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Vl"'"""" )> z 0 I"""" m 0 r 0 () FEATURE -< 16 And all the rest COMMENT Ja ck Waterford's Election File: 4 Andrew Hamilton Face value & Part Two. Moment of choice

POETRY SNAPSHOT 33 Kate Llewellyn Red Rover All Over Publisher Andrew Ham ilton 51 Editor Morag Fras er 6 Words in vogue, heads in gear, real Assistant editor Kate Manton estate, refugee aid, and the war artist. Graphic designer Siobhan Jackson BOOKS General manager M ark Dowell Marketing Kirsty Grant 34 No mouths, on ly ears Advertising represe ntative Ken Head LETTERS Peter Mares reviews Living Silence: Subscription manager Wendy Marlowe Burma under Military Rule by Editorial, production and administration 8 Stephen Brown, Neil Buchanan and ass istants Ben Hider, Juli ett e Hughes, Ivan Head Christina Fisk. Geraldine Ba tt ersby, Susa nnah Buckley, Sandy Waterworth, Paul Fyfe 51, Kate Hird, 35 Th e pen and politics Mrs Irene Hunter fohn Button samples the letters Contributing editors Adelaide: Greg THE MONTH'S TRAFFIC of John Curtin. O'Kelly 51, Perth : Dea n Moore, Sydney: Edmund Campion & Gerard Windso r, 1 0 Frank Bongiorno Precedents 36 Lettered I ife Q ueensland : Peter Pi erce 11 Maggie Helass Closed doors Jim Davidson looks at fohn Shaw United Kingdom Denis Minns OP jes uit Editorial Board Peter L'Estrange 51, 11 Juliette Hughes Rocky heights Neilson: A Life in Letters Andrew Bu llen 51, Andrew Hami lton 51 12 Tim Stoney Timor's future by Helen Hewson. Peter Steele 51, Bill Uren 51 14 Jim Davidson Words at work Patrons Eureka Street gra tefu lly 38 Novel encounters ackn owledges th e support of Kerryn Goldsworthy reviews C. and A. Carter; th e tru stees of th e es tate Corfu: A Novel, by Robert Dessaix. of Miss M . Condon; W .P. & M.W. Gurry COLUMNS Eureka Street magazine, ISSN 1036- 1758, 39 The wordsm ith Australia Post Print Post approved 7 Capital Letter Peter Steele assays Seamus Heaney's pp349181 /00314, is published ten times a Ja ck Waterford End games Electric Light. yea r by Eureka Street M agaz ine Pty Ltd, 300 Victoria St ree t Ri chmond VIC 31 21 13 Summa Th eo logiae 40 M an at work PO Box 553, Richmond VIC 3 121 Richard Treloar Living on the edge David McCooey reads the Collected Tel : 03 9427 73 11 Fax: 03 9428 4450 emai l: [email protected] es uit.org.a u 14 Archimedes Poems 1970-1998 by John Forbes. http://www .eurekastreet. com.au/ Tim Thwaites T elling science Responsibi lity for editorial content is accepted by Andrew Hamilton SL 46 Watching Brief THEATRE 300 Victoria Street, Ri chmond Juliette Hughes First impressions Printed by Doran Printing 46 Indust rial Dri ve, Braeside VIC 3195. 42 Ca ll as on stage © Jesuit Publications 2001 Geoffrey Milne salutes Amanda U nsolici ted manuscripts wi ll be return ed Muggleton's interpretation. only if accompanied by a stamped, COVER: JOURNEYS sel f-addressed envelope. Requests for 20 Other ways permission to reprint ma teria l from th e Anthony Ham rethinks travel writing. magazine should be addressed in writing FLASH IN THE PAN to the editor. 23 Moving mountains 44 Reviews of the films He Died With a Peter Davi in Tibet. Th is month: Felafel in His Hand; The Bank; Cover design by Siobhan Jackson. Cover 26 Through the barriers photograph by Peter Davis: monks at the Jura ssic Park III; Purely Belter and monastery in Shigatse, Tibet. Brian McCoy in Australia. Lantana. Photographs, p3: Libya, by Anthony Ham; 28 Believing in Greece Ti betan pol, by Peter Da vis. Graphics pp 6, 10, 26, 28, 31-32, 38 Gillian Bouras in Greece. by Siobhan Jackson. SPECIF IC LEVITY Cartoon p 11 by Shelle Miller. 31 The last time I saw .. . Cartoon p 15 by Dea n Moore. Peter Pi erce in Paris. 47 Joan Nowotny Cryptic crossword COMMENT: 1

Face value

T •MAw o• TH' Wodd Tmde towe« coll•p,ing seemed to leave nothing to the imagination. But at a deeper and fateful level they left everything to the imagination. On the quality of imagination we bring to these catastrophic events and to the smaller daily afflictions suffered by Jews and Palestinians, much The New York skyline, 11 September 2001, as televi sion ca ptured it. will depend. Not least the way in which we remem­ ber the dead. And most of us will acknowledge that our imagination is not pure, not undivided. One part of our imagination is readily seduced by the big picture: the scale of devastation, the mechanics of terrorism , the sheeting home of blame, the calculus of rights and wrongs of aggrieved parties, the demands of national honour, and the technicalities of suitable reprisal. This way of imagining violent events is nourished by the standard action movies. It is a way of coping, but it ultimately demands and condones death in response to death. Another way of imagining atrocity is to focus on the faces of those who are affected by it. These are for the most part ordinary people: passengers in planes, cleaners leaving office buildings, office-

Noted Above: Twelfth -century granary store, Libya. Below: W elcome pot on th e boi l at Punu M eggna village, Tibet. See Eureka Street's se ri es on 'journeys', pages 20-33. Anthony Ham, Eurelza Street's correspondent and photographer, won the 2001 Australasian Catholic Press Association 'Best Feature' award for his series on Africa. The judge's comment: 'At its best, his story on Niger put m e in mind of the travel writing of V.S. Naipaul. Ham writes about the forces of history that have made the country, but always stays close to the people who live through that process.' Eureka Street won the 2001 award for best magazine layout and design. In the Australasian Religious Press Association Awards, Maggie Helass was highly commended for her report, 'Divided family', in Eureka Street, May 2000.

4 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 workers arriving. And for each of these bloody faces When the dominant imagination of a society is of the dead and injured, there are many faces of grief: technological and impersonal, it is trapped in violence. those of spou ses, children, friends. A network of It looks for security in overw helming force and pain and incom prehension . inviolable defences against enemies too sm all to be These faces are relatively easy to imagine. We intimidated by force or kept away by large shields. It m ay have to work harder to keep in focus the features com es to respect the dignity neither of its own dead of those who will suffer in reprisal-women, men and nor of the victims of its retaliation . children who die and are injured in acts of retaliation . The Ch ristian im agination is personal. It is And in our own societies, the faces of m embers of compassionate, begim1ing with faces, domestic and ethnic and religious groups who are abused and foreign, and their claims on us. On such an imagination shunned because they are held responsible. are built policies that can alone promise security. •

CO MMENT:2 Moment of choice

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VOLUME 1 1 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 5 well with his silver, untrimmed beard. Maybe the answer is to pay the extra On his white dustcoat he wore uniform couple of grand per square it costs to use bands of luminous orange tape. On fine a good small builder, who'll design some­ days he circled his turban with glowing thing closer to home. strips. They looked like an ingrained golden diadem- Sikh splendour on a clay In track under a gum tree. When the rains a word came, he cocooned the turban inside a great translucent plastic bag and held the As a word, 'sovereignty' has puffed itself whole confection down with the same up like an adder. Originally souverain, luminous loops. Children walking to from the Latin root meaning above, it school must have thought they were Plugging added reign to its patrimony for the sake stepping into a fable. But it was just one the gaps of grandiloquence. And like many snakes, man, adapting and enchanting, with a it prefers to mount high horses to make plastic bag, a length of cloth and a roll of The Tampa incident drew some initial its hissing heard. industrial tape. attention to the h ealth problems of The scope of 'sovereignty' was honed asylum seekers who risk the high seas. in theological debate. The good argued Closer to home, access to medical that God's reason was sovereign, so that services for asylum seekers and refugees in dealing with the world, God was limited in the community is a problem of another by what was reasonable and by the laws kind. What happens to those invisible which express what is reasonable. people who have no access to Medicare, The mighty argued for an inflated jobs or Newstart? view of God's power, identifying sover­ Real estate's Public hospitals will generally provide eignty with God's will. Divine law flawed plans emergency care and attempt to get pay­ simply expresses what God wants, and ment from the patient or the government. whatever God wants is by definition just. Building a house? Planning to get in there But for basic medical care people must When conversation turned t o the in time for the government's $14,000 rely on the generosity of m edical staff. sovereignty of kings, the mighty normally grant? You'll doubtless have been round The Red Cross Asylum Seekers won. Sovereignty became seen as the the display centres. But the plethora of Assistance Centre in Melbourne has a list right to do whatever you will, whenever designs offered by large project builders of health-care workers willing to provide you will, and to whomsoever you will. such as A.V. Jennings, H enley and their services for fr ee. If X-rays or pathol­ And all that naturally passed into laws Simonds belies the lack of real variation ogy are required, a call is made to labs and against which there could be no recourse. in their floorplans. radiology asking them to waive their fee. For kings, sovereignty sat well with a All sport a ga rage lumped wen-like Fortunately, enough people in the medical surfeit of sartorial dignity. In dem o­ at the side, destroying any character or community believe in universal health cracies, national sovereignty is usually symmetry. And though the house sizes care and will provide a free service. Sadly, invoked when, like snakes, governments and outer styles range from meek-and­ our national rhetoric and actions after the wish to bite unprotected heels without cramped to gargantuesque-w edding­ Christmas Island stand-off have failed to interference. At such times the dignity cake, the inner proportions are all very reflect this compassion. of those who would be sovereign and the similar. They all have huge central human dignity of those whom they bite kitchens overlooking most of the living are alike casualties. areas. This is understandable- these fl oorplans are aimed squarely at young marrieds who'd want to keep an eye on the littlies while rustling up the gour­ m et banquets that the dimensions of the kitchens suggest. Observer But there isn't much on offer for at large people who want the kitchen out of the Head way to make room for a library or office If you don't catch one of the current 1n gear unaffected by cooking sm ells. And the exhibitions of work by Australian painter bedroom accommodation assumes that Rick Am or you might look up this One kind of sartorial dignity found its we all want a master suite big as an extraordinary artist of urban isolation in own style during the recent equinoctial assembly hall, with all other bedroom s Gary Catalano's Miegunyah Press m ono­ gales- and no surfeit about it. the size of broom cupboards. Display graph, The Solitary Watcher. Amor, also The lollipop man at an outer-suburban houses aren't so much real living-places one of Australia's war artists in East Australian school crossing in early spring as shops selling illusions of space and Timor, is pictured above in his haunting wore a sparkling white turban that sat light, mostly wasted. self-portrait, painted in his early teens.

6 EUR EKA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 End games

H Ave m,, oeroRTUN>SM •nd )ohn L•w' token it •ll •w•y ship with Special Air Service soldiers, asked East Timor, then from Kim Beazley? Riding o comfortably only a few months Papua New Guinea and finally Nauru to accept the refugees, ago, he now risks being done over by an artificially confected and was then held up in the courts. Meanwhile, Labor's own refugee crisis, mounting hysteria about invasion, fear of Mus­ capacity to show leadership had been undermined by the fact lims in Australia and, finally, an act of unparalleled terrorism that Beazley did not want to appear offside on the sovereignty in the US which has us panting for war-as soon as we can find issue. Consequently, he fa iled to neutralise the John Laws a country to attack and som e targets to bomb. If Beazley's chance audience while alienating core constituencies that Labor needs. has slipped away, he can blame only himself and the Labor The assault by terrorists on the World Trade Centre and Party's habit of looking for an opinion poll to follow. the Pentagon could hardly have been better timed for John John Howard has always insisted that he could com e from Howard, though he was circumspect in seeking immediately behind to win this election. Only a m onth ago, well before the to use it to any partisan purpose. Beazley's background in refugee 'crisis', he was reminding supporters that Menzies had defence-which the Coalition is reluctant to attack- might won comfortably in 1963 after a debacle election in 196 1. have stood him in good stead. In deploring the attack and What won it then ? The received wisdom is that it was a endorsing calls for justice, he migh t have m ade some states­ combination of the fear and uncertainty that gripped the m anlike comments about the seedbeds of discontent which electorate in the aftermath of the assassination of John F. inspire such terrorism. Instead, Beazley succumbed to me-taoism . Kennedy, and a security crisis affecting Indonesia which saw T his has limited his freedom of action yet left him prey to Australia ordering its firs t F1-1 l so that it could, if necessary, charges of being less determined and less leader-like. bomb Jakarta. Labor's ineptitude over whether Australia should Meanwh ile, Howard behaves however he chooses. allow the US to open a comm unications station in We tern Australia, and the '36 faceless m en' episode, did Menzies no B uT THE FATES ARE EVEN-HANDED, even to the undeserving. The harm either. Superbly opportunistic, he cantered to victory, with collapse of Ansett, and the shockwaves it will send through som e extra insurance fro m a hand grenade he threw into Labor the econom y (adding to the short-term ripples that the US Party ranks by giving the firs t fe deral state aid. Three years terrorism will cause) create fresh uncertainty in the economy later, Menzies' successor, Harold Holt, even further demolished that Labor will exploit even as Howard plays the statesman. the ALP over Vietnam. La bor, on the wrong side of the opinion Down the track, the disaster may be seen as owing rather more polls, continually gave mixed messages. The electorate rewarded to the government's airline competition policy than to its fore­ it with the worst hiding it had ever experienced. knowledge of the state of the Ansett and Air New Zealand The lessons from these elections help explain Labor's accounts. But, in either story, the government is vulnerable, pathetic responses to the crises of August and September this especially in rural and provincial areas. If a world 'crisis' swings year. Even before the radio shock-jocks sounded the alarums, people back to the devils they know, an economic and social Philip Ruddock and John Howard were actively mining working­ crisis like the Ansett crash ought to work in the opposite direc­ class discontent about the presence of refugees in the com­ tion-more because voters would think the government should munity. Out in the electorate, the notion that the freshest be punished than because the interventionist nostrums of 'invaders' are Muslims who will not readily assimilate into our Beazley make better policy. But better policy is not served by culture has become settled, with the fact that the boat people Labor's seeking to 'neutralise' important international issues are refugees from fundamentalist authoritarian regimes almost by aping the government so that the electorate votes on the ignored. The Sydney Daily Telegraph has been throwing petrol (domestic) point of difference. Rather it is served by having on to the fire with claims that not a white Christian woman in principled positions-necessarily involving difference-which Sydney is safe from Islamic rapists. NSW Premier, Bob Carr, allow voters to put matters into perspective. who always panics and rushes to the right when law and order My guess is that most voters at the next election, issues are involved, has been lending legitimacy to the fear. confronted by the two least impressive political leaders ever It soon becam e clear that the government's refugee simultaneously in office in Australia, will vote on domestic decisions-made at cabinet level without, or against the advice issues, because neither party has an international policy any of, the Departments of Defence and Foreign Affairs and Trade­ person of intelligence could support. • had not been though t through. T h e government fu mbled th rough confron tation with the Tampa captain, invaded the Jack Waterford is editor of the Canberra Times.

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 7 L ETTERS

Eureka Street welcomes Immigration and Reconciliation. However, The garden path letters from our readers. with the punitive way in which refugees Short letters are more likely are being trea ted in this country, it seems to be published, and all You report the view of a federal minister letters may be edited . Letters incongruous that the Minister should have that, if the government gave the univer­ must be signed, and should these two portfolios-they surely cannot be sities any more money, they would just incl ude a contact phone reconciled. spend it on their gardeners ('Education number and th e w riter's Neil Buchanan blues', September 2001 ). name and address . Se nd to : Hornsby, NSW eureka@ jespub.jesuit.org.au or There is surely an unconscious irony in PO Box 553, Ri chmond VIC 3121 this remark. No place in Australia receives more lavish attention from gardeners than Three heads Parliament House, Canberra. Its constantly journeys that the 'illegals' undertake are groomed lawns, its lush environs, its costly and hazardous. One might thus Andrew Hamilton's editorial ('Taking the coiffured shrubbery and its manicured assume that those who make the journey high road', June 2001 ) highlights tensions courtyards reflect not only the skilful are strongly m otivated, whatever that in the Governor-General's role and within dedication of the workers but the unlimited motivation m ay be. Living in a developed, Australian society. He asked about what a indulgence of politicians when their own relatively prosperous society, and not bishop, as Governor-General, might be comfort and interests are in issue. From having been in their position, it is hard to expected to say to the cabinet and office computers to VIP aircraft, no expense envisage their situation. Perhaps that is all departmental hea ds about any maltreat­ is too great, and the Parliament House the more reason to deal with those less m ent of asylum seekers. gardens arc but an incidental example. fortunate than ourselves as we would like He might say, 'I intend to visit asylum Stephen Brown to be dealt with ourselves. Compassion, and refugee centres over th e next 12 Forrest, ACT decency and understanding (even if finn) months to form my own views.' This would would be appropriate. The schoolyard be an interesting exercise in the 'symbolics' bullyboy tactics used to deal with refugees of national life. He might choose to visit a Legal perspective are sham eful. number of nursing homes for the aged to Although this approach may be fodder dispense the symbolic and real goodwill of Liz Curran's article 'Refuge in the law?' to talkback radio presenters and listeners, the nation . He might choose his 'public (September 2001), and m ore recent events it is a sad reflection on our society. It is symbolic acts' with great care and decide with the Tampa, are most disturbing. likely to be much m ore divisive in the long to shape government delivery of services While on e can well understand the term than short-sighted politicians, with and policies by conversation in private, desire of any country not to be 'invaded' by their eyes on the polls and forthcoming rather than by 'on e sentence m edia uninvited people, the magnitude of th e election, envisage. So much for the great soundbi tes'. problem in this country is m odest com­ Australian euphemism of the 'fair go'­ Theory begins when we ask, 'How many pared with that in Europe and the USA, fo r redefined as 'go elsewhere'. Anglicans does it take to run the country?' example. Australia is a t least in part No-one would pretend that Mr Ruddock The answer 'three-one to be Prime Min­ protected by being an island and the has an easy task in eith er of his portfo lios- ister, one to be Leader of the Opposition Men of hospitality Living and proclaiming God's hospitable love

As lived out by StJohn of advocacy and reconciliation WiU you dare to accept God's God over five centuries ago, for those m arginalised by our invitation to a life dedicated our vocation is to give of society. to hospitality? ourselves comple tely and Our core of hospitality If so please contact: fr eely; to b e a brothe rly compels and urges us to Br. John C legg O H. presence; a symbol of hope deepen our relationship with Vocations Director. PO Box BN 1055, for the world; proclaiming God, o urselves and those Burwood North. NSW 2134 God's hospitable love to with whom w e share o ur Australi a. all. li ves, community and T elephone (02) 9747 1699 W e are call ed to a ministry. Facsim.ile (02) 9744 3262 charism of h ospitali ty and We are the: 'Brothers of Email provin [email protected] love that promotes healing, Stjohn of God.' W ebsite: www.stjohn.com.au

8 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 and one to be Governor-General' is Pauline Hanson 'straight-talk'. Australia possible. It is an accident that one of these will not just 'work by magic'. What is the www.antiqbook.com happens to be a bishop. symbolic basis on which Australians can I do not think that a particular tension ground the truth of the statem ent ' the arises because a bish op as Governor­ Afghan refugees are m ore like m e than Europe's premier site General might have a unique responsibility different from me' and not 'they are aliens, to members of the body of Christ to say foreigners and illegals who should go to for antiquarian and som ething to a government of the day. All Nauru'? office- holders in our nation h ave an A m odern Lock e might 'privatise' out-of-print books, opportunity and obliga tion to speak up on ethnicities with respect to the state in just prints & maps m atters of value and to suggest practical the way he privatised 'm ere theological response to difficult situations. The Prime opinion', and rescued the town square from Minister and the Leader of the Opposition violen ce. M eantime, we see ' the three Over 3·5 million have as much obliga tion to any Australian Anglicans' in a 'broad and hazy' Anglican people 'defined as the body of Christ' as heritage trying to work out the best way of titles on all subjects does a bishop. How can this be? interpreting the old parable of the Good The pre-Christian thinker Varro, then Samaritan. Featuring St Augustine and finally John Locke can be There are a few tried and trusted way consulted. From Augustine, I would draw to implement a more generous universalism . 20 Australasian the distinction between the Human City When Peter H ollingworth speaks as antiquarian bookdealers (in which we all participate as citizens) and Governor-General, he speaks only acciden­ the Divine City (which to som e extent tally as a bishop. In terms of the human overlaps the human city and invites city to w hich his present office applies, that www.antiqbook.com/au/ participation as Christian, Jew, Muslim, does not matter. The other two Anglicans Buddhist, Hindu, Atheis t and so on). in high office have identical obliga tions to I would stress Varro's dictum, 'The human common humanity. Any decent secularist city com es before its Gods', to focus on our and humanist would be just as forthright www.antiqbook.com need as humans to participate in a common for good-even if they had not tracked this earthly city or 'common-wealth'. In this through to a theology of the human person. human city, ' the three Anglicans' have Revd Canon Ivan Head reduce, reuse , recycle , indistinguishable and identical obligations Warden, St Paul's College to a comm on humanity. It is not an add-on Sydney University, NSW invest ethically dimension that only appears when God or Gods, or Christ, are introduced. Locke, whose 1697 Letters on Toleration july/August 2001 Book Offer Winners 'canned' 150 years of chaos in the human G. Byro n, Lindfield , NSW; H. Clay, city over religion, sou ght to privatise Charl evi lie, QLD; M. Dowd, Ro se tta, religious opinion with respect to the state. TAS ; A. Dowling, W endouree, V IC; P. Dresse r, Kandos, NSW; j . Dudley, He tried to keep theology from releasing Ea st Fremantle, WA; D . H yder, Batlow, conflicted forms of disharmony out of the NSW; M . Lipse tt, Ca mpbell , ACT; literal marke t-p lace. The tendency to B. M arro n, N orth Ca ul f ield, V IC; duali m of soul and body is avoided by P. Newman, Ravensbourne, QLD; understanding the Varronic intent ' to place I. Palumbo, N o rth Geelo ng, V IC; G . O'Byrn e, Bellbrae, VIC; T. O ' Hea rn , the human city before its Gods'. Castle Hill, NSW; M. O ' Keeffe, In this, ' the three Anglicans' have a Parkdale, VI C. Why bother recycling if your savings pollute?Why common obliga tion to the human city, as conserve energy if your investments waste it? they would if they were 'the three Muslims'. You needn't compromise your principles to earn a H ow the Governor-General fulfils his To advertise in competitive return. Invest your savings with Australia 's obligations to the Australian community specialist fund manager. is a matter for his discretion and the EUREKA STREEr particular obligations and sensitivities of his constitutional office. Save with Australian Ethical Investment A final insight from Locke: Australia's contact Ken Head phone 1800 021 227 now for aprospectus multiculturalism is vulnerable because it (03) 9427 7311 or visit ourwebsite www.austethical.com.au does not have sufficient apologists and 'lJphcauoos Ia rll/eSUJI!Illcanm~l!!rnademill! lamcmlarii!d mill!Clllenl ~aspeciUI explicators at the level of symbol and theory 0419 584 658 Ida led2YlilllOCOalll regr~~edwr~ ASIC Iv.llrdlrs avarlable lrrrnwalran Elhrcal who teach it. It has become vulnerable to

V OLUME 11 N UMBER 8 • EUR EKA STREET 9 THE TRAFFIC

foreign and a naivety about the scale and times Jewish or European- particularly Precedents significance of Australia's problems in the Southern European. global scheme of things. The danger has m ost commonly been OUR REFUGEE Two fears have long exercised white perceived as racial, but not always so. Con­ IMPASSE IS NOT NEW Australians, both legacies of our sense of victs were a particular concern. In 1852 the isolation as European peoples in the Asia­ Victorian parliament passed a bill that L E RECENT EVENTS off the coast of Christ­ Pacific region. One, less powerful today sought to prevent convicts with conditional mas Island recall a story once told by Paul than even 30 years ago, is the fear of invasion. pardons flooding into the colony from Tas­ Hasluck. The year was 1945 and the scene The historian Robert Hyslop has estimated mania. Australian governments in the 19th the San Francisco Conference at which the that there were nearly 200 war scares in century were also hostile to the presence of United Nations was formed. Hasluck was Australia before Federation. The feared French convicts in that country's Pacific there as an adviser to the Australian Minis­ enem y varied, but included Fran ce, possessions because of the possibility that ter for External Affairs, H.V. Evatt. Germany, Russia, the United States, China, they might end up here. And the appear­ One evening some Australian delega tes Japan and even occasionally Holland and ance in Sydney in 1849 of the convict ship, walked into a bar where they encountered Spain. In September 1854, at the time of the the Hash emy, set off angry protests led by the Czech politician, Jan Masaryk. Earlier Crimean War, Melbourne went into a panic our federation father, Henry Parkes. This in the day, Evatt had criticised Masaryk for when some of its citizens heard cannon fire agitation ended an unpopular attempt by fai ling to support an Australian proposal. and rockets appeared in the sky above the the British government to renew convict 'Here come the Australians,' announced city. Word go t around that the Russians had transportation. Masaryk jovially, 'the people who have no landed. It soon em erged that the racket had Parkes was also in the forefront of anti­ geography.' When one of the Australians been caused by a ship celebrating her release Chinese manoeuvres in 1888 when a ship protested lamely, Masaryk walked over to a from quarantine. (called, ironically, the Afghan) arrived in map of the world on the club's wall. 'Where Yet a more persistent Australian dread Sydney, carrying abou t 250 Chinese immi­ is Australia?' asked Masaryk in m ock is that of being swamped by 'undesirables'. grants. It had previously tried landing at puzzlement. 'Ha, here it is, way down here. This has a long history, which perhaps Port Melbourne, but the Victorian govern­ And what is around Australia? Nothing. found its clearest expression in the public­ ment managed to contrive reasons for send­ Water. N o neighbours. A long way fro m ity given to a reported remark of a Chinese ing the ship away. It then moved on to everywhere. And where is Czechoslova­ man during the gold rushes of the 1850s Sydney, where there were violent anti­ kia?' Sure enough, Masaryk found it in that all China was coming. In recent times, Chinese protests. Parkes, as premier, rushed central Europe, looking vulnerable to the the threat has been similarly identified as through draconian legislation in a single Soviet giant looming on its eastern border. Asian, as in Hansonite rhetoric, but early in day to stop the Chinese fr om landing. Sound These geopolitical realities would have the 20th century the intruder was some- familiar? tragic consequences three years later, when The appearance of a ship carrying 'unde­ a co up brought Masaryk's nation within sirables' has on more than one occasion in the communist bloc and he was himself Australian history been the focus of gov­ almost certainly murdered by communist ernment concern and popular protest. In thugs. Evatt, on the other hand, died in bed 1916 the arrival in Australia of a boatload of in 1965, the privileged end that most Aus­ Maltese immigrants was badly timed as far tralian politicians enjoy. as Prime Minister Billy Hughes and the Half a century later, as the Australian advocates of military conscription for over­ government was provoking a diplomatic seas service were concerned. Its appearance incident over the arrival of a few hundred during the height of the bitter debate over boat people, there were millions of refu gees conscription added credibility to the claims and asylum seekers around the world sit­ of som e anti-conscriptionists that employ­ ting in camps in much poorer countries ers intended to replace white Australian than our own. Australia, in fact, will never conscripts with cheap 'coloured' labour. have to deal with anything more than the Rather like the appearance of the Tampa, m erest trickle of refugees because she is, as the Maltese immigrant ship served a useful our national anthem tells us, 'girt by sea'. domestic political purpose. Australia arguably owes 'Girt' a great In 1885, at the time N ew South Wales debt. She has provided the country with a sent troops to an imperial war in the Sudan, m easure of n atural protection against a little boy fr om Manly nam ed Ernest 'chea p' foreign goods, potential invaders Laurence wrote to the premier sending and hordes of 'coloured' folk. 'Girt' has also money to assist the cause. A Bulletin car­ helped to breed insularity, a fear of the toonist seized on the event, and created an

10 EUREKA STRE ET • O CTOBER 2001 Australian symbol-The Little Boy at Manly- who cam e to stand for a people who had not yet grown u p. This Australia was impudent, naive and ignorant of the ways of the world; it was yet to pu t away childish things. Th e Little Boy at Manly appeared in cartoons for years, but seems to have eventually disappea red, perhaps at the point when Australians had the Anzacs and Gallipoli to show that they had come of age. We may have dispensed with the Little Boy at Manly prematurely. He was on display during the Tampa crisis, when an affluent Western nation in its centenary year tried to convince itself and the world that it is hard put upon by the world's riff­ raff. I would like to advocate that the Little Boy at Manly be taken out of retirement. -Frank Bongiorno Closed doors CHURCH lEADERS Dr Carnley says that church leadership SUPPORT ASYLUM SEEKERS has an obligation to speak publicly against Rocky heights potentially dangerous developments in J OHN HowARD's doctrine of 'repel all society. 'I think there is a form of racism REMEMBERING boarders' earned a rebuke from eight heads that has been unleashed .. . a sort of latent, SHIRLEY STRACHAN of churches during the Tampa saga. low-grade racism that is not very far under Anglican Primate Peter Carnley deplored the surface. I think it has been set loose by O NE SUMMER NIGHT in the early '70s I was the fractures in community life cau sed by the events of the last week. dancing at one of Melbourne Uni's Union the governm e nt's policy of 'rou gh ­ 'The first thing to do is to take refugees Nights. I was perilously close to the band, h andling' people to deter others from very seriously .. . We have to continue to talk enjoying the bass thudding through my coming to Australia. from a Christian perspective about the plight chest; but the volume then wasn't as lethal 'There are huge divisions which have of refugees and what our obligations might as it is now, when stoned lads get cauli­ opened up- divisions that are expressed, be. Both our legal obligations and our moral flower eardrum s fro m hugging the speakers for example, in letters of hostility ... not obligations. I think we have to be very clear during Korn concerts. The singer was good. just hostile with regard to refugees but about what our m oral position should be.' He was quite short and wore what looked hostile to Islam generally. If we were trying Although the refugees had been removed like dyed carpenter's overalls. That's to build a multicultural Australia I think from public scrutiny by the intervention of possibly what they were, because the band our success at doing that is very much the military, Dr Carnley was confident that was Skyhooks and the singer was Graeme called into question by the way people have truth would not be buried in government 'Shirley' Strachan. He sang' All My Friends responded to Islam .' propaganda. 'It will be difficult to find out Are Getting Married', one of bass-player Dr Carnley argued that churches now what's going on aboard the troopship, but Greg Macainsh's trenchant little lyrics. have a role within Australia to take inter­ I think, however, that m ore and more of the Through the filter of 30 years I remember faith dialogu e much more seriously than truth concerning what conditions are really that he ang it in a grinding low range, not they have to date. 'I think we need to begin like in Afghanistan is beginning to come in the cheeky rock tenor that became his to make much more positive overtures to out. You can't complain about the Taliban, trademark very soon after. The time had the Islamic leadership in this country to try and then not expect refugees to want to get come for those voices: something akin to a and get some discussion, some inter-faith away from it.' call-up was happening. Choirs everywhere dialogue going, to build congenial relation­ Leaders of the Anglican Church, Catho­ lost tenors as they deserted old-time religion ships. This will not only be of benefit to lic Church, Uniting C hurch, Churches of and embraced the new trinity of sex, drugs, Australian society but it will be particu­ Christ, Quakers, Salvation Army and Baptist and rock 'n' roll. Where had all the tenors larly of benefit to Australian Christians Union all endorsed a letter from the gone, mourned the choirmasters as they overseas, who are having to struggle for life National Council of Churches to the Prime shifted reluctant basses into the strato­ in very oppressive Islamic cultures. I think Minister. The letter reminded the Prime sphere where a chap might fear for his if we can break down barriers here, then Minister that the problem of the boat people reproductive future, strangling out those that will help people elsewhere, given the 'involves moral issues of recognising the Cs. Tenors, long reviled as narcissistic, less­ global nature of the social environment in common humanity of the other'. than-macho airheads, were suddenly in a which we live.' -Maggie Helass sellers' market. Be you never so talentless,

V OLUME 11 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 11 you could get an opera gig as Don Ottavio or Somehow, I was always expecting him plays with two of the younger children. even Pinkerton if you could carry a tune, to link up with Macainsh and Red Symons These are the forgotten victims of the because the great tenor shortage was on. again, but he died when his helicopter 25-year struggle for independence in this But only for classical music. crashed in a sudden wind gust. His funeral tiny half-island country. The children who For there they all were, shrieking was simple: his ashes scattered over his are handicapped, orphaned or scarred by a pheromonally into mikes in front of rock favourite surf beach . I never even m et him, war they had no control over. The great fear bands, and thriving on it. AC/DC's Bon but I'll miss him. -Juliette Hughes am ong the few who care for them is that Scott, the baddest lad of them all, he of the there is no place for them in the newest effortless top Cs, whose old videos are an country in the world. education in performance practice, wore Timor's future 'We tried to get some sort of education out his wiry little body with too much for the blind children here in Dili. There are naughtiness, joining the rock legends who W HO'S M INDING THE KIDS? not even any braille books fo r them,' said were not so much a dying race as running Australian Volunteer International's in one. O N A SUNNY SuNDAY, Immaculada, 18, Maureen Magee. But Bon was an exception that proved took her first tentative steps into the sea. 'Many have no parents, or only one the rule: m ost rock tenors were a resilient Although she lives in the tiny village of parent who cannot provide fo r them. Some bunch. It was the baritones that were carried Alto Hospital, just a few kilometres outside have been in abusive homes so they get sent off by their excesses-Jim Morrison, Jimi East Timor's capital Dili, she's never been to orphanages. Hendrix, and The King himself, Elvis. In to the beach. 'They [the new government] are not Britain, Robert Plant survived Led Zeppelin's Immaculada has also been blind since concentrating on the orphans here ... we heroic self-abuse. The Who's Roger Daltrey, birth. She clings to the arm of Sister Michelle work together with other people here to ge t another survivor; Keith Moon, their drum­ Reid, one of the workers in the village, and a voice for the orphans.' m er and a gifted actor-baritone, not a sur­ vivor. Later, N eil Young, Aerosmith's Steve Tyler and the Gunners' Axl Rose went on to bolster the tenor-survivor theory. Jimmy Barnes, the hard man of Cold Chisel, yells to good purpose still, while the younger (but baritone) Michael Hutchence is for­ ever silent. The Acker Dackers''new' singer (20 years on), Brian Johnson, isn't a nicotine patch on Bon, but he's a ten or, a survivor. And Shirley Strachan looked like one too. He was sociologically perfect for his role: a tradie, and a surfie. Like so many other lads who'd done their apprentice­ ships, and thought they could sing just as well as those poofs on the radio, he'd joined a band, and been caught up in success. He was ideal for Greg Macainsh's songs, which were intelligent, bolshie, Aussie, ironic and very catchy. They didn't take off in the US because, like so many young Australian bands at the time, Skyhooks weren't well m anaged. But Shirl had a hom e to come back to, interests beyond the music world, and a gritty sanity. He would get jobs as a roadie for big international acts like Rod Dili children, inso uciant as on ly children ca n be. Photograph by Katrina Langford. Stewart even when Skyhooks were riding high, because he liked to work; though a gives a little jump as each tiny ripple washes It's a similar story at the Don Bosco rock star, he seemed free of vanity. When an over her feet. Communication Forum for Youth, run by increasingly right-wing and humourless Twenty-four children aged from only the Salesian Sisters, where every Friday popular culture decreed the end of Skyhooks, one year to 18 are with Immaculada. Among hundreds of children come to play, sing he calmly go t himself a job hosting a rather them is Thomas- who is also blind. Thomas songs and have possibly their only decent good kids' TV show, Shirl's Neighbour­ sits on the beach under the shade of an meal all week. hood. He opened a carpentry business in ample palm tree playing East Timorese Oliveira Cipriano is director of the Phillip Island, and then found a new metier freedom songs on the guitar he taught centre. He too is concerned that the as the handyman on Nine's Our House. He himself to play. children h ave been forgo tten i n the seemed one of those lucky people who have Behind him 14-year-old Maria, who has election h ype. the ability to be at home almost anywhere, had two horribly deform ed feet in need of 'They [the government] have not done doing almost anything. orthopedic attention since birth, laughs and anything for the street children, they have

12 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 just promised but th ey have not done anything yet,' said Mr Cipriano. 'We tried to speak to Xanana Gusmao 1 a e but we could not meet with him or Jose Ramos Horta because they are busy. They are focused on the impact of freedom. 'We want to ask Xanana Gusmao to pay attention to the street kids because they are the victims of this war ... some of them have had their fathers and mothers killed by the militia.' Living on the edge The transitional government's two highest-profile leaders both say they are concerned about the plight of children in THE AFL SEASON now behind us for another year, the gam e that sticks East Timor. WH in m y mind is that spiteful final round encounter between Carlton and Geelong 'It is a big problem ... there are people without because weare only thinking about at Princes Park, during which one of the local heroes was knocked unconscious the elections. It has to be something on by late, high contact. As the offending Geelong player was dragged from the which we spend more time-to assist the ground by his coach (not least, perhaps, for his own protection), he incited an children,' Xanana Gusmao admitted. already angry home crowd, some of whom could not contain themselves. Ugly Foreign Minister and Nobel Laureate, scenes followed as the visiting players' 'dug out' becam e just that-a barricade Dr Jose Ramos Horta, was more blunt about under siege. where he saw responsibility for the plight As a relatively recent fan of AFL (having moved from Sydney to Melbourne of East Timor's young: 'The foreign NGOs some 14 years ago), and a m ember of Carlton Football Club for just six years, have millions of dollars in funding .. . they I h ave often pondered on the adversarial (but 'safely' so) establishment of are the ones who should be paying more collective identity which the code seems to provide. This, together with the attention to the kids. Most of the work that opportunity ritually to pile the frustrations of the week on to a sacrificial umpire, has been done for the homeless has been and banish him with a verbal slap into the wilderness of the rooms, makes for a done by the church. 'It will be a priority of the new govern­ healthy cathartic experience after which, paradoxically perhaps, one may leave ment to take them away from the streets at peace with the world, if not always with the football gods. and the fos ter homes and set up funds to But this day felt different som ehow. There was a sense of menace in the help the war widows.' response to this incident that I had not witnessed before in any AFL crowd-a According to the United Nations Chil­ sort of threatened defensiveness that boiled over into a display of force. dren's Fund (UNICEF) report Assessment By coincidence, this was the same weekend the controversy over the fate of the Situation of Separated Children and of the Tampa reached fever pitch. What was that national turmoil really all Orphans in East Timor released earlier this about? Human rights? Immigration policy? International law? Certainly these year, there are 'thousands of children who are issues around which the debate turned. But at some level it was surely also still remain separated from the families'. about this question of collective identity. The report states that numbers of orphans Identity is always to some extent worked out adversarially, that is, in terms are lower than expected, given the forced of 'oth erness'. Twentieth-century French -Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel migration of nearly 300,000 East Timorese to West Timor following the 1999 referen­ Levinas, speak s of le visage (the face) as the site, the expression of that irreduc­ dum on independence. However, as many ible relation with the 'other' by which, in part, I know myself, and am known. as 400 children remain separated from their One commentator paraphrases Levinas thus: 'Th e face of the other breaks into families, their parents still in refugee camps m y world and calls out to me. I am not an "I" unto myself, but an "I" standing across the border. before the oth er.' (Terry Veling, 'In the N ame of Who? Levinas and the Other There is renewed hope that many of Side of Theology', Pacifica 12.3 (1999), p281.) these children will be reunited with their This encounter, so Levinas argues, is the origin of all ethical responsibility, families if the remaining 50,000 refugees insofar as the 'oth er' demands a response from me, reminds me that I am not in still in West Timor return home in the next sole possession of the world. few months. How I respond to the very one who faces- who 'opposes'-me, then, says a The report identifies three major risks great deal about who I am. If Levinas' near contemporary, Russian literary critic for children in East Timor: poverty, poor Mikhail Bakhtin, is right to suggest that we 'author' ourselves at the edges of formal education and their families' our lives, by our engagement with that which is not us, then at least the unflat­ inability to care for their children. The children of East Timor are, as yet, tering autobiographical strokes penned that weekend on the boundary line of largely uncorrupted by Wes tern tourism, Princes Park and on our national boundary have the virtue of consisten cy. • but the signs are already there. Many children eke out a meagre existence selling Richard Treloar is Associate Chaplain to Trinity College, in the University of phone cards and newspapers or changing Melbourne, and teaches at the United Faculty of Theology, Parkville.

V OLUME 11 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 13 money on the street. One fear is that, as the tourism industry grows, these children will forsake formal education for the short-term profit to be made from the tourist dollar. Those responsible for planning a viable tourism industry hope East Timor can learn archimedes from the mistakes of other countries in the region and protect the pristine environ­ ment-and Timor's children-from exploitation. Telling science 'We have places like Bali as an example of what not to do and how not to develop things/ said UN Tourism Officer Ellen Psychas. I T's UNLIKELY THAT WHEN BEN HoFFMAN started studying ants in the Northern 'We don't want to compete with Bali. Territory he ever thought his work would take him to Britain. Or that Jeremy We'll be focusing on adventure tourism and O'Brien considered the possibility that his somewhat esoteric research on sustainable eco-tourism, not high-level quantum computers could lead to his spending time with the ABC's Radio resorts and luxury holidays. We don't want Science Unit. But that's what happened to them, as winner and runner-up of all tourism focused on Dili ... that will only the Fresh Science segment of ScienceNOW!, an annual science forum held for bring the wrong sort of problems to the the past four years at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre. co untry.' Fresh Science gives bright young researchers an opportunity to learn how Youth worker Laurentino Guterres, 22, to interact with the media (and the public) early in their careers, and provides who will travel to Cambodia next year for the media with an annual crop of interesting science stories in a palatable form. an in tern a tional forum on training the Each year about 80 researchers are nominated as Fresh Scientists by handicapped, believes it will take time for universities, co-operative research centres, professional organisations, medical the situation for all East Timor's children to improve. research institutes, the CSIRO, the Defence Science and Technology Organisa­ 'Many of these children were fighting in tion, and other research establishments. A committee of researchers and science the mountains and living with Fretilin. communicators selects 16 from all over Australia and brings them to Melbourne They have never had anything done for so that, with a little coaching in communication, they can parade their work. them/ he said. They are chosen not just on the quality of their work (which is assumed-it 'Some NGOs I have been in touch with must be published or peer reviewedL but also on their ability to tell a story. tell me UNTAET [United Nations Transi­ And what stories they have to tell. Working for the CSIRO, Ben Hoffman tional Administration in East Timor] has been using ants to assess the environmental health of slabs of the Austral­ doesn't want to set up places for the disabled. ian landscape. Typically there are up to 20 million ants from 100 different species It's very, very sad for me if they don't living in a hectare of Australian bush. But when the land is disturbed by human want to assist these people, we must do it­ activity such as agriculture, mining or industry, those figures can change for their future.' -Tim Stoney dramatically. Ants are a great judge of the success or failure of land remediation or reafforestation. Jeremy O'Brien, a PhD student at the University of New South Wales, has Words at work been pushing single atoms around a silicon surface. His studies may lead to WHEI\J POL ITICS FLAILS, computers billions of times more powerful than today's. The field is known as TRY A WRITERS ' FESTIVAL quantum computing, and Australia is a world leader- the more so, now that it has a researcher who can explain what it's about in everyday language. O N CE UPON A TIME, when universities And each year there are plenty of others. Donna Ramsay from the Univer­ were places of yearning and learning, there sity of Western Australia has been using ultrasound to study the mechanics of were frequent lunchtime talks given by breastfeeding-as it happens. Her discovery that milk is released not just at the celebrities and politicians, whether local or start, but several times during a feed, will assist mothers. Matthew Jeffrey from occasionally from overseas. But these days Monash University may have found a non-toxic replacement for cyanide in the Governor-General addressing Newman extracting gold, which would prevent environmental disasters such as occurred College students is sufficiently newsworthy for posters announcing it to be plastered all recently in the rivers of Romania and Hungary. over Carlton. Universities everywhere have It is no surprise that the nations with the most effective science and tech­ ceased to be a Paddy's market for ideas. At nology programs are among those most interested in science communication­ Oxford even Rhodes Scholars- tradition­ particularly the US, but now also countries like Singapore and Israel. After four ally chosen for their breadth of interests­ years of Fresh Science, Australia now has 64 potential research leaders who have been told to trim their sails and focus know how to tell a story. • their energies on the curriculum. So thank God for writers' festivals, particularly one Tim Thwaites is a freelance science writer. such as Melbourne's, where the definition

14 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 of writer is su ff iciently broad, and th e himself. At one point h e was asked whether properly discussed since. Som eone who has number of attractions sufficiently large, for he was a non-believer. 'Yes,' he replied, contested it, a determinedly affable Geoffrey many public issues to be discussed. Indeed 'I have nothing.' His sublime self-confidence Blainey, refu sed to be drawn on the matter there were over 120 listed events; what filled the Melbourne T own Hall; a purple in his conversation with John Bu tton. If he fo llows is an account of how one man used jersey beneath his jacket already proclaimed did, he assu red us, the papers would his ten tickets. him his own bishop. immediately run it under th e headline T he keystone occasion for many must In the course of his exchange with PROFESSOR FANS RACE DEBATE. Another have been the conversation between V.S. N aipaul, Robert Dessaix quoted a sentence sometime columnist, Shane Maloney, had N aipaul and Robert Dessaix. On they cam e, fro m the m ost recent novel: 'Our bluff in no such scruples: when opening the session the slight slump of the fa m ous novelist Africa will one day be called.' 'Some people,' he was chairing, he was glad to see that belied by an immensely confident gait; h e added, 'feel that Au stralia's bluff is about there was obviously room for another 436. Dessaix followed as erect and anxious as a surgeon about to perform a difficult operation. And Ht'f FR.rrz .1 ?.,t.RMIIAJ &XPR£55/0A/15( who would say it wasn 't? There are PAIA/1/A/G IS ~IMPU5fiC, TlCHN /CA.Ll 't things which one is not allowed to ~RUPI!, AIJD S"IU/?IF!Ce5 COMPO~/ l!tJf./1/L mention-such as the late novelist brother, or Paul Theroux (since Sir toNSilJ€/?.Ii 11011/5 FOR 9/0WY PI5Pt.JIY! tJF Vidia is spooked by his Shadow). eMOTIONAl ~Et..F-tNDVL6tNCt .I Then there is the thing one is NOW 1i1Ufl/( TlftM expected to have done, namely read A/30UT 1Ift 5rtJl r!fl/IA/6 the whole corpus. And certainly, £ffU.T) OF EtCES5/Vt once they were seated in their pair AJ>Hcf<,E"{CE (0 of armchairs, Sir Vidia took control. ~EIIt..ISIVI 011/ 7HE The surprise was the warmth in the voice, in which Oxford precision f)EVELOPmel'lr OF combines with energetic Indian THe NtNe retrl-rH articulation to produce something Cffti1VR.Y 6tRMA!V rather like the agreeable modula­ NOVEL! tions of an English country squire. But behind it all th ere lurks a Brahmin fastidiousness, a decided impulse to reject, outpaced only by an apparent openness to experience. Naipaul also embodies (and mines) another contradiction, inher­ ent in the journey a Trinidad boy has made to become a knighted Eng­ lish novelist. T he man who in In a Free State was a pioneer postmodernist to be called.' Immediately there was elec­ You can never quite tell which sessions now deplores th e universal decline of tricity in the air: the Tampa had hit the are going to work, and which not. 'Whaddya everything. Perhapshealwayshas; certainly headlines only the day before. 'How? How? Mean, Postcolonial?' looked promising, but the whole performance has been sustained How?' interposed Naipaul, effectively chan­ all four authors followed the lead of the by vigorous prejudice. Even so, it is some­ nelling the tension away. Bu t for the chair in diving into their books to read us a what amazing to hear dumbing-down in remainder of the festival the refugee ship bit for inspiration-theirs, or ours, wasn't contemporary Britain being attributed to kept popping up like a porpoise. Robert always quite clear. Only Amitav Ghosh '40 years of socialism '. (What, no Thatch­ Manne, in the session on 'The Creeping distinguished himself by addressing a few hitch ?) And a bit of a shock to hear the Righ t', said that, 'In the past few days a serious questions, as well as being the most people of m ixed blood in a lately Portu ­ sinister corner in our history has been humorous. It was a pomo poco shambles. guese colony being so totally written off as turned.' Then in question time, an angry Somewhat better was the discussion of 'second-rank people'. There are shades here Malaysian advanced on the chairperson and history, but the topic, a consideration of of the railing against 'infies' (inferiors) which claimed that h e had been deliberately why it was 'hot', in effect flattened it out. Th eroux has remarked upon. Sm all doses of ignored, and that this was racism . Rather There are other equally important issues, infie- dom, of course, can be quite exhilarat­ than be 'patronised', he stormed out. relating to heritage, nostalgia, public his­ ing, and N aipaul described how, when The view was expressed, in this panel tory, changing resources, or history's writing his travel books, he often spends a and elsewhere, that we were in such a mess conscription by various causes, but these couple of hours talking to the humblest of now, with such an embarrassing degree of were hardly touched upon . people, preferably unrefl ective types wh o popular support for the government's action, They cannot now be avoided in the are prepared to go with him through their precisely because-in the words of Henry world of museums. A very good session was lives in detail. Intent on being m agisterial, Reynolds-we 'snuck away' from White led off by prehistorian John Mulvaney, who, Naipaul in defining others is also defining Australia. Population policy has never been as a m ajor con tributor to a revolutionary

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 15 report in 1975, told us with a certain relish And h ow does the writer approach MELBOURNE how bad Australian museums once were. politics, or his role in the community? Some of the oldest bark paintings in exist­ McQueen- perhaps surprisingly, given his UNIVERSITY PRESS ence were being used at the Museum of concerns- took a long-term view and Victoria as trestle-table tops; and, since referred to Dorothy Green 's opinion at the museums then never changed much, there time of the Vietnam War: be wary of the SACRED PLACES was a display case in Adelaide headed 'Some policies that, however intensely followed, War Memorials in the of our recent acquisitions', which had clearly do not last a decade. We are slaughtering a Australian Landscape lain undisturbed since 1908. Not that people deemed the en emy, when tomorrow K. S. IN GLIS Mulvaney was entirely in favour of what or the day after the politicians will say they Paperback $39.95 has come since. He noted that these days, in are our fri ends. Then, McQueen continued, an Aboriginal context, it is anthropologist there are matters of class- people's strug­ Baldwin Spencer who is now patronised; gle for improvement, their right to a decent but also that those bark paintings- if no living. He had but to think of the lives of his longertrestle tables- are not on display either. own parents and grandparents; no-one VISITS HOME The director of the new Museum of should have to live lives like that. Migration Experi ences Australia, Dawn Casey, articulated the new Literature may particularise, and of between Italy and Austral ia concerns: h er institution focuses on the course it fictionalises; but it also connects LORETIA BALDASSAR environment, on Aborigines and Torres with the deepest and broadest aspirations Paperback $39.95 Strait Islanders, and on waves of migrants. people have. It can articulate things for The museum, she made plain, is not about them, too, providing a template which gives famous people, because 'that's not what a shape to feelings, almost permission to Australia is about'. (Since it proudly dis­ have them. Recently Helen Garner was THE FLIGHT OF plays Phar Lap's heart, an exception is clearly approached at a concert and thanked by a made for famous horses.) What it set out to woman for having written about her love THE EMU do, though, was not to capitulate lamely to for a granddaughter, in a way the woman A Hundred Years of populism; rather, she wanted people to be had recognised as describing how she felt Australian Ornithology 1901-2001 brought to question their own attitudes. about her own. Similarly non-fictional LIBBY ROBIN But to do that, things have to be presented McQueen learned, from the doctor who Hardback $69.95 convincingly-and by a variety of tech­ broke the news of his mother's death, that niques. (The postmodern museum is a noisy his book on racism had helped the young place.) Ninety per cent of the people who go man identify the situation around him when there, she claims, are enthusiastic about it. living in a small Central Queensland town. CHAIN LETTERS Occasionally one gets a glimpse of how Given these examples, it is not surpris­ Narrating Convict Lives shallowly traditional European-style cul­ ing that often during the festival concern LUCY FROST AND c hain fl'ltc• n ture is rooted in Australia. Hearing was expressed about the current lack of HAMISH MAXWELL­ STEWART Humphrey McQueen, Frank Moorhouse and public debate. Henry Reynolds pointed to a David Malouf in triangular conversation, it tightening political party discipline, so Paperback $34.95 soon emerged how relatively late each of marked that divergent opinion even within them came to full-time writi n g. In Cau cus is now discouraged. Against this McQueen 's case, it was only after he got a shutting down of discussion stand the ideals MAKING A job as a lecturer in art hi story in 19 79 that of the literary world, where Naipaul can NATION STATE he realised that this was not what he wanted, describe civilisation as 'the ability to stand Cu ltural Identity, Econom ic and that to be a writer one had to go full­ outside yourself', and where Geoffrey Nationalism and Sexuality time-even if it meant that one might have Blainey can stand beside the grave of the in Australian History to be prepared to live on $13,000 a year. The Communist Judah Waten and deliver a KOSMAS TSOKHAS year before, Malouf took the plunge by funeral oration. All this com es like news Paperback $39.95 resigning from the University of Sydney, from a distant planet. N ever have we needed taking his superannuation and buying a writers' festivals more. run-down cottage in Tuscany. With two -Jim Davidson FACING NORTH novels written, and another three turned A Century of Australian out while on a Literature Board grant, he This month's contributms: Frank Bongiorno Engagement with Asia was launched. Both m en were around 40 lectures in Australian History at the Uni­ Volume 1, 1901 to the 1970s when they took these decisions. versity of N ew England, Armidale; Maggie EDITED BY DAVID For his part, Moorhouse had puzzled a Helass is a freelance journalist; Juliette GOLD SWORTHY vocational guidance officer in a country Hughes is a freelance writer; Tim Stoney is Hardback $59.95 school when he declared that he wanted to a reporter for Network Ten and was in East be a short-story writer ('creative dancer' Timor for Eureka Street at election time; was his second option), but he managed to Jim Davidson teaches in the department of www.mup.com.au sidle into the role of writer a little earlier, Asian and International Studies at Victoria from journalism. University of T echnology.

16 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBE R 2001 ELECT I O FI LE:PART 2

JACK WATER FORD And all the rest

jack Waterford analyses the ro le independents and minor parti es will pl ay in the forthcoming federal election.

I'RCC

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 17 win it, but an anti-politician of character and reputa­ to be expected to vote on everything. It is rather more tion can hope to win on Labor preferences-as shown important to know about the candidate's character, by Ted Mack in the seat next door, Peter Andren in and their broad disposition on a number of key issues. central NSW, and Tony Windsor in the state seat nearby. Natasha Stott D espoja's Democrats are travelling a These are all high-profile candidates who, win or lot better at the m oment, now that they are identified lose, can expect primary votes of more than 30 per with vibes and general feelings, rather than with the cent. This is enough, on a good day, to have them passage of a compromised GST or unfair dismissal laws. The more focus there is on the party actually exercising power (which it undoubtedly does) and the less there is on the general principles which are supposed to motivate them, the more the Democrats appear as yet another grubby player. Second, the smart independent or minor party candidate, apart from One Nation, is not actually pitching for 50 per cent of the vote, as any major party must. One Nation has to, at least so long as major While the running number two before preferences are dis­ parties remain pledged to putting them last in their tributed, and likely to be pushed over the line by the preferences, but generally, either major party will Democrats third-running major party candidate. These candidates prefer an independent or minor party before it gives a played pragmatic aside, however, it is still noticeable that the average preference to the other major party. Moreover, if it is combined vote for independents is starting to get into a uncertain that it can win 50 per cent, a major party games with zone that indicates others may succeed. Once the com­ must persuade the minor parties and independents to bined major party vote has slipped below the 70 per preference it ahead of its major rival, but m ost powe"' the cent mark, the chance of an independent independents will divide votes am ong themselves Greens­ being elected increases exponentially. ahead of either party. When the goal is really only to anarchists at get 30 per cent or so, the smart independent can more So WHY ARE so MANY rejecting one or other of the skilfully play to the constituencies that can deliver heart-seemed major parties? The increasing bastardry and point­ the 30 per cent, without worrying so much about the scoring of much of what passes for politics is one people who are turned off. to remain pure reason. So is the apparently increasing incapacity of Suppose, for example, that it is true that a and, to some, governments, on either side, to achieve outcomes. majority of Australians actually support the forcible Then there is the rising tide of cynicism about politi­ turning away of refugees from our shores. I have my became the cians' perks and intention to keep their promises. On doubts about the statistics, but the fact that Labor beacon for those many issues that matter to voters-globalisation and has been so craven on the debate suggests that its own competition policy, for example-the gap between the polling is telling it that a majority agrees with the who say that major parties is very slight, more often than not only government line. Whatever the actual proportions, a matter of emphasis. Meanwhile, many voters are there are many people of both Labor and Liberal there is a politics somewhere else altogether. Twenty-five years of inclination who are positively sicken ed by the of the post­ relentless economism and focus on tax cuts has Boward-Ruddock stance and by the weasel words of disillusioned m any who see the role of government Labor spokesmen as they refuse to condemn govern­ materialistic age. primarily in social terms, or whose main points of con­ ment actions. Indeed, for some, the question of cern are health, welfare, education and environment. whether either party could be given a first-preference It is not only in Australia that many voters have vote must almost be a moral question. lost faith in old-style parties. One might find paral­ In any event, the fact that both the Greens, in lels with the rise of One Nation, populist politicians the form of Senator Bob Brown, and the Democrats, such as Katter, and anti-politicians such as Andren, through Stott Despoja and others, have been out­ in the progress of Ross Perot in the United States or spoken in their condemnation of the policy makes the National Front in France. Green groups have had either attractive for a first-preference vote, if only as significant success throughout Europe. There are a gesture of protest. For would-be Labor vot ers, parallels between the Australian Democrats and Beazley's me-too bellicosity after the New York and groups such as the Social Democrats in Britain and Washington terrorist incidents might well produce the some of the Democratic coalitions in the United same result. Even if only 40 per cent of the popula­ States in the 1990s. tion agreed, but a significant number thought the issue The voter may be frustrated with the venality, important enough to prompt a change in vote, an out­ incompetence or impotence of the modem major party spoken minor player who could capture most of that politician, but does not necessarily set the same stand­ feeling would end up running second before prefer­ ards for the minor party candidate or independent. ences were distributed. First, of course, the voter does not necessarily expect A Labor or a Liberal Party must consider what a a policy on everything, even if the representative is majority might want, where the middle ground is, or

18 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 how much an issue is 'on-' or 'off-message'. All too often, moved to a position of control of a number of the price they pay for a blatantly populist approach branches. How much this will embarrass her probably to policy is alienation either of core supporters, or of turns less on the risk that the adult industry will just the sort of swinging voters they need, particularly immediately attempt to set policy than on the in the suburbs. An artful minor player, however, need willingness of her opponents to exploit it. In one Minor parties worry only about whether her view can command a respect, Stott Despoja has proven to be everything she third of voter support. promised: she is publicly personable and a vote tend to be Populist dissatisfaction, particularly with the magnet, particularly with younger voters. In another squeezed National Party, has passed its zenith, but is still a respect she has proven to be everything that her significant factor. Rural economic conditions have opponents in the party feared-policy-lazy and whenever there . . improved; there has been a major spending effort in inconsistent. A lack of sororal feeling is not the 1s a genwne rural and regional centres, and not a little of the anti­ greatest handicap in politics-the Howard Cabinet immigration rhetoric has been cynically adopted by hardly bubbles with fraternal feeling-but disunity contest or a the Coalition, and thus denied to One Nation. It is un­ in such a tight group threatens the co-ordination of likely that many seats will be greatly affected by a One the campaign. seriously Nation vote, or that too much attention will be paid That disunity could well see the Democrats out­ polarising to Pauline Hanson. Yet resentment continues to run flanked in one of its core constituencies by the Greens, deep, not least because of the failure of the NSW and who have scarcely put a foot wrong politically in flying election. Labor's Victorian National Parties to separate themselves from the flag for the environment. While the Democrats own efforts to the market-driven policies of the Coalition. There are played pragmatic games with power, the Greens­ fears of a continuing decline in services-fears which anarchists at heart-seemed to remain pure and, to avoid being have focused on Telstra but which will now be much some, became the beacon for those who say that there marginalised­ aggravated by losses of regional airline services. is a politics of the post-materialistic age. The Demo­ There is also continuing resentment against the crats, of course, need more than this to hold on to despicable as complexities of complying with the CST. Labor, more­ their power base. Unlike the Greens, they cannot over, may well create a rural scare campaign based on survive in the long run by being to the left of Labor they may appear income imputation plans implicit in the new tax on both social and economic issues. They must take to those who system, but not yet in action. The key seats Labor votes from Liberal constituencies as well, and with needs in order to win power are in rural and regional the virtual disappearance of an articled liberal view expected some centres; some it needs may fall to anti-politicians. on social issues from within the Coalition, they may principle-may It is in major cities and the suburbs that the never get a better chance. But where the Greens com­ Greens and the Democrats can expect to do best-if mand greater support on environmental issues than save the Greens only because cynicism and disillusion with politics the Democrats, the Democrats stand to lose seats. and the there is focused on political incapacity to concentrate Two months ago, the general community expec­ on social and environmental issues, and questions of tation was that Labor would romp home. The stronger Democrats. the honesty and integrity of the political process. The danger for both minor parties is not that their views will be rejected for running against the tide if there is a khaki election based on a fight against Muslim terrorism, or a boat-people election based on keeping out Muslim refugees. The danger is, rather, that minor parties tend to be squeezed whenever there is a genuine contest or a seriously polarising election. Labor's own efforts to avoid being marginalised in such a process-despicable as they may appear to any such expectation, the more any independent those who expected some principle-may save the or minor party candidate has to take it into ac­ Greens and the Democrats even as John Howard plays count in formulating an election strategy. To play the statesman in what he would portray as the moods right one has to work hard at explaining a time of crisis. how one will temper and brake a new government's decisions. One also has to put the right spin on SIX MONTHS AGO, the biggest risk that the Demo­ one's record of doing just that with the previous crats faced was of punishment for its brokering role government, or the right spin on denouncing its in the Senate, particularly after the CST. Now the excesses. As confidence in a massive Labor victory biggest risk comes from turmoil within the party­ declines, the Democrats in particular will probably the barely concealed dislike of Natasha Stott Despoja soften their anti-Labor rhetoric and up the volume by most of her parliamentary colleagues, her poor on the venality of the Coalition-if only to snare relations with some key outside Democrats, and wider more votes in the middle. • questions about the vulnerability of the party to infiltration. The brothel and pornography industry has Jack Waterford is editor of the Canberra Times, and Eureka Street's Canberra correspondent.

V OLUME 11 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 19 JOURNEYS:l

Other ways

Travel broadens the mind, says conventional w isdom. Not always, argues travel w riter Anthony Ham.

R ccmnv, I WROTe A Londy PlAnet tmel guide to LibyA. My finAl t"k befme submitting the manuscript was to write an introduction that would 'sell' the book. It had been a long month, with a rapidly encroaching deadline. Almost without thinking, I concluded: 'Get there before it changes.' A self-fulfilling prophecy. Eight months before, a travel writer had told me about the trouble he'd had convincing the travel editor of a national newspaper to print a story documenting tourism's negative impact on environment and local culture in India's Andaman Islands. The editor could not see how this was a travel story. And back in August 2001, I agonised over whether to include in a guidebook a wonder­ ful traditional teahouse in the Iranian city of Isfahan. It was one of few remaining places Above : Tu areg man at where locals could enjoy a traditional pastime free from inundating tour groups and inflated Mavo Lake, ld ehan Ubari tourist prices. Was I responsible to the tourists who depended upon the guidebook for (Ubari Sa nd Sea), Sahara discovering pockets of an'authentic' Irani To the proprietors dependent upon income from Desert, Weste rn Libya. tourists I Or to the local cultures that seemed at risk from mass tourism? The turban (ashaersh) is In a recent edition of Granta, Robyn Davidson, author of Tra ck s and Desert Places, worn by Tu areg men as protection aga in st th e describes travel writing as 'literature to accommodate a longing for the exotic in an elements, as an indicator increasingly homogenised, commercialised and trivialised world'. In doing so she points to of statu s or as a way of the dilemma at the heart of such writing. showin g submission Travel writing at its best explores the rich diversity of the world. It draws people to to elders. travel and encourages a greater understanding of other cultures. It also sheds light on the Right: Tu areg man in th e environmental and cultural devastation that mass tourism can wreak. The irony, or dilemma, ld ehan Murzuq (Murzuq is this: the more perceptive the writer, the more he or she will become aware that the Sa nd Sea), Sahara Dese rt, writing is part of the problem. Whenever literature about a place encourages large numbers So uth ern Li bya. The man, whose name is of visitors to arrive, the place changes. There is a further danger: readers also imagine Sheikh , fe atures in that they can know, from the writing, all that there is to understand. The result: the 'Sa haran songs', Eureka onslaught of mass tourism and the myth of omniscience smother the very difference Street, Jul y/A ugust 2001. for which we are searching. Photographs by Discouraging travel is no solution. To do so would be to abandon the cultural encounter Anthony Ham to the all-you-need-to-know media soundbites and to the filtering of the privileged few.

20 EU REKA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 / The yearning to leave home, to seek out the world's part of the narrative, as it is for any of us, and her diversity, to travel beyond the confines of our own space writing cannot be divorced from her perspectives, and world view, is an ancient and positive impulse, part prejudices, priorities. V.S. Naipaul, at that Festival of a process of growing up, of finding an independent talk, remarked that travel writing is not about the way in the world. The fear of leaving home and the writer but about the people he or she encounters; else­ retreat behind familiar walls make for a short walk to where he describes his own travel writing as the insularity. Seeking out new ways of looking about us 'writing of enquiry'. These are noble ideals, but also signals a realisation that what we read about, for disingenuous to some degree; the very people whom example, Islam, or the Middle East or a writer chooses to include, and the questions he or Africa, may not be the full story. she asks, derive from a particular view of the world. The decision about what to include and what to omit W EN EAST TIMOR IMPLODED in 1999, the OUt­ is a choice. But so often opinion is read as fact. A piece pouring of sympathy here at home arose from the fact of writing can become the 'last word' on India, rather that many Australians had first-hand experience in than one person's illumination of one of many Indias. the country, we had a shared war history, and the Travel writing is also read by people who will persecution of the East Timorese people had been n ever visit the places in question, the armchair widely and reliably reported and documented through travellers wanting to learn about worlds they will moving footage. There is no such coverage and hence never see. When so much travel writing is given a no such understanding of the plight of, for example, veneer of objectivity, writers are faced with som e dis­ Afghans or Congolese. To travel and to m eet the turbing questions. Do you include a negative image people from these countries, to hear their stories, is when you think that it will reinforce a stereotype, to be constantly challenged by what you thought you and help perpetuate a larger misunderstanding? Do knew. you fall in with the demand for the sensational? You The genre of travel writing should nonetheless can sell more books with an epic tale laced with be interrogated. potentially disastrous or life-threatening incidents. Travel writers often seem to be providing readers They may make for a good read, but they may also with a substitute for discovery. Wittingly or unwit­ form the readers' lasting impression of a place. This tingly, they allow for an abdication of critical respon­ may be their only 'information' about a country, a sibility in those who, as Robyn Davidson writes, people or a culture. Questions of light and shadow 'wished to experience my experience before they felt too easily become issues of black and white. confident enough to experience their own'. I have Equally significant are the customary omissions encountered people who, upon hearing that I write from travel writing, most notably the stories of exile, for Lonely Planet, gush, 'You guys are my Bible; I'd of forced migration, of the mass movement of peoples. be lost without you.' Robyn Davidson has called for a redefined 'literature Such a reluctance to see the world through new of movement'. Travel writing thus conceived could eyes, or at least one's own eyes, ensures that travel then engage with the broader debates about migra­ thus conceived contributes little to understanding tion. The privilege of travelling comfortably anywhere between peoples. Instead it encloses people within the in the world might not be so artificially divorced from restrictions of someone else's predetermined under­ the desperation of those fleeing persecution. standing. The cultural encounter, the sense of dis­ A 'literature of movement' might infiltrate the for­ covery, the mutual understanding travel can foster tress mentality of Western countries when it comes are lost when travellers suspend their own imagina­ to the migration of other peoples. There is something tion, allowing someone else's to take its place. anomalous about exalting journeys of pleasure over a Diversity becomes an abstract concept rather than a journey to save one's life; doing so entrenches in the lived experience. genre of travel writing the ethnocentric view that only The most damaging consequence of seeing the white-faced Westerners have a right to shed uncom­ world solely through the eyes of the travel writer is fortable light on other cultures. that one person's picture of a certain place at a partic­ If travel writing does not reconfigure itself, and ular moment acquires a truth detached from its con­ embrace broader thinking, the genre will remain con­ text; the writing takes on a mantle of apparent fined within a 19th-century definition wherein the objectivity. After listening to V.S. Naipaul, recently maps of the world contained blank spaces for travel in Melbourne for the Writers' Festival, one m ember writers to fill in. It will produce little more than one­ of the audience assured me that Naipaul is all you sided, voyeuristic visions of the 'other' which are not need to read to understand India- as if the man had encounters at all. We will go on looking in the mirror captured some overarching truth or essence of one of that shows us what we already know. Worse still, we the world's most polyglot nations. will end up right back where we started, as if we never Robyn Davidson speaks of a desire to edit herself left home at all. • out of the story. She finds the task impossible because her very presence in the places she writes about is Anthony Ham is a Eureka Street correspondent.

22 EUREKA STREET • O CTOBE R 2001 Moving mountatn• s

Ti bet continues to exist in polit ica l limbo, but at a more bas ic level, life may be improving. Peter Davis reports.

I T's Mu> MO,N>NC. And beneath the of thyroid goitre-a condition resulting is one of the most affected regions in the intense Tibetan sun, children from Genu from lack of iodine. 'Thirty percent of the world. Problem s of geography lead in turn school, 100 kilom etres w est of the population in this region has some sort to problem s of diet, as the m ajority of Tibetan capital Lhasa, stand in ragged of iodine deficiency disease,' says Dr Li. Tibet's 2.5 million people eat food pro· lines in a field. They wait patiently as 'If the goitre is detected early, it can be duced in the iodine-deficient local soils. Dr Ga Li from the Lhasa City H ealth cured. But the problem s becom e more One of the main threats to the disease· Bureau moves along each line. He pauses serious among adults. In pregnant wom en eradicat ion project is the continued beside each child, places his hands gently it can result in acute deafness as well as consumption of non-iodised salt. For cen­ around the child's neck and feels fo r any m ental and physical retardation in the turies Tibetans have used inferior salts swelling. Some children giggle but most newborn child.' from rocks or lakes as a currency in are restrained. They appear to understand In Tibet, iodine levels in the surface exchange for much-needed grains. The the seriousness of the occasion. soil have been eroded over millions of Chinese government has responded by Of the 56 students examined, 16 are years by rain and by snow glaciation . The simply declaring trade in non-iodised salt ushered to one side (privacy is a privilege more m ountainous the region, the greater illegal, but such declarations do little to here). These are the children with signs the problem , and the Himalayan plateau change centuries-old behaviour.

V OLUME 11 N UMBER 8 • EUR EKA STR EET 23 Previous page: The Lhasa sa lt factory produces iodised sa lt to help eliminate iodine defi ciency. This page, clockwise from top : Si sters Shangi and Tsomo suffer from goitre and deafness resu lt ing from iodine defi ciency. 'Our young people mustn ' t end up like us.' Dr Ga Li tes ts children at Genu School for signs of goitre.

Iodised salt is the solution to iodine iodine deficiency. 'Our young people pipes are laid and taps are installed at deficiency. It sounds simple, but produc­ mustn't end up like us,' says Shangi. 'We strategic locations around the village. ing it, distributing it, and encouraging need to make people aware of the The villagers can maintain these systems people to consume it is highly complex. need for iodine.' and each family contributes around two An iodised salt factory has been estab­ dollars a year to a maintenance fund. lished with support from an Australian SEVEN I-lOURS WEST by jeep is Shigatse, At a 'turning on the tap ceremony' in aid project. 'The factory is making a Tibet's second-largest city. The fourth Kunggo village, east of Shigatse, all 118 difference but even at full capacity, it floor of the drab-looking Shigatse City residents gather near the reservoir. cannot meet the needs,' says Dr Li. 'We Water Supply Company serves as HQ for Women display their finest jewellery. arc hoping that a second factory will the Tibet Primary Health Care & Water Someone lights a mound of incense and eventually be built.' Supply Project. The project has helped as the village elder descends into a Iodine pills are distributed as an bring safe drinking water to nearly 40 manhole to turn the system on, the crowd interim measure until the production and villages in the Shigatse region. Water is releases a collective squeal of delight distribution of iodi ed salt becomes more abundant in Tibet, but safe drinking before tossing barley flour to the wind. widespread. Dr Li hopes that Tibet will water isn't. The traditional way is for There is singing, dancing and applause. eradicate the problem in the next few villagers to ga ther drinking water from Then come the offerings of the ubiqui­ years. 'Such diseases have been virtually streams near where the cattle graze and tous w bite scarves (an expression of eliminated in there t of China. We have the people bathe. Diarrhoea from bad gratitude) and of yak butter tea. At one a long way to go but we now have the water is prevalent in rural Tibet and of the three village taps, children scream commitment of all levels of government.' each year children die from acute with delight as they wash their hands, After concluding his examination of symptom s. old men look on in disbelief and women the schoolchildren, Dr Li introduces me The new water systems are simple yet ga ther with their water-carriers. 'I've to two elderly sisters in a neighbouring powerful. The water source is positioned lived here most of m y life,' says Ga village. Shangi, 68, and Tsomo, 76, are at some distance from human or animal Drolma as she watches water gush from both afflicted with extreme goitre, deaf­ habitation. A trench is dug, a small reser­ the shiny new taps. 'This will make a ness and other conditions resulting from voir is constructed, heavy-duty plastic difference.' •

24 EURE KA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 Th is page, clockw ise from top: Chi ldren in Kunggo vi ll age delight in the tap water. Children at Genu School. In Kun ggo village, Ga Drolma wa tches sa fe drinking water fl ow. Photographs by Peter Davis.

Peter D avis is a M elbourne writer and photographer. The Tibet Iodine Deficiency Elimination Project and the Tibet Primary Health Care eiJ Water Supply Project both receive funds from AusAID, the Australian govemment's aid arm.

EURE KA STRE ET 25 )0URNEYS:3

Through the barriers

Reconci I iation is an abstract word, but when people meet face to face in the right circumstances, the connections may be as rea l as they are surprising. Brian McCoy reports.

'Io'oN'T TH'NK they would like m.' the country with Aboriginal people. But one who was trying to get into Her words shocked me. At the end of a most had never met or spoken to an parliament. She did not like Aborigines. successful three-day gathering they came Aboriginal person. In his view she would get rid of them all so plainly and directly. The talking that evening prompted a if she were elected. It took me a while to We had come as a small group from number of conversations and encounters work out who he was referring to. She the desert to join a meeting of young over the following days. People came and hadn't visited the Kimberley, certainly adults. A family-wife, husband and two sat and ate with us. They helped mind not where we lived. Her name was not young children-another young man and the two young children, told their own important here. But he had seen her on myself. We had travelled a long way to stories and showed genuine interest in TV. Her very strong, negative messages one of our major cities. It was a tiring trip our group. about him and his people had by dirt road and plane and we were not Yet her comment still disturbed me. touched and hurt him. sure how the gathering would go. But we Why wouldn't people like h er? Why felt it was a good chance to meet other wouldn't people like her family, her A NOTHER TIME, when I was visiting a young people, share som e Aboriginal people, her culture? desert community, I received a phone call culture and experience something of a I remembered the first time I trav­ asking me to pass on a message to them. city that our group had never seen. elled, as a young student, to a northern The message was that a car-load of the She was obviously pleased her expec­ community. I had not been there long Ku Klux Klan was coming. They were tations had not been met. She and her when I was invited to go out camping wearing tattoos. Somehow- ! am not husband and her children had all enjoyed with a family. On my return, a man who sure why-people believed it was the themselves. had lived in Aboriginal communities for KKK. I am still not sure of the signifi­ There was an evening session when some years asked me quite seriously, 'Did cance of the tattoos. A few years before, our group swapped stories about their they feed you?' when I was working with the Royal Com­ lives, their community back home and Twenty-five years later his question mission into Aboriginal Deaths in Cus­ their culture. The sharing began with still shocks me. It was as though he felt tody, I had seen KKK signs painted on some reticence, but it gradually relaxed that in my place he would have been left various road signs in the Pilbara. Occa­ and developed. There were som e sad and to himself, left uncared for. I have never sionally I would hear from Aboriginal funny stories, a few songs in English and forgotten all those layers of doubt and anx­ people that they thought the KKK were in a desert language, and gradually a iety. What is it that we fear in the other? still alive and active. But I had never seen deeper discussion developed about the A few years ago I picked up a young or met anyone identified as belonging to struggles of growing up as a young man on a dry desert road and took him them. I delivered the message as simply Aboriginal person in Australia today. into the local town. I had never m et him and off-handedly as I could, making it Some of the stories brought tears. Some before, but he was happy to chat as we clear that I didn't think there was any­ of the people listening recounted their went along. He wanted to talk about 'that thing to worry about. Then I camped for own histories of growing up uneasily in woman', the one he had seen on TV, the the night.

26 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 The next morning, when I visited the someone we respected. The crowd's anger community's store, I found that the was palpable. But it was one thing to hear people had moved from their homes articulated fears for a fallen player, quite during the night and gone bush. They another to hear the abuse that came with Your best were most surprised to see me. Word had it. It was as if the incident prompted a gone out that on my way back home I had further level of violence, one where race encountered the KKK group at the local suddenly became the central and signifi­ river crossing and had been assaulted. cant issue. life choice The tale was not true, but at least it was Later, my two friends told me what good to know on what side of that racial they experienced that day. They told me fence I was seen to be standing. the hurt and frustration they feel when What is this relationship that exists they hear words that remind them of an could be between us if some, perhaps many, ancient but still living memory of Aboriginal people remain to be convinced mistreatment and prejudice. I don't know that we non-Aboriginal people actually those feelings from the inside as they do, one decision · like them? We admire them as sports but I do know how easily dangerous people, artists and songwriters, but do we forces can be unleashed when people feel convey to them that we like them just as judged by their colour, and how power­ they are? As one of my artist friends says, fully those forces can affect those who 'We buy Aboriginal dot art and hang it in feel judged. away. our homes, but not art depicting Aborig­ Yet I feel hopeful still. As our group inal faces. ' It is as if it is safer to have the prepared to leave the city for their desert dots in our houses than the people home, the young mother summed up the themselves. value she saw in coming south. It was a At the end of last year I went to the good chance to go shopping, see the latest AFL Grand Final with two Aboriginal film and try some novel foods . It was also friends. Getting tickets had been difficult a time for her and for our whole group to and we were separated by some thou­ learn that, given the chance, we can share sands of seats. Something happened that more than our pasts might suggest. We afternoon which deeply touched the three can hear each other's stories. We can of us. When Essendon's Michael Long begin to understand one another. We www.jesuit.org.au tackled Melbourne's Troy Simmonds, can even discover that we like each I was stunned and worried, like many other. • Contact: Br Jan Cribb SJ other spectators. It was not that such a PO Box 136 serious incident could not happen in a Brian McCoy SJ has lived with Indigenous Grand Final, it was that this one was people in the north of Australia for many Pymble NSW 2073 different. This involved an Aboriginal years. He is presently studying Indige­ Tel: 02 9488 4525 player, someone the three of us had met, nous health issues.

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VOLUME 11 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 27 ) 0URNEYS:4

Believing in Greece

Gillian Bouras explores the spirit of her adopted country.

February lOth. The Peloponnese. I N THE VILLAGE HOUSE in the South West Peloponnese, Greece, a seeping cold wakes m e up far earlier than I plan or wish. Searching for warmth, I stagger into the main room to find the television set blaring already. Not unusual, this. What is unusual is the fact of the liturgy (and it will last three h ours) being telecast on a Saturday m orning. But I've forgotten: today is the Feast Day of the Holy Martyr, Saint Charalambos, protector of the town of Filiatra, in western Messinia. Gold-clad clergy move in stately fashion across the screen while the large congregation watches: Orthodoxy is in large part ancient theatre, and so audience participation is minimal. Occasionally lips move as snatches of psalms are recognised, and the sign of the cross is sketched by all at appointed times, according to signals learned by the faithful in childhood.

I am neither Greek nor Orthodox; by birth and condi­ were rather suspect, and usually ignored. Certainly tioning I am Nonconformist, so that saints (how can the notion of petitioning individuals or vi ewing them I put this ?) took a back seat in my spiritual life, such as personal protectors was considered dangerously as it was, for a long time. Way back then we recited papist. But at the age of 20, go ing on about 14 by Sa ints, clockwise from top the Apostles' Creed occasionally, and I have a vague today's standards, I made my first tentative steps left: Konstan ti ne and Helen, John, George, Charalambos, recollection that the communion of saints go t a slight towards an acquaintance with Orthodoxy and a steep Nikolaos, Basi l, look-in in the old Scottish Psalter and Presbyterian learning curve, which continues steep, not to men­ Fanourios and Dimitrios. Hymnary, but that was about it. Saints, as I recall, tion rocky, even now, decades later. And at the age of

28 EUREKA ST REET • O CTOBER 2001 35 I migrated, som ewhat unexpectedly, to Greece, I quailed very regularly. She was illiterate, and this where it is impossible to ignore saints. fact alone led us to have m any an odd and tense con­ To this day Greek parents have the choice of versation. One of these concerned Elijah, and because giving their children ancient or Christian names, with she always considered me an ignoramus of the first many priests expressing disapproval of the former, let water, it was a relief to us both that I knew said alone anything more adventurous or modem , so perish prophet had risen to heaven in a chariot of fire. But the thought of a Tra cey or a Troy, even in the diaspora: consternation arose when I said something about a Greek-Australian couple of m y acquaintance had Elijah 's land of origin. Are you telling m e he wasn't to shop around in fairly desperate fashion when they Greek! she queried. And that is precisely what I was wanted to christen their daughter Marilyn. My three telling her, but later I realised that once again she was sons are called Dimitrios, Nikolaos and Alexander. probably right, if you consider that Elijah is Elias in I finally got my choice of name with the youngest, Greek, and that the similarity, much m ore m arked in but suspected that, while Saints Dimitrios and pronunciation than spelling would suggest, between N ik olaos/ Nich olas were documented historical Elias and helios, m eaning sun, is surely not a mere fi gures, Saint Alexander was a Christianised version coincidence. The link joining Elijah and Apollo the of Alexander the Great. But no. There are two Saints sun-god, also a rider in a chariot, seem s quite secure. Alexander, it appears. Don't ask m e which is which: In any case, Elijah/ Apollo always has his chapel on a they're both fairly minor compared with SS D and N, hill, and fire- leaping is an ancient way of whose respective Feast Days on October 26th and celebrating the name day on July 20th. D ecember 6th are always celebrated in style. My baby, the only one of m y sons born in Greece, now a strap­ E VERY DAY ts A FEAST D AY in the Orthodox world. ping six-footer of 19, has been m oaning for years that Diaries and calendars list this information as a matter nobody ever rem embers Augu st 30th. He's not of course, for there are so many saints that the sharing particularly concerned about shut churches, unlit of days is mandatory. D evout people are supposed to candles, and unsaid prayers, you understand, but know and celebrate the important days without regrets the lack of presents and parcels of very sweet consulting any diary, and one old m an I once knew and gooey cakes brought to those whose name-days seemed to have the whole calendar off by heart: you are better known. could choose a day at random and he would recite the My sons' childhood and mine could not be m ore listed saints without a falter, and was never wrong. different. Take, for example, the matters of geography Various occupations and professions claim a patron and topography. They are used to m ountains and saint. St Nicholas is the obvious one for the Greek valleys, but I spent my formative years in the Wim­ N avy, while the Artillery chose St Barbara. When m era district of Vi ctoria. Huge skies and unlimited I first came to Greece, I was bemused to find the post flatness are the things I remember. I also rem ember offices closed on February lOth, for the aforem en­ finding it hard to believe that the world was actually tioned St Charalambos is the patron saint of postmen. round. Despite what teachers and parents said, there As I am a devotee of the gentle and dying art of was no visual or visible evidence to support this con­ correspondence, as in snail mail, I have fo nd feelings tention, and I had a sneaking fear that it could be quite for St Charalambos. But he is an interesting and an easy m atter to drop off the edge of desert or pad­ important personage anyway, and well-documented dock, even if your average m erino managed to stay as a bishop with actual dates, having been born in som ehow glued on. All these years later I have no 85AD in Magnesia, Asia Minor, and martyred in idea whether my children have ever thought about 198AD, early days for Christianity within the enor­ the fact that the village, like m ost villages in Greece, m ous Rom an Empire. He obviously gave the lie to is protected by a kind of spiritual ring, for marking the notion that the good die young, for legend insists the outskirts of settlem ent at various points in a that he retained youthful vigour and liveliness for all m odest architectural punctuation, there are chapels of his 113 years. His life was one of virtue and philan­ nam ed for saints: John, Konstantine and H elen, Dim­ thropy, spent in fasting, prayer and ministering to the itrios, George, Basil and Nikolaos. It is as if they are poor, the weak and the suffering. But as what the guarding the villagers and the much larger central Greeks call 'a genuine diam ond' he was inevitably church of the Saints Theodore. The boundaries are bound to provoke the rage and envy of the enemies of thus clear: no fear of vast space, unexpected edges, or Christianity. flat-earthness here. Oh, and on top of a high hill there He had a very narrow escape when he was arrested is the chapel of the Prophet Elijah . by the provincial authorities who were determined My m other-in-law, the redoubtable Aphrodite, to force him to renounce the true faith and turn to now gone to her eternal rest and reward, was the idolatry. This he steadfastly refused to do, and conse­ daughter and wife of Orthodox priests. She stood five­ quently endured a fl aying by m eans of prayer and foot-nothing in her stockinged feet, had a gaze of chanting. On that occasion public pressure forced the basilisk intensity, and exuded a power connected with governor of the province, one Loukianos, to have status, custom and received knowledge before which him freed. But fate and destiny caught up with

VOL UME 11 N UM BER 8 • EU RE KA STREET 29 Charalambos when Septimus Severus, a Roman The expedition took some time, and it seemed, all emperor of north African origin, ordered him the while, as if Kontau were on a mysterious search, beheaded: the number of conversions he had made for in every church he peered at all the icons very was apparently over the pagan limit. Moments before closely. At last, when he and his party arrived at the the axe fell, so tradition would have it, Charalambos' Church of the Entry of the Mother of God, things soul left his body. Divine intervention was of course changed. After a brief interval Kontau found the icon responsible, and so this very deserving person was of St Charalambos and saluted it, and then remained spared the specific agony of a violent death. He has as if in prayer, with his face, according to the very always been a very popular Orthodox saint and curious observers, contracting in emotion. many miracles have been attributed to him. A slight digression to explain, probably unneces­ sarily, that iconography is rather like a treasure hunt I N JuL Y 1944, a German convoy carrying supplies or a jigsaw or a trail that a detective could follow: St from Kalamata, the capital of Messinia, to the troops Peter clutches the keys to Heaven, St Nicholas wears at Filiatra, was attacked by members of the Greek the robes of a bishop, StJohn carries his own head on resistance. More than a hundred German soldiers were a platter, the warrior saints like Dimitrios wear killed, as against a mere 17 Greeks. The orders went armour, St Fanourios, the saint of illumination and out from HQ at Tripolis in the central Peloponnese: revelation, carries a lantern, and so on. Kontau found 50 Filiatra locals were to be executed for every dead the long white beard he was looking for. All the German. And the town was to be burned. The man in previous night, in far from peaceful sleep, he had charge of this operation was an Austrian Protestant dreamed of an old man with a long white beard who called Kontau, thought by all to be a hardened officer had repeatedly asked him to spare the inhabitants of of the Occupation forces. Kontau applied himself to Filiatra. The spectre emphasised that the result would the task of readying his troops to carry out these be that Kontau, his men and their families, would get orders, and the inhabitants of the town endured a night through the war safely. Very much shaken, Kontau of suspense while under strict curfew. cancelled the orders. I do not know what the immediate But on the morning of July 20th, St Elijah's day, consequences of his action were, but this is the story as while the dreadful suspense continued, Kontau I have both heard it and read it. And everything demanded, to the general mystification of his staff occurred as the saint had promised. After the war and an accompanying group of Greek priests and Kontau returned to Filiatra on an annual pilgrimage teachers, to be taken on a tour of the town's churches. to the icon that, as a Protestant, he had once had no idea about, and eventually, when he could no longer do so, his children did the same.

February 19th. Athens. I AM STILL VERY MUDDLED with regard tO the topic of saints. I light candles when in Orthodox churches, but certainly do not kiss icons. But in some strange way the graft has taken. My middle son, who is a OCTOBER HIGHLIGHTS serving NCO in the SAS section of Greece's regular army, is undergoing tests in a military hospital in C li ve James's Essays Athens. He doesn't know that this morning his heretic A review by Don Anderson mother lit candles and wrote prayer notes for him in the Cathedral. He does know that I have just bought Evelyn Juers on Helen Garner him a postcard picture of St Nicholas. But I feel a bit awkward, just the same. 'Here's your mate,' I say. Mi les Franklin 's Glittering Prize A man of few words, he grins and says thanks. I visit again the next day. There he is, my Niko, Richard Flanagan's new novel sitting up in bed and whiling away the long hospital A review by Brian Matthews hours by reading. And, 'Look at him,' he says, grinning again: St Nicholas as bookmark. It is obviously only A ndrew Riemer on the Boyer Lectures a short time since St Charalambos' Day, and bound to be the Feast Day of an obscure saint I know nothing Denni s Altman in Manila about, for I have not bothered to check my diary. I do, however, know a little about the saint of the new year, Robert Adamson - a new poem Basil the Great, who wrote that 'Life without Feast Days is like a long road on which no inns are to be found.' • Subscnbc no"' S63 50 for ten 1sues ( 1ncl GST) Ph (03) 9429 6700 or E-mail abr(a '1cnct.net au Also available at select bookstores and ne" sa gents Gillian Bouras is an Australian expatriate whose latest book, Starting Again, is published by Penguin Australia.

30 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 JOU RNEYS:S

The last time I saw. • • Peter Pierce revisits the city of his-and everyone else's-dreams.

I eou, Pm s" (P•

foreign guests, pickpockets in the Metro, remember conversion rate of on e t o having attic room s with a view of the and of much else that was different from 6.55957 francs ); plain fo od- onion soup, Eiff el Tower. the hom e region of Correzes to which his grilled fish, bceuf en croute, apple tart. The surroundin gs are as busy and fa mily m akes an annual retreat. While in Unhappily the ambience, at least fo r crowded as ever. Repugnant little dogs Paris, he never seem s to stray m ore than sentimentalists like us, had been lost. In still tow their doting owners, but excre­ a block from the hotel. Thus he missed place of the cheery middle-aged fellow m ent is seldom to be seen . f'aime man the chance fo r another confirm ation of who'd greeted us on previous occasions, quartier. fe ramasse. (I love my district. his opinion of the city. T his was the rash a cocky young m an was now front of I pick up. ) the signs wheedle, and they of Chopper m ovie posters, from which house. The geraniums had gone from the appear to be working. The denizens of Eric Bana smiled out with blood-stained window boxes. And at the next table, a this part of the 18th arrondissem ent m outh on passers-by in Pigalle, in the sexual predator pressed his attentions on number the sam e ageless waiters and grand boulevards, and even near the tacky a young wom an . H e was actually off ering sm all busin ess proprietors we first shrine to Princess Diana, above the Alma her French lesson s. Putting aside the encountered m any years ago, together Tunnel where she was killed. Calvina novel that she had been reading, with early-m orning beer drinkers, Arriving late in May this tim e, after she introduced herself as Kimmy from imperious pseudo-intellectuals with dirty what seem ed like a week of travelling, N ew York and began to do what hair, very tall transsexuals and a range of we went on ce m ore for dinner t o Le hewanted. performing beggars. The latter include Bateau Lavoir, where we'd eaten on our those plaintively slumped on pavements first night together in Paris, in 1975. At 0 N EV ERY VISIT we have stayed at the with m essages about their destitution that time the restaurant, nam ed for the Hotel des Arts, in the narrow, steep Rue written on cardboard; others who theat­ laundry wom en's boats once m oored on Tholoze, which runs up the Montmartre rically announce their needs in carriages the Seine, was run by a shrewd old lady hill from the splendid food market in the of the Metro; som e who open the post­ who also did the cooking. She had died Rue Lepic in the direction of Sacre Creur. office door and dem and a gratuity before som e time between our visits in 1979 and N aturally, the street w as known t o m aking way. For in this quarter, indeed

VOLUME 11 N UMB ER 8 • EU REKA STREET 3 1 everywhere in Paris as the year moves Musee Nissim Camondo near the Pare A couple of weeks earlier, work had into June, there isn't much room. One Manceau, les egouts (the sewers), African taken me to Toulouse-one of the most consequence is a disciplined courtesy in art at the Musee Dapper. The Camondo enjoyable of middle-sized European the occupation and crossing of space. But museum is named for a young French cities-with its fifth-century necropolis, little can be do ne about queues for the Jewish pilot who was killed in the Great Church of the Jacobins, 11th-century Louvre that extend for a kilometre and War. It houses, to the point of suffoca­ Romanesque cathedral of St Sernin and for standing-room only (and barely that) tion, furniture, crockery, carpets, tapestry inviting bars along the Garonne. Sub­ inside Notre Dame. and paintings from the 18th century. The sequently we went to Bayeux, Brussels, What still speaks simply and inexpen­ sewers-across the river from the Diana thence to Ypres, where the In Flanders sively of plenty is the fresh food that can shrine and refuge of Jean Val jean in Victor Fields Museum features a simulated gas be bought in this quarter (and not only Hugo's Les Miserables-have tours con­ attack while a recording of Wilfred here). Mad cows have probably kept the ducted by the men who work there. The Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est' is played. horse butcher in business, although the visitor is encouraged to inspect what is N earby is the largest of all Common-

disease has tormented chefs to the extent flowing beneath her feet. Euphemis­ wealth war cemeteries, Tyn e Cot, at that Alain Pascard, who runs Arpege tically it is described as waste water and Passchendaele, with its 12,000 graves. (three Mich elin stars) has turned his grit . An excellently conceived small For pleasure, a shorter journey was on restaurant vegetarian. The horse butcher museum, placed literally on top of one the agenda. I'd been racing in Paris at is flanked by a wonderful pastry shop (try of the drains, it integrates sewerage three of its tracks: Longchamps, most the greengage tart; try to remember green­ developments into the long history of spacious and grand of any in the world gages ... ) and by a fish stall. There, one Paris and proclaims how far the (where in 1975 I backed a filly called afternoon, I counted for sale 17 kinds of city has come. Ivanjica which won the Prix de l'Arc de shellfish alone: crevettes roses and Triomphe-but the next year); to the crevettes grises, araignees de m er, bulots R EVIS ITI NG PARIS IS also to want to do jumps at Auteuil, at the other end of the cuits and vivants, bigorneaux cuits and familiar things again. Thus we took the Bois de Boulogne; and twice to the trots vivants, langoustines, etrilles, StJacques Metro from Pigalle to Pere Lachaise, to at Vincennes, in the wood on the eastern decortiquees, tousteaux cuits, coques, the cemetery where Heloise and Abelard outskirts of Paris. Perhaps because it's moules d'espagne, teline, fines de claire, are commemorated; Wilde, Proust, Pia£, been happening for m ore than 150 years, fines de morue, palourdes and amandes Collette and scores of other celebrities the French classics are run 40 kilometres de mer. are buried there; we saw the wall against from town, at Chantilly. There, on the The charcuterie shops also incite which the last of the communards were first Sunday in June, Anabaa Blue salivation. In the last decade they've been shot in 1871, imagined Balzac's Rastig­ decisively won the Prix du Jockey Club, unexpectedly complemented by Asian nac looking down at the city from this or French Derby. His sire, Anabaa, one traiteurs (essentially decent quality point of vantage and warning, 'It's you of the shuttle stallions transforming the fast-food places)-four of them within and me now'' breeding of thoroughbreds, has just had 200 metres of ou r h otel. The nearest We walked back from the cemetery his first crop racing in Australia. I'd McDonald's is a kilometre away, in through the newly trendy area-at least watched on television, albeit determined Barbes-Rochechouart, one of the centres for intellectuals who have abandoned to get to Chantilly a week later for the of African and Arab Paris, of fabric shops Montparnasse-o£ Oberkamp£ and Belle­ Prix de Diane, the French Oaks. and the breathtakingly cheap Tati stores ville (where Pia£ was born on a doorstep ), Not that this was easy. We arrived at (veritably Tati, c'est chic, as it claims, and past earnest young people at coffee the Care du Nord thinking that no station what a place for cotton underwear). There preparing for Monday's compulsory could be more disagreeable and inconven­ is a Boveesque pleasure in revealing that philosophy examination in the bacca­ ient than Montparnasse (I had suppressed the Barbes McDonald's is dirty and- this laureat. The weather was unseasonably the weekend Independent guide to train being France-has to sell alcohol. warm and the skies above the City of travel which said that the worst main­ (Boveesque: adjective from Jose Bove, Light-at this time of year-never really line stations in Europe include every one farmer, political activist and dung­ darkened. We continued along the Canal in Paris). We tried to get a suburban train. strewing, implacable enemy of the fast­ StMartin, beloved of the directors of film Chantilly was off the map. Tried Infor­ food chain .) nair in the 1940s, but soon to be emptied mation: closed. Tried to get out of the On every return to Paris there are for cleaning. The waste problems of station: impossible. Somehow there was things previously left undone that now Paris have never been more earnestly no way of escaping the black hole, the there might be time for: in our case, the addressed. ramshackle building site into which we'd

32 EUREKA STR EET • OCTOBER 2001 erred. A kindly cleaner offered his pass card for a single exit. I had to squeeze through the turnstile, an unlikely exertion that desperation alone m ade possible. Finally we received advice: take a main-line train at 2.0lpm. What time Red Rover All Over does it come back from Chantillyz How would I know? Ask when you get there. Against the odds we arrived for the First we pick our teams 156th running of the Prix de Diane, walk­ ing from the station under a lovely somebody decides­ wooded canopy. Soon the track appeared: two of the big kids. Cannon Park or Kyneton with a chateau. Yet this small, run-down country track I am on a team with its little old grandstand had mys­ teriously been ordained as the course for and not the last one chosen . France's three-year-old classics. The Each team lines up often-renovated chateau is overshadowed either side of the yard. by the 186-metre-long Great Stables, built Someone yells 'Red Rover all over!' ea rly in the 18th century and now the We storm towards the other line Living Museum of the Horse. French Oaks Day brought out fashions in the field, and m eet in a m elee in the centre. but Flemington need not blush. Typical We simply must break through. of the hat range was a one-metre-high cage with a live bird inside on its perch. At Borodino Fortunately there were horses to see. Napoleon stands on a hill We climbed on to a mound below the stewards' tower to watch the Prix de a glass up to his eye Diane. Against the grain I'd backed the and watches as his lines break. favourite, Acquarelliste, by Danehill, The horses scream and fall We reach the other side which- in Australia- is champion of the the air is full of noise some of us are captured shuttle sires. Acquarelliste settled last, taken finished. but then sprinted brilliantly to catch blood soaks the ground. Nadia not far short of the post and win Banners flutter We're puffing going away. Jockey Dominique Breuf some are tattered. a plait has fallen down cried. Trainer Daniel Wildenstein won­ A great white horse thuds down the saxe blue ribbon dered if his lucky family had another and pin s its rider flutters on m y shoulder champion like Allez France. The Mar­ but we're off again seillaise was played. Down the straight, h e i screaming Hungarian hussars staged a mock cavalry 'M 'aide! M 'aide! ' the cry's gon e up battle with sabres as part of the program's 'Red Rover all over!' sponsorship and the Magyart Festival. We storm across the asphalt. I backed the next winner. The clouds came in, young m en began to fall over and we headed back to Paris. The pepper tree stands guard We travelled back to the city which drooping in the heat Ernest Hemingway ardently called 'a the captured sit on ben ches moveable feast', a place that he believed built around the trunk was with one always and anywhere. To and fewer of u s now admit the stylised simplification of his memory (a nd one's own ) is never an have reached the other side. impediment to being engrossed by the grit, the human jostling for space and a Both lines have thinned h earing, the marvels of art and the but w e must run again. marvels of daily living in Paris, now. • Practising our lives Peter Pierce is Chair of Australian Liter­ we rush and flee apart. ature and Head of the School of Human­ ities, James Cook University. -Kate Llewellyn

VOLUME 11 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 33 BOOKS : l P ETE R MARE S No mouths, only ears

Li ving Sil ence: Burma under Military Rule, Christina Fink, Zed Books 2001 (distributed in Australia by ASTAM Books). ISilN 1 85649 926 X, RRP $39.95

E vm '"'c' the "udcnt After Cho Zin was well enough to uprising that bega n at 8.08am ge t around on crutches he staged on 8 August 1988, it has been a one- man protest against th e on­ obvious that Burma's military going civil war on the Thai side of regime has enjoyed little sup­ the Thai- Burma ' Friendship port among the population. Bridge' which links the two coun­ Those six weeks of nation­ tries ... According to Cho Zin, in wide protest were eventually the four or fiv e vi llages near hi s crushed by t he military, but own, there were over a hundred not before fo rcing the conces­ amputees. 'If you count th ose who sion of a promise of elections. died,' he said, 'there will be about T h e ballot was h e ld three or four hu ndred.' almost two years later in May 1990, although the regim e Brutality breeds fear, and the only allowed it to go ahead regime has created an atmos­ because it thought it could phere where neighbours do not skew th e result through trust one another eno ugh to coercion and m eddling. Aung speak their mind. It is reminis­ Sa n Suu Kyi was disqualified from standing Tatmadaw so ldiers being tru cked through cent of the communist regime in the former Rangoon. Photograph by Nic Dunlop. as a candidate and placed under house arrest. East Germany, where after the fa ll of the Thousands of her colleagues in the N ational SuuKyi, whoisonceagainliving under house Berlin Wall, activists often discovered from League for Democracy (NLD) were impris­ arrest. The talks have coincided with the the Stasi fi les that close fri ends and col­ oned. The government kept all m edia outlets release of scores of political prisoners, but leagues were the ones who had betrayed under tight control, vetted all campaign there seems bttle prospect of a dramatic them . In Burma the use of informers is also literature and fostered the establishment of breakthrough towards democracy. widespread: hundreds of small political parties in a bid How does a regime manage to stay in to split the opposition vote. Despite the power when it is so universally hated by its Htway Win, a student activist in 1988, told best efforts of the regime, the NLD won 392 own people, and shunned by significant how one of his fellow student union mem­ of the 485 seats. The military-backed sections of the international community? bers had switched sides after the failed National Unity Party won 10. Some of the answers can be found in demonstrations. His famil y was poor, and The election results were never honoured. Christina Fink's Living Silence, a detailed he needed a job, so he joined the military More than a decade later, the military remains and moving account of life under military and was assigned to intelligence work ... in power, and is probably more firmly rule. Part journalism, part political science, At first Htway Win ' fri end warned him entrenched than ever before. The SLORC part oral history, it renders Burma's strug­ and his colleagues that some intelligence (State Law and Order Restoration Council) gle in engaging and human terms through agents were shadowing them; later heiden­ has been replaced by the SPDC (State Peace the individual stories of its people. tified Htway Win to other authorities who and Development Council), 'Burma' has On one level there is naked oppression. had Htway Win 's name but did not know officially become 'Myanmar', and little of The general outline of the horror stories that what be looked like. Htway Win was taken substance has changed-at least not for the emerge from human rights reports on to one of th e military intelligence's inter­ better. Troop strength in the Tatmadaw, the Burma-torture, imprisonment, the torching rogation centres, wh ere he suffered brutal government am1ed forces, has been boosted of villages, forced labour-are given shape torture. At one point his former fri end from 180,000 to 400,000. Most of the ethnic and character through personal testimony. brought him fried noodles and apologized. armies that challenged the regime in the Take the case of Cho Zin, who stepped border regions have been temporarily on a landmine, after being forced to walk in As one Burmese writer tells Fink, 'We neutralised, coerced or enticed into ceasefire front of a Tatmadaw column, clearing their have no mouths, only ears.' People keep their agreements. The organi ation structure of route with his legs: thoughts to themselves, and in so doing, the NLD has been smashed, many of its best unwittingly bolster the regime. Obedience members imprisoned, killed or forced into Cho Zin was lucky. Fellow villagers go t him becomes a habit. As a Burmese psychiatrist exil e. The only glimmer of hope has come to a hospital in Thailand, his lower leg was now living abroad puts it, being 'immunised' fro m a series of secret talks over the past year amputated, and he survived. TheTatmadaw to hardship helps people to survive, butitalso between top regime officials and Aung San offered him no compensation or assistance. renders them so helpless that they no longer

34 EUREKA STREET • O CTOB ER 2001 see any point in resistance. Parents who were convinced major companies like Pepsi to halt training to Burmese officials seem s risible once activists themselves will often pressure their business operations in the country. By in the context of a regime that harbours their children not to join demonstrations or contrast, the A sociation of Southeast Asian such an extraordinary ca pacity for brutal­ challenge authority. Nations (ASEAN) has sought 'constructive ity. However, Fink will not dismiss it. As Burma's problems are not contained engagement', arguing that economic growth she points out, by its very size, the army within its frontiers. Thailand hosts more is the best agent of change, and that reform is must be part of any 'solution' in Burma and, than 200,000 refugees from Burma's politi­ more likely once Burma is more fully engaged as the election results in 1990 showed, cal and military conflicts, and perhaps as with the international community. This is there are many soldiers in the ranks who m any as one million illegal immigrants, not a disinterested position of course. The desire change. Burma is waiting for its ver­ forced across the border by poverty. Many ASEAN states have their own economic sion of the Philippines' Fidel Ram os, an women end up in the sex trade, and the agendas to pursu e. But Burma's m ore influential General who is willing to switch HIV / AIDS epidemic is spreading along the immediate neighbours are also acutely aware sides, not necessarily with the purest of heroin traffi cking routes from the Golden that shutting the door on contact is likely to m otives, and open up som e space fo r the Triangle, into Thailand, India and southern drive the regime deeper into its embrace with restoration of civil society. Only then will China. The drug lords are now branching China, which has furnished Burma with the silence be lifted. • out into the production of huge quantities military training and equipment in exchange of m ethamphetamines. for access to Bunnese territory to monitor its Peter Mares presents Asia Pacific on Radio Members of the European Union have rival India. Australia and Radio National, and is the author sought to bring about change by isolating the There are no easy answers. Australia's of Borderline: Australia's Treatment of regime, and pressure groups in the US have much-malign ed provision of human rights Refugees and Asylum Seekers (UNSW Press).

BOOKS:2 j O H N BUTTON The pen and pol iti cs 'Friendship is a Sheltering Tree': John Curtin's Letters 1907 to 1945, David Black, John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library, 2001. ISBN 1 74067 040 X, RRP $29 .70 IN"" 199 1 Placido Domingo speech, sided correspondence, apart from a tanta­ Paul Kea ting characterised Australia's prim e lising quote in which the young girl refers ministers as a bunch of lacklustre John the to a death, and writes 'of the vanished Baptists. 'We've never,' he said, 'had one hands and the voice that was still'. leader.' John Curtin was a 'trier', Ben Chifley The letters to Jessie Gunn constitute a 'plodder', Bob Hawke 'tripped over televi­ the first section of Friendship is a Shelter­ sion cables in shopping centres'. ing Tree. The second section is devoted to It was a speech which irritated Hawke. A letters to Elsie N eedham, a young wom an 'spin-doctored' version of subsequent discus­ with whom Curtin enj oyed a protracted sions between the two men sugge ted that and som ewhat distant courtship before she Hawke was most upset by Kea ting's dis­ became his wife in 1917. This correspond­ missal of Curtin as a 'trier'. Hawke was an ence continued through out their m arriage, admirer of Curtin and a student of his career. but again there are n o published replies. In 1991 Keating could not have read The third section contains m ore letters to Curtin's letters or David Day's excellent Elsie, letters to long- time friends, to political biography, both publish ed subsequently. colleagu es like Frank Anstey and T ed His view of Curtin probably cam e from his Theodore, and some friendly exchanges with early mentor, Jack Lang, a m ore than usually Robert Menzies and President Roosevelt. venomous politician, who undermined both Both Geoffrey Serle, in his 1998 m on o­ Curtin and Chifley. graph fohn Curtin : For A ustralia and A cold reading of Curtin's published Labor, and Lloyd Ross, Curtin's first bio­ letters (without annotations) might justify grapher, thought the letters to Jessie Gunn the conclusion that Keating's view had w ere a m eans by w hich Curtin clarified som ething going for it. Sadly it is a rather his own ideas and sought to improve his scrappy collection, overweighted with let­ literary expression.lt is uncertain whether ters written when Curtin was a young man, to Jessie Gunn, some eight years his junior. john Curtin, 1945. There are no published replies. It is a one- ]CPM L00376/29, Curtin Fam ily Collection.

VO LUME 11 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 35 BOOKS :3

jiM DAV ID SON Curtin ever m et Jessie. She was, indeed, a 'pen-friend' and his letters are full of allu­ sions to his reading at the time, and his affection for poetry and romantic novels. One letter is an account of the plot of The Scarlet Pimpernel, another of a novel by Lettered I ife Robert Buchanan, a largely forgotten 19th­ century novelist and poet. John Shaw Neilson: A Life in Letters, Helen Hewson, There is an element of ' the trier' here, Miegunyah/Melboume University Press, 2001. ISBN 0 522 84920 2, RRP $69.95 but it would be unfair to conclude that Curtin was m erely practising his writing. The letters have the warmth and sagacity of a man in his early 20s introducing the cares INmt ""' 1930< thm of the world to a younger sister. She is was a move to celebrate an advised to stay at school beyond the age of Australian poet. A.B. 14, to persist with h er education. 'War', he Paterson was still alive wrote, 'is an abomination, a creature of the (an unfortunate dis­ devil. Hate it Jessie for it is an iniquity.' And qualification), Henry from time to time there is a hint of life's Lawson only recently shortcomings, of the 'tired feeling' and the dead-and emph ­ 'futility of doing'. atically vernacular. The letters to Jessie Gunn ended in 1910 Adam Lindsay Gor­ but h e continued to correspond intermittently don, on the other with friends and associates from his early hand, had been a formative years. They were clearly important dashing figure on to him and none m ore so than Elsie, whom he horseback and a adored and depended on. His letters to her cousin of Lord were always affectionate, gentlemanly in a Byron, and so a charming and old-fashioned way, and at times commemorative full of rich descriptions of his activities as a tablet went up in unionist and political activist. Westminster Ab­ At a conscription meeting, which he at­ bey's Poet's Corner, tended for 'entertainment', 'the Chairman while in Melbourne was an old whiskery lunatic who spoke in his statue displaced the spasms'. Curtin feared Labor's 'quicksands of Eight-Hour Day memo­ expediency' and his short prison term for rial. Gordon seemed defying conscription, 'nerves our hearts and ready-made for the con­ Q )ohn s: steels us to the great cause'. Certainly the servative agenda; and as was ~n , circa 1911. Talma Studios, said at the time, in Australia letters improved as time passed. Melbourne. It is a pity that this is such a disparate and the lyre of poetry was strung with fragmented collection. Fortunately it is horsehair. But from 1919 to 1938, run­ accompanied by a detailed and scholarly com­ ning parallel to these manoeuvres, continually to be missed by a m ere mentary by Professor David Black which sets appeared the books ofJohn Shaw Neilson, hairbreadth.' But against that there was it in context and provides some narrative a half-blind, quietly spoken labourer from Nettie Palmer's later comment: 'His work consistency. the Mallee. To a more discerning (and has the dew on it.' Quite early on, Sym­ Nonetheless from the letters themselves particularly female) public, these lyrics, bolist elements were found in Neilson's one gains some understanding of Curtin's with their intense scrutiny of the environ­ verse, and a refreshing originality at a caring qualities, his loyalty, his passion, his ment, seemed to hold something of the time when most Australian poetry was intellect and the growing sense that there is a secret of Australia. (No pun on Ern Malley 'bookish in its inspiration and imitative destiny to be fulfilled. Through the letters for them; rather, a case of from deserts in its manner'. But, as Stephens repeat­ Curtin evolves from the young radical to a the prophets come.) Among the poet's edly told the poet, the very fineness of the man who reluctantly accepts that politics is early champions were Mary Gilmore, verse told against it, particularly as the at best a form of palliative care for the human Nettie Palmer and Louise Dyer. A.G . corpus was not large. Even at the end of spirit. Stephens, Neilson's encourager and agent, his career, Neilson's publishers found Alone and in isolation few of the letters lost little time in dubbing him 'first of they had hundreds of copies of the are remarkable. As a collection they illustrate Australian poets'. Collected Poems on their hands. part of the fabric of Curtin's life and add to an Contemporary critical opinion, This volume draws together nearly 500 understanding of his great achievements. • assembled in an appendix to this collec­ documents, rnostly letters, and a few tion, was by no means inclined to fall in telling subsidiary accounts, such as Hal John Button was a senator and minister in line. One critic was not alone in remark­ Porter's insightful description of Neilson the Hawke and Keating governments. ing that 'the commonplace seems when he met him in the Exhibition

36 EUREKA STREET OCTOBER 2001 Gardens. It is, as Helen Hewson claims, 'a rather than of an increased confidence. life in letters'. There are about 300 written Neilson rem ained a timid man, terrified by N eilson, or written out for him, given that the anti-capitalist elem ent in his AQUINAS ACADEMY his persistent eye trouble. Most of these poem about a typiste could imperil his are in public collections; the only signifi­ job at the Country Roads Board. But if h e SUMMER SCHOOL cant group which is not is the Loui e D yer had difficulty in negotiating his way correspondence held in Monaco. But it is through the world, this was partly January 21, 22, 23, 2002 most unlikely that many m ore will ever becau se of a superabundant spiritual life. be found: there are no letters at all for the In his first letter to Mary Gilmore he said whole period 1872-1907. Since the family that, like a diviner, h e might be ' the "'Spirituality in was often on the move in search of work, m eans of suggesting to you som ething there would have been periodic clear-outs. that I cannot understand myself'. A man Australia Todayn Som e t oo would have gon e in the of m onkish temperam ent, h e shied away Chinkapook m ice plague of 1917. ('We from things sexual. His n eeds were St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill, NSW have oft en been eaten out by rabbits', simple. He had no bike, and thought a car N eilson noted in comparison, 'but the basically 'an improved wheelbarrow'. ra bbit is clean & gentlemanly and may Friends h e usually m et in public, as his LesMurray himself be ea ten.') So the first hundred lodgings were so basic there was nowhere letters take you as far as 1924, for a life to entertain them at hom e. A m an w ho Morag Fraser which ends in 1942. Nevertheless the m ade light of his poverty, his frequent David Millikan collection extends our knowledge of the attempts at humour were often laboured. poet con iderably, despite being addressed But then wit rarely stem s from plus a variety of workshops primarily to publishing m atters, whether a deep equanimity. editorial or contractual. We now have a RESERVATIONS ESSENTIAL supplem entary volume to N eilson 's 0 NE OF T HE m ost valuable things in autobiography, som ething less even ­ the volume is the correspondence between handed or ironed out by a single act of the poet and his editor, A. G. Stephens. Workshops Monday & Tuesday (2 - recollection. Elem ents of spontaneity are N eilson was aware that he needed guid­ 4pm) presenters include: Noel Rowe, present, balanced by a persistent quiet ance, since-and it arose directly fr om his Emma Pierce, Marie Biddle RSJ, forcefulness. concern with rhythm in composition- he Michael de Manincor, David Ranson, We learn much from these letters. was 'more likely to be right in the sound Dorothy McRae-McMahon, judith Som e of it sh ould not surprise us: N eilson than in the sense'. Dependence grew as tolerated his harsh navvy life, but oft en his sight becam e worse. The exchange of Keller, Michael Whelan sM fo und the atmosphere, with its constant letters is interesting for the brisk, rational talk of beer and two-up, 'oppressive'. Simi­ advice the poet was repeatedly given in KEYNOTE SPEAKERS larly, when he finally cam e out of the business m atters, and shows too how very Monday morning: les Murray Mallee to literary gatherings in Mel­ considerably Stephens helped to shape bourne or Sydney, h e was a great su ccess, su ch verse as the splendid 'Song for a "Poetry & Spirituality"; with an ease of manner and a capacity to Honeym oon'- perhaps too much so. For Tuesday morning: Morag Fraser converse with newly m et people that all the considerable good he did N eilson­ 'The Spirit ofAustralia often surprised his hosts. In fac t, as is including sinking £60 of his own money m ade plain here, h e was much m ore in publishing the poet's first book­ Through itsArt"; broadly info rmed than people imagined­ Stephens was a control freak, always Wednesday morning: David on e letter establishes the much conjec­ inclined to insist on his pound of fl esh Millikan "Cults & the N ew Age tured-upon link with Verlaine, while when it came to permissions and fees. In in Australia". others sh ow an interest in art and an the end, when discussing a new contract, assuredness in literary judgm ent. He had they reached a stalemate; then Stephens Each of these plenary sessions little time for Lawson's poem s, but suddenly died . D espite the editor's will include an open forum. admired the sh ort s tories; thought increasing autocracy, N eilson was well C.J. Dennis a poet in spite of himself; and aware of what he owed him. BOOKINGS: fe lt it 'a pity T ennyson didn't knock off This volume is a landmark in N eilson when a few of his best things were w rit­ studies. It is admirably conceived and "Summer School" ten'. And although he was not tempted alertly edited; the introductory essay is Aquinas Academy, into free verse himself, he understood m arked by a suren ess of judgm ent. 141 Harrington Street, Sydney that it might suit young poets better. Appropriately illustrated, the book has NSW 2000 Occasionally he comes close to aphorism : been attractively produced by Melbourne Tel: 02 9247 4651 'Books are really other people's mind[s] University Press. • spread out before us.' Fax: 02 9252 2476 Som ewhere around 1930 the letters Jim Davidson teaches in the department Email: [email protected] ga in in amplitude; but this may be the of Asian and Interna tional Studies at Web site: aquinas-academy.com result of a greater resort to amanuenses Victoria University of T echnology.

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 8 • EU REKA STR EET 37 BOOKS :4

KERRYN GOLDSWORT H Y Nove encounters

Corfu: A Novel,

C ORFU IS THE FIRST of Robert Dessaix's not surprisingly, usually furious; h e's a cute books to lay explicit claim to the status of drifter with no apparent desires, ambitions fiction: the (very beautiful ) cover says or ideas beyond instant gratification of 'Corfu: A Novel', as does the title page. various kinds. The lovers (or whatever they This claim is undermined almost at once by are) fight, they make up, they have sex, they the information that the book contains at don't have sex, they arrive, they leave, all in least one significant character who was a no apparent order. Kester Berwick, the real historical personage and who is iden­ narrator's absent landlord, is described so tified in the book by name; this information differently in different places that it is dif­ appears even before the title page. Shortly ficult to get any clear sense of him at all. after it, there appears as an epigraph a And the narrator's h ome town of quotation from The Odyssey, glossed thus: Adelaide, to which he's eventually moved 'Odysseus, a notorious if spellbinding liar, to return, is evoked in the simple strokes of recounts his arrival on the island of Corfu caricature; Dessaix seems to have been on his way home from Troy.' unable to resist the temptation to reinforce So, even before the book proper has the idea of Adelaide as a small and dreary begun, the cautious reader has been well 'A Clear Conscience' turns out to be a very place to which nobody in their right mind warned, in three different places, against nasty piece of work indeed, and I'm not would want to go. He's not on his own themakingofeasy assumptions: about what saying that the two narrators are ' the there, either; Patrick White liked Adelaide sort of book this is, about who its narrator same'- only that I think readers of this so much that he contemplated moving there, is, about who the central character is, about book need to be very careful not to be lulled but he still couldn't resist making it the who is speaking. into thinking that its narrator is in any way destination of the momentarily desperate Readers of this novel who have also read a reliable one, or is in any way to be easily Florrie Manhood in Th e Eye of the Storm: David Marr's 1991 biography of Patrick associated with what the author might say 'Well, she would take her child and go to White may not realise that they have already or think. buggery, or Adelaide.' briefly encountered Kester Berwick, the And this is one of the things that make Actually this is an important problem, shadowy, absent, real-life character around the book heavy going sometimes. The because the novel (w hich is called Corfu, whose absence this novel revolves. In the reader/ narrator relationship sometimes gets after all) is largely about the importance of White biography, Man describes the theatre vertiginous as the reader is shoved off place and its significance to identity. The director John Tasker thus: 'The son of a balance by various things, like the moment story of the Odyssey, more specifically coal-miner, he was rescued from the Hunter when the narrator deliberately steps on a Cavafy's poem 'Ithaca', and most specifi­ Valley at the age of eighteen by a lover who child's toy for no better reason than that he ca ll y of all the m ea ning of 'home', arc what took him to London ... ' This briefly evoked happens to be in a snit, or the point at which holds this story together, and a more com­ and unnamed lover was Kester Berwick, the reader realises that this narrator says 'to plex representation of the narrator's home born Frank Perkins in Adelaide in 1903. be honest' and 'to be frank' and ' to tell the might have made his journey there a more The prefatory note says, 'Although this truth' so often that he must surely have convincing story, or at least one that the novel was inspired by the life of the something to hide (for who but the most reader could care about properly. That going Australian writer and actor Kester Berwick, sneaky draw attention so insistently to home to Adelaide is a difficult fate is the narrator is as fictional as the characters their own acts of truth-telling?). The narra­ som ething nobody, least of all m e, would he encounters.' tor is an actor, which makes him in effect a deny; and Ithaca, of course, is represented The commentary on the novel that I've deceiver by profession. He actuall y spells it in Homer as in Cavafy as poor and barren, a seen and heard so far seems determined to out, at the end of Chapter Nine: 'Nothing rocky place. But neither is a comic destina­ ignore this last remark. I can't ignore it I say is to be trusted.' tion and neither is a dull one; Dessaix because I've met someone very like this The narrative shape of this novel is a makes Adelaide seem like both, which I narrator before, in a short story by Dessaix kind of spiral, which would work better if think h e may not quite have meant to do, called 'A Clear Conscience' that was first the three main strands- the story of Kester and it pulls the whole narrative trajectory published in 1986. The narrator of that Berwick; the wanderings of the narrator, out of shape. story, like the narrator of this novel, is a which eventually resolve themselves into a Three things kept m e reading. One is man with a mannered if not positively gabby journey hom e; and, lastly and to my mind the novel's frank literariness: the way that way of talking, given to the repeated use of least, what for want of a better word I'll call it uses Homer and Cavafy to talk about verbal tics like 'quite frankly' and scornful the love story-were stronger. As it is, the home and Greece and journeying, and reflections on what other people mean when love object is a pretty but irritating boy Chekhov to work through ideas about the they talk about love. The narrator of called William with whom the narrator is, meaning of homely detail and everyday life.

38 EUREKA STREET • O CTOBER 2001 Another is the sensual and poetic evocation Where the two characters differ sh arply mastery of the thing', seeing that accom ­ of Greece, with its oregano and white build­ is in the end of their respective stories. plishment is often onerous and precarious; ings and heat and Easter lamb; to complain Kester Berwick never went hom e, and died H eaney's poems are similarly attended by that it' been done before is churlish, and on Corfu after living there for 23 years. The an awareness that insight can be hard-won, like saying that you already have a photo­ narrator, on the other hand, finds that going can be fugitive. 'Vigilant' i a word which graph of Greece and don't need another one. hom e to Adelaide has been the correct move, occurs often in his poetry and in his prose; The third-and I think this is the m ost and his final sentence is an affirmation as it can refer either to life' choice and skilful thing about how this story has been he looks out at the morning view:' ... blink­ policies at large, or to the ways in which put together- is the way that a subtle and ing in the glare, I lean out across the gerani­ forms of language are indeed forms of life. slightly sinister doppelganger relationship ums to see what I might see.' In such an 'But' is the sibling of 'And', all the way. develops between Kester Berwick and the overtly literary novel, D essaix could almost Chesterton said that to love anything is narrator, culminating in their brief encoun­ have got away with T. S. Eliot by way of to see it at once under lowering clouds of ter in the airport. It's the only direct sight farewell: 'We shall not cease from explora­ danger, and this is often H eaney's way. The w e ever have of Kester, and even then he tion I And the end of all our exploring I Will first poem in Electric Light, ' At may be only an illusory reflection: ' ... like be to arrive where we started I And know Toomebridge', goes: m e he was wearing a crumpled mackintosh the place for the first time.' • Where the flat water and holding a small, brown suitcase in his Came pouring over the weir out of Lough right hand. N either of us moved.' Kerryn Goldsworthy is an Adelaide writer. Neagh As if it had reached an edge of the Hat earth And fa llen shining to the continuous BOOKS:S Present of the Bann. PETER STEE LE Where the checkpoint used to be. Where the rebel boy was hanged in '98. Where negative ions in the open air Are poetry to m e. As once before The slime and silver of the fattened eel. 'The Bridge of Toome' ha been roared The wordsmith through, in pubs and out of them, in both hemispheres, with that rebel boy as its Electric Light, Seamus Heaney, Faber and Faber, 2001. hero: but Heaney has the event, and its ISBN 0 571 2 0798 7, RRP $19.95 milieu, in a quieter, m ore intense keeping, which accommodates the legendary flat I F THERE WERE such a thing as an unassail- blend of history and geography, the admira- earth, its pairing with the flat water, the able Irish poet, it would be Seamus Heaney. tion at the surprising, the savouring of an open air, and silver fire of the eel- tradi­ For anyone so far unfamiliar with his work, elem ent in its vitality. 'Small is beautiful' tional elements, once again, framing a mod­ Electric Light could show how this is so. It might, as an expression, have been made for ern m om ent and, as it were, the issuing of was said of a 19th-century man of letters H eaney. the poetry itself. The m om ent is loved, the that he 'never lived his life at all; only This ability to offer much in little is poetic act is loved, but danger's claims are stayed with it and lunched with it'. H eaney's accompanied by an enthusiasm for the also acknowledged. poetry is emphatically the work of som e- sizeable and the fluid. 'The Fragment' ends I am tempted to say that this is H eaney's one determined to live his life in it. Ranging with the words,' "Since when," he asked, I m ost personal book, though the term is in spirit from the elated to the dismayed, " Are the first line and last line of any itself such a shape-changer that it may be and in pitch from the domestic to the inter- poem I Where the poem begins and ends?" ' useless. Certainly it is a book m arked on national, it keeps on feeling for the nerve of Hean ey is a great one for continuities, for virtually every page by a reappropriation of life, the quickness amidst m ortality. outreach and inrush, for the world's and signal moments in the poet's life, and by H eaney, true to his heritage, has always the word's plenty . 'And' is the fu gleman of allusions or tributes to what Auden called delighted in story-telling, and does so here his idiom's words; over the years, it has 'our good dead'. Another of those 'Glosses', again in many of the poems. But his pecu- often begun segm ents of poems or whole 'The Bridge', goes: liar gift is for succinct formulation and for poem s, standing not only for added item s Steady under strain and strong through the revelatory moment. In a set of 'Ten or events but for the scope and scale of tension, Glosses', 'A Norman Simile' goes in its experience itself. Its feet on both sides but in neither camp, entirety: At the sam e time, Heaney has m ade the It stands its ground, a span of pure mos t of ' But', of all those m ental To be marvellously yourself like the river attention, countervailings which h elp to deliver water A holding action, the arches and the ramp knowledge of things as they go. In 'Known Gerald of Wales says runs in Arklow Steady under strain and strong through World', he writes at one point, 'Allegory, harbour tension. I say, but who's to know I How to read Even at high tide when you'd expect salt sorrow rightly, or at all? ' The Hopkins who This might be an emblem of poetry itself, water. greatly influenced the young Heaney speaks or of H ean ey's version of it, but it can also It is all there-the zest for analogy, the in 'The Windhover' of 'the achieve of, the stand for the way in w hich the living

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 39 BOOKS:6 DAVID McCOOEY named by this book is braced between birth and death. There are elegies (each distinctive in form) for Ted Hughes, for Zbigniew Herbert, for Joseph Brodsky; there are poems called 'Would They Had Man at work Stay'd', ' Late in the Day', 'Bodies and Souls', 'Seeing the Sick'; there is a tender, Collected Poems 19 70-1998, John Forbes, trenchant poem called ' Out of the Bag' in Brandl & Schlesmger, 2001 . LSBN 1 87604 027 0, RRP $27.95 which this eldest child of his family relates the supposed arrival of each of them 'in SINCE JoHN FoRBES' death m 1998, ob1tu- c--~ Doctor Kerlin's bag'. Characteristically, aries, essays, and two major profiles of him this last poem gives its due to the mortal on radio and television have produced some­ vulnerabilities which make it necessary thing like a myth of Forbes. This work for there to be new births at all: and centres on Forbes' poetic life: his ambition equally characteristically, Heaney is (or otherwise); his ironised sense of voca­ plainly not daunted by these. tion; his postmodern influences (especially In The Tempest, the sottish Stephana, Frank O'Hara); his mentorship of younger listening to his own song, acknowledges poets. But more personal details intrude: that 'This is a very scurvy tune to sing at a Forbes' tropical childhood; his love for man's funeral', and any poet worth the name unattainable women; his use of drugs (and must feel som ething of the kind about even cough mixture); his knowledge of military the best of elegies. But Heaney's elegies­ and cultural history; his 'un-literary' jobs and by now they are many-are commonly (like furniture removalist); his betting on sustained by the sensed comradely presence horses; his money troubles; the bike he of those saluted. The souls, or shades, of the rode around Melbourne; his death at the age dead are convoked into a cloud of witnesses, of 47 of a heart attack. themselves benign sponsors of the poems, Biography tends to intrude on post­ and indulgers of human inadequacy. Heaney humous reputation, even the reputation of is as aware as anyone else of language's a poet as 'impersonal' as Forbes. Here some many frailties and humiliations, but unlike poems refer to historical individuals, and some others he does not suppose that this catalogue interests that now seem bio­ must induce resentment or desperation. To graphical: poetic vocation in 'On the Beach: be, as he says early in his poem in memory A Bicentennial Poem'; military hardware of Ted Hughes, 'Pounded like a shore by the and unrequited love in 'Love Poem'; cough roller griefs/ In language that can still knock mixture and Frank O'Hara in 'A Dream'. language sideways' can be dismaying but is And we find comments like this one in a not disabling. late poem, regarding love: 'continually dis­ Heaney has given new vitality to the appoint / the expectations of others, / this notion of 'crediting marvels', by which he way you will come to hate yourself / & they means m ore than conceding that they are will be charmed by your distress' ('Lessons there-he m eans that we are in credit to for Young Poets'). Meanwhile Forbes' tastes them, and can be made the more creditable seem apparent throughout: his interest in by them. All of his mature poetry is driven popular music, television, smoking, by this notion, even when circumstances philosophy, Sydney and nostalgia. aesthetician, constructing formalist, soul­ are dire. First to last he wants to find out the But Forbes insisted that poems shouldn't less poems lacking all reference other than marvels, as when, awaiting a new birth, he simply be vehicles for the poet's attitudes. language'. A joker or a formalist/rhetori­ sees that 'Planet earth like a teething ring His poems show him avoiding the idea of cian- they were the early standard lines on suspended / Hangs by its world-chain', or the poet as 'presence', a transcendent Forbes. And he is funny, as you can see in his when he sees the bereaved 'Set apart. First authority within the poems. So how useful surreal associations and brilliantly off-hand out down the aisle/ Like brides', or like boys is biography when reading Forbes? Know­ jokes, like suggesting that Sydney Harbour out of school early for music practice, 'And ing that he was Australian and born in 1950 'should be covered in concrete / to bring real­ then the savagery / Of the piano music's seems enough. The trick is to get to know estate prices down / and make parking at the music going wrong.' He has, as he says of the poems, to go 'on your nerve' (to quote Opera easy' (' thin ice'). And 'Europe: a guide his father, 'The assessor's eye, the tally­ O'Hara), and to know when to think and for Ken Searle' shows how bizarrely spot-on keeper's head': he also has, as he says when when to give thinking a miss. he can be even as he's taking the mickey: anticipating a new birth, 'a born awareness / Now that Forbes is regarded as a major 'We pity the English, though they get on / as name dawned into know ledge.' The water poet it may be hard to remember that early our wick, pretending to understand us // & still runs fresh into the harbour. • reviews tended towards the dismissive. As Scotland is old-fashioned like a dowry / but Martin Duwell wrote nearly a decade ago, unusual, like nice police'. Peter Steele SJ holds a Personal Chair at the Forbes is not 'a lightweight, jokey poet, Forbes' formalism is part of his interest University of Melbourne. despite the tone of many of his best-loved in language as a game, not as something

40 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 that reflects 'reality'. 'TV' is the best-known seen as absurd and shameful in Australia in Indyk's case-th eir insights som etimes example of this, with its opening injunc­ 1988: it looks 'more like a blurred tattoo / or appeared after his death). The apparent tion, 'dont [sic] bother telling m e about the something you did for a bet / & now regret, autobiographical references in 'autobio­ program s', and its engagem ent instead with like a man / walking the length of the bar on graphy' (furniture moving, drug- taking) are the television as an object. Forbes is noth­ his hands / balancing a drink on his shoe'. less revealing than the poem 's final lines: ing if not clever, although given the place of Forbes' concern with vocation and nation ' & all this more blessed / than any happiness 'theory' in universities in the last two dec­ suggests earlier Australian poets, especially /feral or domestic, / that I've been granted ades, his linguistic tum probably now seem s Wentworth, whose odes and public poem s yet.' Maybe not Forbes' best lines, but they less radical and tendentious than at first. evoke and parody the project of nation­ are poignant in their mix of charm and Those early characterisations (joker/ building. In 'On the Beach ', Forbes deflates distress. This personal tone is offset by the formalist) are interesting in the way they and satirises. Poetic vocation ultimately '3 Songs'. Something of a reprise of 'On the downplayed Forbes' interest in Australia, slides down to the beach, like a thing from Beach ', this sequence is less subtle (perhaps the use of idiom, the range of reference, and outer space, or evolution in reverse. Forbes suggesting, as som e have argued, that Forbes' the stylistic variety. And of course the joker was a public poet in an age that has no call poetic was beginning to play itself out). For and formalist positions needn't be mutu­ for such things . m e it shows Forbes' wit unaltered, as in the ally exclusive. Chris Wallace-Crabbe made It's not surprising, then, that there are replaying of the landing of the First Fleet: this clear (in his review of The Stunned few Collected Poems by Australians. Forbes' 'The First Fleet's first mistake-/ i.e. leaving Mullet) when he noticed Forbes' 'discon­ Collected is well-produced, authoritative the beach '. The reference to the First certing or rug-pulling enjambement, a and timely, reminding us how many of his Fleeters' 'pink / as yet unzinced pale faces' rhetorical and rhythmical gesture which poems could be considered 'classics': 'Ode reminds us that Australia (as Darwin pre­ weakens the line you have just read by to Tropical Skiing', 'Four Heads & how to dicted) is a maritime nation. The beach revealing its reliance upon the line which do them', 'Odef"Goodbye Memory'", 'To always has figured largely in Forbes' poetry. follows'. However unlikely this sounds, the Bobbydazzlers', 'Stalin's Holidays', It figured not only in his poetry, but also Forbes was a postmodem Philip Larkin. ' Speed, a Pastoral', ' D eath, an Ode', his dream s. A Layered Event, the profile Both m arried wit with form to devastating 'Watching the Treasurer', and ' Anzac recently repeated on Radio National, effect (and both were poetic perfec- D ay'. And that's not all. includes an archival recording of Forbes tionists who were also outsiders). recounting a dream ' about going in a I DO WISH, T HOUGH, that the book had been Balmain-Push organised Iron Man run from I F THERE IS ANY doubt that Forbes is a organised differently. Arranging the poem s Sydney to Wollongong and m eeting Henry 'm ajor' poet, hi Collected Poem s should chronologically adds little to our under­ Lawson at one stage, and seeing him washed dispel that. With a foreword by the poet standing of Forbes, especially since the under the waves and being given a bottle by Gig Ryan, and an introdu ction by the chronology is based not on date of compo­ him like a baton that he was passing on to critic Don Anderson, this is a major pub­ sition but first publication date (a nd dates m e'. This is quintessentially Forbesian: it lication, containing all the poem s in Forbes' are only given for the uncollected poem s). gestures at literary history and poetic elec­ five previous collections, and 30 previously As these uncollected poems are hived off at tion just as it shows its grotesquerie. The uncollected poems. Ryan's claim that critics the end, this organisation is doubly odd, elder poet is both national icon and a drunk. have over-emphasised Forbes' limitations since the previous sections simply jumble What he passes on (a bottle) represents both is right: the Collected shows a diversity of up the order of the poems in Forbes' five inspiration and destitution. That this hap­ tyle, technique and content. earlier books. The uncollected poems are pens in the surf echoes the ending of 'On The mix can be seen in Forbes' idiom, always interesting, though Forbes was prob­ the Beach'. That the event is an Iron Man with its intermingling of 'high' and 'popu­ ably right to omit most of them from his contest (in w hich Forbes takes part) organ­ lar' cultural references and the deep suspi­ collections. The main exception is '3 Songs ised by the bohemian Push shows Forbes' cion of 'artiness' while being most artful. for Charles Darwin'. The compiler of this gift for the absurdly comic. 'Love Poem ' demonstrates this. Beginning Collected, the poet's father, E. Len Forbes, Were he alive, Forbes might look upon as the familiar Gulf War poem (the safe and tells us that the reason it was left out in the the biographical process with som e scepti­ distant poet, musing over the televised, posthumous volume, Damaged Glamour, cism. But, then, scepticism was Forbes' technological war) the choice of genre only 'remains unclear'. Another quibble: why is Penelope, faithfully unravelling certainties appears inapposite. The military hardware this Collected Poem s: 1970- 1998 when the while the Ulysses-poet was out sm ashed on that fea tures in the poem is a political earliest poem in the book was published in Actifed CC. And the dream? Forbes won critique that has wedged itself, like an 1969? the race. It was of course only a dream, but unexploded bomb, into the lyrical subjec­ That the two last poems of Forbes' Col­ even Forbes-so suspicious of transcend­ tivity of love poetry. Having been rejected lected Po em s are 'autobiography' and '3 ence-seemed to suggest, life i a kind of by the loved one, the poet watches CNN: Songs for Charles Darwin' illustrates nicely embodied dream : 'Hello the yellow beach 'I watch the west / do what the west does Ivor Indyk's argument that Forbes' poetry & the beauty / that closes a book. H ello the best // & know, obscurely, as I go to bed / all shifts between 'private injury and public suntanned skin / & undernea th that skin, this is being staged for me.' Forbes was a spectacle, the one acting as the indictment the body. / Goodbye M emory!' • master of such political obliquity. of the other' (see 'The Awkward Grace of It has been clear for some time that John Forbes', Heat 8, 1998, pp138-50) . (And David McCooey lectures at Deakin Univer­ much of Forbes' poetry is interested in notwithstanding Gig Ryan's disappoint­ sity and is the author of the 'Contemporary national culture. In ' On the Beach: A m ent with commentary on Forbes, he has Poetry' chapter in Th e Cambridge Com­ Bicentennial Poem', the poetic vocation is had some excellent critics, though- as in panion to Australian Literature (2000).

V OLUME 11 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 41 THE A T RE GEOF FR EY M IL NE Callas on stage

A MANDA MuccmoN beg•n h e< Maria Callas. Callas gave the lessons to de Palma, a soprano who has great prom­ Australian career as Chrissie Latham in singers at New York's Juilliard School of ise but is too technically correct. Callas' the cult TV series Prisoner. She was born Music between October 1971 and March view, frankly expressed, is that she needs in England, w here she trained at the 1972. Master Class' Australian life began to be shocked out of her comfort zone. Guildhall School. However, m ost of her in Brisbane in 1997. Directed by Rodney The girl launches nervously into an aria rem arkable success has been in Austral­ Fisher, it had Robyn N evin as Callas. from Bellini's La Sonnambula. She ia. She settled here in 1975, and spent four When they reached Adelaide in 1998, scarcely ge ts out a couple of bars before years on Prisoner. T his established a Amanda Muggleton had taken the lead­ Callas is needling and challenging her to pattern, and she has continued to land ing role and has rem ained in it. greater freedom of voice, and a deeper roles in long-running gigs, often touring Simon Gallaher bought the produc­ understanding of what the score and the all over the country. tion, with Muggleton aboard, and pre­ role dem and. Her early stage shows included Nell sented it in Melbourne in January 1999. The coaching is blended with anec­ Du nn's bathhouse play, Steaming, in Now Andrew Kay has picked it up for dotes of Callas' own teachers and career. which she played Josie. The original Aus­ International Con cert Attraction s, They're mixed with acerbic and often tralian production toured the country in touring this year. They do two weeks in very funny one-liners about other singers 1983, 1984 and 1985. T hen in 1988 she Canberra, from 18 October, and fo ur in of her age. According to the program began a fruitful association with plays by Perth, fro m 3 N ovember. Master Class notes, this was m ore or less how the English writer Willy Russell. She did moves on to Melbourne for a sea- m aster classes actually unfolded. Bu t at Educating Rita for Peter Williams in son beginning on 13 December. this point the play moves away from Sydney and then Shirley Valentine for the documentary drama. Hole in the Wall in Perth. c ALLAS TAUGHT 23 classes at Juilliard McNally goes back, in fictional form, As lonely Liverpool housewife Mrs Joe but McNally collapses it down to three­ to some crucial moments in Callas' past. Bradshaw, nee Shirley Valentine, Mug­ classes given to two sopranos and one We learn of the part of her childhood gleton started her assault on Australian tenor. The play gives the impression that spent in Greece as a fat, ugly kid. Callas' box-office records. The play was a raging elem ents of many of the classes are rolled bitter battles with her mother led her to success over several seasons in Perth. into the th ree. Callas' voice was long take emotional refuge in her music Over the next few years it was sold on gone by the early 1970s, so apart fro m a studies. The high point of the first act for productions and tours for Michael tiny fragment, at one momen t, the Callas is another interesting flashback. While Edgley, Paul Dainty and the Melbourne character doesn't sing. Her presence in the second student is attempting some­ Theatre Company. these session s is to h elp her three th ing from Verdi's Macbeth, Callas More recently she appeared in The 'victims' find their own, full-throated, supplies the usual interruptions and Book Club by NZ playwright Roger Hall. natural voices. This was how he sang encouragem ent. Eventually, she lets the Muggleton plays a middle-aged, lonely herself, she says, but in no way does she girl sing on. T h e lights tighten on woman again Iwith a wild interior spirit). want them to imitate her. Callas. Slide projections transform the The role seems tailor-made for her The play opens on an uncluttered stage into La Scala, scene of her great particular talents. Don Mackay's produc­ stage. There's a grand piano, a stool for triumphs years ago . Callas' own recorded tion, for International Concert Attrac­ the diva and a couple of little tables, one voice takes over the aria, and her tions and the Victorian Arts Centre, strewn with music scores. In sweeps onstage alter ego tells the sensational opened in Melbourne in late 1999. It soon Callas, wearing an elegant trouser suit. story of her debut. went on the road for a national and A mane of black hair is pulled back from It's a spectacular device, but it regional tour. her expansive forehead. She imperiously appears in almost identical fashion in In between she's been involved in quells any hint of applause, takes ou t t he second half. The tenor's session Ma ster Class, by American playwright dark-rimmed glasses and-after a bit of leads back to a later period and the Terrence McNally. It portrays a series of ban ter with the school accompanist-is appalling treatmen t Call as received from master classes by the legendary opera star ready for her firs t student. This is Sophie her lover Ari Onassis. The repetition

42 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 makes it predictable, and less effective. The second act is also strained by Callas' (or the playwright's?) insistence on the almost sacred vocation of Art and the Artist. This becomes tedious. Master Class, then, does have weak­ nesses. Muggleton has a harder task than in som e of her other roles. But audiences have not been deterred; it's a case of 'never mind the play, feel the perfor­ mance'. Rodney Fisher is a practised director, which helps to some extent. He is an expert at massaging awkward or wayward dramatic material (som e of Dorothy Hewett's work springs to mind ). But it is Amanda Muggleton who makes Master Class m emorable. The role demands the full battery of her consider­ able range. Many reviewers didn't even bother to say that Muggleton plays Callas, preferring the notion that Muggleton is Callas. Callas is always centre stage and commands our atten­ tion. For an accomplished monodrama actress this is nothing new, but it's how she controls our focus that counts. Callas is by turns imperious mistress of the grand gesture and humble, even self­ effacing, facilitator of the master-class process. She is bitchy and she is jovial, tempestuous and matter-of-fact, passion­ ate and cool, acid and sweet. Whether Muggleton looks or sounds like Maria Callas is not the issue. If Ma ster Class were ordinary docudrama, the 'Muggleton is Callas' headline would be the telling factor. But what she has to deliver in McNally's fiction is a taller order. She has to capture the extrem e vulnerability of a woman in a position of enormous power. It is an astonishing performance. •

Geoffrey Milne teaches theatre and drama at LaTrobe University. Dinostars

Jura ssic Park III, dir. Joe Johnston. My eldest son could say and spell 'Tyrannosaurus stock-a beautifully dry and chalky, high­ Rex' before he got a handle on 'please', and Good stock contrast feel, which managed to convey the that was before the first fmassic Park in fe eling of a post-speed-binge hangover better 1993. He Died With a Felafel in His Hand, dir. than any performance or art direction. That film, which was over two hours Richard Lowenstein. For a fi lm that's - Allan James Thomas long, represented the best and the worst in ostensibly about the raucous, filthy, anar­ movie-making. There were some breath­ chic life of the share-house dweller, this is taking scenes which defied time and a surprisingly gentle and reflective piece of Don't bank on it recreated dinosaurs as splendid, spectacu­ work. I gu ess this is partly because its main lar, living creatures, seamlessly interwoven character, Danny (played by a fabulously The Bank, dir. Robert Connolly. Everybody with th e live actors. The disappointment battered-looking Noah Taylor), is so fun­ who hates the banks should love The Bank was the live actors themselves who were damentally detached from the circus that With this huge potential audience in mind, little more than cardboard cut-outs, and surrounds him, oft en seeming not even to writer-director Robert Connolly has crafted who, apart fr om being dina-bait, also stuffed notice it, let alone act upon it. When nco­ a dark corporate fairytale spiced with a up the action with deep and m eaningful Nazis on motorcycles cut the back off his powerful element of wish fulfilment. mumbo jumbo and rom antic drivel. house with chainsaws, while his housemate Simon (Anthony LaPaglia) is the CEO of The Lost World sequel in 1997 was even is being ritually sacrificed on the hills hoist Centabank (it could be based on your bank, longer, at two-and-a-quarter hours and, fo r the winter solstice, and the two women and probably is). He's a take- no-prisoners, largely due to self-indulgent direction by he's m ost attracted to start kissing each AI 'Chainsaw' Dunlap kind of guy who Steven Spielberg, the human characters other rather than him, hi s only response is believes that people work better with his were wooden to the point of being inedible. to shrug his shoulders and move on to 'foot against the back of their neck'. But The good news is that this second sequel house #48. h e's under pressure to increase profits and under new director Joe Johnston (The In fact, the film is mostly about this love h e's running out of branches to close. One Rocketeer, October Sl

44 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 With a plethora (now extinct) of eaters and tells the same story as his own, the con­ good Australian m ovies embody the ironic, eatees, there's a purity about it all, with 30 struction of a past with a loving father deflecting humour with which we typically minutes of pontification gone, and chomp seemingly too valuable not to be shared. view ourselves that it sometimes seems replacing pomp. Gerry's Dad is an itinerant alcoholic and comedy is our only form of filmic expres­ The clever mix of animatronics and m ean with it, only turning up for long sion. Lantana is one of those films that digital magic has crea ted a new realism that enough to steal booze money and bash any­ prove this m ere appearance. far exceeds anything we could have imag­ one who happens to be around. Gerry's This is no simple 'relationship' film; it ined a decade ago. If you like your earth chain -smoking mum (thankfully not played is an engrossing essay on the complexities shaken and your monsters stirred, this by Brenda Blethyn) spends her life dispirit­ of love, pain, desire and aging. Like the m ovie is your martini. edly moving house to escape him. Sewell plant from which it takes its name, the love -Gordon Lewis reveals shamefacedly that his 'Dad' is really explored is bright on the surface and spiky­ his grandfather, his real parents having tangled beneath. The plot revolves around drifted away too early in his life for him to a small group of troubled couples. At its Hulks united rem ember them. heart is Leon (Anthony LaPaglia), a dogged Oddly, the film is full of hope, unrealis­ cop, given to outbursts of rage and guiltily Purely Belter, dir. Mark Herman. Unlike tic hope perhaps (as the inclusion in the n egotiating an affair with the febrile Jane Mark Herman's elegiac Brassed Off, which soundtrack of 'Happy Ending Lies' by the (Rachael Blake). A mysterious disappear­ looked at the last gasps of a working-class Lightning Seeds suggests), but the hope ance and a couple of unexpected twists add community, his latest, Purely Belter, is an that youth and newness gives to everyone. to the intrigue. odyssey through aftermath. Set in the present-day post-industrial wastelands of England's North, Purely Belter takes full cinematographic advantage of the monu­ m ental hulks ofNewcastle-on-Tyne's aban­ doned factories and warehouses . Gerry (Chris Beattie) and Sewell (Greg McLane) scamper among the ruins of their heritage. Children of the broken-backed North, they don't know or care about what has been lost. Their only culture is drugs, N ewcastle United, pop music and sex. Gerry and Sewell are two not-very-likely Geordie lads who fanatically support New­ castle United football club, yet have never been to a m atch in their lives because they can't afford the £500 season tickets. It's impossible to buy a ticket to a single match in this sellers' market. The lads hatch daft schem es to get the m on ey for two tickets within the year. The film follows them Purely Belter gives the impression of being The acting is splendid, especially from through the summer, autmnn, winter and made in a rush; its plot is not without holes; LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush and Rachael Blake. spring of their discontent. the ending is anodyne; yet it is an absorbing The Sydney settings are neatly integrated In Herman's Little Voice and Brassed and enjoyable shemozzle of a film. with the unfolding exploration of the Off, the characters were gifted with know­ -Lucille Hughes characters' interior lives. Andrew Bovell's ing and musical talents-Gerry and Sewell script cleverly combines mystery, surprise have only bucketloads of desperation and and psychological nuance. One of the film's likeable stupidity. Gerry is the sharper of Entanglements strengths is the way it delves into the the two, which isn't saying much. Sewell's guarded emotions of m en. There is a striking total lack of motherwit and huge bulk pro­ Lantana, dir. Ray Lawrence. This is only scene where Leon collides with another vide most of the movie's laughs. Both young Ray Lawrence's second film and there are man while out jogging. The scene and its actors have great natural presence, and 15 years between it and his first, the much­ complex em otional tone seem irrelevant at though there may be an edge of amateurism praised Bliss. Moviegoers have clearly been the time but its climax is beautifully echoed sometimes, it is possible to be such a good the poorer for the absence of his major much later. actor that you 're just irritating (like Brenda talent from our screens. It seem s to take a Perhaps the tight circle of the principal Blethyn ). writer to lure him to the cinematic task. players is m ade too tight by a series of 'Let's talk about first times,' says the Bliss was based on a Peter Carey novel and coincidences. Yet even here the implausible teacher in one of the necessarily few class­ Lantana is derived from a play by Andrew artifice works to good dramatic effect by room scenes. Gerry recounts his earliest Bovell. insinuating darkly that the casual acquaint­ m emory of being taken to the football by Lantana is an outstanding achievement, ance is really deeply involved and the his Dad, so eloquently that there isn't a dry a thoroughly serious and absorbing explo­ intimately known is unfamiliar. eye in the house. Later on, his friend Sewell ration of emotional complexity. So many -Tony Coady

V OLUME 1 1 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 45 First impressions

I WAS WAHNW G,NTCY AnOUT midnight of 11 SeptembeL 'You'll hadn't heard, seen or felt the tiny piece of shrapnel as she'd want to see this, love.' The planes had hit the World Trade dashed home, feeling immortal. towers and the Pentagon, and the images were there, the ones The fear in some commentators' voices was palpable, as you knew would be the 'sexy' ones to splash over the print though the US had never seen terrorist violence before, as media the next day. The sense of unreality was there: already though the systematic elimination of the Kennedy brothers and the CNN and SkyNews commentators were mentioning the Martin Luther King had not been war waged on their soil. novels of Tom Clancy (plane hits the White House), the films But this was, after all, the worst thing for them: worse than of Bruce Willis (New York skyscrapers destroyed). Because it their earthquakes and tornadoes and forest fires and school wasn't something that was ever supposed to happen in the US. murders. The US has felt insulated from the outside world, Other countries would know what it is like to be bombed by a and that perhaps gave the country the same kind of young, foreign power while you're working at your office desk. immortal feelings that led my mother to be so 'It has cleared the air to some considerable extent.' damn silly in 1941. Dr Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, interviewed on ABC Radio's PM, said this on 12 September, the day after LEANALY SIS ON CNN and SkyNews has been very patchy at the terrorist attacks on America. In the midst of all the rightful the time of writing, with BBC World only slightly better. Inter­ sympathy for the victims of the atrocity, his Darth Vader voice views with Middle East specialists and terrorism experts reminded me why some people might hate the US. It's not in abounded on the last. The nadir was the man on Sky News who human nature to become a mass murderer without some deep said, 'It's September 11 - that's 911 emergency day.' This injury to one's emotional development, and we can only contrasted with some superb analysis by the ABC. The TV speculate about how Kissinger got to be the way he is. But the networks channelled CNN and ABC (US) news during the crisis, terrorists who killed thousands of innocents on 11 September and the same images recurred: that plane hitting the second were of a generation that had to grow up under foreign policies tower was wound back and replayed again and again in rapid whose foundations were with Dr Strangelove, who has long succession, like a video game or a sports replay. Stuff like that since learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. made you remember that TV studios are full of cynical tech­ Some of the commentators were level-headed and infor­ nicians and crisis-hardened producers. mative, but there was no Walter Winchell to draw the country But when the ABC ran a special evening of commentary, it together. Colin Powell, holder of Kissinger's old job, had a states­ was all it should be. Kerry O'Brien, the doyen of current affairs manlike demeanour. With George W. Bush in Airforce One broadcasting here, was admirable in his pursuit of hard questions somewhere en route, Powell was the reassuring voice that said that looked to the future and didn't simply dwell on the to a frightened country that it would be OK, we'll protect you, sensational parts. Mark Colvin on ABC Radio showed that he we'll get them in the end, stay calm. People have come through is a presenter of enormous resource and intelligence, his this before. It was the sort of thing Winston Churchill used to correspondents all sharp in analysis and clear in focus. Colvin's say when death rained down on my parents' town in the north program, PM, was the one that got the Kissinger interview, of England during the Blitz. My mother, who as an 18 -year-old which gave so much background, intended and unintended, to worked at a post office, would be stranded at work all night in the crisis, for it was the Herr Doktor himself who told the world the winter when the air-raid sirens would go off in the dark of on PM that we'd been 'living in a fools' paradise' since the end late afternoon before knock-off time. So she would often take of the Cold War. He looked forward to a time when America her chances and dodge her way home on foot for five miles, would be more practical, and invest more in what was necessary because the bombing wasn't always heavy. She was forced to to keep the rest of the world scared. For the rest of us, it's an stop this when she got home one night. (By then the all-clear opportunity to say to the US that we know too well how you had sounded and they'd left the shelters.) 'What's happened to feel and we do feel for you. It would be a tragedy if the opponents your sleeve?' gasped my grandmother. Mum looked, and saw of democracy succeeded in making America lose faith in it. • that the thick tweed sleeve of her overcoat was neatly slit, with burn-sealed edges, from padded shoulder to gathered cuff. She Juliette Hughes is a freelance writer.

46 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 2001 Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 97, October 2001 Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM

ACROSS l. Seemingly, during an age, Sal called on the heaven ly helpers. (8,6) 10. More vacuous words uttered by English parliam entarian on order. (7) ll. Mountain pool his fumbling actions may discolour. (7) 12. Rearrange harp logo on eastern wall- it may be print of old master. (9 ) 13. From the beginning, the word 'above' had different ending. (2,3) 14. A true Aussie calls this fair. (6) 15. The hour when the decision was taken- at the last moment, perhaps! (8) 18. The professor's a contemptible fellow, cutting up mice. (8) 20. Tease, in short story, is decidedly clannish. (6) 23. In part, dem onstrates the one opposed to 1- across. (5) 25. Triple pleat there, som ehow, follows a pattern. (9) 26. Initially, heavenly bower provides a haven . (7) 27. On an empty day, turning, for example, to art can bring disaster. (7) Solution to Crossword no. 96, September 2001 28. In this unfortunate phase, m en see car as the m eans of getting to the Italian city for something to go with the pasta! (8, 6) DOWN 2. Referee and youngster, both short, come upon a great many. (7) 3. Measuring device for the downpour on the railway? (4,5) 4. Such an encroachment is not the way out of the problem . (6) 5. H e is m ore of a head case than a hard case-to put it in summary! (8) 6. Standard of achievem ent attained by a girl. (5 ) 7. Kept record in zoo, as arranged, of animal parasite. (7) 8. Rest from training enj oyed at Michaelmas, for example. (6,8) 9. Time-keepers on the m ove bound into store. (10,4) 16. Add colours to the mixture, or average it out otherwise. (9) 17. In archaic era I knew the climbing plant. (8 ) 19. Being som ewhat mad I err in becoming her fa n ! (7) 21. Clean ed out Royal Society for the middlem en . (7) 22. Quote literature that is arousing, or cite other sources. (6) 24. Put your head in it and bring about your downfall? (5)

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If you want to know when to organise a celebration of Easter A bold, timely book that with Orthodox friends, or how breathes imaginative life to co-ordinate a holiday with into the art of listening interstate schoolmates, this is that is at the core of the diary for you. It is pastoral traditions in all beautifully designed, compact religions. and informative. The diary LISTENING It is an essential guide for gives m ajor feast and holy days a pa stora l s ty l e the professional and for from the Lutheran Church, the general reader. Ukrainian and Maronite Catholic rites, Orthodox, Pastoral counsellors of all Jewish and Muslim calendars, persuasions will find this along with all state and m ost book illuminating.

A u s t ra I ia u international holidays. It also FR ANCES M. MORAN R ELIGIOUS DIARY has a comprehensive list of 20 0 2 liturgical readings for each day.

Thanks to David Lovell Publishing, we have 15 copies of each book to give away. For a chance to win both books in David Lovell this bonus offer, just put your name and address on the back of an envelope and send it to: Eureka Street October Book Offer, PO Box 553, Richmond, VIC, 3 121. (S ee page 9 for winners of the July/August 2001 Bool< Offer.) Publishing

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