment, minimal value-added processing, tal restructuring. In W A and Victoria, for example, a diminishing competitiveness and a failure single department now has responsibility for both to restructure.' conservation and the forest industry, and this has ef fectively resulted in the ascendancy of forestry agen E YEN IF THERE WERE to be aggressive investment in da s over conservation. native-forest industries, however, there is no hard ev The costs of this have been apparent even in the idence that these industries could be competitive in lack of coordinated accounting procedures in Victo the world markets opening up in the next fiv e to ten ria's D epartment of Conservation and Natural years. Demand for forest products is increasing in the Resources, as the Victorian Auditor-General's Tim economies of the Asian 'tigers', but so are the sourc ber Strategy Audit noted in 1993. The Audit reported es of raw material available to them. Since the brea k that the department was effectively subsidising na up of the Soviet Union, for example, a cash-strapped tive forest operations, failing to prevent log-grading Russia has been selling its native forest at a prodi rorts and implicitly restricting new entrants to the gio us rate to the same customers that Australia needs industry: 'In the case of hardwood operations, the to attract. department reported a loss of $13.2 million for 1990- Japan's demand for pulp or chips from Austral l. However, due to limitations in its financial data, ian native forests may be in doubt if a $1.4 billion the department is unable to accurately assess the project to exploit Siberia's untouched forests goes extent to which this loss represents a subsidy to in dustry, production inefficiencies or adverse marl 20 EUREKA STREET • D ECEMBER 1994 THE N ATION: 2 MicHAEL M cGIRR Assessment Commission conducted two surveys to m easure the industry's 'contingent', or non-market T reE's ~~~~'"~~~pe:~~~ t~~ssion is value' (see glossary). One survey calculated that if over. In Melbourne, every Saturday in the months leading up to logging of native forest were to cease in southern NSW Christmas, there are about 160 buses competing for parking space and East Gippsland, the immediate financial effect in the streets near inner-city factories. This impressive fleet is evi would be a loss of $11million in trade. A further $32 dence of one of Melbourne's boom industries, the shopping tour. million would n eed to be spent on 'adjustment Having spent years looking for reasons to come to Melbourne, it assistance', m aking a total cost of $43 million. That seems that the rest of Australia has at last found one. would amount to a nett lump sum payment of $6.05 Rhonda 0. Rust is the managing director of 'Shopping Spree per adult living in NSW and Victoria, or alternative Tours'. Recently she has had 47 buses, each with an average of 30 ly, a continual annual payment of 43 cents. passengers, doing the rounds of the bargain outlets in one day. Her The other survey m easured the willingness of record is 53. The cost of the expedition is about $30 and this includes Australians to pay for the preservation of the National lunch in a restaurant. The average shopper spends $217 in the day. Estate forests in south-eastern Australia. The m edian A driver for a rival company, Kevin Jarvis, says it's nothing for a willingness was estimated at $43.50 per household busload to spend $15,000 and utterly exhaust themselves in the per year, or $22 per person per year. The samples were process. They start at Sam and finish around 6pm, although by the rigorously conducted and evaluated, with 5000 last two or three outlets most passengers have to force themselves respondents drawn randomly from the Common off the bus. 'But they usually make it,' he says, 'they think they wealth electoral rolls in NSW, Victoria and ACT. The might miss out on a bargain.' expected return was 50 per cent; the final valid re What lies behind the phenomenon ? sponse rate was slightly over that amount. Rhonda Rust explains that many tours are organised as a fund If, as the survey suggests, people are willing raiser by clubs. The club gets about 8 per cent of what its m embers actually to lose money in order to keep the National spend. The company also provides prizes to raffle on the bus and so Estate forests, then what might be the community on. But for committed shoppers, signing up for a tour off their own support for a profitable, sus tainable plantation bat, the appeal is being able to spend up big and save money all at industry that provides employment while protecting once. The brochures tell you that you will save your fare at the first the native forest? And what might be the gains for outlet. At a place called Faulty Towels, a couple can be seen going tourism in such a buoyant atmospherez In 1992, the through a bundle of towels which has been marked down to $50 for Resources Assessment Commission's Fore st and the lot. They are wondering if they throw out the black towels in Timber Inquiry noted 'that innovative commercial the bundle, which they abominate with enthusiasm, will they still approaches are required to generate more revenue be ahead? It appears they will. And somebody at work might score fro m the use of parks and services, to support required the 'disgusting' black ones for Christmas. A decision is made and management function and provide better services to the couple squeeze out to. the door and trundle off to Newman's the community, particularly in relation to ecological Chocolates, then Bolle sunglasses, then Siricco leather goods ... objectives.' (my emphasis) 'It's great,' says Kevin Jarvis, 'people can do their whole shop The m erits of park land and biodiversity may ping for the year in one day. By the end of the tour, you can't move seem vague to an unemployed Orbost timber worker, in the bus. People are literally jammed in with their shopping.' but the bureaucratic wilderness may seem more of a Rhonda Rust has busloads booked from Adelaide and sells threat to the sm all sawmiller who has been squeezed tickets in Brisbane. She has a special tour for Tasmanians. They out of business, or to the desperate field worker whose can come overnight on the Spirit of Tasmania, shop all day, and go reports are suppressed so that a different agenda may back on the ship the following night. From 1 February, she will be prevail. operating around Redfern and Alexandria in Sydney. With overseas demands for Australi an woodchips Is there a greed factor in this business? 'There certainly is', Rust likely to wane in the near future, and with communi says, 'there are too many people trying to get into the industry. ty resen tment at the loss of native forests unlikely to There's some real cowboys out there. It's too competitive.' decrease, the time has come to make money by pre David Crow is the general manager of Newman's Chocolates. serving unique Australian resources. The outcome He says that the outlets at one end of Church St, Richmond, can could be a flourishing forest industry, supported by take 'several hundred thousand' in a day. He notes that residents cmrununity attitudes, and unshadowed by sovereign risk. are worried about noise, litter and parking problems. But the out • lets are bringing money into the district. 'If you live in the inner city,' says Valerie Hockin, manager of Juliette Hughes is a Eureka Street staff writer. Just Right Shopping Tours, 'you have to put up with inconvenienc es. I wouldn't live here if you paid me.' ENNEAGRAM P ERSONALITY T YPES Kevin Jarvis, a tour-bus driver, stresses the fun that people have. 'Some of the people on this bus were out with me two weeks ago. Workshops by Don Richard Ri so They're shopaholics. They should do the same thing for men. A in Melbourne and Sydney, February 1995. tour of spare parts and hardware outlets. They'd love it.' • Enquiries: Fr Mark Sumner. (054) 41 6877 Michael McGirr SJ is the consulting editor of Eureka Street. VoLUME. 4 NuMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 21 THE N ATION : 3 A NDREW H AMIL TON The law turns about-face on justice AsWE HAVE LEARNED RECENTLY in Janus, reports, some asylum seekers have bought where human rights, and parti cularly the the law has to do with wisdom. It is about their refu gee status. More importantly, how right of asylum seekers to protection, are analysing confl icting claims with intelli ever, m any of those rejected have had good recognised effectively in law. Otherwise, gence and compassion, and resolving them cases. Of the first l 7 people to be inter Australia's own duty to protect refugees elegantly. It is self-confident enough to wel vi ewed in Australia, three were given refu would not be exercised. But on the other come review. The other side of law has to do gee status at the first stage. This is the hand, few nations, and almost none in our with will. It spurns elegance or wisdom , for norm al proportion for any group of onshore region, guarantee a full protection of refu these arc superfluous when confli cts can be asylum seekers. It suggests, as law yers work gees. Thus, in an y crisis in which the Gov resolved by unfettered power. This fa ce of ing w ith the process already know, that in ernment may be tempted to appeal to this law does not welcom e review, because it m ost countries the process yields very rough new legislation, it will have little scope to gets in the way of the effective use of power. justice indeed. do so ethically. In immigration legislation, generally T hese defects of the CPA suggest that In summary, this am endment does deal both faces have been seen, but the face of Australia, whose poli cy is to judge each with a genuine conflict of interest, and power has more recently been visible. Two individual applica tion for refugee status, resolves it with som e discrimination. But pieces of legislati on recently before Parlia should hear again the asylum seekers' the legislati on is too preoccupied w ith m ent present the two faces of Janus: one applications: justice would seem to demand pow er, in that it leaves the Minister unac must handle genuinely conflicting claims, that they have the opportunity to m ake countable for what he fa ils to do. Fu rther- while the other has to do with asserting their claim by Australi an standards of jus more, the legislation gives the Government executive power. The Migration Amend tice. The wise response in this difficult practical powers w hi ch are li ke ly to be of m en t Bill (N o.4) 1994 attempts to deal with situation would be in prin ciple to refuse to practical use only if the human rights of a rea l dilemma, arising from the arrival by reassess people who have already been re asylum seekers are disregarded. boa t of Vietnamese asylum seekers from jected under the CPA. The fact that they The second piece of legislation, the Galang Camp in Indonesia. T hese boat peo had the opportunity to apply for refugee Migration Law Amendment Bill (No.3) 1994 ple had been rejected in screening estab status elsewhere, and the harm done to the is the latest episode in the saga of the Cam lished under the Comprehensive Plan of Vietnam ese asylum seekers as a who le bodian boat people. T he goal of this legisla Action (CPA ), which has been supported by would ju stify this step. tion is to ensure that the Government does the UN High Commissioner for Refu gees. G iv en the seriou s fl aws in CPA screen- not have to pay com pensation to the asy The CPA was introduced to cope with ing, however, asylum seekers should be lum-seekers for unlawful imprisonment. the fru stration of nations like Hong Kong, entitled to an interview in which they could The Government's problem was created Indonesia and Malaysia and Thailand to make their case for a fresh assessm ent of when som e High Court Judges said that the which the boat people had com e. Because their case. To ensure transparency, that boat people may have been imprisoned fe w were being accepted for resettlem ent, interview and decision should be m ade by unlawfully before May 1992. After som e threats were m ade to push off new arrivals. the Refugee Review Tribunal. asylum seekers took action to seck com T he CPA ensured screening of the existing The Government's response has been to pen sa tio n, the Governme nt e n act e d boat people, resettlem ent in developed coun recognise strongly the claims of the CPA, legislation to limit any compensation to tries of those fo und to be refugees, and the but to allow for som e little fl exibility in one dollar per day. eventual repatriation to Vietnam of those individual cases. Its legislation will prevent Another decision b y the High Court, rejected. It th erefore offered a defin ed future those assessed under the CPA from m aking however, in a case unrelated to refugees, for the boat people, and in the m eantime a valid application in Australia for refugee suggested that this legislation m ay be guaranteed their temporary protection in status. The minister, however, has an over declared invalid. Accordingly, the present the countries to which they had com e. For riding power to allow applica tions to be Bill w ill repeal the limitation of compensa all its fa ults, the CPA has provided som e considered in the public interest, though he tion, but w ill am end the Migration Act to security and som e definition to the future is not accountable if he declines to exercise declare that all people ever detained under of the Vietnam ese boat people. It is unlikely that power. it were validly detai ned. Thus, they will that a more generous poli cy of resettlement Under the legislation, how ever, the Gov have no grounds fo r com pensation. or of temporary protection will ever be ernment has also taken on powers which do T his legislation is a naked exercise of off ered. not bear on this problem . It will be author power, by which the Governmen t will award Therein lies the dilemma for Australia. ised to m ake agreen1ents with prescribed itself impunity for its past actions. Unlike If people who have been rejected under the third countries, under which asylum seek other m embers of the community, who arc CPA can come to Australia and win a new ers can be returned w ithout having had accountable before the courts for their assessm ent of their claims for refugee sta their cases heard in Australia. 'Safe third actions, the Government will enjoy the tus, this will undermine the CPA. N ew and countries' are defin ed as those where the privileged position of being able to p ut the unrealistic h ope will be offered to people asylum seekers have resided for a time or actions of its officials beyond judicial review. whose onl y real future lies in Vi etnam, and have the right of entry: the concept was Some commentators believe that the Gov they w ill effectively su bmit them selves to born in Europe, where it appeared that asy ernment will use the bill to trigger a double screening by wind, storm and piracy. This lum seekers were shopping around for the dissolution of Parliament. It is hard to consideration suggests that new assessm ent forum most favourable to their applica imagine that the electorate would be should be denied. tions. In Australia, h owever, it poses a fu attracted by this brutalface ofJan us. • O n the other hand, those who have par ture dilemma. ticipated in the processes of screening k now On the one band, it would be ethical to Andrew Hamilton SJ teaches at the United that they are flawed. According to newspaper return asylum seekers only to countries Faculty of T heology, Parkville, VIC 22 EUREKA STREET • D ECEMBER 1994 IN MEMORIAM Joseph Cindric, 1906-94 E R THE PAST 35 YEARS, Joseph Cindric has been one of the most familiar figures on the streets of Sydney. But possibly one of the least well known. Day after day, through city crowds, he pushed a trolley laden with the tools he carried onshore when he was dismissed as a ship's engineer in the '50s. He slept in bus shelters and wore a helmet to protect himself from the house bricks that had been occasionally been dropped on his head. He lived entirely in public but was a private man. He didn't wel come conversation, nor assistance, nor any kind of intrusion into his world. Occasionally he accepted a sandwich from a shop in Wynyard. On 4 Novem ber, at the age of 88, he died of pancreat ic cancer. During the 10 years that Fr James Ware was stationed at St Patrick's, Church Hill, he worked at getting to know Cindric. He recalls that Cindric, Croatian by birth, had been a member of the Hitler Youth and had 'given his soul to a system which fell apart'. Cindric sometimes told him 'we will rise again.' Along with his tools of trade, Cindric's suitcase contained letters from the son with whom he'd lost contact after the war and longed to be reunit ed. Cindric's trolley has been acquired by the Powerhouse Museum as part of its social history collection. 'This is the first thing we've acquired that belongs to a street person,' says Eddie Butler-Bowdon, one of the Photographs by Andrew Stark curators. 'Normally you Text by Andrew Stark and think of them as having a non-material existence. But this trolley will intrigue Michael McGirr the thousands of visitors who are going back to their own homes.' • V O LUME 4 NUMBER lO • EUREKA STREET 23 N INETEEN-NINETY -FOUR JoN GRJ marks the 50th year since the Liberal Party was founded to represent the in terests of middle Australia. But, although the Liberals are in power in every state except Queensland and only narrowly lost last year's federal election, the mood of Menzies' party during this anniversa ry year has been less than buoyant. The Liberals continue to be obsessed with The yol self-scrutiny, unsure of what will cure their crisis of confidence. That forming the government in five states cannot compensate the Liberals McClymont attributes the shift to the past elec for being the Federal Opposition for a toral success of the Liberals: 'In 1949 it was a free record 11 years is one m easure of the enterprise, middle-class party versus the socialist shift in power from the states to the working-class party. Chifley and all those were open Commonwealth. Before 1983, the Liberal ly socialist; these days "socialist" is a word that has Party had been in government for all but negative connotations. We have won the battle of eight years since 1944. Labor has now ideas. The Labor Party federally now is in m any assumed the mantle of 'the natural par respects more rightwing than Bob Menzies ever was.' ty of government', and the Liberal ma But, though the Liberals may be having trouble chine is struggling to find the magic coming to grips with Labor's shift to the right, formula that will convince the elector McClymont believes this augurs well for the long term ate not to vote for the ALP. because Labor's MPs are leading the ALP away from The troubles of both the Hewson its traditions. 'I think what's going to happen is this: and the Downer/ Costello leadership it's OK when you are in government to paper over teams suggest that the party is still look problems but ultimately, when the Labor Party does ing for its soul. Hewson took the Liber lose government federally, there will be a backlash als to the extremes in search of an and the party will move back to the left because the economic panacea and in the process lost rank and file of the party are far more leftwing than the 'unlosable' election. Downer is strug the leaders. ' gling in his attempt to paint a softer por Achieving that elusive electoral success is the trait of the party that spooked the current challenge for the party. For Margaret Fitzher electorate in 1993, and current specula bert, who at 25 is retiring as the Victorian president tion that John Howard might be resur of the Young Liberals, what is needed is not a rein rected is an indication of how limited the vented party but a more consistent adherence to tra Liberals' options are. So where to for ditional Liberal values. 'I think what the Liberal Party Photographs: Tim Stoney the good ship Liberal as it rounds the really needs to do is stand its ground on issues', she 'I was having a chat with 50-year buoy and sails towards the says. 'During the '80s, when I was at university, there next century? The answers might lie was a lot of talk about the Liberal Party moving to Michael Kroger a couple of with the generation waiting in the the right. If you look at the figures in the Liberal Par weeks ago and said to him wings. ty who saw that as the way to go ... there has been an Ross McClymont is 25, a Mel acknowledgement that this is not a popular m essage that the problem with the bourne solicitor, and national presi in the electorate.' den t of the Young Liberals. He Fitzherbert, a politics graduate from Monash Liberal Party is that we concedes that the party is undergo University, and currently working as a projects offic could staff every golf club ing an identity crisis that has its ori er fo r the Victorian Automobile Chamber of Com gins in the loss of the middle ground merce, disputes the notion that the electorate has comittee in Victoria with to Labor during the 80s: 'Our tradi tolerated Labor's to shift to the right because it is more great people, but it's not golf tional constituency is saying "Well interested in the conflict of personality than the con the Keating government is doing flict of ideology. 'I think Australia- certainly since club committee members things that we agree with." The Labor the war- has had personality politics', she says. 'You party has had to jettison all its couldn't say that Menzies was not part of personality we're after. We 've got to get ideology and all its baggage to get politics. Whitlam is still a fo lk hero, not only to the political animals.' where it is today, and we now have Labor Party but to many Australians. Personality the Liberal Party fighting another politics is a worldwide trend but we still see a big - Ross M cCL YMONT liberal party.' battle of ideas at the same time.' 24 EUREKA STREET • DECEMBER 1994 H ION: 4 What has made Young Liberals : ENAWAY prominent in the Liberal Party appara tus- more prominent than their equiv alent in the ALP- is their presence as a discrete body within the party proper that Liberal Party members can join vol untarily. It has its own organisa tion and budget, and at times its public state ments have opposed the activities of the 1ng ones party proper. Most recently the Young Liberals voiced their concern over the direction of the party under Hewson's leadership, particularly aft er the '93 McClymont and Fitzherbert both recognise that election. Their criticism of him for not the Liberals trail Labor in the selection of candidates appointing a representative to the Re sufficiently harden ed to survive the rigours of public Advisory Committee drew the at Canberra politics. McClymont believes that the cause tention of the m edia and resulted in a lies in an innate conservatism among the party rank hastily convened m eeting between and file. 'In the '40s, '50s, '60s and into the '70s the Hewson and the federal executive of the Liberal Party membership was very large, middle-class Young Liberal movem ent. and mainstream . What has tended to happen now is McClymont believes that such that m embership has atrophied. It's the sam e people, incidents have raised the stocks of the getting older and older. Young Liberals. 'We have a reputation 'What we have seen as a result is that those peo for being outspoken and maybe, som e ple, who tend to be quite conservative in their judg times, publicity seekers. But because of m ent, tend to preselect those who are very good the policy work we've done in recent community people but are really not a politician's years and the profile we've built up, pol bootlace.' He reinforces the point: 'I was having a chat iticians are coming to us with their with Michael Kroger a couple of weeks ago and said views because they don't want to do to him that the problem with the Liberal Party is that battle with the Young Liberals.' we could staff every golf club comittee in Victoria McClymont himself is a minimal with great people, but it's not golf club committee ist republican, but believes that because m embers we're after. We've got to get political of general suspicion of the ALP agenda animals.' it will be 30 or 40 years before the Fitzh erbert and McClymont also stress that republic is brought in- by a Liberal Labor's talented individuals are encouraged to rise governm ent. Fitzherbert, on the other within the party organisation, while the tendency hand, is indifferent about republican among the Liberal membership is towards sideways ism, citing unemployment as a more m ovem ent into lucrative careers, which often important issue. preclude active involvem ent. 'The Labor Party is like In most respects Fitzherbert and 'If you lool< at countries where a machine', McClymont says. 'They just churn them McClymont concentrate on the issues out like sausages. They get them in from that interest the party generally. They women have done well in uni and train them up and put them in a differ only on points of emphasis. The government they are countries union.' economy is the first priority on their list, but they point to its effect on where women have the B OTH ASSERT, HOWEVER, that the Liberal Party has youth unemploym ent. While McCly services available to enable learnt that it must produce seasoned politicians or mont expresses an interest in issues face the prospect of m ore time on the opposition of national identity, Fitzherbert, like them to get out and make a benches. As evidence they point to the success of Petro many of her older colleagues, is criti Georgiou in gaining preselection for Kooyong: 'It's an cal of Labor's target of filling 35 per career .. . What the Labor outward symbol of som ething that's been happening cent of preselections with women by Party is doing at the moment for a while,' Fitzherbert suggests. She points to the the year 2002. recent round of preselections for federal seats in Vic 'If you look at countries where is fixing up its own backyard toria. In her opinion, they have thrown up a more women have done well in government capable type of candidate, 'I think there has been a they are countries where wom en have but ignoring the needs of most change in the sort of person we're going for. They're the services available to enable them Australian women.' tending to be people a bit younger, often women and to get out and make a career', she says. often people who have that political experience.' 'I think if the Labor Party was looking - M ARGARET fiTZHERBERT V OLUME 4 N UMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 25 at issues like child care with any great detail and com of the imagination but want to give Downer a bit of a mitment then we'd see more of a change. What the kick in the backside for that.' Labor Party is doing at the moment is fixing up its The common ground between the people who own ba ck yard but ignoring th e needs of m ost represent the party present and the party future is the Australian women.' significance of the last federal election loss. And per Both express a general sa tisfaction with the haps the repercussions will be felt in the Australian attempts of the party's federal leadership to reclaim electorate not so much in what policies the Liberals the centre ground despite the problems of division present to us but how they present them. and rancour that h ave marred the process. And 'The lesson that all major political parties learnt McClymont is quick to play apologist for Alexander from the 1993 fed eral election was "don't be honest Downer for the sake of stability. 'I think people are with the electorate"', McClymont argues. 'When you concerned about Downer's performance, which was hear som eone in the community say that politicians initially very good,' McClymont points out. 'He's go t are all liars, that they don't do what they say, point to himself in a bit of trouble, which he freely acknowl the '93 election and say, "Well the Liberal Party told edges, and now he's having difficulty in rebuilding you in 75 0 pages what they were going to do and you h is position. But he's only been there for six months. absolutely punished them for doing itn No political I think the party has got into a cycle now where they party in Australia will ever again spell out its poli think that changing the leadership is going to change cies in such detail'. everything. It's getting ridiculous!' Whether the Liberals are to blame or not, the Fitzherbert is quick to deny that any leadership party must solve the dilemma of what particular challenge is in the wind. McClym ont offers the ex incarnation will reverse the results of the last four planation that the clamouring for Howard has m ore federal polls. The version that eventuall y works may to do with dissent over Robert Hill's missing out on well be created by those who formed their politics preselection for a lower-house scat than dissatisfa c while the party was in the woods. • tion with Downer as leader. 'I think there are a lot of people who are not Howard supporters by any stretch Jon Greenaway is a Eureka Street staff writer. • In Eureka Street's next issue, [an-Feb 1995, Jon Greenaway looks at the future with Young La bor. Th e Hofbauer Centre's Training is pursued in four Teaching Institute offers areas: four different Courses in 1995, with the focus on 1 . Presentation of the theory Christi an perspectives and va lues, to prepare students of psychotherapy and w ith profess ional skill s of related areas. a hi gh sta ndard and w ith 2. Appli cation of the theory th e ability to impart God's HOF&\UER CENTRE INC to the student's personal love in helping emoti on life to promote growth. ally troubled peopl e A Psychotherapeutic Cli nic 3. Applicatioa n of the rt of individuals, coupl es and and Training Centre for Psychotherapists psychotherapy fo r helping fami lies. oth ers therapeutically. 4. Aquisition of the art of Courses commencing Febru ary 1995: psychotherapy in a A 3 YEAR FULL-TIME COURSE IN PASTORAL PSYCHOTHERAPY pastoral settin g. wi th flexible hours for people w ith an academ ic background preferably in psychotherapy or a related disc ipline. For more information A 1YEAR PART-TIME COURSE IN PASTORAL STUDIES contact: for people w ishing to work in a pari sh or oth er pastoral setting. The Hofbauer Centre A 1YEAR PART-TIME COURSE IN SUPERVISED PASTORAL EDUCATION 93 Alma Road East St Kilda, 3187 w ho are ab le to devote more time to thei r studying and practi ca l Telephone 529 7861 experi ence w orking in a pari sh or oth er pastoral setting AN ONGOING PASTORAL EDUCATION COURSE (PartTime) Approved by the Federal Ed ucation Department for Special Studies fo r for trai ned pastoral workers seeking further input and regular super Overseas Students V ISIOn 26 EUREKA STREET • D EC EMBER 1994 S PORTING LIFE TIM STONEY Shaving Dr Grace's beard team s before being picked in the NSW open side in 1990, at the age of 20. Sh e was selected in the Australian team the sam e year and has been captain for the past two years. Garey, 23, a physiotherapy stu dent, first played for the NSW uncler-1 8 side w hen she was 14, and at 16 she was chosen as captain. She spent a year in the under-2 1s before being selected in an uncler-25s team to go to India, but the tour was cancelled. La st year, playing in the newly formed un der-23 squad, she represented Australia for the first Belinda Clad< (left) time, in three one- clay internationals against NZ . and fo Garey (below) Clark and Garey arc fro m rural N SW where, be in action. ca use of the lack of women's cricket teams in these Photographs: NSW areas, both began their competitive careers in boy's Cricl 28 EUREKA STREET • D ECEMBER 1994 How the ram brought 1 home the bacon ITWOKS unit's been thcre foe centmies, w•it- So the vision itself must have had some other expla- ing for us.' nation. 'Enough with the Picnic at Hanging Rock jokes. Celia smirked at my lack of enthusiasm for the It's just a big ugly old ram. A laughing stock in itself, meal. 'I told you not to eat that in a place like this. but with absolutely no mystical significance.' It's always deep-fried leftovers drowned in something Celia swung the car off the road and into the car sticky from a bottle.' park of something called a Life Australia Centre. 'I think not. It's a sign. From Jumbuck.' There are many Life Australia Centres, but that which A dead-swine muncher at the next table turned we were entering was special. Not only did it have round to stare at us. 'Keep your voice down,' hissed several score of petrol pumps, a barnlike pub, a Celia. 'People will think you're strange.' restaurant with fake Viennese decor and various oth 'They should be afraid of Jumbuck, not me,' I said er Life Australia Centre accoutrements, it also had a gesturing at the Big Ram outside the window. 'He has Big Ram. There are many Big Rams too, of course. In sent me a vision because he is angry. People come fact, at least one town in each state claims to the be from all over the world to worship at his shrine and the home of the Big Ram, and they're all wrong. they are forced to eat pig meat. Not sheep meat, the Several Australian country towns own the Big Ram pure food that nourishes Jumbuck's children.' in the way that several medieval monasteries owned Celia groaned and switched seats to a stretch out supposedly unique relics, like the head of John the on a bench beside the table. 'If I have to listen to any Baptist. But the Goulburn Big Ram is special none more of this I'll go into labour right here and it'll be theless. It's the only Big Ram that stands beside a your fault. Yours and Jumbuck's.' Viennaworld. By now the man at the next table had abandoned Some people might think this noteworthy sim his plate of dead swine too. Celia propped herself on ply because of the unfortunate architectural juxtapo an elbow and addressed him: 'He,' she said, m eaning sition. In other words, two displays of bad taste are me, 'believes that Jumbuck's statue is a cosmic beacon worse than one. I have long suspected, however, that placed here to guide the return of ancient star there is a more esoteric connection between these two travellers. And he thinks it has a mysterious relation hideous edifices. I concede that my evidence for this ship to Viennaworld, guarding it like the Sphinx belief is anecdotal and circumstantial, not conclusive. guards the pyramids in Egypt. In fact, he But it's at least as good as anthing you'll hear from reckons that Jumbuck, Viennaworld, the Sphinx the UFO lobby about why God was an astronaut and and the pyramids are all aligned on some how space aliens control your mind. The following astral map.' incident is submitted for your consideration. I followed Celia into Viennaworld and surveyed TEMAN STOOD UP SLOWLY, mopping the last streak the limp offerings in the bain marie. Lasagna, sweet of dead-swine grease from his lips with a traditional and sour pork and several other classic Viennese dish Viennese paper napkin. This exercise completed, he es, ladled on to plates by a bored adolescent in a dirndl dropped the object and walked out, striding towards skirt. Celia opted for a salad and I, less wisely, for the Jumbuck's statue. Celia turned her gaze in my direc sweet and sour pork. The meal really needed beer to tion and gave me one of her you-deserved-that looks. wash it down but we collected a couple of Cokes from 'You shouldn't have told him that we know about the fridge instead and headed for a table. After a swig the alignment,' I said as we returned to the car park. of fizzy black fluid I forked some pork and raised it to 'He may have been sent by Them. To prepare the way.' my lips. A heady aroma misted my eyes and a vision Her expression switched back from you-deserved-that of the animal I was about to eat hovered before me. A mode to labour-is-imminent mode. 'And a distinctly greasy, dung-encrusted brute, rolling in its own mess unpleasant way for Them to come back, too,' she said, and snorting out the message, Go ahead. Eat me and pointing to where our luncheon companion now stood see what I make of your da y. gazing up into the Ram's posterior. 'I hope for Their I wrinkled my nose and replaced the dead-swine sake that Jumbuck isn't flyblown.' slice on my plate. Now I am not saying, of course, Celia started the car and drove in a circuit round that Viennaworld of Goulburn (and, I am sure, the car park, towards the exit nearest the Big Ram. Viennaworld of anywhere else) serve rotten meat. No And, as we drew level with the dead-swine muncher, sir and no ma'am, no way would I even imply such a she slammed on the brakes. thing. Clearly they would never do that. For one thing, I wouldn't swear to it, but I think he was it's illegal. And for another, we were sitting in a res levitating. taurant full of dead-swine munchers, each of whom • looked as healthy and happy as a pig in, er, my vision. Ray Cassin is the production editor of Eure]{a Street. VOLUME 4 NuMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 29 REVJEW EssAY BRUCE WILLIAMS A life and some letters Out in the Open: An Autobiography, Geoffrey Dutton, Uni versity of Queensland Press, 1994. ISBN 0 7022 268 1 5 RRP $39.95. Letters, Patrick White, edited by David Marr, Random House Austra lia, 1994. ISBN 0 09 182992 5 RRP $49.95 Luther King were assassinated and ital. White went to Cambridge, Chicago burned.) I found that the Dutton to Oxford and their private combined impact of the two books incomes, though not lavish, kept was to bring alive earlier times, es them, when young, off Grub Street. pecially the 1950s and the early Both spent World War II in the Air 1960s, a period which the gregarious Force. Each did some farming, Dutton calls 'a season for solitaries though White's goats and chooks in the arts'. Nolan was painting, just helped to top up dividend Clem C hristesen editing Meanjin, cheques, while Dutton went in for Manning Clark was at work on his serious pig-farming and lost a pack Dreaming. Those were the years of et. They were republicans, long be The Tree of Man, Voss, Riders in the fore the present bandwagon was Chariot, The Solid Mandala- the built. (Dutton published Australia L comNM>NT'' N'w cucoveAc novels that (together with The Aunt's and the Monarchy in 1965.) Both policy statem ent Creative Nation is Stmy) remain for many of us the believed passionately in the Cause suitably gung-ho: 'During the past essential Patrick White. of Australian Literature, though 25 years, Australian culture- now Geoffrey Dutton, meanwhile, Dutton hoped to serve it, whereas an exotic hybrid- has flourished. laid the foundations of his multiple White gave the impression at times Enlightened government support for careers as poet, biographer, publish of thinking he was it. To work out the arts, a n equally enlightened er, editor and roustabout-of-letters. and work through the meanings of migration policy, a growing respect In reckoning his output, his own 'being Australian' was a life-project for Aboriginal and Torres Strait books (over fifty of them) need to be that engrossed their energies and Islander peoples ... ' supplemented by editorial activities their creativity. (Neither would care It was in fact 26 years ago, in with Australian Letters, Sun Books, much for the people who sit around 1968, that John Grey Gorton estab- Penguin Australia, his organising today 'deconstructing Australian 1ished the forerunner of the Australia role in the Adelaide Festival Writ icity'.) They were friends, for twen Council, to focus all this enli ghten er's Week, his championing of the ty five years, and their falling out is ment. Geoffrey Dutton, typically, Russian, Yevtushenko - the list is a piece of gossip that has begun to W 30 EUREKA STREET • DECEMBER 1994 The role of inheritor was one who write boo ks ' not destined or sketches of the Greek islands, a few Dutton played intermittently, one even intended to last'. But that cul memorable social events. My fa way or another, until, rising sixty, tiva ted fa cility has its costs. vourite is the lunch on the Royal he 'left South Australia and shed a ll The book invites us to read it as Yacht Britannia, with its splendidly that baggage of ancestors and roots a journey towards liberation, the duchessy tone towards the Queen and the decayed grandeur of the double m ovement fro m Anlaby to ('Poor girl, she might loosen up if buildingsofAnlaby'- In 1982, White the Glasshouse Mountains where one took her in hand ... ' ). Another complains about his ex-friend's 'ina Dutton now lives, and from a con excell ent lunch is the one at which bility to see that the Edwardi an val ventional early marriage to the au he was m ade Australian of the Year, ues of the Dutton tribe don't belong thenticity he now enjoys with Robin and his 'lower false teeth broke up anywhere today.' This, like so much Lucas, whom he married in 1985 . on a savoury boat'- A good number else in the later letters, is unfa ir, and D u tto n wants to see this i n of the letters are routine communi worse, it is sloppy. Dutton, as his Nietzschean terms as a kind of rein cation about ro utines- the cooking, book shows, is not som e kind of vention of the self: 'one's life as well the dogs, the work around the place, relic. It was not all that easy fo r a as one' art is there to be created.' coughs and colds, asthma and bron member of the Ad elaide Club to op So far as the life is concerned, chitis, Manoly's arthritic feet. The pose Vietnam, to become a republi good luck to him, but the account of later political activities are well-doc ca n, to promote Russian poetry. But the process in the autobiography is umented here: there are sidelights it has to be said, it was not all that Nietzsche-and-water. Self-creation, on the Utzon scandal, the Green difficult, either. Good-natured, ex according to Nietzsche (t hat sub Ban s, the Nuclear Disarmam ent troverted, likeable, popular, enthu limely Bad Bloke) is not the prov siastic, not overl y-exacting, modest ince of every w riter, but only those ~. ~..:-~ ~ ~ AA. ly adventurous, not too original rare beings who can, through their rr1-- these are the gifts of the Good Bloke strength and profound originality, on whom, until quite recently, the succeed in inventing a new lan ~· Australian literary scene has rather guage with which to describe them o~. heavily depended. When he fin ally selves. It has been a condition of left the Adelaide Club, there were Dutton 's whole career that he is ~~---A-il pl enty of other doors open to this not that kind of writer. White just ...-.~..._..-v-~ quintessentially clubbable man. might be. T here is a good deal to enj oy, and When the N a tional Library fo r those interested in our literature, asked Patrick White for his papers, a grea t deal to learn in Out in the he replied that he hadn't any: 'The Open. Dutton has known just about final ve rsions of m y books are what everybody, and the main strength of I want people to see and if there is the book is its portrait of 'the age', its anything of importance in m e, it personal guide to that 'season for will be in those.' Like T. S. Eliot, solitari es'. It is full of excellent White wanted to defl ect attention anecdotes, though not all survive from 'the man who suffers'. He pressing between 501 large pages, scorned ' those unnecessary people and I do wish UQP would recruit its who come here and talk about my editors from the slash-a nd- "work and life" '. Yet he was often burn people. helpful to academics, even those "' he didn't much care for, and of A S A STORY OF THE SELF, some course, towards the end, he gave thing we have come to expect in an him self over to David Man who autobi ograph y, the book is far less has turned out to be one of the best convincing. Of biography, Dutton of first biographers. The devoted says that, 'the challenge is to divine, and the curious will always want and then, as far as possible, prove letters (even seeking Eliot in the various aspects of the truth. Unlike permafrost of his.) White's corre Francis Bacon's jesting pilate, the spondents kept his letters, against biographer must ask, "what is the Patrick's wishes; they gave them to truth?" and stay for an answer. ' Marr, and here they are, minutely Indeed: stay. And that exacts of and tactfully edited. a writer a particular discipline of What do we get ? A volume of Party. There is endless complaining mind and a conception of form that letters is a radically open text, a about Australia, how White is fa ted issue in something other than a brisk, miscellany which different readers to live here but the place stinks and entertaining chronicle. Dutton, in a will shuffle and sort in different ways. he's a Londoner at heart, and so on modest summing up, is quite right Some will like the gossip, which is and so on. By the end I came to feel to say that in a 'healthy literary com plentiful and bitchy and fi erce. There as Geoffrey Dutton does, that all munity' there must be som e people are n ot m an y set pieces- som e this was plain tire ome and wrong- VOLUME 4 N UMB ER 10 • EUREKA STREET 31 headed and even began to wonder share his life with a lover; he found Duttonry' and the one Dutton shot what, from a psychoanalytical stand Manoly Lascaris, and they were to back: 'as for telephoning, I wouldn't point, 'Australia' might mean. gether for over forty years. He want waste the ten cents on you.' Grist For me, a main interest of this ed the tangibilities of land and the for the gossips. What is more sub new volume is its revelation of what daily routines of a farmer and he stantial is to follow through the ref it is like to be one kind of writer. found them outside Sydney at Cas erences to one another in both m en's White belongs in the company of tle Hill- until the day came when books. It is not just that Dutton is Yeats and Lawrence, the Romantic the city's call was stronger, and off astute; he is also a persuasive wit Moderns. 'I am a romantic at heart' he went to Martin Road. On Sunday ness to the moral squalor into which he says. He quotes Baudelaire: 'Gen mornings he would spend hours on the great man was capable of de ius is recaptured childhood.' There the telephone to Maie Casey or Eliz scending. (Try the dinner party is evidence here of his mysticism, abeth Riddell but his telephone scenes at pp. 379-81 of Out in the his love of the exotic, his sense of number was silent. His circle of Open) himself as an outcast, friends was so tightly controlled that But equally, Dutton's claim in his trust in intuition. those excluded from it decided he the severance letter that White was There is endless What offers to be about must be a recluse. All this, always, once 'a hurnane, generous and even the world always comes for the sake of the writing. good m an' is borne out by the new cmnplaining about back, in the end, to that These are the letters of a slave collection. There is a beautiful letter, giant inexhaustible Self and a tyrant. Visionary writers serve for example, to a young relative, Australia, how White which the romantics be their visions, and where the appear Philip Garland, later to be diagnosed queathed to psychoa ances of the world resist inclusion, as schizophrenic. As for the gener is fated to live here nalysis. 'I am always they must somehow be subdued. osity, that is by now well-known: walking on eggs' White 'Perhaps I am not a realist. When turning the Nobel Prize m oney into but the place stinks tells Dutton 'when I we came to live here I felt the life an award for neglected writers, giv becom e a Greek char was, on the surface, so dreary, ugly, ing away- over a long period-scads and he's a Londoner acter.' monotonous, there must be a poetry of money to the Smith Family. And 'I expect all my char hidden in it to give it a purpose, and it is not fair to remember only the at heart ... By the end acters are really bits of so I set out to discover that secret cast-off friends: to a handful of myself, and it inhibits core, and The Tree of Man emerged'. people-not, inte restingly, the I came to feel as m e when foreignness 'Reality' or what passes for it, famous- White was persistently forces me in to a certain must be effaced and replaced. The loyal and steadfast: Peggy Garland, Dutton does, that amount of objectivity.' letters show White checking facts Frederick Glover, Ben Huebsch, Jean Writing is not for and asking correspondents for details Scott Rogers, Ronald Waters. all this was plain this man a trade, or even of manners or period, but in the In 1969, Dutton was in crisis. He a calling; it is a fate: the tapestry of his writing these wrote to White: 'that I was profound tiresome and writer 'must read and are colou red wools that he ly depressed, that in the old phrases, write, read and write, stitch es onto the fully- my soul was afflicted and disquieted wrongheaded and and forgetting all about drawn cartoon. within me. But I felt guilty about being a writer, li ve, to these feelings, because (so I wrote) I even began to wonder perfect his art'. He is A S WITH THE NOVELS, SO the read lived in a beautiful place with a compelled and con- er of these letters must suspend dis loving family . . . So why should I what, from a demned to work, each tance and allow the particles of the not be happy? ' new book burning and self to be pulled into White's gravita White replied: ' ... I don't see psychoanalytical pressing inside him, tional field. Full contact or nothing, why you need be plunged in such Lear's hysterica passio vassal or en emy. It was t h e gloom and remorse for having it good standpoint, -or a bad case of indi same with his friendship, which in life and an amiable character gestion- until he heads depended on your remaining the thrown in. There are so many 'Australia' might for the desk. Yet this is person h e had decided you were. depressive, violent, irritable, sleazy, as it should be: 'Thank When you changed, or he decided destructive people about, it's a relief mean. God for the Demon you had changed, he dumped you. to think of somebody attractive and Work to combat the oth- Some of the most concentrated enviable. So relax and enjoy your er Devils.' writing in Out in the Open concerns spiritual status.' Viewed this way, White's ego White, about whom Dutton is per And keep smiling. Those who tism and exclusiveness are less char ceptive, not only because of their still think of Patrick White the man acter defects than they are aspects of long friendship but because they are as a colossus rising from the shal a way of being in the world. The so gloriously and painfully unlike lows of Australian culture have much letters reveal a m an who found out and, I think, because White hurt him to ponder in the new volume. • rather quickly what his necessities so badly that he has been forced to in life were, and answered to them think hard and long. with great purity and ruthlessness. We now have both sides of the Bruce Williams is H ead of the School (D utton sees this, as he sees so much famous rift, the letter in which White of Arts and M edia, La Trobe else about White.) He wanted to announces that he's 'had enough of University. 32 EUREKA STREET •DECEMBER 1994 BooKs: 1 FRED CHANEY bring out the author's amusing side: indeed, he is savage about incompe tence. These negative sentiments come through more strongly than Hail, high flier the praise for work well done which is acknowledged from time to time. Flying the Kite: Travels of an Australian Politi Phillip Flood, a previous ambassa cian, John Button, Random House, Sydney 1994, dor to Indonesia, can rest easy, which ISBN 0 09 182872 4, RRP $16.95 accords with my own experience. On the other hand, as someone who has had a similarly hosted visit to N EVER APPEAR for a fnend in motion of a new culture in industry. the United Kingdom, I can say that court is a good rule for a barrister. I That is what makes this book so John was dead unlucky to strike all learned that rule when I broke it interesting. It lays out some of the duffers. many years ago. Don't 'shadow' a experiences which led him to advo- He is much more at ease with minister who is doing a good job cate approaches which fell outside America and Americans. Sure those might be another one for a politi- the fa shionable hands-off markets- are problems but 'I felt good about cian. I broke that rule of prudence are-all view but still put a lot of the visit' and 'All the competencies when I shadowed John Button in the pressure on individuals and indus- were there' reflect an apparent liking earlier part of his years in the indus- tries to perform. and there is regret rather than con try portfolio. A third rule I am break- The book is made up of 16 essays tempt about the fact that in Rea ing now is never review the work of written around Button's ministerial gan's America there is no one to som eone you know and admire. travels abroad and earlier visits to bring it together. It is hard to be objective and most the United States and the United And that is perhaps the key to his readers of John Button's 'Flying the Kingdom as a backbencher in oppo- even more relaxed sense of Asian Kite' will find it hard to separate out sition in the seventies. This is his countries. Here you find people who the impressions they already have of account of his attempts to brea k out are both competent and directed. a well known figure from what he of 'a morass of tired and borrowed This is a personal parable of the open has written. ideas', the response of a thoughtful ing up to Asia which is happening This author may be regarded as a man to the sense of a 'Lucky Coun- and has to continue. rare, endangered species. He left Par- try' drifting without confidence or There are two related things or liament aft er 19 years in 1993, well purpose down ' the Argentinian ideas which em erge from this book. liked in industry circles where he Road'. The first is the learning experi had worked for a decade and popular For most of us the criticisms of ence which being a minister in a with the public as a man not like Australia's position became accept- Westminster system government other politicians. A bit franker at ed cliches without our ever coming involves. Button is frank about his times, a bit funnier at others, a good to grips with the substance of our uncertainties when he started on the bloke really. He has the figures to problems, let alone finding solutions job. Some readers may find that con support the proposition that he was to them . Button is not cliched, and, firms their fears about our system of an eff ective minister. He presided as we have known since the N ew government. Others, like me, migh t over the industry portfolio for a dec- T estament, a tale works better than welcome it as encouraging an ade during which there was rn assive a lecture. Button's travels were no approach to government which is restructuring. doubt real, but they also function as practical and based more on reality In the steel industry for example, parables about what works in the than ideology mindlessly and care the Button Steel Plan required the m odern competitive world lessly applied. loss of about half the jobs in the and what doesn't. Paul Hasluck wrote, correctly in industry to achieve competitive pro- m y view, that 'policy is shaped and ductivity. Some opportunities were 1TI S AN EASY RE AD. The quirkiness developed best when it is the out lost. Expressed ambitions to move of the man is reflected in the quirky come of practice rather than of from woodchip export to adding val- selection of events he chooses to theory'. These essays describe a man ue in Australia foundered in part on deliver his message. In part it is easy looking at practice around the world the failure of the government to bring to read because he is notal ways kind and shaping national policy around together environment and industry to those he describes including those the successful outcom es he observed. policies.Buttherapidgrowthofman- who served him below his exacting I hope they are read by lots of politi ufactured exports to a wide range of standards. Some public servants- cians and would-be politicians. • countries during the latter part of his both Australian and British- will not decade suggest that he got a lot enjoy his description of their inanity right- a detractor might in more and ineffectiveness. Acts of kind- Fred Chaney is a former Liberal grudging vein say he didn't muck it ness delivered in the context of slack Senate leader, Cabinet minister and up but I would give him a better irrelevance to the job in hand are MHR. He is now a Research Fellow mark than that. held up to ridicule. Coasting on the at the Graduate School of Manage Part of his success lay in his pro- job with no clear obj ectives does not ment, University of WA. VOLUME 4 N UMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 33 BooKs: 2 B RUCE P ASCOE Tristan's quest I T" AN mmcATION of Aum'li''' American-Australian parallels are literary insecurity that the nation blatant but you always believe in The Unusual Life of Tristan worries about how it should react to Smith, Peter Carey, University of Efica; you feel if you were dropped Peter Carey . If h e weren ' t so Qu ee nsland Press, Toowong, off there you 'd know where to get a successful, there'd be no confusion: 1994. ISBN 0 7022 2626 2 RRP $29.95 newspaper and a good cup of coffee. he'd be regarded as an inventive The world is elaborately created, storyteller. Because he's successful complete with political intrigue, some feel that his facility must be in Tristan Smith than in any of his betrayal and rigid correctness. A regarded with suspicion. work since Th e Fat Man in History. vicious contest of political wills is Interviewed by Andrew Riemer Tristan Smith (Th e In dependent September '94), is the physically Carey gives as a foundation inspira repulsive child of tion for Tristan Smith the sight of a Felicit y, the young, severely handicapped man in director of the 1~ l S '{Ef\R WE-''J E- (;,DI'\t fOR ~E. "F \.lt..L a wheel chair. 'The man had a weird avant garde Feu DICKeNSIII.N CKR1S1,.'u\S - TH E. TAISL.E.'5 LA.l P look of intelligence in hi s eyes. I was Follet thea tre WITH\ A 5UMVfUOO.S DINNf{<, ACOUPLE. 6F repulsed.' Repulsed and yet drawn. collective. It HAL f- ~~ N~IGI-I60URS A.ND Al'l ~PHAN fiR £ Carey wondered how that intelli could be the Sta OYf..r< AS Gll~SI$, AND ii-IE. P..PVLt:. Of Ol)R gence could have its release, an ap bles in Sydney or e1e!5 UPS1A.I~S At()lJI 10 VROP DeAD plication. He responds like the aver the Pram Factory f~OM coNsu~Wii ON I age person, but as an artist he pro in M elbo u rne. ceeds to build a world around this Tristan 's father deformed 'crea ture'. describes the the- N o mystery there. Carey's in atre as 'a group of ventiveness and craft is excruciat professional s ingly good and that world he creates who feel they are around Tristan is both fabu lous and beyond criticism, real, but he employs no tricksy arti who elevate slop fice of fogged and di storted mirrors piness to a style to lure the reader into beli eving that of acting .. . you there is a deep and m ea ningful hid ch eer up th e den m essage. Carey does not seem lo nely libera ls, afraid of the narrative, or the stigma you annoy the fas of being known as a m ere teller of cists. It enter stories, a slight to send the expen tains.' This dis sive haircuts of many current novel missiveness is ists quivering. typica l of Bill The fab le of Tristan Smith cu ts Fleur, a fo unding back and forth between time and actor of Feu Foll et perspectives, and the questionable w ho deserts fo r validity of those perspectives, but t h e t h ea tre the story docs not suffe r because of world's version of it. Carey succeeds where many fail Disneyland. Bu t because of his supreme language the preciousness craft, imagination and lack of fear. a nd self-con He sees structure for what it is, a sciousness of the vehicle, rather than an end in itself. Feu Foll e t is Perhaps the ambivalence felt to palpable. Forget the audience, think behind every Efica n conversa ti on, wards Carey by critics and academ of the truth' the left and ri ght struggle fo r ics has more to do with his wealth Th e dominant empire of Voor powe r w hile th e spectre of and fame than it has to do with craft. stand intimidates the world with its cul tural obliteration looms Carey is not the fir t advertising culture and the tiny archipelago state '""r over them . executive to launch into novels, but of Efica is swamped by it, except for of those w ho have he is the best I've that area of land reclaimed by the .1_ HER EARE MANY WAYS tO write this read. And that skill is more apparent national bulwark of Feu Follet. T he novel. Charles Dickens, the grea t 34 EUREKA STREET •DECEMBER 1994 creator of worlds, would have worn There is room for the convinced both. It's not a stance to drive social his heart on his sleeve, Marquez and unconvinced in all societies. T he organisations bravely forward but wou ld have strangled the whole nar u n convinced act as a wry an d perhaps it creates the ballast for the rative in the fine webs of alchem y whim sical conscience for the Joans keel of the passionate yacht with its a nd mythic his t o ries, Felici t y of Arcady. sails full of wind and the rigging wouldn't have survived unscathed T he critics are wasting their time screaming with brave noise. • from the pen of Patrick White and if they demand that Carey declares Gunter Grass has already done it in himself finally, takes the side of red Bruce Pascoe is the co-editor of The Tin Drum. or blue, for he sees too m uch fo lly in A ustralian Short Stories. Carey doesn 't get as close to his subjects as any of the above. H e BooKs: 3 writes like a distant professional, a JuLIETTE HuGHES carefu l plastic surgeon conscien tiousl y tryin g to re -create the smashed fa ce of humanity, but, like most surgeons, Big Mac h e's from a different class, Mary MacKillop: An Extraordinary Australian, Paul Gardiner SJ, E. J. Dwyer/David Ell Press, 1993 . ISBN 0 85574 993 8 RRP $39.95 suburb and life to (HB ), $19.95 (PB ); that of the Mary MacKillop Unveiled, Lesley O'Brien, CollinsDove, 1994. patient- an in ISBN 1 863 71 396 4, RR P $16.95; c r e dul o u s Julian Tenison Woods: 'Fa ther Founder', Marga ret M. Press RSJ, interest in t h e CollinsDove (revised edn .) 1994. ISBN 1 863 71 321 2, RRP $24.95; stranger. Mary Mackillop: No Plaster Sa int, Clare Dunne, AB C, 199 1. ISilN Part of you 0 7333 01 36 3 RR P $12.95, auc\10 tape 0 642 176 10 8 RRP $16.95 wants the autho rial vo i ce t o position itself in LATELY THERE HAS BEEN a pletho- surrounding Mary M acKillop's life the novel to tell ra of MacKillopiana engendered by were often enormously interesting you wha t th e the prospect of the first Australian in them selves, their eccentricities writer thinks, to beatification. The current crop of and influences having an important give some reason biographical treatments form a mo- bearing on one's understanding of for the creation of saic of diffe rent approaches; every the w om an and her tim es. And a another chaotic reader, it seem s, is catered for. But deterrnination to present all of the and vicio u s the essence of canonisation is to subject's actions in the best possible world, but anoth m ake 'h eroes' out of real humans, to light serves the purposes of a Positio er pa rt of you create rallying symbols for a com - but does not necessarily m ake fa sci- w ant s it left munity of believers. This process nating reading. There are tantalising alon e, as you can create conflicts between the de- glimpses ofletters, allusions to m eet- wish the develop m ands of rigorou s scholarship and ings and conversation s between ers had left The those of constructing a good defence MacKillop and various people, but Rock s in their case. This is not to say that histori- the engine of agenda runs a very fecund slummi cal facts are distorted, but that the straight line through them. Cardin- ness and Collins weight of authorial intent and com - er's book is honest h agiography, Street to its silly m entary may end up telling us m ore painstakingly researched, and will Victorian dream of the agenda for the subject than it be the dominant text for a long tim e o f old m o n ey. does of the subject h erself. to com e. Sanitising slums The best-known of these titles is T o m eet the dem and for further and l eve lling Paul Gardiner's Mary MacKillop: An knowledge of the bit players in the playing fi elds is Extraordinary A ustralian, which the MacKillop saga, a revised edition of for other writers. Introduction says is 'substantially Margaret M . Press' 1979 book, Julian Carey is dis- identical' to the Positio, or his tori- Tenison Woods: 'Father Founder' has t a nt fro m the cal study presented to the Vatican in been released. Again, there is a char- principals of his novel but he is no support of a candidate for canonisa- ity in the account that blunts the less interested in them than a m ore tion . The limitations imposed by interest, especially when the subject passionately partisan writer might such an approach can be imagined, was, despite the author's hovering be. It seem s that Carey doesn't know and Fr Gardiner readil y admits that benevolence, a neu rotic whose self- what to m ake of them - and there's 'human interest' was not 'the crite- ishness, vanity and weakness was justification for that stance: they are rion '. The centrality of focus on the difficult to excuse despite his desire very peculiar people, even if you do m ain player is, strangely enough, a for holiness. The extracts from let- see them on every tram and train. problem here; the other characters ters, again, are tantalising. As with VO LUME 4 N UMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 35 the Gardiner book, there is a sense postulants. I was so excited when I MacKillop and the people she knew. that the reader is being urged to went to l 36 EUREKA STREET •D EC EMBER 1994 claimed biography of Christina Stead First, sh e is an exceptionally fine but is now researching and writing and co-convenor earlier this year of a writer. Second, sh e is a genuinely one, I wince every time I read that conference on biography, colleagues provocative one. Try this on for size: passage. I'm skewered, like a butter of hers in university English depart 'The biographer at work, indeed, is fl y on a collector's display board. m ents are reading m ore biographies like the professional burglar, break Malcolm has already written with a than novels. 'Biography is at the in ing into a house, rifling through cer similarly sharp stylus about psycho tersection of being a scholar and a tain drawers that he has good reason analysis in 1980 with Psycho writer. If you get the scholarship to think contain the jewelry and analysis: The Im possible Profession, wrong, the n the academics will money, and triumphantly bearing about the Freudian establishment, hound you and if you get the writing his loot away. The voyeurism and in 1983 with In the Freud Archives, wrong then readers will desert you.' busybody ism that impel writers and and about journalism in 1990 with Get it right though, she says, and readers of biography alike are ob Th e Journalist and the Mmderer. the rewards, both literary and finan scured by an apparatus of scholar However, third, and most inter cial, are great. Biography sells: in ship designed to give the enterprise estingly, there is a curious and com Australia Paul Barry sold over 80,000 an appearance of banklike pelling tension between what Janet copies of his expose of Alan Bond 'Tblandness and solidity. says and what Janet does. It is also and has already sold over 90,000 cop dual-edged; Malcolm's critics, and it ies-in hardback- of The Rise and HE BIOGRAPHER IS PORTRA YEO is not surprising she has a number, Rise of Kerry Pacl V OLUME 4 N UMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 37 FOR 1995-96 Masson repeatedly boasted of his Society, October 7, 1994). This is SPIRITUALITY ability to charm or seduce senior what I meant by saying Malcolm & PASTORAL CARE analysts. He said they regarded him demonstrates the best qualities of as a private asset- they enjoyed his the professions she probes. Her anal A MASTER'S PLUS irreverent jokes-but a public liabil ysis of people's actions and motives Advanced certificate , ity- he was too young and brash to would do the average psychoanalyst twelve credits beyond Master of Arts be taken seriously. Although the proud; her ferreting investiga tions (comfortably two years, one-year phrase did not appear on Malcolm's make for excellent journali sm, and and two summers for either M.A.) interview tapes she quoted Masson now in Th e Silent Woman, she has saying, 'I was like an intellectual combined this with a nose for mood gigolo.' In the middle of this legal and nuance and an abi lity to draw imbroglio, Malcolm nevertheless character to produce a fresh, sensi CONSIDER A launched into her dissection of jour tive portrait of Sylvia Plath and Ted PERSONALI ZED CURRICULUM nalists' capacity to seduce and be Hughes. FROM A WI DE RANGE OF tray the subjects of their stories. She What needs to be clarified is THEOLOGI CAL AND m ercilessly pummelled journalist Joe Malcolm's purpose in writing so pro PASTO RAL STU Dl ES McGinniss who had deceived a Navy vocatively; her critics charge her with doctor accused and convict- arrogance, and she certainly comes Theology & Practice of Spiritual Di rection ed of murdering his family. across at times, in the four books of Pastoral Counselling Skills hers I have read, as aloof and icily Supervised Practicum in Spiritual Direction M ALCO LM WAS EVENTUALLY analytical. But I think she is also History of Spirituality I and/ or II clea red of libel because Masson had witheringly honest, not only about Spiritual Diredion failed to prove that any of the quota her subjects but about her own work. tions were deliberately or reckl essly (S he confesses in The Silent Wom Pastoral Counsell ing Theo ries falsifi ed (reported in Th e Austral an, to feeling the 'early symptoms of Pastoral Counselling Skills ian, November4, 1994), but the jury infection: the familiar stirrings of Pastoral Counselling Practicum in San Franscisco District Court still reportorial desire.') Special Issues (e.g. Addictions) found that Malcolm had falsifi ed two What she has to say about the Pastoral Counselling quotes attributed to Masson . The power struggles and unspoken agen New Yorker, which is the publica das that underlie the relationships tion where most of her books have between journalists and their sub Clinical Pastoral Education originally appeared as long articles, jects or about the biographical enter (1 Unit) decided in spite of the libel case to prise (as quoted above) is certainly commission and publish her work true. It is also be true that at least Practicum for on Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. som e journalists and biographers are Directed Retreats And I think they were right. Re honest with themselves about what viewers have widely praised Th e they are doing, and strive for an Group Theory Silent Woman (published in the Unit ethical balance between their inter & Practice ed States last March). Th e New Yorl< ests and those of their subject. Times Bool< Review said she had But if Malcolm had written a on achieved the metaphorical feat of the-one-hand, on-the-other ha nd sawing off the tree limb she sits on, masterpiece of vaci ll ation, her work yet not fa lling, while Bernard C ri ck, would have had nothing like the DIRECTORS respected biograph er of George impact it has had. • John J. Shea, OSA, Ph .D. Orwell, sa id 'it contains some of the Matthew Ricketson is a freelance Janet K. Ruffing, RSM, Ph .D. best thinking on both the practical journalist. He is currently research a nd phil osophi ca l problems of ing a biography of financier Stani biography.' (New Statesman and forth Ricketson, his grandfather. How will they face up? Fordham University GRADUATE SCHOOL OF RELIGION EURI:-KA SJRI:-Er & RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Bronx, NY 1 0458-5163 (718) 817-4800 Versus QUADRANT The Inaugural Cricket Match FORDHAM 11 December, Walker Street, No 1 Oval , Royal Park l .OOpm . 38 EUREKA STREET •DECEMBER 1994 Fooo CATRJONA JACKSON Taste and see A Now eon"'"""' M'Nwnce asked 'What's the point of writing about food?' Pointing to m y well leafed copy of The Art of Eating by M.F. K. Fisher (who was often asked the sam e question) I told him to look up the answer for himself. Back in 1943 Fisher wrote, 'It seem s to m e that our three basic needs, for secu Fast Pasta, Gabriel Gate, Anne O'Donovan/Pengu in, 1994. RRP $5.95 ISBN 0 14 024303 8 rity, food and love, are so entwined Good Food No Fuss, Geoff Slattery, Anne O'Donovan, 1994. RRr $19.95 ISBN 0 90H476 72 8 that we cannot think straightly of Creative Casseroles, Anne Willan, Reader's Digest Australia,1994.RRP $25.00 ISBN 0 86438 565 X one without the others. So it hap The Classic Italian Cookbook, Marcella Hazan, Macmillan Papermac, 1992. RRI' $26.95 l>n pens that when I write of hunger, I 0 333 4H5l8 1 am really writing about love and the Allegro AI Dente, pasta and opera, Terry Durak, Rinaldo Di Stasio and Jill Dupleix, William hunger for it, and warmth and the Heinemann Australia, 1994. RRI' $45 .00 ISBN 0 85561 620 6 love of it ... and then the warmth and 50 Great Curries of India, Camellia Panjabi, Readers Digcst, l 994. RRP $45.00 ISIIN 0 86438 720 2 richness and fin e reality of hunger Fine Family Cooking, Tony Bilson, Angus and Robert on, 1994. RRP $45.00 ISBN 0 207 1H242 6 sa tisfied. ' N ot all this summer's food books for Australians. Fast Pasta is a quick reliance on the microwave, or his display so much profundity, or com run through of noodle and pasta dish habit of putting lime peel into every m on sense. But there is no doubt es that can be thrown together in thing. But Slattery's point is that that, when writing about food, peo record time. One thing Gate doesn't preparing a m eal is a creative process ple often end up writing about the m ention is that many of the pasta that every cook should make his/her things they think are really impor dishes are also very cheap. The first own. The recipe in this book, says tant, be they precision and a perfect 20 pages or so read like a m enu from Slattery, are things to be read for result every time (which I happen to m y first student share house: m aca in spiration a nd the n u sed, or think is impossible), or the courage roni cheese, spaghetti with napoli changed, or discarded as the cook and creativity to take risks and hope sauce, with garlic and parsley, with sees fit. for the best. tomato and beans. It is a tribute to The latest in the Look and Cook It is said we arc living in an era in their fundamental goodness that I series, Cmative Casseroles, is the which no one cooks at hom e any can still feed anyone, anywhere, with polar opposite of Slattery's com e-as m ore. That's nonsense, but just in these dishes. you-a rc approach to cooking. Eng case there is even a suspicion of a Good Food No Fu ss is a catalogu e lish author Anne Willan runs a cook trend let's begin with the handful of of Geoff Slattery's favourite recipes ing school with branches in the Unit n ew cookbooks written for the along with a full-frontal assault, ed States and France, and her book uninitiated. Geoff Slattery's Good aimed pretty squarely at blokes, on describes itself as the 'ultimate step Food No Fu ss, and Gabriel Gate's the idea that cooking is a chore. by-step guide to mastering today's Above: pocket size Fa st Pa sta, both make Rather than forming the core of the cooking, with success every time'. Eating on a high note, cooking sound possible and enjoya book, the recipes here are illustra The Look and Cook television series from Dural<, DiStasio ble. And I think both succeed. tions of Slattery's views on how to is currently running on SBS, and and Dupleix's Allegro AI Gate is a bumblingly charming live well, and many cooks will disa watching a recent episode I did pick Dente, pasta and opera. m edia chef who has played a large gree with at least som e of what he up som e handy surgical hints on Photograph: part in demystifying French cuisine has to say. Personally I don't like his how to dissect a chicken into equal Rob Blacl V OLUME 4 NUMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 39 eighths, and how to tell if the join t of the best until last. T he two fi nest beef is done. This book does exactly cook books out this season are Fifty what it says it will do. It lays out Great Curries of India, by Cam ellia every step of the cooking and prepar Panjabi, and Fine Family Cool 40 EUREKA STREET • DECEMBER 1994 THEATRE G EOFFR EY MILNE A valuable Currency A N 'M"''"" HANoruc of pl>y tionship between working-class Jared texts has arrived on my desk from (Jade's brother and a close fri end of Currency Press, the intrepid pub Ricko, whose drunken party was the lisher of Australian drama founded locus of the rape and murder) and more than 22 years ago in Sydney by Rachel, a student fr om across the Katharine Brisbane and the late river. Philip Parsons. Currency has pub The staging is simple and anti lish ed all of Australia's major con naturalistic but the relationships and temporary playwrights, and this lat issues are complex. So are the out est batch of four plays suggests that com es. The community has lost a it still has a keen eye for spotting number of its young (one penna publishable new work. nently, others for the term of their The plays all com e fresh fr om prison sentences), friendships are productions by various N ew South broken and community confidence Wales companies during the past and trust are shattered, but life will three years, and each text bears the apparently go on. What is not much tamp of theatrical exposure. This dealt with in the body of distinguishes them from those pub Nick Enright photo: Currency Press this play are questions like lished in Currency's Current Thea tre them es, as in the autobiographical why and how routine male- 'While women Series, which off er only the version St fames Infirmary, the quasi-bio female violence and hatred of a text provided by the author for graphical Mongrels (al so in this group are perpetuated in our soci the beginning of rehearsals. of plays) and the present work. ety. Presumably, these is believe, m en The four new plays haves veral A Property of the Clan is set 'in a sues are to be tackled in the elements in common, including the large Australian indu trial city in follow-up material that typ rape, torture and fact that all are written by men, all the present day' (the N ewcastle of ically accompanies Thea deal with events and/or characters its premiere production ?) and it tre in Educa tion programs. kill. Who is to dra wn from real life, and all have had portrays the rape and subsequent This Enright play is a clas the benefit of 'workshopping' or sim murder of a teenage girl by a group of sic exa mple of the best of blam e ~ ' ilar involvem ent by theatre profes boys attending a welcome- hom e par the issues-based TIE plays sionals other than their authors. ty for one of their drop-out school that, accord ing to David - )o EYLN Scun, Thr e of the plays concern male mates. The story is based on events Carlin (whom I quoted last violence, and two are about the widely reported a year or so m onth ), have died out. introducing thea trical arts themselves. before the play's opening. Clearly, they have not. Gordon Graham's The 13oys First of the bunch is the nea tly (if Gordon Graham 's The ironically) titled A Property of the ENR IGHT'S VER ION OF THE STORY Boys (which premiered in Clan, a play commissioned from fo cuses on the victim's fri ends and 199 1 in a Griffin Theatre production Nick Enright by Freewheels Thea tre their families, all of whom are hav at the Stables in King's Cross), is in Educa tion and fi rst performed by ing troubles of their own. The girl simila rly concerned with m ale them in N ewcastle in August 1992. herself, Tracy, is never seen onstage hatred and violence towards wom Enrigh t, who was born in Sydney, but is much talked about (as 'a moll' en, and in it, too, the focal event (the has written, co-written ortranslated by the boys, 'a real fri end' by her rape and murder of a young wom an many plays and music- theatre piec schoolmate Jade, w ho maintains a by three working- class suburban es, such as The Venetian Twins vigil over her grave until ju stice is brothers, one of whom is just out of (premiered by the lam ented Nimrod done, and as 'mature for her age' by prison) takes place offstage. When in its late heyday), On the Wallaby Jade's battling m other). The action the play was workshopped at the (SAT C) and Daylight Saving, along is interrupted-and thea trically Australian N ational Playwrights' with TV and film scripts (like Come counterpointed- by parallel voice Conference in 1988, and again when in Spinner and Lorenzo's Oil). More overs of the boys' court appearances it was fully produced, obvious paral recently he has turned to darker and by a subplot portray ing the rela- lels with the awful Anita Cob by case VOLUME 4 N UMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 41 were apparent. Graham 's trea tment Ensemble Thea tre in Sydney in 1991 ), Czech-German writer Franz Kafka of the story focuses, in a linear and is also rooted in violence of a kind. and in the inspiring cafe of the Yid grittily realistic n arrative, on there Early in the piece, Edmund Burke is dish Drea m Theatre in Prague, circa lationship between the Sprague boys' freed from prison (where he spent a 19 12. T h e two settings are comple m other an d girlfriends, who form a long stretch for violent crimes), but m ented by n o less th an three simul strong bond am ong them selves: they Enright's Burke-unlike Gordon taneous fram es of action. One con are supportive of each other and Graham's Brett- is set up for a suc cerns the consumptive, acquiescen t blindly supportive of their men, who cessful career as a playw right. He is and utterly indecisive Ka fka's do in their eyes couldn't h ave don e nurtured by a wealthy theatrical pro m estic life: he does pretty much w hat anything to hurt an yone. (As Jocelyn ducer, Elaine Vanderfield, w ho soon he's told by his authoritarian father Scutt suggests in an illuminating introduces him to an other of h er Hermann. His weird dream s, in introductory essay, 'While w om en stable of playwrights, the homosex w hich the Yiddish actors teach h im believe, m en rape, tortu re and ki ll. ual Vincent O 'Hara. to 'act' (in many senses of the word ), Who is to blam e?') The all-fem ale T h e two writers strike up a bond form th e second action. T he third, action is punctuated by flashbacks of mutual respect and envy. O 'Hara, from which the play derives its title, to the fatefu l day of Brett's home for example, gives Burke considera con cerns Kafka's long and indeter coming and the fa ta l night that fol ble dram aturgical assistance early in minate en gagem en t w ith Feli ce lowed. his 'outside' career but resents being Bauer, with whom he corresponded The play is overladen with h eav partly supplanted by him in the fo r years but rarel y met. In these ily articu lated dialogue, designed to theatre's favours. He is n evertheless scen es, sh e teaches him to dance. help the audience to understand eve on e of the few to com e to Burke's In learning from the Yiddish ry ch aracter's every action . When deathbed, even though he is very ill actors and fr om Feli ce how to act reading the text this alm ost m akes himself. In fact, it is the relationship (i.e., to take responsibility for his their actions unbelievable, bu t by all between the ratbag but genuinely actions as well as to act his proper accounts Alex Galeazzi's production talented Burke and the sensitive (but role in life) and to da nce (i.e., to let was so well-acted that this sh ort campily acid and by then m ediocre) his spirit take flight ), the hopeless coming was n ot a problem on th e O'Hara that provides m ost Franz is emboldened to read frag stage. of the interest in this play. ments of h is m asterpiece Metamor Another play of Nick Enrigh t's, phosis aloud to his bewildered fam Mongrels (first performed by the R EADERS FAM ILI AR WITH the Syd ily during the play's rem arkable cli n ey theatre scen e in the 1970s will m ax, when all h ell breaks loose h ave little trouble recognising Jim around him and them . T he u tterly • Theology & Ministry M cN eill and Peter Kenna in th ese anti-naturalistic fabric of Daly's play a~ for Tomorrow's two characters, and Enright liberally is further enriched by deliberate char OF THEOLOGYI NSTITUTE ~ Church & World sprinkles events and character traits acter-doubling, whereby the actors 7 from the m en's lives throughout h is playing Kafka's family also play the fast-m oving and well-o bserved ac arch etypes (T he Fath er, T he Moth tion . Seeing the play published by er, The Daughter etc) in the Yiddish C urrency adds a certain extra frisson D rea m T heatre. • Sabbatical Study Program with Personalized to one's enjoym en t of its nuan ces: This is a fantastic piece of thea Certificate - 4, 9 or 12 months that press's proprietors were pro mi tre, blending Strine! berg's kind of re • Masters programs in Pastoral Care, Adult nent am ong M cN eill's supporters, alism , Breton 's surrealism , German Christian Formation, Liturgical Ministry, and published both playwrights. This expressio nis m and P ira n dello's Preaching, Theology & Divinity is a good and lively play, and its m etathea tre (not to mention m o • Doctor of Ministry in Preaching interest in art and artists is an added m ents of ironic Aussie and age-old bonus. Jewish humour) into a dream -play • Programs focused on integration of experience, Argu ably th e best of the four pl ays form peculiar to Timothy Daly. Hav theological foundations & pastoral skill in this group (and the one w hich h as ing vastl y enj oyed read ing it in the • Warm & hospitable ecumenical learning had th e greatest success) is Timothy form of a C urrency Press play text, I community of religious, ordained , and laity Daly's Kafl 42 EUREKA STREET •D ECEMBER 1994 named after a up a swag of international awards. musical in Jake, a hard m an with a chip on s trum e nt) his shoulder, is out of work and had ambigu spends his days drinking at the local ous national pub, where he rules the roost with origins. his fists. Beth loves her husband deep Once Were ly; she is drawn to his powerful sexual Warrior s , presence but suffers physically at adapted from his hands if she defies him. The eld Alan Duff's est son, Nig (Julian Arahanga), has b es ts elling joined a gang and another, Boogie book of the sam e name, will suffer (Taungaroa Emile), has been taken St Mac m eets no such identity crisis-it is to a welfare home. unmistakably a New Zealand film. Amid all this violence the eldest St Lucy Warrior tells the story of a Maori daughter, Grace, tries to help Beth family, Beth Neke (Rena Owen), her bring up her two younger sisters, and Mary, dir. Kay Pavlou (selected cin husband Jake (Temuera Morrison) escapes the harsh realities of her emas). Conventional drama inter and their five children, living in surroundings by writing short spersed with comments from 'talk squalid, crowded conditions in Auck stories. But despite her apparent ing hea ds' is this well-accredited land. Such has been its impact in its strength, Grace is ultimately the director's m ea ns of making Mary country of origin that it has out most vulnerable m ember of the fam MacKill op's life intelligible, and the stripped Th e Piano in box office ily, and it is her fate which deter device works well. The talking hea ds, mines theirs. filmed in locations that m atch the Eureka Street Once Were Warriors is an emo drama, insist on the soundness and Film Competition tionally and physically violent film. reality of Mary. Perhaps you thought you we It is also a magnificent piece of She is played as a young woman would let 1994 end without men cinema about survival, courage and by Lucy Bell, who is one of the best tioning the International Year of reclaiming a sense of dignity. Aus things about the film. There is char the Family again. Silly you. Here's tralians, grappling with the plight of acter in her work. It was a bit of a a still from that most saccharine their own indigenous people, will rude shock when she left the screen of Hollywood family sagas, Las find its m essage especially poignant. to be replaced by Linden Wilkinson sie Come Home. Tell us, in 25 -Tim Stoney as the older Mary, although in the words or less, what Lassie's love film's terms there wasn't much left means to you and we'll award To life I to tell. The choleric bishops, the two tickets, to the film of your jealous Fr Julian Tenison Woods and choice, for the answer we loathe No Worries dir. David Elfick the neurasthenic nuns had all been most. Send entries to: Eweka (independent cinemas). If you are bit ably dealt with by Lucy Bell. Street film competition, PO Box jaded by the usual offerings for kids The film does nothing for the 553, Richmond312l. The winner at Christmas, you and they will enjoy bishops, who are either thick, bellig of October's competition was the this fresh film from a director who erent, alcoholic, or all three, and Rev. Dr Kim Miller, of St Alban's believes in using actors instead of does even less for their clerical off Anglican Church in Wagga Wag extruded chromium globs with siders. And Vatican's m an on saints, ga, NSW, who thought that Mar Ainold Schwarzenegger's hea d on while charming and commonsen ily Monroe was saying, 'Stick with them. The children's jury at the 1994 sical, is above all, old and toothless. me, Simba honey, and I'll show Berlin Film Festival liked Elfick's There are glimmerings of the so you how a leopard can change her version of Australian country life cial context to which Mary respond spots.' during the 1990s drought well ed, and of the religious culture that enough to award it the Golden Bear shaped not just her response but that for Best Children's Film. But you of the hundreds of other young wom may have to hunt for No Worries : en who joined the Josephites the major distributor are playing enough glimmerings to make the safe this sea on and sticking with film worthwhile. guns, sex and robots. -Margaret Coffey If your kids get to see No Worries they migh tlearn what guns are really War cry used for on a working farm. The Bell receipts there, and created a storm of family run sheep in rural N ew South Once Were Warriors, dir. Lee Tama controversy because of its portrayal Wales, where they face the conse hori (independent cinemas)The best of the Maori community. The film is quences of natural and m anufactured known film to have reached this like The Piano in being much hardship: drought, dust storms and country from New Zealand (the one decorated, however, and has pi cked bank deregulation. The film focuses VoLUME 4 N uMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 43 on Matilda, the 11 -year-old daugh themes and concerns (obsession, of the 1947 original with Maureen ter, played with engaging severity by endurance, the search for meaning O'Hara, a classic comedy that gets Amy T erelinck. Ma tild a is old in a journey, the dark side of power) dredged up each Christmas by som e enough to drive a ute to the school with such great American myths as TV station in need of a movie for the bus pickup and young enough to Moby Dick, Easy Rider, Deliverance, insomniac slot. The association with sulk when life is hard. When her even Duel. The fairytale symmetry Ms O'Hara will probably ensure a fat her has to take a shotgun to his of the beginning and ending places it short run for thi remake, because stock and her ancient heeler/kelpie fi rmly in a high category of Ameri its chief defect is that sh e's not in it. she doesn't fo rgive him, at least not can art. -Juliette Hughes Sure, dismissing it in this way is for a co nvincing gap of time. a bit hard on Elizabeth Perkin, who The film is unembarrassed about puts in a creditable performance as archetypes verging on stereotypes Fischer king the character O'Hara played in the Matilda's family and friends are Searching for Bobby Fi scher dir. original. But Perkin would probably sunburnt and laconic; the banker Steven Zaillian (independent cine play a competent lise Lund, too, were villains wea r ties and pressed mole mas). I'm one of those people who anyone ever stupid enough to remake skins, and lack humour. But good lea rnt to play chess because of Bobby Casablanca; and that wou ldn' t acting and some sharp scripting guar Fisher. For a few brief years in the change the fact that the role is forev antee authenticity. And there are '70s, he captured the imagination of er Ingrid Bergman's. some quirky and enchanting mo the West . He was a child prodigy, an Apart from the absence of Ms ments. In one marvellous scene, Elf eccentric world chess champion and, O'Hara, the remake of Miracle is ick has the rangy, cash-strapped farm in 1972, a Cold War hero. He was noteworthy for its fidelity to the er (Geoff Morrell) break irlto an un also a political fanatic and a clown original- perhaps beca use the writer likely Zorba dance, more ga me ener right difficult customer. director of the 1947 version, George gy than parody, which ca rries his This film is about who Bobby Seaton, coll aborated on the screen family and audience along with him. Fisher could have been. At the age of play for this one. And there is one The Bells lose theirfarm and have seven, Josh Waitzkin (Max Pomer casting triumph : Richard Attenbor to head, like Steinbeck's Joads, for anc) plays an occasional ga me of ough as Kris Kringle, the depa rtment the promised land. Sydney is not chess with the passing parade in N ew store Sa nta Claus who believes he is kind but it is convincing. So is York's Washington Square. His the rea l thing. It is a role that the Elfick's film . -Morag Fraser friend, th e streetwise Vi nnie (Lau director-turned-actor has been grow rence Fishburne), schools him in a ing into for years. kind of aggressive gam e called 'blitz Miracle on 34th Street (version The main chance chess'. Pomeranc, who w hat is prob II) also prompts a question about the The Music of Chance, dir. Philip lematically known as ' rea l life' is relationship between the world we Haas (independent cinemas), based himself a chess whiz kid, rattles piec actually li ve in and the world as on Paul Auster's novel of the sam e es round the board with an authority Hollywood presents it to us. If you nam e, concerns itself with control, you couldn't lea rn in acting class. were looking for a 1940s co medy personal and political. It is about People start to whisper behind that could plausibly be remade in how power is given and wielded, their hands that Josh is the next the '90s, would you choose one about how one's vu lnerability is affected Bobby Fischer, and his father, Fred a single mother/business executive by chance, and how patterns are im (Joe Mantegna), takes him for les type who will only find happiness by posed abitrarily on the world and on sons to the legendary Bruce Pan starting to play house again? people. dolfini (Ben Kingsley). At first Pan - Ray Cassin Two eccentric millionaires in dolfini shrugs them off, but he real habi t an American Olympus-their ises that Josh, unlike the 'competent wealth allows them caprices of be fakes' w ho lurk around the chess Mrs Prufrock nevolence or cruelty. Two drifters, club, is a creative player. Tom and Viv, dir. Bria n Gilbert (i n one a louche 'pro' cardplayer (James What follows is a m odel educa dependent cinemas), which tell s the Spader), the other a quiet, decent tion for the talented. Josh is urged to story of T.S. Eliot's first marriage, Ishmael type (Mandy Patinkin), m eet succeed but allowed to fail. And, of lingers in the m emory long after the by chance and go into business to course, Josh ends up as a well-bal final credits have disappeared from gether. The 'business' is a serious anced kid with good friends. It never the screen. Eliot met Vivienne Haigh poker game with the two million happened to Fischer, but it makes a Wood before World War I, when he aires. To come under their power is heart-warming story. was still an ambitious young Am er to take a risk-the kind of risk known -Michael McGirr SJ ican studying at Oxford, and the pair to gamblers and the powerless as fell in love and eloped. Only after they atte mpt to multiply their their m arriage did he discover Viv's chances in a ga m e that signifies so Recycle, recycle mental illness, caused by a honno many American cultural realities. Miracle on 34th Street, dir. Les May nal imbalance. Her erratic m ood This film is an interesting debut fi eld (Hoyts). Mention the title of swings gradually forced tbern apart, feature for its director, sharing its this film and m ost people will think and eventually she was declared in- 44 EUREKA STREET • DEC EMBER 1994 sane and committed to a psychiatric Alexander (Blakemore), a theatre crit ing to send a m onthly cheque to institution. ic in London. Having been sacked London. To confront Alexander The film (adapted from a stage from his n ewspaper, Alexande r would mean confronting himself, so play by Michael Hastings, who co returns with his beautiful new wife, after a momentary unpleasantness, wrote the screenplay with Adrian Deborah (G reta Scacchi), to the prop they shake hands and return to their Hodges) touches on many issues: erty of his first wife's family. separate lives. prejudice, justice, sexism , creativi He is said to be on first names A more productive style of living ty. And faith. Like Eliot's poetry, the with Bernard Shaw and- despite the is embodied in the figure of Dr Max film is replete with ambivalent reli fa ct that he has abandoned his daugh Askey (Sa m Neill). If you are tempt giou s symbolism - the scene in ter Sally (Kerry Fox) for his literary eel to dismiss Askey's concern for which Viv (Miranda Richardson) career-is welcom ed home as a con land degradation as a politically stands banging on the locked doors quering h ero. As Alexander is correct anachronism, go and check of a church, screaming for admis exposed as a fraud, Uncle Jack is your Chekhov. It's all there. And it's sion, while Tom (Willem Dafoe) is faced with the chilling discovery that skilfully rendered here. baptised inside, is a searing one. his own life has been wasted work- -Michael McGirr SJ Tom and Viv explores sugges tions that som e of the poet's finest work, especiall y The Waste Land, was an expression of his marital prob lems, and implies that the vivacious wom an who loved him has been un fa irly written out of his story. Since the film's release, Eliot's widow, Va lerie, has chall enged the accuracy of its claims about Vivienne's contribution to h er husband's writing, and about his role in her committal to an asylum. T he truth m ay never be known, but Tom and Viv will leave many with an urge to reach for that dusty anthology to brush up on the man and his poetry. -Brad Halse To life II Country Life, dir Michael Blakemore (independent cinemas), Chekhov has been well served by Australian in terpreters. Those who relished John Pierre Mignon 's innovative produc tions for the stage will find som e thing entirely different but eq ually sa tisfying in this screen version of Uncle Vanya, which takes its name from the subtitle oft hat play, 'scenes from country life'. Blakemore has relocated the events from the Russian country side to the Hunter Valley, and moved them forward in time to the years immediately after World War 1- a period that, in an Australian context, provides the sense of a brit tle world on which C h ekhov depends. Country Life shares Chekhov's sharp eye for self deception. For years Ja k(JohnHargr aves)hasbeensend ing part of the earnings fr om his Check daily newspapen1 for session details sheep station to his brother-in-law, V OLUME 4 N UMBER 10 • EUREKA STREET 45 A brief tour of Caledonia with Dr Connolly A few years ago I went with behaviour.' The small audiences were in tiny halls friends to see Billy Connolly perform on the Orkney Islands, and it was to one of these in Melbourne. As we walked out into performances that the camera then cut; Connolly the night at the end of the show we was cadging lollies from the audience. 'Ooooh it's a realised we were all in pain, from Chocolate Eclair, m'fuckin' favomite ... I'll have armpit to kneecap; we h ad been some of yom sweeties, too- are these the ones that laughing so hard and so unrelenting are in the shape of the fruit? Oh, they are! I havenae ly that we had all almost gone into spasm. There are seen these in years ... See, that's what happens when no half measures with Connolly; either you watch ye laugh wi' a sweetie in your mouth. It's shot righ t him entranced and howl with laughter (and if you up your nostril.' are my parents you forgive what the ABC warns is The scene that typified the whole slant of the his 'coarse language', which they sure wouldn't do show and its aims as good television was shot on for anyone else), or you have no idea what the fuss is Culloden Moor, with a Connolly version of the about. Either you think the title 'Billy Connolly's central and defining moment in modern Scottish his World Tour of Scotland' is funny, or you don't. If tory. ('Bonnie Prince Charlie was actually a wee Ital you don't, don't read on. ian person.') Dressed in an unlikely but fitting and This three-part special was shown on the ABC's dramatic combination of classic Levis, check lum The Big Picture over three weeks. It was a unique berjack shirt and a red plaid shawl with fringes fly piece of television, mixing genres that don't often ing in the wind-the outfit in which, elsewhere, he all converge, especially on TV: travel documentary, recited an entire poem by the Great McGonagall in autobiography, stand-up comedy. For two of these the middle of a snowstorm-he told the story of the to merge is in no way unusual; it takes som eone like Battle of Culloden. 'After such a sensational victory Connolly to indulge in all three at once. As he for the English, they then banned the wearing of tar reminisced about his not especially happy childhood tan, they banned the use of bagpipes, they banned in Glasgow and his first sexual experience in the use of the language. And we were really domi Arbroath, as he talked about the taste of smoked had nated from then on, and so it occupies an extraordi dock or the smells of the countryside round Kelso nary place in the Scottish psych e.' He went on to that you could take in if you rode your bike, it be demonstrate the new, battle-winning techniques came clearer and clearer that this was a program ('chop and slash- from the side!') of the English, about the convergence of memory, the body, and the and the charge of the Jacobite army. 'But tltis is ver map. ra vena marshy groond. An' by the time they got to It made riveting television. Brisk editing where the English were waitin' for them they were provided constant movement back and forth between completely knackered. ' Connolly's travels round Scotland and his perform His treatment of this classic example of cultural ances in the towns h e visited; what emerged was blitzkrieg was typical of his practice as a performer: nothing less than a denwnstration of the creative making dire things funny as a way of refusing to for process, as h e turned the day's travels into material get about them. More than anything else I have ever for the show. A lot of emphasis was put on the act of seen him do, this program demonstrated how cen travelling itself- by car, boat, bicycle and aeroplane tral his Scots identity is to his work. He mentioned and one of the effects of this was to indicate just his loathing of nationalism a number of times, but how small Scotland really is, and to reveal the im he's one of those people who understands that the m ense density of its history: monuments, nuances love of a place is a different thing from the impulse and ancient rocks as far as the eye could see. to get aggressive about its boundaries. At one point Connolly's meditations on the process of being he arrived on his bike at the English border by mis a comedian were interspersed with landscapes and take: 'Oh dear, I've come a wee bit far. An' me oot stories. In the first of the three episodes he talked wi'oot me passport.' about the way he was energised by anger (at compla One of the most extraordinary and revealing cency, exploitation, prejudice, abuse of power) and moments of the program, in fact, was the point at how this fed his comic performances; this comment which he talked about his passion for the country was recalled by a moment in the third episode when, and the way that travelling around it feeds and spitting as is the custom on the Heart of Midlothian energises his performances. 'Ye have tae learn to get (yes, it's an actual h eart shape picked out in bricks into a m ental state that is neither sleep nor wake in the middle of Edinburgh), he pointed out that fu lness, an' meditation is quite useful to you. In Parliament was nearby: 'A spit at Parliament is never recent times I have taken to drivin' m eself aroond, a bad idea.' an' I have great joy in this. I used to have a driver, Another aspect of performance uppermost in his but I got rid of him. Because now I can stop and have own discussion of it was the importance of direct a scone. I can drive to the gig on the B roads. I can connection with the audience. 'I like to perform to walk, if I want to.' • small audiences- to improve the conversational side of my act, an' the conversation al side of my Kerryn Goldsworthy is a Melbourne writer and teacher. 46 EUREKA STREET • DECEMBER 1994 Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 29, December 1994 Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM AC ROSS I & 5 Carts oils with March medley. Could be seasonal song. 19, 5 ) 8 Girl from French town who fa ced awful ideal of man's instigation, initially. 14, 2, 7) 9 For cocktail, stir limes without desert or reward (9) 10 See 2 down. 12 Old hunter found in dorm ? Unusual 1 16) 13 Unorthodox P.R. video right for this supplier 18) 16 C urrent coin before journalist emphasised the pronunciation . 18) 17 Price of the battery? 16) 19 Quiet yet ? 15) 21 Friends in the spirit enjoy the same lotus flower arrangem ent. 19) 22 Swap right for left in acts of thinking about joyful festivities in honour of 8-down, perhaps 112). 23 What do you think about wool thickness? Answer please. (5) 24 Evert disaster with ease on the day after Good Friday. 16-3) DOWN 1 In Rom a silence involves these ritual observances I 11 ) 2 & 10-across. The name of 8-across-who faced trial by fire, literall y, Solution to Crossword no. 28, November 1994 as did 8-down, m etaphorically. 15, 4,2,3) 3 Arranged in mode or secured by ropes. (6) 4 Do they provide funds for godparents? 18) 5 A cold mixture here is hot in Italy. (5) 6 Rita wandered in confusion until taught to do this by 8-down and her followers. 14,3,5) 7 The French cultural attache? Ask Dam e Edna. 13) 8 Girl and Scotsm an kill member of the Order of Preachers. But she's almost a saint! 14,9) 11 Somehow crooner nets som ething of prime importa nee. I11 ) 14 In som e parts, they give he- men celebrations marked by intensity of feeling. 19) 15 In case peas, mingled with paint, cause problem s, calm yourself with this ocean view. 18) 18 Without you, it seem s, I'm inquisitive about collectors' item s. (6) 20 Vestibule subject to influence. 15) 22 Ba ck the RACY outside Vi ctoria with this vehicle. 13) EUR[-KA SJR[-EJ subscription form