Vol. 3 No. 8 October 1993 $5.00

Undermining Mabo On your way, sister Frank Brennan Pamela Foulkes The shaming of Manning Clark Trading in union futures Rosamund Dalziel! PauiRodan In Memoriam D.J.O'H

One thirty. This is the time I saw you last Braving death with a grin in the stilled ward. Invaded and insulted, you stood fast, Ready to fight, or ford

The cold black stream that rings us all about Like Ocean. Some of it got into your eyes That afternoon, smarting you not to doubt But to a new surprise

At what sheer living brings-as once Yeats Braced in a question bewilderment, love and dying. As the flesh declines, the soul interrogates, Failing and stili trying.

On a field of green, bright water in their shade, Wattles, fused and diffused by a molten star, Are pledging spring to Melbourne. Grief, allayed A little, asks how you are.

'Green is life's golden tree', said Goethe, and I hope that once again you're in a green Country, gold-fired now, taking your stand, A seer amidst the seen.

Peter Steele

In Memory of Dinny O'Hearn

I

Outcome, upshot, lifelong input, All roads leading to a dark Rome, We stumble forward, foot after foot: II You have taken your bat and gone home. Though you had your life up to pussy's bow, He disappeared in the full brilliance of winter, The innings wound up far too quick yellow sun unfailing, the voice of Kennett But the nature of knowledge, you came to know, utterly itself away on Shaftesbury A venue, Is itself the flowering of rhetoric. Keating unveiling a sort of cardboard republic and politics full of passive verbs. Your bullshit-counter hardly ever failed you, But only one strainful night Ticking its way through academic crap. after his minussing At Stewart's and at Percy's chums regaled you the first koolAustralia, recalling his miraculous ear for falsehood, Each face as rosy as a full blown dahlia. his jocund whiskeycoloured soul, now on early retirement.

His absence was a black mechanical shadow creasing the macadam, the fetch of a small car whirring in the night.

Chris Wallace-Crabbe

2 EUREKA STREET • OcrOBER 1993 Volume 3 Number 8 October 1993 A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology

38 CoNTENTS LAW AND PEACE Peter Collins profiles Australia's n ext 2 ambassador to the Holy See, Michael Tate. IN MEMORIAM Peter Steele and Chris Wallace-Crabbe pay 40 THE SHAMING OF MANNING CLARK tribute to Dinny O'Hearn; Andrew Hamil­ Rosamund Dalziell argues that Australia's ton writes of Noel Ryan SJ (p31 ); and Pamela obsession with shame is at the heart of the Foulkes remembers John Truscott (p49). Clark controversy. 4 42 COMMENT RECENT AUSTRALIAN BOOKS Peter Steele; Damien Simonis (pS), Frank Paul Kane reflects on The Ern Malley Affair, Brennan (p6); and Evan Jones (pl2). and Niall Brennan remembers some of the 8 original players (p44); Sam Watson reviews Chris Walsh's Over M y Tracl

A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology P ETER STEELE Publisher AND D AMIEN SIMONIS Michael Kelly SJ Editor Morag Fraser Production editor Ray Cassin Design consultant John van Loon Production assistants ES travels John Doyle SJ, Paul Fyfe SJ, Juliette Hughes, Siobhan Jackson, Chris Jenkins SJ. Contributing editors Adelaide: Frances Browne mvM Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ Darwin: Margaret Palmer Perth: Dean Moore M v '"OURIT' BU"N"S ADO""' is the one in Chicago Sydney: Edmund Campion, Andrew Riemer, which puts 'Leona's Beautician' next to 'Leona's Mortician'­ Gerard Windsor. they get you coming and going. My next favourite is the travel European correspondent: Damien Simonis agency called 'Please Go Away'. I don!t know whether it does US correspondent: Thomas H. Stahcl SJ well, but our restless race has been taking its advice for as long Editorial board as records have been kept. Loving it or hating it, we have kept Peter L'Estrange SJ (chair), on the move. Margaret Coady, Margaret Coffey, The paradigmatic books for this in the West are The Madeline Duckett RSM, Tom Duggan, Odyssey and The Book of Exodus. The first is mainly concerned Trevor Hales, Christine Martin, with the adventures of an individual, the second with those of E..evin McDonald, Joan Nowotny IBVM, a people. In both cases, the span of emotions from desperation Lyn Nossal, Ruth Pendavingh, to exhilaration is on display; what is at issue is not only the John Pill FSC, seascape or the landscape but the geography of the pysche. Peter Steele SJ, Bill Uren SJ And so it has gone ever since. Whether it is Lucian dream­ Business manager: Mary Foster ing in AD200 of a voyage to the moon, or various astronauts Advertising representative: Tim Stoney telling the story of their trip to that unpromising spot, the un­ Editorial assistant: Jon Greenaway announced agenda is a charting of the human. Hakluyt's mot­ Patrons ley array of voyagers may be linguistic geniuses, like Ralegh, Eurel

4 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 1993 fact, all that is necessary to pain most people is to pre­ fruitless, and the growing popularity of extremist and clude freedom of movem ent: liberty and mobility are fundamentalist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad intimately related. Tme of our bodies, this is at least as made the PLO an increasingly attractive bargaining part­ tme of our minds. The latest book by one of the best ner- while it still had some power. living poets, W.S. Merwin, is called Tra vels. Its jacket In spite of the vociferous minority opposition on shows migrating caribou filing across the tundra-some­ the Israeli right, the Jewish state can hardly lose. At the thing prompted, no doubt, by Merwin's sense that we best, Palestinians will overcome their differences, use are prone both to lay wa te to the world and to waste foreign aid to build a functioning and peaceable admin­ our own lives. The poems themselves are all exhibi­ istration , and convince Israel to abandon the West Bank tions of mobility of mind and heart-attempts to re­ and allow the creation of a fully independent state­ pleni h diminished resources. This is being a 'mental much smaller than the 1947 UN plan envisaged. traveller', something more than an anecdotalist or an Should Palestinian groups opposed to what they entertainer or even a savant. It is an attempt to replace call Arafat's betrayal continue a campaign of violence, appropriate pain with appropriate pleasure. Israel will be able to sit back and let the PLO do its dirty The October and November issues of Emeka Street work. And so a campaign of violent opposition to Israeli touch base with some of these matters, spanning differ­ occupation will become an ordeal of fratricide among ent parts of our globe, and addressing them in different the Palestinians. At the worst, Jews will continue to be tones. As usual, the writings are in part as good as their attacked and the Israeli army will march in again, offer­ readers. Bon Voyage! ing a moral justification for doing so. The wild cards in the pack are the Jewish ftmdamentalists and extrem ­ Peter Steele SJ is a reader in English in the University of ist - how fa r will they go to oppose peace? Melbourne. Syria and Jordan complained at not having been notified of the deal arrived at in secret between Israel and the PLO, but they too have everything to gain. For all the noise about Arab unity and the sanctity of the Palestinian cause over the years, the Arab states have Peace, maybe always pursued their own agendas. At the end of the 1948-49 war, Jordan incorporated the West Bank into its territory. King Hussein only E EN THE PALESTINIANS who back the peace settlement renounced his claim to it (occupied by Israel after the hammered out between Israel and the PLO, or more pre­ 1967 war) in 1988. He has often been accused of collu­ cisely between Yitzhak Rabin's Labour Party-led gov­ sion with Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. More ernment and Yasser Arafat's Fatah section of the PLO, than half of Jordan's population is Palestinian, and they must wonder whether it has all been worth it. form the bulk of the educated and business classes. A Autonomy under Israeli supervision in the patch­ strong Palestinian state could cause an exodus of Pales­ work enclaves of Gaza and Jericho, and even the vague tinians and their money from Jordan. It has often been prospect of full statehood to include the West Bank at suggested that Palestinians and Jordanians should cre­ some unspecified later point, looks a poor deal compared ate a new state, a scenario that could leave Hussein's with the United Nations partition plan of 1947. Then, throne in danger- the Hashemite m onarchy appeals the Jews and Arabs of what was the British mandate in little to Palestinians. A Palestinian statelet is the kind Palestine were assigned six interlocking chunks of of compromise that must appeal to Hussein- his throne land- three each- to be considered two states in an eco­ is safe and he won't lose the Palestinians his country nomic confederation. The Jews said yes, the Arabs no. needs. No one will ever know if the two states could have Syria, first and foremost, wants the Golan Heights lived in hannony. What we do know is that thousands back. For this, Israel wants recognition, open borders, of lives have since been lost. trade and nonnal relations. Both sides would prosper, It would be churlish in the extreme not to welcome but is there not more to it? No one knows what kind of the agreements reached, but equally it would be naive deal the two sides stmck to end the Israeli bombard­ to ignore their fragility. ment of Lebanon in August. Now that the PLO have Yasser Arafat and the PLO have never been weak­ made their bed, the Syrians no longer feel obliged to er. Supporting Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War cost sleep in it. This is pure speculation, but would not a them financial backing from the Gulf states, and much convenient quid pro quo leave Syria a free hand in Leb­ of their political support. anon (part of a notional Greater Syria) and Israel similar Rabin's negotiators will have pointed out that a deal latitude in dealing with the Palestinians? Such a cove­ was only possible with Labour, and Likud's strident de­ nant with fanner enemies would hardly be new to Syria's nunciation of it seems confirmation enough . Rabin, wily Hafez al-Assad. however, was also under pressure. As much as terror­ ism has failed to bring Israel to its knees, violent occu­ Damien Simonis is Eurek a Street's Middle East corres­ pation of predominantly Arab land has proved equally pondent.

V OLUME 3 N uMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 5 COMMENT

FRANK BRENNAN Undermining Mabo

T,MWayne Goss. An­ tors demanding certainty, the miners convinced the view Aborigines in nouncing his own 'modest, blanched and Commonwealth to act. But Keating was minded only responsible' land-rights package back in to suspend native title on validated leases for the life of their states as citizens 1991, Goss had said: 'We rejected out of any mine, rather than extinguishing it for all time. The hand the Northern Territory approach as miners and Fahey objected that such a renewal was 'in­ with rights rather being too radical both in the way it affects consistent with the Mabo ruling'. They did not bother than as enemies of the the community generally and the specific to state that universal statutory validation of mining impact on agriculture and mining.' titles since 1788 was contrary to the whole state. Government is Second, in view of the Wik claim in spirit of the Mabo decision. Cape York, and in response to pressure for the good of all from Comalco, foreign banks and Goss, the N OW THAT VA LIDATED MINING LEASES will revive native Commonwealth agreed to validate all non­ title when they expire, we can expect a new round of citizens, including Aboriginal titles back to 1788, rather than QCs' opinions and newsletters from major corporate so­ just from 1975 when the Commonwealth licitors' firms confirming that few if any mining leases Aborigines. State and Parliament passed the Racial Discrimina­ were invalid and in need of validation, thereby reviving tion Act. Validation legislation will sus- native title at the end of such leases. A year ago, the Commonwealth pend the operation of the Racial silks were asked if there was any conceivable doubt Discrimination Act, confirming the valid­ about the validity of the mining leases. Having enter­ tribunals should enjoy ity of any crown grant made over land and tained the doubt, they will now be asked to give their extinguishing retrospectively an native ti- opinion on validity. Despite the merest doubt, they will the confidence tle that otherwise may have survived if the confirm the validity of the leases and the permanent grant had been invalid. extinction of native title. The Commonwealth has of all parties whose The Commonwealth also agreed to already signalled that 'it is likely that there are very few extinguish any remaining native title on titles which are invalid, and which therefore will be val­ rights are being pastoral leases and to guarantee continued idated by this exercise'. public access to beaches, river banks and The Australian Mining Industry Council, the min­ determined by them. waterways. ing industry's public face of reason, has published full­ The miners were happy with these page advertisements about the need for validation, also three policy shifts. But they were not quite as happy as stating their acceptance of the High Court's decision in the pastoralists, who were guaranteed immunity from the wake of Chief Justice Mason's extraordinary refer­ any effects of native title. Although the Commonwealth ence at a Cambridge conference to 'the concerted cam­ was prepared to spare pastoralists the inconvenience of paign run by the mining interests supported by the ever having to deal with native titleholders again, it re­ pastoral interest to discredit our decision.' In August, mained insistent that native titleholders should be trea t­ the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies ed like any other landowners whose land is subject to a circulated a 66-page tract to every barrister in the coun­ mining lease. Once the mine had closed and the last try, containing attacks on the High Court that two silks

6 EUREKA STREET • O CTOBER 1993 had made at a meeting of John Stone's Samuel Griffith Society. One silk attacked the judges for 'their inven­ AusTRAL!~"' tiveness and emotionalism' in making the 'pitiful' deci­ CHURCH Dt\rn sion. The other clain1ed that the court had decided issues 1094 'in the absence of the interested persons'. Obviously, the industry is pulling out all stops for the last round with the Keating cabinet. Beautifully bound and illustrated, the A TIENTION IS NOW DfRECTED tO the premiers being diary begins with urged to water down even further the revised Keating the First Sunday in package. The Aboriginal'right to be asked' about devel­ Advent 1993, and opments on their land is to be further curtailed. This serves for both the right is modelled on Queensland's Mineral Resources liturgical and cal­ Act, passed by the previous National Party government. endar years till the Aborigines can say no to development, in which case end of 1994. With the matter is referred to a tribunal (which in Queens­ Christian, Jewish land is simply the Mining Warden's court). If the tribu­ and Muslim feasts nal also says no, the government can overrule the and commemorations, public and school holidays decision in the state interest. for all states, double-page spread for each week, year Keating's advisers thought they should at least add planner, lectionary details and much more. time limits for each step of the process in the interests of fairness and certainty for all parties. John Fahey, con­ 7 rri'•< . lh '{ l} ()() vinced again by the miners, claims that these procedures could add another seven months to processing new min­ (Norn1al retail price: $22.95) ing leases. Governments, having decided to deny Abo­ rigines a say over development on their land and having Available at this price exclusively from Jesuit Pub­ vested themselves with that power after a tribunal proc­ lications, PO Box 553 Richmond VIC 3121. Include ess giving Aborigines a chance only to be heard, would $3.50 per book for postage and handling. have to expect and tolerate some time delays for Abo­ rigines to consider the application and put their case, and for the tribunal to make a decision. Or are Aborigi­ BLACKFRIARS nes to have a right to be consulted provided the govern­ ment can make a final decision overnight, as in the good old pre-Mabo days when native titleholders had no rights and land was simply classified as vacant crown land? "("cmCanberra. The spacious building includes a determined by them. peaceful enclosed garden with plenty of walking The premiers have a duty to design a system that space. The Mount Ainslie-Majura Reserve is within will be as attractive to Aborigines as it is to miners. It walking distance of the Priory. would be a relief if, before the end of the Mabo process, the miners could graciously and publicly concede some It provides single-room accommodation for 60 peo­ points to the Aborigines and the premiers could confi­ ple (or 90 people with shared accommodation), with dently espouse their commitment to Aboriginal native hot/cold water and central heating in each room, and titleholders as well as to other citizens and corporations a large conference room holding up to 100 people, as committed to the state interest. There can never be any well as severa l small rooms. There is additional space return to the certainty of native titleholders having no for small group work. individual and organized group rights and no say at all. Even the overseas investors will Retreats are avai Iable. have to get used to that idea. • All enquiries are welcome and should be directed to: ThL Co-ordinator Frank Brennan SJ is a visiting fellow in the law program PO BOX 900, DICKSON ACT 2601 of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Phone: (06) 248 8l'l'J Fax: (06) 247 b892 Australian National University.

VOLUME 3 NuMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 7 L ETTERS

t, r 1 )I r 1\ll, n md tht \\ ntu ~ edgm ent to the victim s, that the 'The Christian Brothers' Story' (Let­ n.1 't .nd a lliiL"" Chrisitan Bro thers empathise with ters, Eureka Street, August 1993) them in their struggle to rebuild their would make a worthy historical nar­ lives. And that is anathema to 'the ra ti vc of the brothers' notable achieve­ missionary spirit' of the congregation m ents, were it not for the absence of which, in the past 30 years, is noted for compassion for the story's victims. its work with 'some of the most un­ Instead, the story never rises above derprivileged of God's people' (Con­ the complacency of a spirited defence stitution of the Christian Brothers). of the congregation. Dr Barry Coldrey Certainly, it is laudable to defend CFC fails to show regret for the partic­ the congregation against an intem per­ ular sufferings of the six men. ate, sensationalist, and trivialising Br Coldrey projects these six men, media. But, primarily, Emelw Street who were form er orphans, and their readers want to see it reinforced that all egations of 'sexual and physical the abused suffer from a stolen child­ abuse' made against 'individual broth­ hood. An unwitne sed struggle toes­ ers', as his focal point. From that focus, cape the physical intensity of rape on he introduces subjective comment uninitiated innocence is so spiritually which sows doubt in our minds, about that the story wants to avoid making confusing, and so emotionally biza rre, the truth of what is being alleged. The a sincere admission of some that the victim feels forever marked intention to create doubt becomes wrongdoing. with an indelible scar. Surely, this is unambiguously evident in his later Of its nature, sexual abuse is de­ part of 'the full story' that 'still needs and only question 'But how do we ception, and whether it is 'recent' or to be told '. know what abuse took place when so not recent, it is never 'easy to check'. J. F.A. Sutherland many key people are dead? ' It seems How often do we hear a witness 'cor­ Blackburn South, VIC roborate' the sexual abuse of a child? Nevertheless, that inherent difficulty CATHO LIC COMMISSION doesn't absolve society of responsibil­ What is owed FOR jUSTICE, ity to seek the truth. I believe it is not to the brothers I DEVELOPMENT AND the certainty of proof that society re­ 0 PEACE quires. Rather is it a commitment to From Brian Cosgriff The big theme in the main stories in M elbourne Archdiocese respond to adult survivors with sensi­ tivity and healing. So, blessed may Br papers, films, TV and videos is revenge. Take any fi ve videos out of a shop and Invites applications for member­ Coldrey be in his em brace of our Fa­ ther which art in heaven. For how can three will be about getting even. It's shi p of this newly fo rmed Comm­ a sexually abused child do this, when the underlying idea in the principal iss ion of the Archdiocese of it conceptualises fa therhood as evil? stori es in the papers most days. It's so Melbourne. Hence, by debasing the credibility of unh elpful. Seven positions are open for ap­ those allegedly abused as children, Br On the other hand, there is a way pointment from interested persons Coldrey does not seriously address the in which it's good to recognise past living in the Archdiocese. Th ey w ill problem upon which he firs t focused. help and to thinkabout waysofpaying join four regiona l nominees from For their particular sufferings, we back. At the very best it's an acknowl­ th e diocese and the chairpe rson. owe the six victims at least compas­ edgement of that debt of gra titude. All A kn owledge of Catholic soc ial sion for having the courage to step out that is a quite convoluted way of say­ teaching and des ire fo r ac ti on on of the closet. And, in my view, we ing how much so m any people owe to j ust ice, peace and development ought to listen to those men with the Catholic teaching orders, or, more iss ues would be an adva ntage fo r humility and open-mindedness, to specifically in my case, the Christian applica nts. discover the despair of wounded child­ Bro thers. They were my teachers for Further informati on ava ilab le fro m hood. Indeed, the abuse of children is 11 years and had an effect on my life, 18 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy 3065 a matter causing the deepest sorrow in and on that of hundreds of other boys, (phone 416 0032) the Australian community presently, that is immeasurable. Applica ti ons should be sent to: Th e including Catholics, and especially in There isn't an y fi eld of public life that I can think of where you won't Epi scopal Vi ca r for justi ce, Devel­ the Christian Brothers and among their find brothers' boys who have reached opment and Peace, 123 St Leon­ respected leaders. And in all sorts of the highest level. You can mention ards Road, ASCOT VALE, Vi ctoria ways, we are constructively respond­ ing to it by a greater recognition of this anything: politics, business, law, edu- 3032, by October 29th .

8 EUREKA STREET • O cTOBER 1993 cation or any sporting endeavour and Catholic faith accepts what the call for the use of 'all the theological there they are. Always they are able to church, following unbroken tradition, and exegetical resources the church show the sam e values that were learnt; has always taught. The church today, (sic) can command', they seem auto­ commitment, dedication, faith and a as at Trent and earlier, teaches that it matically and on principle to exclude great ense of social justice. And I am is of faith that Christ instituted the papal magisterium and those scholars convinced that even a moving away sacrament of order at the Last Supper. who would support it as qualifying to from the church leaves those values If some Catholic Scripture scholars do be considered part of such resources. intact in whatever lifestyle choice not see it that way the problem is Christian Moe FSC these schools' graduates m ake. theirs. Surely Pamela Foulkes would Kingsford NSW For 10 years I did a m orning paper agree that the present delivery round so I was around earlier Pope, like his predeces­ than most people for a long time. That sors, holds that Christ, also gave m e a chance to see the begin­ knowingly and inten­ ning of the brothers' day, a start with tionally, instituted the worship and prayer. Then they spent a sacram ent of order; his is whole day dealing with lots of boys the authentic magisteri­ and their problem s and afterwards um. Indeed, what seem s went off to the university to improve to be at issue in the de­ their qualifications. And all of it done bate about the possibili­ out of an ideal of Christian love. I've ty of admission of wom­ seen m en take over the responsibility en to the sacram ent of of m ost demanding positions at an age order, is the place of tra­ when most are planning retirement. dition and the teaching They practise an equality not often authority of the Roman seen so that each house's budget was Pontiff. the same per brother, irrespective of 2. The Christology im­ the socio-economic level of the plicit in this article is school's clientele. So many great strange: there seems to things, so m any great m en, so many be a dichotomy pre­ great results. Lots more say the same sumed between Jesus and thing about the other teaching orders. Christ. But the Jesus of We were very blessed. history is the Christ of Brian Cosgriff faith; and Christ certain­ North Balwyn, VIC ly knew what he intended when he founded the church and instituted the Thank you sacram ents. One has only to read the Authority relevant sections of the Vatican docu­ From Fr Paul Francis CP m ents and the corresponding exposi­ I would like to thank Quixote for his in question tion of the sacrament of order in the cheque for 500 francs and also for his Catechism of the Catholic Chtuch to 'The Comfort of Strangers' article (Eu­ From Br Christian Moe FSC see what the faith of the church is. reka Street, August 1993), which was In response to the article by Pamela 3. A lesser point: it i surely disin­ well-written and most enjoyable to Foulkes in the August issue, I should genuous on the part of Pamela Foulkes read. It was kind of him to refer to me like to make a few points: to claim without any reservation that as 'young'. I hope his next visit to Paris 1. Her case seems to be presented the Junias of Roms 16:7 was a woman. will be less m emorable. almost exclusively from the point of The discussion of the name Junias in Paul Francis CP view of sola scriptuiO; even more, A Greek-English Lexicon of New Tes­ Paris Seme, France from scripture read exclusively from tament and Early Christian Litera ­ the perspective of the advance which ture (ed. Bauer et al.) is much less How the Pope is said to have been made in the past absolute than Pamela Foulkes: while 30 years or so (cf. par. 3). The fact that noting that 'ancient comm entators sees it there are reputable Scripture scholars took A. and J. as a married couple', who do not uncritically accept the these authors go on to say: 'the possi­ From George Ringer w hole package of contemporary 'po­ bility, from a purely lexical point of On pages 18 and 19, vol. 3 no. 6, of litically correct' views does not seem view, that this (sc. Junias) is a wom­ your lovely m agazine, a Pam ela to occur to the writer; in fact, some of an's name, is probably ruled out by the Foulkes has written about women her statem ents (par. 3, p18 and the context.' priests. She may be interested to know final par., p19) are examples of the There would not seem to be much that our Pope wrote on this subject 10 kind of generalisation she claims to hope of satisfying the proponents of years ago. The following is taken from find in the document she is criticis­ woman's ordination: when, like the the Servants of Mary Help of Chris­ ing. author of the article in question, they tians Newsletter March/April1992.

VOLUME 3 NUM BER 8 • EUREKA STREET 9 No Women Priests would be quite happy to share a choc­ tionship with the state. We pray for The Pope Speaks olate cake, a fa g and swap a few old the Queen as our head of state, and we 'The bishop must give proof of his school jokes-all this well behind the honour her for the office she holds as pastoral ability and leadership by with­ sight screen. But if old chums can't well as for herself as a person who has drawing all support from individuals meet I would be quite happy to send shown remarkable and consistent ded­ or groups who in the nam e of progress, him his chocolate ca ke. ication to her vocation and to her justice or compassion or for any other 70 Not Out people. But the Queen has no formal alleged reason, promote the ordina­ Parkville VIC responsibility, either in the spiritual tion of wom en to the priesthood. In or the temporal realm, for the Angli­ doing so, such individuals or groups can Church of Australia.' are in effect damaging the very dignity Putting the Queen John G. Denton of women that they profess to pro­ in context Sydney NSW mote and advance. All efforts m ade against the truth are destined to pro­ From John G. Denton, general seem­ duce not only failure but also acute tory of the general synod of the Angli­ And thank you frustration. Whatever the bishop ca n can Church of Australia. for reading I think Margaret Coffey has also gone out on a limb From Brigid Venables (Eurelw Street, August I must take issue with Ray Cassin's 1993, p48) . turgid and frighteningly unimagina­ II Coffey gives her un­ tive review of Reservoir Dogs ('Be­ II ll derstanding of the Arch­ wareoftheDogs', Eurel

10 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 1993 holes and call it art, but Tarantino genuine Aussie homegrown ingenui­ sinks to no such depths- he puts a ty can earn the AFL a little more bullet through a women's head and pocket money by designing som e suit­ calls it light relief. Yet the actors in ably go Id en inward arching goal-posts this film rise above their dependence mirrored on the ground by a nicely on the director- this is a film held curved golden goal square. together by the best acting I've seen in And what about language? For a m y life! The director is well out of the few extra millions, the Sherrin could way-perhaps acting as a sa fety net be dubbed officially the Mcball, and I should the wonderful amalgamation see no reason not to institute, for a bit of talent collapse for a minute. more corporate cash, the McMark, Reservoir Dogs has powerful McKick, McGoal, McPoint, McUm­ metaphor after powerful metaphor, pires and so on. Perhaps as a conces­ punctuated by hilarity, crudity, mon­ sion to competing corporate interests, strosity, lubricated with an outrageous someone could put boot to the occa­ amount of blood, an ugly display of sional gut-turning whopper (read tor­ guns and macho cliches, fear, confu­ pedo). sion and sex, tied up with 'punch Thanks to the wise men of Brun­ lines'. (The last scene is a joke, Ray. ton Avenue, we mere unincorporated The film is a comedy.) mortals now have the opportunity to I would not call it the best film I've appreciate fully the vision of our for­ ever seen-far from it. But I've rarely bears who, over a century ago, incor­ enjoyed a film so much. No film has porated a truly '90s way of thinking assaulted my senses quite so violent­ when they named our home of foot­ ly-no pun intended-since Withnail ball. It's just a pity that it's taken us all and I (who made that film ? Certainly this time to correct! y read their hand­ not Martin Scorsese.) And yes, the writing and to begin to call the hal­ violence in Reservoir Dogs is obtru­ lowed turf by its true name, the MeG. sive and frequently unjustifiable. In short, this film is not subtle. I cannot David Holdcroft morally vouch for this film. I am re­ Fitzroy, VIC minded of Solo-somewhere, deep in the bowels of these directors, are dread­ Teachers' plight fully sick men. Yet I would hate for readers of From Gabriella Pretto Eurel

V OLUME 3 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 11 COMMENT ------~~ ~~------EVAN JoNEs

w.TA~~~,.~~T' ~~::":~~~ ~~e~~:~h~~~:wetion in fundffit tages, 1993 is one you definitely would not be cellaring. quality-of-life programs. Best pour the lot into the Home Brand flagons and flog If I were Paul Keating, I would be a very unhappy it off to the remaining true believers to replenish party chap, constantly having to go out on a limb in promis- coffers. ing a 'turn around tomorrow'. He has taken the rap for a The chemistry is off. This is a case of the whole failure attributable to his economic advisers, yet the being less than the sum of the parts. The driving force general economic policy direction remains unques- was the commitment of Keating and Dawkins to in- tioned. The ego-stroking label of 'Treasurer of the year' come-tax cuts, promised in One Nation (February 1992) has cost Keating dearly. and legislated prospectively in September 1992. The op- The 'econ-speak' litany that Keating learnt from portunity for significant spending cuts seemed slim, fac- his intellectual masters now carries less conviction. He ing continued unemployment and following five years has also been confronted by the fact that some crazy (1986-90) of the conscientious pruning of programs. Add heretics (the Green and Democrat senators) refuse to the continuing pressure to wind back the recession-in- sprinkle The Australian Financial Review on their duced deficit ('one per cent of GDP by 1996-97'), and muesli every morning, and that they have real power without the option of an open-ended general sales tax. and have to be mollified. What is inexplicable is why The feared Expenditure Review Committee has Keating is so pathologically committed to flattening the plodded on, but its activities appear to have been suffi- income-tax scale. Why does Dawkins boast of being in ciently well negotiated for there to have been little post- the same low-tax league as Turkey? It smacks of attach- budget controversy (savefrom finance media hardliners). ment to the thoroughly discredited perennial that high For example, introduction of the home child-care marginal tax rates lower work incentive; or of the equally allowance will cost upwards of $1.2 billion a year; an- dubious notion that usable national savings will result. other $250 million has been allocated to various train- Why be so passionate about one aspect (income- ing and labour-market programs and tax cuts) of previous policy statements? What is the sta- administration; and almost $100 million has tus of contemporaneous decisions, especially those been granted to boost export programs, es- contained in the major documents of March 1991, pecially for small businesses. November 1991 and February 1992? Have they been Programs within the Department of abandoned? What is needed to bring them to Employment, Education and Training at- fruition?What does one learn from their success or fail- tracted concern. DEET's administration of ure? More fundamentally, an evaluation is needed of the CES and of Austudy has not won it any the quite hasty, un-strategic manner in which strategic brownie points, and the tighter administra- decisions are made-the budgetary process takes more • tion of presumed fraud remains a priority. than seven months, One Nation was thrown together JUIASSIC Poll Derek Volker, previously Social Security in a month. secretary and no bureaucratic wallflower, Another industry policy statement is expected from has been sent in to bring DEET to heel. the industry department, DITARD, with promises of The controversial decisions were generated by the program streamlining. DITARD has been restructured little-publicised Revenue Committee. As a consequence, for the umpteenth time, and any remaining specialist we get an ill-conceived lOc-a-litre tax on leaded petrol. knowledge has been utterly destroyed. The prospect of And the eccentric selectivity of optometry services being visionary output from this turmoil is slim. withdrawn from Medicare coverage, simultaneously Finally, a Committee of Employment Opportuni- with some dental services being included. Add the ties has been set up with great fanfare. What the com- tobacco tax and the wholesale tax imposts, and it's back mittee needs is not necessarily more funds, but more to the rinky-dink budgets of the M enzies years. lateral thinking. This might begin with consideration Dawkins's office must be held responsible for the petrol- of how to slow the haemorrhaging of the existing work- tax decision. The normally austere Treasury gremlins force. pointed out the regressive character of the leaded petrol In both the public sector and the private sector, job tax option, only to have the professed champions of the slashing has become a fetish, and the cost of labour too poor opt pragmatically for its adoption. convenient a whipping horse. This has resulted in the The funding crisis goes beyond an electoral bidding entrenchment of an anti-social mentality which de- war with the Opposition. It goes beyond the supposed mands an economic flexibility whose promises of auto- tiredness of a party long in office. Foremost is the fact matic trickledown are illusory. that the economy has not produced the goods, in the sense of generating healthy employment levels, a healthy Evan Jones teaches economics at the University of current account, and a healthy exchequer that would Sydney.

12 EUREKA STREET • O cTOBER 1993 Shaping up for a DURDy fight

T,SCENE IS BEING SET fm one of the moBrian Howe, a weak minister desperate­ of the other departments are working to ensure that this ly trying to regain some clout; and the Minister for new committee merely focuses on indulging the Prime Industry, Technology and Regional Development, Alan Minister's tastes for Georgian architecture, but if Mant, Griffiths, who is keen to make a mark after a lacklustre an empire-builder from way back, can be restrained in six months. this way it would be a first worth noting in a world The game is about how the Commonwealth uses yearbook. its power, whether in its own right or as a source of The Prime Minister's department is headed by Dr funds for other governments, to achieve social and eco­ Mike Keating, who is not only an old DURDite but the nomic goals. These might be the stimulation of employ­ author, 15 years ago, of the classic bureaucratic report ment in particular places, specific types of on why and how the Commonwealth should take a con­ microeconomic reform, quality-of-life issues such as scious role in urban and regional development issues. protection of the physical and social environment, bet­ Traditionally, the Prime Minister's department has ter planning of public facilities and a more economic strongly resisted such creations, and has worked to use of resources. restrain the ambitions of ministers who want to build The Commonwealth's awareness of its role and on the blocks they have been given. The department power goes back 50 years, to the Department of Post­ wants the Commonwealth to focus on funding the states war Reconstruction, but, more or less in tandem with to do the work, rather than on stepping past them to the advent of Labor governments, the Commonwealth deal with local government and community organisa­ has gone through periodic fits of conscious action and tions. The signs are that Mike Keating now buys the planning. In between, it reverts to letting things work department line. out without much co-ordination. The heyday of federal There are two other factors at work. The Industry activity was Tom Uren's Department of Urban andRe­ Commission has prepared a draft report on obstacles to gional Development ('DURD') in the early 1970s, most regional development, which attempts to rein in sim­ of the functions of which were retained through the Fra­ plistic assumptions about what the Commonwealth can ser years, though in an increasingly uncoordinated fash­ do, but also implicitly calling for more coordination ion. DURD was not restored by Hawke, but DURDish within the government and bureaucracy. The report philosophies still percolate through politics and the bu­ points out, for example, that not a few Commonwealth reaucracy, and with the government keen to be seen to programs and decisions tend to cancel each other out. be doing something about unemployment, the idea of The other factor is a white paper on unemployment, coordinated action is again taking hold. that is being drawn up by a committee headed by Brian Howe bid heavily for control of regional de­ Meredith Edwards, a new deputy secretary in the Prime velopment, and lost, but through responsibility for the Minister's department. Edwards used to be an adviser Better Cities program he retains enough influence on to Brian Howe, and she headed the national housing local government and urban issues to continue to be strategy. It seems likely that the white paper will able to push for control. He has set up a heavyweight emphasise regionally-focused employment initiatives taskforce to survey his estates, and it is looking ambi­ and better coordination of employment, training and tiously over the boundary fences. welfare schemes-which bring two other departments Alan Griffiths has established a task force on re­ into the action. gional development, chaired by Bill Kelty. Its brief is to Even leaving aside the politicians involved, the advise on policies that would stimulate industry and bureaucrats concerned are among the toughest fighters employment in regional Australia, and on the restruc­ in the Australian Public Service. Plenty of blood should turing of communities that are in decay. have been spilled by, say, January, when preliminary Ostensibly, the two committees differ in scope and reports from all of these bodies will be in, and when emphasis. 'Regional' apparently does not embrace they will all have to meet in one room to work out what 'urban', and the Kelty committee has focused oneco­ to do next. I would not be putting any money on Brian nomic and employment issues while the other has Howe. • focused on 'quality-of-life' questions. But all of the actors are aware of the ample scope for the two committees to Jack Waterford is deputy editor of The Canberra Times.

VOLUME 3 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 13 THE NATION

PAUL RODAN

Trading in union futures

l,Tuc umQucn o• MOULaurie Brereton endured a good meas- for industry unions less obvious than in the days of a that the union ure of jeering from angry delegates, Paul centralised system. Granted, larger unions have access Keating escaped relatively unscathed, helped to greater resources, but these will be spread far more movement has in large part by the fact that he limited his thinly than is necessa1y under the award system. 1£ there speech to mind-numbing economic statistics were any congress delegates who wondered whether survived and tribalistic Liberal-bashing. enterprise bargaining might not constitute a prima facie Ultimately, refuge was taken in that case for enterprise unions, they (wisely) kept decades of time- honoured remedy, the government/ such thoughts to themselves. conservative ACTU working party to investigate enterprise bargaining in the non-unionised sector. A res­ 0 N THE QUESTION OF RECRUITMENT, the congress WaS olution of this issue continues to be elusive. confronted by the sobering statistic that of every 10 new government; it Moreover, the matter is complicated by the members of the workforce, only one joins a union. The is far from clear uncertainty, given the numbers in the Sen­ ACTU recently sent a fact-finding mission to the United ate, of the fate of any amendments that may States to examine union recruitment and organisation. that it can then be proposed to the industrial-relations On the surface, this seems a curious move, given the legislation. low levels of union density in that country and the survive Labor Given the growth of profits, it was made relative impotence of unions in the US political proc­ clear that for some sections of the private sec­ ess. The rationale lies in the fact that enterprise bar­ governments. tor favourable enterprise deals can be done, gaining (by whatever name) is the way things are done as indeed they always have been done, albeit in America, and in the claim that US unions are making by some different name. For workers in the something of a comeback. Moreover, the American un­ public sector and poorly organised areas of the private ionisation levels vary enormously from state to state, sector, however, the prospect of gain from enterprise with some boasting rates comparable to Australia, that bargaining remains minimal. For them, it will probably is, about 40 per cent. be a matter of trading away terms and conditions, or, Without doubt, the US television and radio recruit­ worse, 'agreeing' to job losses, in return for modest pay ment material was impressive, but the difficulties faced

14 EUREKA STREET • O cTOBER 1993 by our American counterparts served to drive home the than in productive investment of profits. And, whatev­ paradox of the ACTU's enthusiasm for enterprise bar­ er concessions unions make, they are never enough. The gaining: it will almost certainly make recruitment more business agenda is clear: a total free market for labour, difficult and, in areas where bargaining produces little unfettered by union influence. or nothing, will leave potential members with no mate­ The ACTU needs to rediscover the virtues of plu­ rial reason to join-and it is too late in the day to expect ralism. Rather than acting as an adjunct of Labor gov­ workers to join unions for philosophical reasons. ernments, it needs to acknowledge the reality of labour/ Unions are at their most credible and effective when capital conflict and to advance its interests as it sees defending democratic values: it is more difficult to jus­ them, without fear or favour, and regardless of who is in tify the exclusion of non-unionised areas from bargain­ power. At least when conservatives govern, the union ing when they constitute the majority of the work force. movement has no qualms about a robust defence of its With unionists now in a minority, there is a danger that­ interests, and it is probable that some Labor 'refonns', if the union movement will be marginalised, becoming advanced by a conservative govenunent, would have just one more interest group. been vigorously resisted. Granted, organised labour will Much of the discussion on recmitment took place probably lose more than it wins, but that would be an in one of five syndicate groups into which the congress improvement on the present lose/lose situation. Grass­ was divided, a refreshing innovation that enabled a larger roots union members are sick of being wheeled out to proportion of those attending to take part more active­ vote for Labor governments because of the alleged hor­ ly. (Shop assistants' leader Jim Maher, attending his rors of opposition industrial relations policy, only to find last ACTU Congress, observed that as an old that elements of that policy are embraced by the gov­ Grouper he was pleased to see congress using ernment as soon as it is re-elected. History tells us that groups). the union movement has survived decades of conserva­ tive government; it is far from clear that it can survive L CONGRESS ALSO APPROVED the creation of an 81- Labor governments. member council, which will meet four times a year to determine policy issues between congresses. Represen­ Paul Rodan is an administrator at Monash University. tation is based on the new large union stmcture. Of more He is a vice-president of the National Tertiary Education importance were the affinnative-action initiatives: the Union and was a delegate at the ACTU Congress. council must include three female affirmative-action delegates, three of the six vice-presidents must be wom­ en and 25 per cent of the (34-person) executive must be Economics and the Dreamtime women, this fraction rising to 30 per cent in 1995, 40 A Hypothetical History per cent in 1997 and 50 per cent in 1999. These are wel­ N. G. BUTLIN come initiatives, given the consensus that unionism The economic significance of Aboriginal culture for the needs to make major advances with women and the British colonisers of Australia is rarely addressed and, until young. It is overdue for unrepresentative unions, espe­ now, has not been closely studied by an economic historian. cially those with leaderships dominated by middle-aged This imaginative book shows how an Aboriginal presence men, to follow suit. over millennia shaped the local environment and responded Although Laurie Brereton received a hostile recep­ co it. Professor Budin's presentation of the contrast be­ tion, he made one observation that should not be lost tween one of the world's most ancient economies and one on his audience: 'Let's not kid ourselves, our best insur­ of its youngest is both illuminating and exciting. ance policy is not total reliance on federal Labor gov­ $35.00 PB 0 52 1 43820 9 272 pp. ernments-that can't go on forever.' Unforttmately, it Outback Ghettos seems that for the better part of a decade the ACTU has A History of Aboriginal Institutionalisation and been trapped in total reliance on the Labor govenunent, Survival and in an inability to grasp the pluralist nature of PEGGY BROCK democracy and the place of unions and other interest Until the 1970s, a large proponion of Aboriginal people in groups in that system. By defining the government's Australia had some experience in institutions as pan of state interest and its own as synonymous, the ACTU has assimilation and protection policies. Focusing on three denied its members the benefits of vigorous partisan communities in South Australia, this book attempts to advocacy. Meanwhile, business has shown no such self­ understand the consequences ofthis institutionalisation for lessness, aided as it is by a propensity to equate the na­ Aboriginal people and Australian society in general. tional interest with its own. Studies in Australian History The corporatist approach has not served union $25.00 PB 0 521 44708 9 240 pp. members well. Unless all relevant elements join the 'cor­ poration', the deal remains one-sided, ""ith unions show­ CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS ing restraint and agreeing to painful change, while business stays outside, showing no restraint and display­ 10 Stamford Road, O akleigh, Vic 3166 ing more interest in indecent rises in executive salaries

V OLUME 3 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 15 THE CHURCH

PAMELA A. F OULKES On your way, sister

T,2 N o CeNTURY CHURCH eATI ffiR, Clem­ tion. The two would seem to go hand in hand, as a ful­ ent of Alexandria, stressed the complete filment of the biblical imperative to recognise that both equality of women and men, as human be­ male and female were created in the image and likeness ings and as Christian believers. In his Paid­ of God. ogogus, he wrote that 'one life, one hope, one Through the women's movement, Christian wom­ knpwledge and one love' are available to both en discovered that they, too, were persons, not just hand­ women and men, who also share in the 'one maidens or appendages. The most valuable lessons they church', where grace and salvation are pos­ learned were twofold: the need for education and the sessed in common [Paid. 1.4:1-2]. value of shared experience. The result of the former is An ideal picture of the church. But is it beginning to have a profow1d effect on church life. Wom­ the way in which women experience church en are becoming the best theologically educated group life today? For many, the answer is no. What in the Catholic Church. Theological schools are filled they do experience is a patriarchal, over-cler­ with them . Teaching faculties are no longer able to icalised and legalistic institution in which ignore either the women or their fresh approaches to they are patronised and powerless. With scripture and theology. The recently published Austral­ more than half of its membership female, asian Directory of Women Scholars in Religion and The­ the church uses both the labour and money ology exposes only the tip of the iceberg. Women are of women to preserve a status quo which leading retreats, adult education groups and spiritual re­ gives them no voice in its organisation. As newal seminar for the clergy. To tell them when they the Irish Catholic writer, Anne Thurston, return to their parishes on Sunday that they are banned said recently: 'If the church were a club, I from the pulpit and are unfit to stand beside the altar would hand in my membership.' (Th e Tablet, 1 May and hand the cruets to the priest is to deform the life of Cartoons by 1993) Lip service is paid to the 'dignity' and 'piety' of the Christian community. Graham English womanhood, using as its icon a distorted, asexual im­ Such was not always the case. Somewhere over the (p1 6} and Prue age of the Virgin Mary that stresses the virtues of pas­ centuries we have lost the truth of a Jesus who treated Borthwick (p17) courtesy of sivity and obedience. women as equals whose gifts were to be taken serious­ Women-Church. But Catholic women are on the move. No longer ly; the truth of a group of believers whose baptism into content to support the status quo, they are coming to­ Christ had instituted a new era of human existence in gether to share their experience and to work for change. which there was 'no longer male and female' (Gal.3:28). Women's groups such as the Catholic Women's League It was women's recognition of the value of sharing and The Grail have long been part of Australian Catho­ their experience that led to the establishment of many lic history. But the new groups are demanding more. of the new Catholic women's groups. Increasingly al­ They seek a church community that, in the spirit of ienated by patriarchal structures, together they could Clement's vision, is truly inclusive, supportive and lib­ find support and energy to articulate their new visions erating for all its members, not just the male minority. of the church. One such group is the Melbourne-based Their critics accuse them of having been influenced A New Vision for Woman, which grew out of the 1986 by the secular feminist movement, with feminism be­ centenary conference of the Brigidine Sisters. Its origi­ ing seen as antithetical to Christianity. This argument nal charter affirmed the belief that 'all baptised persons assumes both that it is necessary to make a clear dis­ have equal rights and responsibilities within the church', tinction between the secular and the religious, and that and supported 'styles of leadership that demonstrate the church is somehow immune from secular influence. collaboration, inclusion, flexibility, mutuality, and in­ However, the Christian faith teaches that the divine is terdependence'. incarnated within the world. And the church's history Less strictly Catholic in its membership is Women­ has always been influenced by movements for social Church, which began in Sydney in 1985. Its aim, in the change. Feminism argues for a belief in the value of words of one of the founders, Kate Scholl, was to 'breathe women's experience, together with a recognition of their new life into existing structures by empowering and dignity and their needs. Christianity preaches the good gathering the energies of the women who have been cast news that we are all set free, equal in Christ, to enter aside, ignored or undervalued. With this a new church into a fully human relationship with God and the crea- can be brought to birth, one in which all people's expe-

16 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 1993 rience is honoured, and a person's gifts, not gender, now appears utterly irredeemable. Bombarded with im­ determines how they will participate.' (Women-Church ages of a male God, marginalised by patriarchal power 2, 1988). From the beginning they have endeavoured to structures, sometimes sexually abused by its ministers, include women across the whole spectrum of religious they are no longer able to find either love or life within beliefs. Their rituals fuse both Christian and non-Chris­ it. In agony and despair they walk away. This is not, as tian symbols in celebration of feminine experience and some would have it, because they have been seduced by spirituality. secular values. Their departure is most often marked by The strength of these groups lies in their freedom the depth of their belief in the divine, and their pain at from the official organisation. They are able to provide its distortion by the institution which claims to own it. environments of trust in which Cluistian women can The damage done to the body of Christ by such depar­ explore and communicate their own experience and tures is incalculable. provide support for each other. They are free to follow What then of the future? Imbued with the vision of the Spirit wherever she leads, exploring new forms of Clement of Alexandria, I asked 20-year-old Julia, daugh­ liturgy, of prayer, and of spirituality. If fed back into the ter of a friend, how she felt she fitted in the church. institution, particularly within the parish context, this 'Why do you and mum keep trying to hang on to it?', creative energy is capable of reshaping the Church into she said. 'How long are you going to go on being the a religious community truly inclusive of all the bap­ flower arrangers? I can't cope any more with those priests tised, both women and men. ego-tripping from the pulpit. They say nothing of rele­ In contrast, the Women and the Australian Church vance to my life.' Will the voices of the flower arrangers project (W ATAC) was established to operate from within be heard in the church, as a source of life for all its peo- the institution. Initiated and sponsored by the major superiors of women and men religious and approved by the Australian Episcopal Conference, it sought'a change @ in the understanding of the role of women in their par­ ticipation in the Australian church and in the broader society'. Through research and the establishment of ~cp @ small groups, WAT AC set itself the task within the ·, church of 'consciousness raising of women on Chris­ 0 tian feminist issues'. 0 0 With such official support at its inception, it was hoped by many that WATAC would develop into a strong pressure group for women's voices in the church. Sadly, that has not happened. It continues to provide valuable opportunities for discussion and education in a small group context in many states. However, the bish­ ops, while prepared to sponsor its establishment, appear so far to have been unwilling to pay serious attention to its findings. u NL!KE THEIR ANGLICAN SISTERS, women in the Catholic feminist movement have not, on the whole, been single-issue oriented. Though the question of the ple, or will it, in the name of patriarchal conservatism, admittance of women to the ordained ministry is cer­ continue to bear the loss of its daughters? • tainly on the agenda, it is not the sole item. The vision has been of change across a wider front, calling for a Pamela A. Foulkes is a Catholic biblical scholar. church that is totally inclusive in its language, worship and organisational structures. Women of the New Cov­ A New Vision for Woman enant, however, has focused specifically on the church's Kilbride Centre, 52 Beaconsfield Parade, stance on ordination, declaring its intention to 'promote Albert Park VIC 3206. the leadership role for all in liturgical celebration and in Women-Church collaborative decision mal

VoLUME 3 NuMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 17 T HE W ORLD

DAMIEN SIMONIS

The Nile's other country

H AW1980s drought almost broke the back of ous groups have come and gone and come Kordofan and Darfur, two great western provinces of again, and all have run up against a wall the Sudan, once home to ancient and largely mysteri­ of non-cooperation at one time or anoth­ ous sultanates such as those of the Fur and the Funj. er. One method for making movement But death still stalks that wild and parched land. An aid difficult has been the imposition of per­ worker in the town of Nyala tells the story of a woman mits for travel anywhere in the countty, who walked maybe hundreds of miles with her chil­ traditionally a time-consuming and dren to get to what he hoped would be the safety of uncertain exercise, although they have Nyala. She started off with four children, one a baby. To been much eased for certain parts of the keep her youngest alive, she sold her two eldest. The country now. baby she was clutching in her arms when she arrived Apart from the south, which ha long with her other child was dead. She would not let go. been off limits, the Nuba mountains in There are perhaps two million people on the move the centre of the country have been sealed in the Sudan, about a twelfth of the population at la t off. Wild stories abound, but a few facts are available. count. The government of General Omar al-Bashir, The Nuba, a collection of black tribes whose ancient which came to power in a bloodless coup in July 1989 culture had lived on virtually undisturbed for centuries and has taken the country down the path of Islamic fun­ until Leni Riefenstahl and others started doing docu­ damentalism, doesn't like attention to be drawn to the mentaries on them, appear now to be the victims of a country's problems, but there are so many it is hard not campaign of forced removal and extermination. to notice. 'Genocide is the word that springs to mind,' com­ In late March, the government and the principal mented one Western diplomat drily. The government leader of rebellion that re-eruptecl in the south of the is aid to be arming the traditional Arab tribal enemies country in 1983, John Garang, declared a unilateral of the Nuba and sending them in, backed by the odd ceascfire in preparation for peace talks in Ahuja, Nigeria. helicopter gunship, with the aim of making over the In Khartoum, the papers rejoiced at 'victory and peace'. comparatively goodland to Arabs and eliminating what A dry season offensive in 1992 had seen the government some see as a black enclave too far to the north for the recover about 90 per cent of the territory (according to government' liking. One aiel worker suggested its own claims) in rebel hands, largely because the rebels Khartoum was worried lest any agreement on autono­ were busy slaughtering each other. The day after, re­ my for the south include this prize area-and has ports of more fighting between the various rebel fac­ decided not only to lance tl1is potential boil, tions took the shine off Khartoum's 'victory'. but simply remove it altogether. About the same time, the BBC reported that 1.5 million people in the south of the country were facing N ONE OF Tt-II S is enhancing the country's image starvation. Aid on the odd flight from Khartoum or Ken­ abroad, and most Western countries have pulled out all ya, and from the end of March aboard an occasional barge government economic aid. The US, for instance, has shut down the White Nile, is barely a fraction of what is need­ down its once-extensive USAID projects. But Khartoum ed. In March, the US State Department started making seems to be expert at attracting international known its ideas for creating 'safe havens' for the vic­ opprobrium. Having introduced sharia law in 1983 to tims of fighting and famine. Khartoum, which initially please Saudi Arabia and attract some financial reward, roundly condemned the US presence in Somalia, regard- and so unleashing the civil war in the south, it has since

18 EUREKA STREET • 0 CTO!lER 1993 shifted its allegiance to Iran and Iraq. at around 200 per cent) that is crushing poorer Suda­ A s- Salam camp for the Backing Iraq in the Gulf War has cost the Sudan nese, whose average monthly wage of US$40 is worth 'internally displaced ', dearly. Not only was it the last straw for Saudi Arabia increasingly little. Khartoum hoped to get some free Sudan. and the Gulf states, which expelled 300,000 Sudanese petrol from Iran, but Teheran's friendship has limits. and cut all aid links, but it worsened relations with In April, the 4.5 litres-a-week ration for pri- Photo: Damien Simonis neighbours like Egypt. In the early months of this year, vate vehicles was cut to nothing. Egypt moved troop into the disputed border region of Halaib, partly in response to reported plans by the Sudan w.HE YOU WALK UP TO A STRANG ER in the Sudan to to allow Iran to establish a naval base in Port Sudan. ask for help or directions, you can't just launch into your The Iranians are also supposed to have sent volunteers question after a quick 'excuse me'. Kayf al-haU Tam­ to join in, or to help direct, the fighting in the south. am~ (How are you? Well?) Tamam, al-hamdu lillah Egypt is convinced the fundamentalist Gama'at al­ (Well, God be praised). Kullu tamam~ Kul al-hayat tam­ Islamiyya, which has stepped up its campaign of terror am~ (Is everything well? Is all your life well?). The ex­ in Egypt in the past months, gets support from the Sudan. change of greetings takes a little time and is accompanied Sudan denies this, but is losing friends throughout North by warm smiles. Africa. Algeria recalled its ambassador from Khartoum The outsider can only ask how people living so close in March, and even erstwhile friends such as Libya have to the edge, with so little, find 'all their lives well'. A gone cool towards al-Bashir-Colonel Gaddafi is no lover kind of slow ease seems to reign over most of them, of Islamic fundamentalism. allowing them to cope with difficulties that would leave Despite claims to the contrary, the Sudan's econo­ Westerners desperate. And one wonders how a funda­ my is also suffering, not the least from its isolation. The mentalist state, however much more lax than the Irani­ International Monetary Fund has put a stop to all loans an version, can sit well with Muslims whose experience for the Sudan because it cannot even pay interest, in of Islam owes far more to the mystic traditions of the spite of attempts made to meet some IMF requirements Sufis. on reform. In 1992 it floated the currency, which im­ The answer is that, for most, it doesn't. Support for mediately dived, and started lifting subsidies on essen­ the National Islamic Front that lies behind General al­ tial items, which created an inflationary wave (it stands Bashir's government is thought to be about 25 per cent

V O LUME 3 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 19 in the Muslim north, and is probably falling as econom ­ January 12. The group is indeed taken to a site long con­ ic crisis bites deeper into people's lives. 'When the next sidered ... to be inconsistent with human existence ... ' coup comes,' said one aid worker in Khartoum, 'it will Jennifer Jolmson admitted that the government had be bloody. Too many people have been hurt under this succeeded in its aims. The UN and aid agencies had regime.' Previous coups, contrary to much of the report­ been caught between a rock and a hard place. Had they ing at the time, have been pretty much bloodless. refused to try to bring aid to the displaced in the new He was only surprised that it hadn't happened camps as a sign of disapproval of government policy, already. the main losers would have been the di splaced, o the agencies helped the newly relocated displaced people LEFURTHER souTH you travel the Nile from Egypt to and in so doing gave the government a hand too. Khartoum, the more you notice the presence of non­ The camps have improved a little, according to Arab southerners. They have moved north to escape the Johnson, which is not saying much. The government misery of the war, but many have exchanged it only for considered the As-Salam camp for the 'internally dis­ the squalor of the camps. Central Khartoum is fu ll of placed', west of Omdunnan, good enough to show two outsiders, not just southerners but refugees from fam­ British MPs in the Sudan on a fact-finding mission in ine in the west and a long-standing population of rehl­ the first week of April. The dirt track passes one of the gees from Ethiopia old demolished set- and Eritrea. Few have dements near Souq any work. Some beg, Libya, a market on many try to scratch Anaid worker in the town of Nyala the western edge of out a living as street tells the story of a woman who Omdurman, on the vendors, still others way. A collection of just sit waiting. walked maybe hundreds of miles huts with a more or Khartoum is a less permanent air magnet for the dispos­ with her children to get to what she about them stand in sessed and the desper­ the middle of a dust ate. Jennifer Johnson, hoped would be the safety of Nyala. bowl. The 11,000 of the UN Emergency inhabitants have Unit, stresses the im­ She started off with four children, water now, which possibility of getting they must queue accurate figures on one a baby. To keep her youngest for. There are five the number of dis­ small clinics, three placed people in the alive, she sold her two eldest. of them run by Sudan, but says two the Sudan Council m illion is about right. The baby she clutched in her arms of Church es. A Of those, up to a mil­ tuberculosis treat­ lion have encircled when she arrived with her other ment and preven­ Khartoum. In 1990, tion program is in the government em­ child was dead. She would not let go. place. Occasionally barked on a progra1n trucks transport of relocating dis- m en into Omdur­ placed people and what it calls squatters. Johnson said man, where they can set about looking for work. There in late March that, despite the opposition of the UN is no vegetation, nor even a sign of domestic animals- and aid groups, the government had succeeded in shift­ the most common sight in any true village or ing as many as 700,000 people from the precarious homes town community. they had established on the periphery of the capital to camps far enough away to make getting to Khartoum in SOME OF THE DISPLACED PEOPLE have chosen tO head fur­ the search for work difficult or impossible. The govern­ ther north to the small towns along the Nile. Luke, from ment policy also involves relocating people to 'their ar­ Torit in Equatoria State, which lies to the south, has eas of origin' or to 'agricultural areas'. lived in Shendi, 193km north of Khartoum, for three The relocation was usually accompanied, or pre­ years. His fa mily lives in one of the ca mps around the ceded, by the demolition of displaced settlem ents. A capital. 'The people here are good, I have no problems,' UN summary of the relocations catalogues the incidents. he says of the local Arab population, but asserts that In 1991, 'two days before Christmas Eve, the Squatter blacks are constantly discriminated against. 'They ar­ Settlement Abolishment Committee (sic) demolishes rest us and put us into jail for maybe six months with hundreds of homes in the Kunnuta suburb of Khartoum no reason. Or they simply stop us from doing things. South, killing about 25 people and injuring 100 ... Gov­ Blacks are stopped from studying abroad for instance. ernment announces that relocation of 60,000 displaced The north is afraid of the south, because most of the people in Kusha (Khartoum North) will commence on country's resources are in the south. They want to con-

20 EUREKA STREET • OcTOBER 1993 troland exploit it, but it is our land and we want equal Theos and theory justice.' Military service is compulsory for 18 months to T HE UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO, located in Dunedin, is New three years, and Luke claims that many southerners end­ Zealand's oldest. The Otago Theological Foundation, ed up killing their own brothers. It should be noted, how­ by comparison, is a recently established ecumenical ever, that the southem ers are divided among themselves venture that, in association with the university exten­ and that the human rights record of John Garang, the sion office, organises international symposiums and main rebel leader, is not much better than that of the brings outstanding scholars to New Zealand and Aus­ government. 'We all want to go back,' Luke says, 'but tralia. Two years ago the Moltmanns, Gustavo Gutierrez only when there is peace.' and Janet Martin Soskice were among the contributors Michael, a Dinka boy from Juba, lives further up to a symposium on Christ and Context. This year, in river, in Karima, where he has only lived for 'two moons'. August, the topic of the symposium was Science and He too would like to go back south. He speaks English Theology: Questions at the Interface. Archimedes at­ and Arabic. 'But I don't like it. People in Juba prefer to tended. So did Jack Dodd, emeritus professor of physics speak English (as a second tongue)'. Michael and Luke at the University of Otago, a professed agnostic whose have both lost family in the fighting and famine, and yet interventions added a delightful touch of realism. neither seems to boil with hatred or rancour. Like their Among the invited speakers were: John PoUting­ Muslim Arab neighbours, they seem to have a quiet dig­ horne (formerly professor of mathematical physics at nity that allows them to absorb great blows. Cambridge, an Anglican priest and the only current That the blacks do have problem s is confirmed by member of the Royal Society in holy orders); Nancey Western diplomats, who see some of them in their Murphy (chair of the board of the Centre for Theology embassies requesting political asylum. Among those and Natural Science at Berkeley and co-editor of the who have constantly voiced concem is the Pope, who papers from the recent Vatican Observatory meeting of was allowed to make a brief nine-hour stop in Khart­ scientists); and Owen Gingerich (professor of astrono­ oum as part of his African tour in Febmary-enough my and the history of science at the Harvard­ time for him to boost m orale am ong Christians in the Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, who has an Sudan and for the government to extract mileage from asteroid named in his honour). it in the following months. The country's English­ The focus was chiefly on theology's relationship to language monthly declared in March that the Pontiff physics, although genetic engineering was discussed and had left the Sudan 'convinced that Christians in the some biological and evolutionary issues were aired. Sev­ Sudan enjoy fuller rights than ever witnessed in other eral themes emerged. First, the new physics makes the countries'-nine hours seems a short time to form any argument from design more persuasive, though no more conclusions either way. conclusive. Secondly, the history of the relationships Long gone from the headlines are the 300,000 or so between theology and science shows that the two have refugees from Ethiopia and Eritrea still living in the been partners as much as antagonists, and that when Sudan. The UN hopes to begin repatriating som e this each is ignorant of the other misunderstandings have year, provided Eritrea and Ethiopia peacefully resolve occurred. Thirdly, recent philosophy of science suggests their differences over Eritrea's moves for independence. that science can never explain itself and that a higher­ The long years of war that ended in 1991 m ay have order explanation of reality is .necessary. Further, theo­ doomed many. One quiet, young Ethiopian man, 22, who logical method is not all that different from scientific works in a hotel in the eastern city of Kassala, would method, given the nature of research programs and the like to migrate to the West. His qualifications? Ten years web of beliefs that makes up our world view. Fourthly, as a guerrilla, from the age of 10. 'The l

V OLUME 3 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 21 TRAVEL

K ERRYN GoLDswoRTHY

Being in Scotland

Tartan sister, whom he has not seen for many years, can say M ACALPTNE IS my father's middle name, but tl1is definitively: Now we are in Scotland. Phrases rise. Bor­ is the first time I have ever been to Scotland. I buy him der country. Debatable ground. a fine woollen MacAlpine tartan tie, navy, black and dark green with a white thread running through it and a Staying with Angela fine butter-yellow stripe, the fabric cut on the diagonal. At the station in Stirling, Angela is waiting on the plat­ He hates wearing ties but feels obliged to own a few, for form. I have never seen her with her hair down before. he is offended by their absence from other men's necks She ushers me into a stately, portly Rover like a travel­ at funerals, and these days there are often funerals to ling living room, over whose steering wheel she can bare­ which he feels compelled to go. When I get home he ly see. We drive through the sort of countryside that has loves the tie and says he'll wear it to all of them. visible, unconcemed rabbits in it. (We might even see a deer, says Angela. A deer? On the road?) When we get Fathers to the house in the village, her husband, whom I have On the vast lawn in front of the Gallery of Modern Art never met, is standing with a glass of wine in each hand, in Edinburgh, there is a man playing with a little girl of one for her and one for me. His is nearby, on the sink. garden-gnome aspect: she's about two and she's wear­ ing a red jacket and green rubber boots and a pointy yel­ History low hat. He swings and slings the kid round and round In the 13th century the Earl of Menteith built the primy in a circle and then tosses her up over his head. They of Inchmahome on the Isle of Menteith in the middle of are both whooping and shrieking. There's a lot of it the lake, a hiding-place 300 years afterwards for the in­ about; I see young fathers with children everywhere I fant Queen of Scots. In the remains of one ruined cham­ look, and wonder if this is because they're out of work. ber lie three effigies, two of solitary knights and one of On the train there's a couple who look about 18. the earl and his countess as they lie facing each other, The shine hasn't worn off their wedding rings yet, but warming their stone feet upon a faithful hound. He is they have three little daughters, aged maybe two-and-a­ the taller and his knees are a little bent so that both his half, one-and-a-bit, and a new baby. I can tell they're face and his feet are level with hers. They look into each girls because their mother (frizzy perm, jeans and a del­ other's eyes and her head rests in the curve of his out­ icate, sulky face) snaps at all of them by name. The whole stretched ann; at the back of her neck you can see his family is angelically fair-haired, with broad Border ac­ fingers curling lightly round, their tips caressing the cents. The baby drapes itself with abandon along its fa­ place where her plait begins. He has been doing tl1is for ther's forearm, its nappied, bunny-rugged bottom in the 700 years. palm of his hand. He looks like a sweet-faced high-school Later, in another country, I look at the colours in fullback. He is endlessly patient with everybody. one of the photographs I took at Inchmahome: through London's not like this. You see plenty of children, a grey stone archway and down to the shore, out across but you hardly ever see them with men. the Lake of Menteith to the Lowland hills round Stirling.

What line? Lavender's blue, dilly dilly After Newcastle, more or less, you can see the coast Lavender's green from the train. I don't know where Scotland starts, and When I am King, dilly dilly this is unsettling for a woman whose heart rises every You shall be Queen time she drives across the border out of Victoria into South Australia and, this is true, the sun comes out. The difference There is a little bump. But on the train not even the The man behind the counter in the cafe, who finds me a Scots-to-his-boots man sitting across from me, who has table and brings me an extremely Scottish scone, ex­ told me at length and in detail how he feels about his plains to me as he gives me change that everyone in

22 EUREKA STREET • OcTOBER 1993 Scotland will accept either sterling or Scottish pounds tion, a wrong tea-towel, a silly move in a board game), but I won't be able to spend the Scottish pounds in one will snap at another 'You stchoopit geddle'-the England. I opine that this is ridiculous and he just laughs long 'o' is pronotmced as in 'whoops'; 'geddle' is the word and says that's the English for you, but we are in the that Muriel Spark spells 'gairl' in The Prime of Miss fean country of Macbeth, and of Flodden and Culloden and Brodie, but I like mine better-and the other two will Solway Moss, and whatever it is at the back of his smile fall about shrieking. reminds me of something I read once about the Scots We love Scottish accents. We listen to Billy Con­ playing football with English heads, all through the nolly in a trance. streets of Edinburgh. Finding Jessie Malting things In a mined church in the middle of the cemetery in the In the coffee queue in an Edinburgh department store, village of Aberfoyle near Stirling, Angela's son Dan finds the woman behind me is talking to her friend. 'Geoffrey the grave of Great-Aunt Jessie, my grandmother's sis­ said I should use the special flour,' she says, 'so I got ter, my grandfather's first fiancee, romantically dead at some o' that, an' I thocht, well, I'll get enough for two 21 of influenza and pneumonia at the bitter end of win­ loaves an' I'll see how the fairst one tairns oot.' I tum ter. My great-grandparents are there too. around, pretending to be looking at something else. She's The ruined church gets a mention in a local guide­ about 17. Later in the High Street I hear a dear old man book for its 'rather macabre mort-safes' but I don't know in front of me, also talking to a friend, say 'My wife's what these are, and only find out later that a mort-safe vena interested in lacemaking, she makes lace.' i 'a heavy grating used to guard a corpse against resur­ In a shop near the Castle at the top of the High rectionists'. Resurrectionists sound to me like some treet, a shop which like so many others is also a work­ particularly literal-minded breakaway Scottish sect, but shop, a man is making lamps of opaque glass. The pan­ I look them up too, and discover-it isn't so surprising, els and pieces are milky, or a matt candy-pink, outlined nearby Edinburgh was leading the world in medical re­ in thick black curves to form the disquieting tendril and search-that they are diggers-up of bodies for dissection. petal shapes and lines of Art Nouveau. He also makes None of us knows any of this the day we come to heavy silver jewellery, and tourist-attracting novelty Aberfoyle, or perhaps we might associate the church things of staghom and heather that are, against over­ more directly with the graves right at the beginning, whelming odds, quite beautiful. and look inside the ruins first of all. But after a method­ In the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art ical search through all of the wrong places, I have pretty there's a big sculpture on the floor that I don't under­ much given up-I only find out later that my parents stand. It's made of thousands of little bits of trash: a were here on the same mission 12 years ago and they bent red plastic spoon, a broken yellow piece of Lego, couldn't find her either-when Angela appears around an orange bottle cap, a shard of blue crockery. Without a corner, calling 'Dan's found her!' taking my eyes off it I step back three paces, as in a fairy Dan, reading the gravestones nearest the church, tale, and it turns into an eight-by-ten-foot rainbow. has caught a passing glimpse of more inside the ruined In the kiltmaker's shop above the silversmith's, I walls. So he has disregarded the signs saying DANGER­ abandon my kilt-buying mission for my Adelaide friend KEEP OUT, negotiated the barriers of rubble and fallen Stuart, a Gilmore on his mother's side, and get a cata­ gratings, climbed over the collapsing picket-and-wire logue and an order fonn instead. There is, I have discov­ fences, bush-bashed the waist-high nettles and head-high ered, no Gilmore tartan: they're a sub-branch or 'sept' shrubbery, climbed in what used to be a window, and of Clan Morrison. Clan Morrison, it seems, has four, found the MacAlpine headstone almost at once. 'I perhaps five, or possibly even six different tartans: Dress thought it'd be a hame,' he says, 'for you to come all or Hunting? Ancient or Modern? Red or Green? Are any this way and not find her.' of these the same as any of the others? And how will Stuart feel about mortgaging his house? Besides, the man Being in Scotland I speak to is a little shocked that Stuart would settle for Everything is made of wool and everyone is funny. a ready-made kilt, or tmst someone else to buy it. I stand Nobody whinges. The bookshops are better than the there breathing in the smell of wool, while sharp-look­ one in London. Two weeks before Midsummer Night, ing blokes with brogues and bifocals sling their tape­ it doesn't get completely dark till quarter to eleven. The measures round their necks and dodge purposefully colours are lavender blue, lavender green, silver and slate round the piles of tartan cloth. On the counter there's a and granite and black rock. Close and wynd are the pair of dressmaking scissors they must have paid a ran­ words for the steep dark lanes and alleys of Edinburgh som for, with lines of light sliding down the blades. Old Town: words naming the curving lines, the hidden things. How to make my sisters laugh My two sisters and I can always make each other laugh by invoking our grandmother MacAlpine without warn­ ing. Given suitable provocation (an unconsidered ques- Kerryn Goldsworthy is a Melbourne writer and teacher.

V o LUME 3 NuMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 23 T RAVEL

CHRIS M c G rLLION

A ""'"" HO", " mEuch forITC> th"DSose "' w ho eventually have to decipher them as for those who feel On the trail of compelled to scrawl them in the first place. After saying the same thing fiv e times to fiv e different people I stopped HoChiMinh for the day. There were coffee stains on the first two ca rds and ciga rette ash all over the las t one. The face of Ho Freed, the prisoner can build the country. Chi Minh stared up at me from grimy Misfortunes are te ts of a man's loyalty. bank notes on the table and I thought To worry about the common good is a great merit no doubt. about how much had changed since Let the prison door open and the real dragon will fly out. that night in 1920 when Ho, then a - Ho Chi Minh, Prison Diaries, 1942- 1943. young nationalist agitator, slipped out of Saigon aboard a freighter bound for France. run down by a new Honda Accord in re-cementing the pavement around The city that now bears Ho Chi aigon than to be gunned down by a showrooms along otherwise neglect­ Minh's name, officially if not collo­ terrorist. The war is a distant echo, eel and congested idewalks. quially, has changed con iderably. like the sound of a storm trailing off The Vietnamese are an especially Turn-of-the-century sepia photo­ out to sea. The war still claims its pl ayful people, and along the street graphs show the familiar bustle of an victims-men and women who have one is constantly dodging men play­ Oriental port, the emascu­ lost legs to the land mines I i tteri ng the ingcards or draughts, children playing Billboards advertise lated faces of the opium co untryside; children who have lost a form of shuttlecock but using their smokers, the bewildered hands and faces to curiosity and boo­ feet as bats, improvised soccer match­ other consumer look of children wondering by- trapped metal canisters. But these es and test flights of new kites. N car at the photographer's inten­ people are despatched to the shadow the entrance to my hotel some chil­ desirables, other ti ons, the shanties breeding world in which life's hideou and gro­ dren were playing marbles. One little rats and plague and misery. tesque creatures roam about, softly, girl saw the foreigner approaching, lifestyles, other ways Black-and-white shots silently, and almost transpa rentl y. broke off from her ga me, and, mbbing of the 1930s and 1940s show I left the Continental Hotel and her stomach to indi ca te hunger, thmst of doing things, and a centre of colonial com ­ wa lked down what was once the Rue out a tiny, beautiful hand in the way of mcrceandadministration- Catinat to my more modest lodgings. a beggar. Getting onl y a smile in re­ invariably the fir t for the French, then Again change can be seen everywhere turn she went back to her play as if briefl y for the Imperial Japa­ and it is happening more rapidly and nothing has been ventured, los t or advertiser's idea nese, and after for the French more profoundly as Vietnam opens to gained. In Saigon these cl ays there is again. Men in white suits the outside world. more room for opportunity, more rca­ of the satisfied and pith helmets can be seen The rising middle-class clutter son to dream, and less ca use for disap­ dedicating monuments to Sa igon's streets wi th motorbi kcs, con­ poin tmcn t or de pair. customer is obscure achievements, or, stantly using their sq ueaky little horns The day was very hot and very muc h m ore diligently, li kc charms to ward off swarms of less humid. The clouds were building up a Westerner checking cargo. Women fortunate push-bi ke riders. Western­ fo r the aft ernoon shower and it would with parasols lean and wave style jeans arc replacing the elegant ao be raining before my head hit the or a distinctly from balconies. Here and dai dress of the women, and Ameri­ pillow. In the lobby of the hotel I there the police break up ca n-style baseball caps the old ca ne pas ed French and American tourists, Westernised Asian. some demonstration or an- mollusc hats of the paddy fields. Stores Japanese and Australian businessmen, other- a hint, hindsight re­ arc crammed with new television sets and overseas Vietnamese who have Saigon has en1braced veals, of much worse to and cassette recorders. Billboards ad­ come back with mixed motives. One come. vertise other consumer desirables, oth­ ca n always tell the new arri v

24 EUREKA STREET • 0 T O BER 1993 row or throw them out with yester­ Dai 'Vatican' at Tay Ninh, near the exchange of secrets in some plot day's news from home. The weather Vietnamese-Cambodian border north­ against the go vernment. In a one-par­ in Vietnam makes you listless. Trav­ west of Saigon. Now at Tay Ninh the ty state, how much elling does as well. Cao Dai are disarmed and the clergy of suspicion does a man The train journey from Saigon to 'bishops', 'priests', and 'nuns' number attract simply be­ Hue was sufficiently Hanoi takes about 50 hours, depend­ only a few hundred. When they take cause he chooses to ing on the temperament of the old their places for daily prayers in their whisper in the places divided in 1968 to allow Chinese rolling stock and the state of ga udy stucco cathedral- the blue, yel­ he regards as holy and the tracks. And there are nearly al­ low and white robes indicating rank­ mysterious? the Vietcong to hold it ways unexpected delays. Six hours the Cao Dai hierarchy look less like an Back on the train into the countryside the train comes army deployed for battle than like the and across the old De­ for 25 days during the to a sudden, stumbling stop in the pieces laid out on a Chinese checker­ Militarised Zone that night. There is feverish activity and board. once separated North Tet Offensive. It is still concern for a while-a peasant, I am On the eastern coastal flats where and South Vietnam, told, has been killed on the track- but the train snakes north, the differences further local differ­ sufficiently divided- soon the passengers are no longer are more subtle but no less real. The ences adding to the amused by merely another death and city of Hue was sufficiently divided in patchwork of Viet­ among pro-communists, they settle back into the solitude of 1968 to allow the Vietcong to hold it nam are easily detect­ waiting. Much of what we call travel­ for25 days during the Tet Offensive. It able. H ere the old anti-communists of ling is actually waiting: waiting to is still sufficiently divided-among green canvas helm ets depart, waiting to arrive, waiting for a pro-communists, anti -communists of of the Vietminh na­ various stripes, and body to be scraped off the rails, pieced various stripes, and Buddhists-to tionalist army-not back together and left in the charge of attract particular attention from the baseball caps-are Buddhists-to attract some hapless local fann er. security police. the fashion, and the It is said that one can never really Hue is the only place in Vietnam everyday dress of the particular attention know a country from its cities alone where I was pointedl y reminded of the peasants is the old because cities are functional rather war, and that seemed to say some­ familiar black pyjama from the security police. than cultural creations and are too thing about this city and its inhabit­ suit. prone to outside influences. But if that ants as well. On the southern approach Poverty is more Hue is the only place in is true, then what one finds outside of to the city, the train passed a ceme­ apparent in the north. Vietnam's cities is not one but several tery; 'American', said a passenger from It is not unusual for Vietnam where I was countries inhabited by many different Hue, by which he meant victims of whole villages in iso­ peoples. This is not surprising. Until US troops, since no Americans lie lated regions to be pointedly reminded relatively recently, Vietnam was three buried in Vietnam now except in the malnourished, their states-Tonkin, Annam, Cochin. Its imagination of the MIA/POW lobby. inhabitants illiterate, of the war. history is one of intervention and As he spoke he made an action as their children suffer- meddling by outsiders- Chinese, though he were firing a machine gun ing from any number of debilitating French, Japanese, Russians, An1eri­ levelled at my stomach. diseases. And travelling on the coastal cans- all of whom have left different At Hue I visited Notre Dame Ca­ plains by train at night, one is less marks on different people at different thedral, one of the very few Catholic likely to see the steely blue flicker of times. Today ethnic (a boriginal) mi­ churches in Vietnam with Vietnam­ a television set ina peasant's hut off in norities account for nearly a fifth of ese motifs incorporated into its archi­ the rice fields. the population. And among theetlmic­ tecture. (Sadly, the same principle has The struggle to survive also seems Vietnamese themselves are distinct been neglected in developing the lit­ more poignant. Waifs, dressed in straw communities based on Buddhism, urgy, choosing strains of theological hats and ragged clothes as though Catholicism and unfathomable syn­ reflection, and training religious in they'd just come off the set of Hucl

V OLUME 3 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 25 corridors off which ran rooms that victory was a nationalist one that left looked like prison cells. The whole new mandarins atop an essentially building had the ambience of a place unaltered Confucian social structure. in which one might commit a major The irony continues 300 m etres crime- mostlikelysuicide. I was wok­ away at Ho Chi Mjnh's tomb. Ho was en in the m orning by rats, and little a genuinely popular leader, and one dried pellets of gecko shit fell from the reason for his popularity was that he rafters onto the butter at breakfast in lived simply and frugally, like his peo­ a dining room that had all the charm ple. As the lea der of North Vi etnam, of an old railway cafeteria. he lived, worked, and received guests I quickly m oved into a guest house in a two-room ed wooden house beside at half the price but m ore than double the carp pond in the grounds of the old the value. This was a family-run, not French governor-general's palace. In a government, concern-and it keeping with his style, it was Ho's showed. There were 'fresh' plastic wish that after his death his remains flowers in m y room each day, and, should be cremated and buried with­ after I made an obscure inquiry about out fuss. But under the influence of theCa tholic cathedral, a picture of the the Soviets, the N orth Vietnamese Virgin and Child was found, dusted off authorities had him embalmed and and placed against my bed lamp. Such Ho now lies in state like a dried-up is the traditional hospitality of the salami within an ugly grey mausole­ Vietnamese that 200 years of French um m ade of concrete and m arble. colonialism, 50 years of communism Looking down on the mummified and nearly a decade of US bombing body of H o and the soldiers frozen to raids have not destroyed it. attention around his pyre, I was re­ Hanoi is a shabbier but also a minded of a night I had spent in Saigon quainter city than Saigon. It is less in the home of a retired language teach­ congested with traffic, more welcom­ er. My h ost kept a picture of 'Uncle ing in its tree-lined streets, and more Ho' above the washtubs out the back elegant in its ubiquitous French colo­ of his house 'just in case'. But in his mal architecture. There are other en­ lounge room these days he preferred dearing touches: each day at noon an to be surrounded by pictures of the air raid siren wails to mark the occa­ Sacred Heart, a copy of Da Vinci's The sion, and US Air Force parachutes Last Supper, and the most popular now grace many a courtyard as shad­ objects of devotion among Vietnam­ I mag ing against the sun. In the south, old ese Catholics, Our Lady of Lourdes GI helmets can be seen being used by and Our Lady of Fatima. Perhaps be­ kerbside mechanics to collect the oil cause of this devotion, the old m an drained from m otorbikes; in the poor­ was convinced that the days of com­ er north, the wreckage of B-52s has munism were numbered and I asked 0 N 16 joe>, the Suaic, Tim"' been turned into thermos fla sks and whether h e thought the end would be of Singapore reprinted an article from hair combs that are still in use. a peaceful one. 'When the sun rises, the Japanese monthly Chua Koran, by Hanoi must also be one of the the fog disappears', he told me. 'And the former diplomat Kazuo Ogura. In world's few cities where statues of then watch the colours: red fades peace­ its best minatory fa shion, the paper Lenin remain erect and intact. There fully to orange; orange fades peaceful­ captioned this piece 'Re-examining is one overlooking Dien Bien Phu ly to yellow; yellow fades peacefully spirit of Asia and spreading its univer­ Street-every city in Vietnam has its to white.' sal values'. Confused or disingenu­ Dien Bien Phu Street, celebrating the Massive change is occurring in ous, Ogura's argument rehearses Ed­ great military victory over the Vietnam and, given the country's old ward Said's notion of the Western French-and there is a cruel irony and new divisions, there is an ever­ con truction of Orien talism , before­ about this statue. Lenin stands, tight present danger associated with it. iJ1 a very Japanese move- adopting it hand on lapel, looking approvingly Whether the logic of political transi­ to suit other purposes. not towards a worker's paradise but tion there will ultimately conform to 'Asia', Ogura wrote, 'is escaping across the street to the headquarters of the prorillses of the Virgin or to the from the hollow concept created by Vietnam's military command. A gen­ chemistry of cheap dyes, no one can the West ... Asia itself is finally uine socialist revolution has not oc­ say. But for the sake of the Vietnam­ developing slowly into something that curred in Vietnam. N owhere is there ese, and for our sake, I hope the old isreal'. One of his key measures of this the effort devoted to literacy, nutri­ teacher is right. remarkably unhistorical process is that tion, health or social equality that one Japanese, Koreans,' as well as the Viet­ finds in Cuba or found in Nicaragua Chris McGillion writes for The Syd-• namese and Chinese', are now 'active under the Sandirustas. Ho Chi Minh's ney Morning Herald. internationally in artistic fields such

26 EUREKA STREET • O cTOBER 1993 Tokyo correspondent for The Guard­ ian, Lisa Martineau observes that many young Japanese expect to fight a second war with America. Popular fiction has seconded these apprehen­ sions. In The Two Ten Conspiracy (Fontana) in 1986, Leon Le Grand prophesied the invasion of Australia by the Japanese. In this addled admo­ nition to his Australian countrym en to work harder, native survivors have been granted citizenship and have never been more prosperous. Economic hegemony over Alneri­ ca-sough t by foul and fair means-is the subject of Peter Tasker's Silent Thunder (Orion ) and, notoriously, of Rising Sun (Random Century), the book with which Michael Crichton followed Jurassic Park. Sean Connery will soon bring to the big screen the warnings of Crichton's hero about Ja­ pan, no doubt occasioning even more inten se Japa nese protests tha n those that greeted the novel.

R ECOLLECriON OF THE Great War ought to remind us of the danger that bellicose prophecies fulfil them ­ selves-that wars happen in large part because people want them . In the three decades before 1914, the coming Eu­ ropean conflict was imagined in scores ining Japan of novels and plays; it was one of the ways in which the world was psycho­ logically conditioned for war. In Australia, there are yet pockets of rancour against the Japanese among as Western music and architecture'. tration of Asian economies. What those who suffered in consequence of The gauge of Asian reality, by this looked like Japanese generosity-large the Second World War. These were reckoning, is emulation of the West. aid programs, specific instances of co­ revived, in order to be interred, in the As a former diplomat, Ogura lodges a operation, as with Mala ysia over the memorial service at the end of July fo r covert and clearer subtext within his development of the Proton Saga car­ the victims of the Sandakan dea th article. By implication, Japan is truly often turned into reinforcem ents, by march. The time for such revivals of Asian, and a brother to its neighbours­ back door mean s, of Japanese econom ­ anger and pain is passing. The Japa­ not an overbearing, rapacious enemy. ic control. nese (as far as they are likely to be The need for such assurances is There are signs of Japanese sensi­ concerned) will benefit from the cir­ the subject of Friedemann Bartu's tivity about the way they are per­ cwnstance thatforgetfulness is strong­ study of 'Nippon's Economic Empire ceived in Asia, signs such as Ogura's er than forgiveness in Australian cul­ in Asia', The Ugly Japanese (Long­ article or the recent apology for the ture. Indeed, what Australians know Takenoko Zuku­ man ). Bartu highlights 'a centuries old u se of thousands of Korea n and of Japan will soon be out of the control 'bamboo shoot children'. fundamental Japanese problem: How Chinese women for the 'comfort' of of most of them and will become the A new youth culture to approach the people of Asia?' and Japanese soldiers in World War II. province of a specialist few. flourishing among wonders whether 'Japan is really an At the same time its people seem, Not long ago, Australian tourists country teenagers who Asian orphan in search of an adequate resignedly or scornfully, to expect came to Japan in considerable num­ flee to big cities such as place am ong its neighbours'. American envy and hostil- bers. At Nara they fed the deer; on fine Osaka and Tokyo. Much of the book, deftl y assem­ ity. days glimpsed Mt Fuji fro m the bullet Emmanuel Santos bl ed from newspaper cuttings, charts train as guards stood to attention. In composed this the mthless, eventually resented, if 1N Caught in a Mirror (Macmillan ), Tokyo they marvelled at the pace of photo essay in not effectively resisted Japanese pene- her excellent memoir of three years as life, withoutdesiringitforthem selves. Harajulm, Tokyo.

VOLUME 3 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 27 If their travel agents were aesthetical­ to Japan is more than usually exposed ly attuned, they saw the cherry blos­ to the risks of solecisms of behaviour som. My parents carne to Japan in that and absurdities of judgm ent. What to remote time, the 1970s, my mother make of the strange world of signs at taking her schoolgirl impressions of which Roland Barthes marvelled? How the Tokyo earthquake of 1923. Many to reckon with the relentless Japanese decades before, her teacher had ex­ determination not only to remake plained to the class that the conse­ urban landscapes, but to eradicate most quent fire was so devastating beca use of the evidence of the old ? How to 'all their houses are made of paper'. cope with the psychological pressure Nowadays, with an exchange rate of a cost of living that is palpably that is a source of shock and shame, higher than in any other city on earth ? few Australians can afford a holiday in And by what means can one combat a country which, in any case, is un­ the subtly encouraged impression that ready to receive them . As a result, our efforts by the West to contest opinions of Japan will increasingly be Japanese power are obso­ second-hand; or will revive old mysti­ lete and una vallmg? fications; or will be formed from the impressions of the Japanese in AN Australia: tour groups carefully herd­ I,,, HOUR-AND-A-HALF bus trip ed by Japanese guides through our from Narita to Tokyo or, notoriously, cities, past selected natural wonders. $300 by cab. There were plenty of ri ot Albeit unwittingly, the Japanese will police with batons and shields in evi­ control Australian's views of them. It dence- this was a few days before the is not an arrangement that it is in their G-7 summit- but none of the protest­ interests to disturb. ers who struggled so long against the The sh ort-term, first-time visitor building of the airport. On the right a race track, to the left the familiar towers of Disneyland: a vast conurba­ tion unfolded, all in the process of becoming larger and busier still. Near the road an unfinished structure, no doubt with a an arcane industrial func­ tion, loomed like a giant ski jump. Prudently, few tall buildings rose in the soupy air of early summer. Resi­ dents of Osaka are said to be impa­ tiently waiting their city's tum to be national capital once the next big earth­ quake demolishes Tokyo. In search of rare traces of what the first settlement here had been like, we were taken to the new Edo Tokyo Museum, which is next door to the sumo stadium. Inside, tricks of scale were everywhere. A replica of the Ni­ honbashi (Japanese bridge) led to the diorama of old Edo, whose first feature was that bridge in miniature. A kabu­ ki show, appropriately performed by puppet-sized robots, was backed by the full-size frontage of a kabuki the­ atre. A towering but scaled-down model of a 12-storey towerwasflan ked by a photograph of its remains after US bombing, and by real bricks from the ruins. This was the past sardonically packaged. The point of the enterprise seemed to be to highlight the clever­ ness of modem museum craft, rather than to conjure poignant rem em ­ brance. Much more Japanese energy is devoted to social control in the present than to seeking lessons from the past. We'd travelled first to Kyoto by bullet train, hearing along the way an apolo­ gy that the French TGV is faster, and a promise that it would not be for long. Just before we boarded the train, a manacled man was led along the plat­ form of Tokyo Station. His head was shaven, his unifom1 khaki drab, his shoulders pulled forward by the bag containing his possessions. Three de­ tectives accompanied him for a fast ride to trial, or to gaol. His public humilia tion was less a warning to onlookers, perhaps, than a means of reassurance to them of how few and solitary are prisoners in Japan. On the bus to Nara we passed pachinko parlours, luridly coloured, unbearably noisy, run by the yakuza, and packed with people concentrating with the intensity of Zen Buddhists on the fall of tiny steel balls. We were travelling into humid, wooded coun­ try to see the largest statue of Buddha inside the largest wooden building in the world. The tour guide informed us that pachinko was not the only generator of social problems in Japan. He com­ plained of being an eldest son, hence responsible for his parents. On the capsules', which can be rented by the detached itself from the ground, be­ plight of Japanese husbands retired hour for those who are shy or incom ­ come a cloud, and then, gently, van­ from employm ent, he related how petent at singing in public. Suspicion ished. wives spoke of them mockingly as of the need and uses for privacy out­ On street level, at 10 each morn­ 'wet leaves', 'big garbage' as they sat weighs concern for the tonnents that ing, we were treated to the sight of disconsolately around, deprived of the some individuals suffer through kara­ three young women in lem on uni­ male society of work, of the solace of oke. Back in Tokyo a plethora of signs forms and white gloves emerging to absence from home. (Japanese men lay ready for interpretation. Election chant a welcome as their department who do housework are known as ' Aus­ posters sprouted. Politicians toured store opened. Here were Gilbert and tralian husbands'.) We were being giv­ the streets in vans with blaring loud­ Sullivan's 'Three Little Maids from en a carefully scripted instance of Jap­ speakers. Thirty-six thousand police School', but was this mockery of West­ aneseopenne s, but were told nothing had been mustered to guard the G-7 ern images of the Japan ese, or a valida­ of the kinds of resistance that some summiteers, especially perhaps those tion of then.1' What w a~ indubitably Japanese women must mount against Americans who jogged by the moat of signified was the extent of redundant the institutionalised lack of regard for the Imperial Palace (whose 128 acres employm ent in Japan, the assumed them. of land are rumoured to be worth social benefits willingly paid for in The tour driver also reminded us all the real estate in Cana- higher prices. of one of the successful instances of da). Conversely the costs to the va unt­ 'Th e coats they borrowed Japanese cultural imperialism by foist­ ed racial homogeneity of Japan of the from fam es Dean': ing a karaoke concert on to his passen­ EARLY ONE MORN ING, the m ost increasing, if rarely remarked use of bamboo-shoot fa shions gers. First he coerced his female assist­ famous natural wonder of Japan made foreign, illegal labour, are presumably are recognisable ant into singing, sang himself, then a cameo appearance. Draped in banners endured as a curb on prices. The square borrowings from the persuaded an Indonesian man into a of unmelted snow, MtFuji was visible near Tokyo's Harajuku Station used Wes t, but the final look is anything but American rendition of what sounded like 'By the lOOkm in the distance. In late after­ to crowd on Sundays with Iranians, of old Sulu Sea'. As the concert closed, noon it was visible again. Cut off at whom 4000 are believed to be work­ Pie. It 's all their own work. we passed a pile of karaoke 'practice the base by haze, it seemed to have ingwithout proper visas. The area was

VOLUME 3 N UMB ER 8 • EUREKA STREET 29 closed on 28 April because of damage The two TV sports of summer in His response was to parody sumo by to 2200 azaleas. The Iranians now Japan are baseball and sumo. Import­ becoming the biggest wrestler ever, at congregate a few blocks away. ed American players are well-estab­ 270kg. A larger community of illegal Fili­ lished in the former: one secured the The very big ones can't reach their pino workers can be found in Yokoha­ game for the Swallows against the own backsides to wipe them . Appren­ ma, as describedinRayVentura's droll Giants with a home nm off the last tices have the honour. In 1988 young reminiscence, Un derground in Japan pitch of the day, and spectators rose in Chad Rowan came from Hawaii to be (Jonathan Cape). Exploited by their drenching rain to wave thousands of a sumo. As Akebono, he was installed Japanese employers, yet convinced of aqua umbrellas and plastic baseball as the 64th yokozuna (after organisers how much richer they can become bats. The road to fame in sumo has reacted to adverse publicity over Kon­ than at home, the Filipinos live a been much harder for fo reigners. The ishiki) and does earnest ads for the fugitive existence that is unnecessary. giantHawaiianKonishiki was not pro­ sumo way. Turning its competitors if Their whereabouts are well known to moted to the highest rank of yolwzu­ not into eunuchs, then asexual mon­ the police, who have no regular direc­ na, purportedly because he did not strosities, sumo suggests the Japanese tive to act against them. comprehend the mysteries of the sport. ambivalence about their bodies. Everywhere in T o kyo, hoarding and TV advertise­ ments, glossy magazines and cinema billboards, as well as bronze statues with pretensions to art, seem to proclaim a pref­ erence fo r European body types. Does Japanese culture suffer from a Caliban complex, a desire to overthrow, by becoming like the m aster who brought magic in 'black ships' rr from over the seas?

.1. HE CONVER SE OF Japanese chauvinism is a visceral distmst of the figure that this people .. cuts in the world. Having for­ sworn military conquest, the Japanese exert enormous eco­ nomic power, but the task of escaping peacefully from their islands to establish a confident cultural presence in the world, an ease with their appearances as much as with their financial and management clout, is one of terrible difficulty. The orchestras of the West may fill with Japanese string players, but the prospect of be­ coming a people in the image of the West (so strongly desired and resented) will, and should, remain a chimera.

Peter Pierce teaches in the Cen­ tre fo r Australian Studies at Monash University.

Tal< enoko chorus line: somewhere between West Side Story, a Coca-Cola ad and a martial all .

30 EUREKA STREET • O c TOBER 1993 OBITUARY

N "R '>N, WHO D1960s sions of faith, which seek certainty by denying the com­ in the life of the Society and the Catholic Church, he plexity of reality. For Noel even those aspects of the helped prepare for a difficult period of transition. world which did not fit his preconceptions, were of God In the late 1950s, a claim that Catholic school and made a claim on us. He did not believe it proper to students were good at passing examinations, but were defend the truth of Catholicism by attacking those out­ not well prepared for university study, was widely pub­ side or inside the church who differed from him. Faith licised. Noel examined it in detail. He gained his doc­ had to wrestle with the awkwardness of the given, and torate in education by showing the claim to be largely hence with modernity in all its forms. unfounded. But this became incidental to a characteris­ But Noel's life spoke also of emerging patterns of tically ambitious inquiry about the religious effects of coherence. Although in his set lectures the effort to or­ Catholic schooling. The task, which involved a long der complexity often proved too hard, on those occa­ questionnaire and hours of dedicated work to process it sions when he had to speak without preparation or notes by the Knights of the Southern Cross and others, proved a simple image would place an aspect of contemporary too ambitious and complex for the available technolo­ Australia within the currents of the western intellectu­ gy. But again he raised central questions about the rela­ al tradition. The illumination which he brought was tionship of faith and culture. almost awe-inspiring. At these times he spoke as a poet, Afterwards Noel pursued postdoctoral studies at drawing together intuitively his faith and his learning. Harvard under Talcott Parsons, and returned to teach Finally, although Noel was almost Plotinian in his sociology. In his courses he introduced his students to passion for theory, his engagement with the tangible the classic texts of social philosophy that lay behind world was given consistency by his compassion for peo­ the formation of the modern mind. The Melbourne ple who were broken spiritually or intellectually. His College of Divinity had now been formed, and Noel was distaste for a public order and a public philosophy the inaugural principal of Jesuit Theological College in spawned by accountants came partly out of a scorn for those early days of ecumenical cooperation in theologi­ computer-designed ideas bought off the hook, but more cal teaching. out of his pastoral friendship for those who had been Subsequently, disturbed by the summary judgment crushed by that order. He is mourned as a passionate and discrimination shown to unpopular religious groups, man and not simply as a mind. he involved himself in issues concerned with religious In this fragmentation and these budding forms of freedom in Australia. This led him to give evidence for coherence, Noel was a Jesuit. Call these principles which the Scientologists. He also contributed substantially to integrated his life the search for God in all things, the a Victorian Government inquiry on gambling. service of the church, the struggle to co111111end faith, That, in summary, was Noel Ryan's life. Its pro­ and the option for the poor, and you have the shorthand gression from country to city, from seminary teaching phrases which summarise Jesuit mission, old and new. to research on the adequacy of Catholic schooling, from But in Noel, these catch phrases took an attractively classical texts to the key texts of modernity, and from and idiosyncratically human form. • church to public issues, reflected the directions of change in the Catholic Church in Australia .It has been a move- -Andrew Hamilton SJ

VoLUME 3 NuMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 31 Here be dragons

I DmDED rr wAS TIME to go looking lor the mgel on his pilgrims on up the mount, away from the hotel. I press island. Not Ariel, and certainly not Caliban , but Michael, on. the dragon-slaying one. He has watched over his island The horror begins halfway up the road to the abbey off the coast of Normandy for at least as long as there church at the summit. It is the first spectacle son et has been a church dedicated to him there, a thousand lumiere, one of two on the mount conducted by the years or more. Musee Grevin. In each of them you can hear, 'delivered The angel and the island have always had visitors. by seven of France's greatest actors', a potted history of Once they came as pilgrims, trusting to the angel's guid­ 'this special place that preserves better than any other ance to pass safely through the quicksands dividing Mont pilgrimage site a sense of the holly (sic)'. It is, as side­ St Michel from the mainland. Some still do come as show audiences used to assure each other, all done with pilgrims, but most are tourists, and all now cross to the wires. Mont over an elevated, black-topped causeway. The The angel and his abbey are actually only bit players causeway builders have not quite succeeded in beating in the sound-and-light story, which is largely about one the tides that used to keep the angel secure on his rock. Tiphaine de Raguenel. Tiphaine was the wife of Bertrand Instead of a daily inundation, now the road is only du Guesclin, who was Constable of France during the swamped by tides for part of the year, in March or April. early phase of the Hundred Years War, when the Eng­ I want to see the Mont as the early pilgrims saw it, lish won all the battles. Bertrand, a kind of French Rob­ rising from the morning mist. So I will not take a pack­ in Hood, kept up French morale between all those lost age tour, or a local bus or taxi from the railway station battles by winning a skirmish or six. And, to protect his at Pontorson. I shall walk. It is not a long walk, about wife from the marauding English, he moved her out of nine or 10 kilometres. the family chateau and into the Abbey of Mont St It is not a pretty walk, either. Not because the flat Michel. Norman countryside offers little relief to the eye, but Tiphaine stayed on the Mont for the rest of her life, because the advertising hoardings that hug the road of­ a life that is now the subject of every conceivable item fer too much confusion to the eye. One in particular of Mont St Michel merchandise, from tea-towels toT­ seems ominous. It entreats passersby to visit som ething shirts. But the highpoint of Tiphainemania is a visit to called the Mont St Michel Crocodile Fann. Dalliance her house, where surviving members of the Du Cues­ with dragons in the realm of the dragonslayer? I sup­ din family invite you to inspect various supposed press antipodean anger at the thought of having trav­ medieval objects, including three chastity belts. elled across the world only to end up on the road to the Bertrand du Guesclin was a man of his time, but Daintree again. he was also a good man for any time. I do not believe But there is nothing in Port Douglas or Cooktown that he would have forced, or even asked, his wife to to compare with the sight that now rises before me. wear such a harness. Nor do I believe that the three Suspended in the air, its base mist-wrapped as I had metal-and-leather belts on display are of medieval prov­ hoped, is the angel's Mount in Peril of the Sea. It looks enance. One even looks as though it was stitched by like a kind of Disneyland for adults, and I shall be disap­ machine. Perhaps the latter-day Du Guesc­ pointed to leam that, with a little help from the French lins are just kinky. tourist authorities, the image has overtaken the reality. Mont St Michel largely is a kind of Disneyland for adults. L BEST THING about a visit chez Tiphaine is that the Angels have some stake in wonders, even of the back door of her house opens onto the front door of the tacky, glitzy kind. And no doubt any concentration of abbey. The writ of the Musee Grevin does not run there, medieval pilgrims, in Mont St Michel or Compostella but sound-and-light silliness unforttmately does. One or Rome or anywhere, attracted more than a few touts of the most sublimely beautiful early Gothic structures and charlatans in its wake. So perhaps Michael does not in Europe, the three-storey merveille ('the wonder') ad­ mind. But I am no angel. joining the abbey church, has been tumed into a kind of Inside the gates at the foot of the mount, adorning obstacle course of contemporary glass and wooden sculp­ the fac;:ade of Mere Poulard's hotel, I am greeted by a tures, which are illuminated at night to the poster announcing that after dinner there will be a ka­ accompaniment of taped music by Kodaly and other raol

32 EUREKA STREET • O CTOBER 1993 The top level of the m erveille is the old monastic you know?' 'Oh, I dunno. I suppose it's the telluric forces cloister, open on one side to give a glorious view of the making me prophesy.' bay and its shifting sands. In the centre of the cloister I suggest that it is lunch time, and she concurs, has been placed, as part of the sound-and-light show, a hooking one arm around mum to prevent her swaying large glass book sculpture, apparently to explain to the too close to the wall of the forecourt and its 20-metre uninitiated what the monks used to do as they peran1- drop to the rocks below. We find a cafe in the village, bulated round their cloister. This, even more than the and mum and daughter grimace as I order a choucroute crocodile farm, makes m e think I am back in Australia. (sausages, potatoes and sauerkraut) with beer to wash it The Big Book is a product of the same sort of imagina­ down. They choose a salad and bottled water, and pro­ tion as that which has given the world the Big Banana, ceed to explain how eating pure foods is necessary to the Big Pineapple and the Big Merino. cultivate sensitivity to telluric forces. Everything, it Mont St Michel was secularised at the time of the seems, is connected: Navajo spirituality back home in Revolution, but a notice on the door of the abbey church Arizona, telluric forces, Mont St Michel on its node, announces that Mass is celebrated each day at noon. I swilling Evian water and eating only vegies, and the ask the guide in whose company one must visit the spiritual renewal that will come from a restoration of abbey whether the monks have been allowed to return. matriarchy. In the time it takes to eat my choucroute, I They are not monks, he says, but a small community get the entire gospel according to the witchy-poo school with a special character. The guide frowns, trying to of feminism. find English words to explain this special char- Inevitably, I ask a silly question. 'How does acter, and then smiles triumphantly: 'They Michael fit into all of this? Isn't he, well, rath­ are a bisexual community.' er masculine for your tastes?' The daughter I attend Mass, and afterwards talk to one looks around to see if she is being overheard, of the 'bisexuals'. She is one of a community and moves closer. 'He wasn't always a Chris­ of seven-four men living in the abbey and tian archangel, you know. There is an older re­ three women in a separate house in the vil­ ligion.' 'I know/ I start, to say, 'The cult of lage. One of the m en is a priest, but his ordi­ angels was originally Hebraic, with maybe a nation gives him no precedence outside the few Persian connections. But I don't see how liturgy. The woman is unperturbed by the fact that eases the masculine tone.' Mum and that the Mont has fallen into the hands of the Philis­ daughter stiffen in the presence of the infidel. I have got tines. 'People come here from many places/ she tells the wrong older religion in mind. me. 'If they just enjoy themselves, that is good. If they To keep the peace, I change tack. 'Have you told also find time to pray, that is better.' Mile Du Guesclin about the node and the tellmic forces?' Not everyone who prays on the Mont does so as 'Mlle Du Guesclin?' 'She's the young woman at the bisexual and her confreres might wish. As I walk Tiphaine's house, where they show chastity belts to out into the forecourt of the church, I behold two wom­ tourists.' Warming to the theme, I add: 'And perhaps en swaying in some pattern that is evident to them but Mlle Du Guesclin could tell you about her famous not to the small crowd of tourists gathered around them. ancestor Tiphaine, who may have been not an ordinary Flashbulbs pop in appreciation of the dance, if such it human being at all, but a local manifestation of the Great is, and a blue-rinsed American matron in front of me Mother.' whispers to her husband, 'Should we be here? It looks I excuse myself and escape into the abbey garden. like some special Roman Catholic ceremony or some­ Later, as I head down the hill to catch the bus for thing.' Pontorson, I see mum and daughter again, haranguing Or something. As the flashbulb brigade disperses, I Mile Du Guesclin at the entrance to chez Tiphaine. Mlle linger to ask the dancers the meaning of the dance. They Du Guesclin looks as though she could cheerfully too are American, a mother and daughter from Arizona. throttle the pair of them with the nearest available The daughter does most of the talking, while mum con­ chastity belt, and I feel a pang of guilt at her discomfort. tinues to sway, and to cackle out of context occasional­ I also notice for the first time that Mlle Du Guesclin, a ly. The daughter eyes me gravely. 'Did you know that tall, willowy blonde, does in fact closely resemble 14th we are standing on one of the great nodes at which tel­ century descriptions of Tiphaine de Raguenel. luric forces intersect?' 'Er, no, I didn't know that. I didn't Perhaps everything on Mont St Michel really is even know there were any telluric forces.' She tilts her connected. But as to the cause and effect thereof, I'd put head and extends her arms. 'I can feel the power in me my money on the angel anyday rather than on nodes now. When we leave here, we will go to St Michael's and mystical vegies. I wonder what they're chomping Mount in Cornwall. All of the great Michael churches at the crocodile farm these days? • are aligned on the same pattern of telluric forces.' 'Let me guess/ I reply. 'After Cornwall you'll be Ray Cassin is the production editor of Eureka Street. going on to Stonehenge? And then maybe up to Scot­ He also met the witchy-poo feminists dancing round land, to chomp on a few mystical vegies at Findhorn?' the labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral, but that is another The daughter's eyebrows edge up a fraction. 'How did story.

VOLUME 3 NuMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 33 F ICTION

GERARD W INDSOR

The business trip

B .,NAD

34 EUREKA STREET • O cTOBER 1993 Eliot twisted his head from side to side as though avoiding the tongue of an affectionate dog. His face was impassive. Peter paid no attention. He flicked his forefinger at the book. I opened it. On the front free endpaper were two signatures. On top, written with a thick nib, in purple ink, was the name Joyce Foot. The J was minimal, a simple curve with no cross top. Below it, in black ink, and with a long bold upward stroke to the head of the M, and a parallel, diagonal line beneath the sumame, was a second signature, Michael Foot. 'How curious,' I said. 'A novelty item altogether. What do the two signatures mean? Co- ownership?' 'Oh yes,' said Peter flatly, bouncing a cigarette from his packet. 'Or a proprietorial war?' Peter shmgged, not interested in this line of gloss. Eliot used his chin to nudge the rat back down his shirt. 'Is that a scary story?' he asked suddenly. 'Revolting, by the look of it,' I said. 'Thoroughly objectionable.' The rat clawed its way back to Eliot's armpit. His body tightened and he gave a slight grimace. 'Will you read it to me?' 'Would your Mum and Dad approve?' Peter tilted his head back as he drew hard on his cigarette, and again shmgged. 'Why,' I asked,' would Michael Foot read an unknown Australian's tale of gothic mayhem in a New South Wales seminary?' 'Why would he buy it,' said Peter. 'Why would he own it,' I said, playing the game. The book was clearly unread, the spine still at sharp right angles to both its boards. 'A decent yarn is it?' Peter asked. 'I've never read it. A scarce book after all.' 'Now's your chance. Sounds like your sort of book.' 'Ah, you don't downgrade such a copy.' The rat leaped from Eliot's shoulder to the floor. Its body froze. Its head jerked through precise angles, only the endpoints of its movements visible. Eliot, still impassive, rolled over and watched it. The rat took in all the possibilities, but its feet stayed locked. Eliot stretched out his hand and plucked it from the floor. He rolled and opened his fist and the rat teetered up along his arm and nosed its way in beneath his sleeve.

I WENT ouT WALKJNC in the countryside of south Hertfordshire. I ambled down the rutted road from Rose Hall Farm and swung over the stile into the horse field and across the pasture until I entered a wood. There I met an elderly woman with an old border collie. She liked to talk. She pointed to the dog. 'I'm teaching him Welsh,' she said. I looked at him nosing around. 'Clever boy,' I said. He barked twice, perfunctorily. 'He's coming on,' I said. 'Will he be singing next?' Then she told me about her son and her daughters and how they had all made a career, and about the terrible problems that all the immigrants had brought to Britain. 'I'll only be here a week,' I said. I passed through the village of Sarratt and down a long slope of lush grass ready for the cutter, crossed over Plough Lane in the hollow, and ascended the bright yellow slope of Hillmeads Farm where the tight round bales lay scattered. I stopped to watch the farmer swathing them in black plastic. He manoeuvred his tractor into position and lifted the bale onto his trailer, leaped from his seat and clamped the end of the plastic to the great golden spool. He bounced himself back into his cabin, and the bale spun in its saddle. The plastic wound itself on prodigally, edging up millimetres at each revolution. I stood on the faint green track across the flattened yellow field and watched the plastic race from its confines, and then I noticed that something stubborn in the bale had shied against the black covering and stalled the climb halfway. The sheeting unwound fmitlessly. The dark waist of the bale thickened. The top remained ex­ posed. I saw the saddle jerk, and the half-dressed bale roll from the trailer. The farmer drove on and repositioned and loaded, and the other bales spun unprotestingly into their sleek jackets. I walked on elated to Chipperfield Common.

V OLUME 3 NUMllER 8 • EUREKA STREET 35 I WAS BEING DRIVEN ALONG MARYLEBONE RoAD by a friend. He pulled in to use a phone. He wanted to ring in to account-or, more accurately, misaccount-for his absence from home. When he returned to the car he dropped into my lap a shower of business cards. 'Any use to you ?' he asked. The cards were all for the same enterprise and gave the same telephone number, but they flashed with a variety of pinks and oranges and scarlets. Their sales strategy was simplified and direct. 'The best nipples in London,' the motto read. 'Best?' I said. 'What are best nipples? Someone's not afraid of absolutes of quality.' My friend paused with his hand on the ignition. 'Give me a look again,' he said. I passed across a pink card. His finger stabbed at fine print. ' "Firm 42D" it claims.' 'God,' I said, 'I thought that was the name of the company.' He accelerated out at a sharp angle and shot away. I hung on to one of the cards.

B EFORE I WENT ACRoss, Peter, the dealer, warned me about Phelans. 'They've got the game tied up in the south of Ireland,' he said. 'It isn't patriotic to deal with Christies or Sothebys.' He'd had a bad experience. They'd listed two letters of Dickens. Mounted, complete with photos of the writer and cartes de visite. One was to Ellen Ternan, enclosing a ticket for the opera and telling her he'd be along later. The estimates were £300-£400. Cheap. Both lots ca me in to Peter, each at £400. Still cheap. He wondered. He did some research. The Ellen Ternan had come up at Christies in the 19 70s. He was able to learn that the buyer had been Eton College. The letter had reappeared in a Sothebys catalogue in 1989. It had been withdrawn just prior to sale. He rang Eton. Yes, they still had their letter. Peter cancelled his cheque to Phe­ lans, and wrote that he was returning the items forthwith. 'You get sussed out at Sothebys,' he said. 'Lie low for a couple of years, then you slip them over to Ireland, and bung them into Phelans.' 'I know,' I said, 'they operate out of a village. No one ever gets there. Everything's sight unseen.' I went across to Ireland. 'Well yes,' said a friend there and laughed. 'We had a bit to do socially with the father. Met som e very nice people through him. There was a Swiss couple they employed for a few years. They were furniture restorers.' 'What! ' I exclaimed. 'Well, it could be quite kosher,' she said, and gave a high playful laugh. 'Let's say you've got to have the legless Pleyel grand ready for auction. If there's a billiard table lying around unwanted you saw off the legs ...' Her eyes widened and then she shook her hea d to strangle the chortle. 'If you deal with them you know about it. Just stay on the watch. If they're listing paintings, say, they'll give the artist as N. McGuinness, but it's not Norah, or E. Hone, but it's not Evie. You're just careful.' Phelans just happened to have an item of Australian interest in their ca talogue. It was described as a sketchbook/notebook belonging to the wife of Governor Richard Bourke, Eliza­ beth. She had died at Parramatta after only five months in the colon y. Not that Phelans said that. But the provenance was plausible. The last Bourke descendant was a bachelor, and I knew the estate was being broken up. 'Botanical notes,' said Phelans' catalogue, 'and sketches of Australian and Irish scenes.' The estimate was £300-£400. I phoned through a bid for £600. I got it for £400. The item reached me, professionally wrapped. There was no ownership signature, no clue to age. Five pages were fi lled with transcription from an unidentified botanical primer. An ancient leaf fell out. There were nine faint pencil sketches on duodecimo pages. Several appeared abandoned, or, at best, works in progress. Those completed, and recognisably of a scene, all shared one feature. Ruins. Former Norman or Tudor castles, now ruins.

0 N THE QANTAS FLI GHT OVER I had been seated beside a man whose reading was a volume of miscellaneous essays of Lytton Strachey. A food technologist, he had flown over that m orning from New Zealand. But he was an Irishman and he was on his way to Ireland.

36 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBE R 1993 'Holiday or business?' I asked him. 'Actually/ he said quietly, 'I'm flying over for my mother's funeral.' I offered my sympathy, and asked was the death expected, and he said she had been ailing for some time. I asked if his father were still alive and he said he was. I wondered, to myself, if he would prefer conversation or silence. I said that I too was on my way to Ireland, eventually. I explained my connection and my interest and we talked of things Irish. He himself had a Gaelic name, and was the son of a Wexford farmer and a fanner himself, but he had been sent across to England to school, to the monks at Ampleforth. I found this curious. I knew there was an old tradition; Oliver St John Gogarty had been sent over to Stonyhurst, but that was how many generations ago. What sort of Irish Catholic finds England and its clergy more congenial than Ireland and its own? He said his mother's people had been to Clongowes, but his father had been at Ampleforth and was happy there. It was a good education, but not an Irish one. I asked if he felt gaps because of it. I asked what Irish writing he read. Banville, Aidan Higgins, William Trevor, he said. 'McGahem?' I asked. 'Not yet. Should I?' 'Yes, you 1nust.' 'Why? ' I tailored my recommendation. The last act of the great Irish rural fictions: the land, and the father, spumed; the comfortless melancholy of the parting; the black beauty of the words; McGahem's mother lost to him when he was very young, and this absence haunting his work. My neighbour gave thoughtful attentive nods. I enjoyed the conversation with him. During the Bangkok stopover I strode briskly off on my own along the length of the unen­ cumbered tenninal. When we took off again my neighbour was not beside me. About half an hour into the sector the attendant came and started to gather his belongings. I managed to catch her with the query in my eye. 'We've moved the gentleman forward/ she said. 'He's been having a very trying time of it.'

Gerard Windsor is a fiction writer.

CCI make FORTHCOMING FROM OXFORD UNIVERS/1Y PRESS ¥J protecting your LIVING DECENTLY home and family Material Well-being in Australia Peter Travers and Sue Richardson as easy as Living Decently descnbes material well-being in Australia at the end of the 1980s, and reaches conclusions that are surprisingly positive. Unpersuaded by the 'gloom calling and doom' accounts of life in Australia that abound, the authors critically examined the measures used in these 008 011 028 accounts. They have designed better measures of material well-being and poverty, which paint a more accurate and Call 008 011 028 now and find out rather more encouraging picture of how Australians were more about CCI House and living at the end of the 1980s. Contents and Childrens' Accident Insurance. You'll find This rosy picture, however, is under threat in the 1990s, the service personal and attentive, and the authors make recommendations on how the rates competitive and making a Australians might live as decently in the future as they claim easy right from the start. have in the past. Living Decently is a challenging and For honest protection for your home timely addition to the literature on material well-being, and family call the Church's own poverty, welfare and social economics in Australia. insurance company - CCI Insurances. 0 19 553360 7 224 pages paperback $1 9.95 CCI Insurances *DUE NOVEMBER 1993* Cru hollc Church /ruuu1n~ Umucd A.C.N. 000 005 210 324 St. Kilda Road, Melbourne, 3004 O.U.P., GPO Box 2784Y, Melbourne, Victoria 3001

V OLUME 3 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 37 PROFILE

PETER COLLINS

Law and peace

the first of its kind in the world, yet it the society into something not worth is one of Australia's best kept secrets. preserving or saving.' ln 1969, while studying theology After Oxford, Tate returned to lec­ at Oxford, Michael Tate was struck by ture in law at the University of Tas­ the power and simplicity of the gos­ mania. There he wi m essed the lottery pel: 'As I read the words of Jesus, "Be scene that caused him to change his perfect as your heavenly father is per­ life radically, and consequently all our fect," I realised that God's care for lives. 'I still recall the blood draining humanity doesn't depend on whether from the face of one of my students a person is good or evil. when his m arbl e was drawn. At that '!did not even write 'With a 1950s Christian Brothers moment I felt compelled to go into a press release. J ius£ schooling I was well-versed in cate­ politics.' wanted the J 971, 20-nM-ow Mmhow chism but had not touched the scrip­ Michael Tate joined the Labor Par­ Governor-General's IN Burfitt hoped against hope that he tures at all. So delving into the gospels ty and in 1977 was elected a senator signawre': Michael would lose the lottery. Transfixed, he lead to a very profound conversion. I for Tasmania. In 1983, when Labor Tate, architect of sat listening to his won government, the conscientious­ radio as a man drew he introduced a pri­ obiecUon provisions marbles out of a bar­ vate member's bill of the Defence rel. If his birthda te The amended Defence Legislation Act (1992) makes provision for the into the Senate. The Legislation Act, wereengravedon one conscription of men and women who are 18 years or over. It limits bill was referred to a 1992. of the marbles he conscription to times of war when Australia is directly threatened. bipartisan commit­ Phot o: courtesy of woul d be conscript­ Conscription can occur only through an Act of Parliament, not simply by tee th at T ate The Age. ed into the Austral­ the decision of the Prime Minister or Cabinet. The Act allows for chaired. During its ian army and could conscientious objection to particular wars as well as wars generally. It hearings, the pro­ be sent to fi ght in defines conscientious belief as one that involves a fundamental convic­ posed legislation at­ Vi etnam. 'I believed tion of what is right or wrong, and is of long standing and is so compelling tracted criticism we shouldn't even be in character that the person is bound to espouse it. from the Australian in Vietnam . It wasn't Defence Force and like when dad went the Retumed Serv­ to N ew Guinea. Australia was under realised that Jesus' ca ll to perfection ices League. They argued that allow­ attack then.' meant relating to other people in the ing for conscientious objection would For a conscientious objector like way the creator does. And that is why open the floodga t es for many Matthew Burfitt, to be told to fi ght in we shouldn't engage in violence and dubious exemptions and leave a war he did not believe was right was warfare, even against an unjust Aus tra li a ina deq uately to be forced to commit murder. But aggressor, even against an evil per­ defended. because Burfitt was not a pacifist, he son.' could not apply for exemption from What Tate calls his m etanoia, or T HAT VIEW WAS unanimously re­ military service. In March 1992 Federal change of hea rt, in embracing paci­ jected by the Senate commi ttec, which Parliament passed legislation that gave fism became the spiritual core of a argued that the fear was groundless Australians a choice that Matthew profound rethinking of his convictions because 'even if the number of consci­ Burfitt never had. Although m en and about society. entious objectors was of "floodga tes" women can be conscripted in Austral­ 'I cam e to realise m ore deeply that proportion, this phenom enon would ia, the amended Defence Legislation the hallmark of a just society was its be a highly significant moral barome­ Act recognises for the first time that rega rd for a person's conscience/ Tate ter of community regard for the gov­ selective conscientious objection­ says. 'For a society to submerge the ernment's action in committing a that is, conscientious opposition to a individual personality and the claims nation's forces into a war.' particular war- is valid. The Act is of conscience would be to transform The committee's view that Aus-

38 EUREKA STREET • O cTOBER 1993 tralia would still be properly defended could not defend themselves. In both Off to parley if it allowed for selective conscien­ wars, Curtin acted in a manner con­ tious objection is one that finds sub­ sistent with his political conscien­ with the Pope stantial support in history. Australia tious beliefs about war. has always fulfilled the necessary num­ Australians did not accept the S CANDAL HAS SURROUNDED some of Australia's past bers for defence by relying on volun­ hom e defence theory in the Vietnam diplomatic appointments to the Vatican. By contrast, tary forces-even in World War I, when War. In 1972, they elected the Whit­ Michael Tate's appointment as Australia's new ambas­ Australia suffered the highest casualty lam government, and its first act was sador to the Holy See has been greeted with welcome rate of any combatant nation and had to abolish conscription. Even ending acceptance. the only all-volunteer army engaged conscription was not enough for In 1974, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, hoping to in the war. Michael Tate. He wanted to ensure­ break a political deadlock, offered the position to Queens­ In 1985 a delighted Tate reported conscription or not- that individuals land DLP Senator Vince Gair. The move backfired badly. back to his colleagues that the bipar­ had the legal right to say 'no' to their Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen replaced Gair in tisan senate committee unanimously involvement in war, according to their Canberra with the ALP renegade Patrick Field, whose approved the legislation . The Labor individual conscience. vote for the coalition ensured a double dissolution of the caucus, afraid of the possibility of a While Tate was still pushing for Parliament. The so-called 'Gair affair' was not the end of 'RSL fear campaign ', refused to sup­ the bill to be introduced to Parlia­ unholy rows. In 1990, fanner WA Premier Brian Burke port the proposed legislation. m ent, he was faced with further com ­ was called back from the post to appear at the W A Inc For the next seven years, Tate plexity. The outbrea k of the Gulf War Royal Commission, to answer allegations about improp­ worked to persuade the Labor Party to in 199 1 ra ised the question of whether er relations between his government and large business accept what he claimed was a basic Australia should be involved in wars interests. principle of human dignity. Last year that had nothing to do with immedi­ Michael Tate's appointment, therefore, is not only his doggedness finally paid off. The ate threats to Australian territory. crisis-free but appropriate. He is the first Catholic Act was passed, nonetheless quietly. It also forced Tate to examine his layman since the Reformation to be awarded a degree in 'I did not even write a press release,' own pacifism : 'We were confronted theology by Oxford University, and he has had prior says Tate. 'I just wanted the Gover­ by aggression against a small neigh­ dealings with the Vatican. In September 1991, while nor-Ge neral's signature.' bour, with horrific crim es being com ­ visiting Italy as Ministerfor Justice, Tate had an audience In including the term political as a mitted against innocent civilians. We with Pope John Paul. Prompted by Tate, they discussed legitimate grounds for conscientious knew through Amnesty International two fam ous centenaries, that of the encyclical of Leo XIII, objection, the Act recognises in an and defence papers presented to Cab­ Rerum Novarum, and of that of the ALP. unprecedented way the legitimacy of inet how Saddam Hussein was treat­ As a former politician, Tate is well placed to enhance the political conscientious objector. It ing the Kuwaitis and the Kurds.' the relationship between church and state in his new does so while preserving a clear dis­ Tate voted in Cabinet to support role. 'My appointment m eans that there is someone tinction between them and political Australia's military involvem ent. 'I aware of the pluralist, tolerant and ecumenical aspects of dissenters. felt I was in a warfare situation be­ Australian society, who is versed in the practical applica­ T his novel recognition of the legit­ tween good and evil. I'm still not con­ tion of social justice principles which appear in church imacy of political conscientious ob­ vinced I m ade the right decision . I feel documents but have to find their place in the structures jectors gives legal sanction to those I betrayed the gospel. ' of society, and someone who understands the ways the who evaluate the rightness of a war by Tate's own judgm ent m ay be un­ church operates in society-' the just war theory. The Act also vin­ necessarily harsh . It is a Christian Tate is already diplomatically silent on particular dicates the actions of Australia's World option to use due force to defend those Vatican policies, but sees extensive value in the post for War II Prim e Minister, John Curtin . who are suffering at the hands of op­ all Australians. 'While people might think it m eans As a young m an, Curtin was jailed in pression and evil. That is a conscien­ going down to the Easter ceremonies, the role is diplo­ 1916 fo r failing to register himself as tious choice which Tate has directly matic, not just ceremonial,' he says. 'The Holy See is the eligible for conscription . Curtin re­ defended and enshrined in the Act. A centre of a worldwide organisation which will be able to garded the First World War as an un­ selective conscientious objector is one inform Australia of its concerns in som e countries where just war because, in his view, it was prepared to fight for what they believe we may not have accreditation ou rselves.' And, Tate fought by large imperial powers to is good, and against what is evil. says, given the Vatican's more extensive network of gain more prestige and territory. What is clear, even amid his own embassies, it may be able to provide Australia with Paradoxically, when he becam e troubled re-exam ination of his con­ information and influence, especially on issues of human Prim e Minister Curtin introduced scientious attitude to war, is the ex­ rights and in those areas requiring humanitarian aiel . conscription, though with limits on traordinary value of what T ate has Tate is also the new Australian ambassador to The w h ere con scripts w ere t o be achieved. 'I believe the embodiment Hague, a role that will allow him to further Australia's deployed- not further than a 200-mile in legislation of the principles I argued trade and economic interests in Europe and to report radius from Australia's shores. Curtin for in the Senate inquiry represents first-hand on the development of the European commu­ regarded World War II as a just war the crown ing point of m y parliamen­ nity in the post-Cold War era. And with the International because it was anti-imperialist. He tary career and justifies m y going into Court of Justice situated in The Hague, Tate hope to believed that Australian military in­ politics at all.' • become involved in issues of intem a tional humanitarian volvem ent was necessary in order to law, particularly if, as expected, a war crimes tribunal is protect the integrity of nations and Peter Collins SJ writes regularly fo r set up at the end of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. the fr eedom and liberty of people who The Herald Sun. -Peter Collins SJ •

V OLUME 3 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 39 THE NATION

RosAMUND DALZ IELL

The shaming of Manning Clarlz

A cAnPeter Ryan's as 'guilt cultures'. But I suggest that math- is impressive. attack on Manning Clark as an Aus­ Australian culture is deeply shame­ Ryan describes his early friend­ tralian icon (Quadrant, September bound and that it is no mere coinci­ ship with Manning Clark as based on 1993). This controversy has shown dence that two of our icons, Manning 'roistering' together. Alcohol is a leit­ with remarkable clarity the extent to Clark and Patrick White, were pro­ motif in the Quadrant article. Ryan which Australians cherish concepts foundly shame-bound in their life and criticises Manning Clark for not hold­ of honour and shame. Ryan has been their work. The trouble with shame is ing his liquor well, resulting in public condemned for betraying the trust of that another person's shame can trig­ drunkenness, but is bored by Clark's friendship and hospitality, for playing ger our own. Shamed ourselves, we subsequent abstinence. Alcoholism is the man as well as the ball, for speak­ proceed to shame others, unless a pervasive element in Australian cul­ ing ill of the recently dead. checked by unusual self-awareness. ture, and shame is one of its dominant It is unusual, to say the least, for a side effects. Clark's autobiography, man to repudiate a major part of his The Puzzles of Childhood, certainly life's work, something that was, in his bears the shaming traces of a family in own words, 'a daily preoccupation of which alcohol was a problem, with its my life'. For in shaming Manning frequent allusions to his father's en­ Clark, Peter Ryan has shamed him­ joym ent of 'cold tea' (nea t whisky) self. Indeed, the Quadrant article is a and his mother' fear and disapproval confession of shame: 'Of the many of drinking, which he relates to alco­ things in life upon which I must now holism in previous generations of her look back with shame, the chiefest is family. Clark condemns the prudes, that of having been the publisher of the 'straiteners', the wowsers, but Manning Clark's A History of A ust­ cherishes dmnks. ralia.' Recent studies of children in fam­ The controversy is more than a ilies where alcohol or another addic­ storm in an academic teacup. Profes­ tion is a problem show recurrent fam­ sor Paul Bourke, writing in The Can­ ily patterns and roles. One of the roles berra Times (28 August 1993), sus­ taken up by a child to overcome shame pects that it raises larger issues about In the words of The Book of Common in an 'addictive' family is that of the Australian culture: 'Australian cul­ Prayer, the phrases of which permeate clown. Manning Clark in The Quest ture all too often lapses into an awful Manning Clark's writings, we need to for Grace frequently describes him­ ferocity as its players seem driven by be preserved fro m our secret faults. self as a buffoon: 'One cannot be a a will too inflict personal damage on Shame is the most crippling of clown in the cla sroom forever, or a others.' emotions. Guilt tells us that we have jester in the drawing- rooms of Yarra­ Bourke cannot explain why this done wrong. Shame tells us that we side.' (p143) should be so, but alludes to our public are wrong, that our entire being is As Clark matured, he wished to be fascination with 'visceral display' and defective, that there is no health in us. taken seriously, and to make a contri­ in particular to Patrick White's 'truly The autobiographical writings of bution worthy of his gifts, but the old awful' autobiography in which he took Manning Clark show a painfully role was hard to set aside. He became fi erce and unseenu y revenge on former shamed individual, emerging from aware of the complexity of his person­ friends (Flaws in the Glass) . Autobi­ what contemporary psychologists ality: 'There were many voices inside ographies can be dangerous weapons, would call a dysfunctional family, one me. There was a clown who put on a and Bourke does not mention that that appears to have been incapable of show for the misfits of Melbourne Manning Clark himself did more than taking the gifted and sensitive child suburbia; there was a young man driv­ simply search out the tragic flaws in seriously. en by ambition to rise out of the soci­ historical figures but also took pot That Manning Clark achieved ety of the ge nteel poor; there was a shots at friends and associates in The what he did academically, battled his pilgrim for the means of grace; there Quest fo r Grace. shame and his drinking problem, and was a young man who had already From our Western perspective we retained the unswerving loyalty of his decided the measures, the social sci­ often talk about Asian, Melanesian or large family-a loyalty that has been entists and the spiritual bullies were

40 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 1993 disastrously wrong, but who did not tally wounded in his spirit at an earlier thing to think about. Ryan records an know what was right, or what he had point in his 'privileged' education, by incident in which he gazes into the to offer. ' (p 145) his experience at an English boarding face of a dying Japanese soldier who is Anotherresponsetoshameisgran­ school. being pressed for information by Aust­ diosity. Clark had an intense belief in In his autobiography Clark also ralian intelligence officers. Ryan his own destiny, assuming the role presents a self wounded early by fam­ writes: 'As !looked into his fa ce, wast­ and the ponderous oratory of a secular ily troubles that he appears never to ed with fever and suffering, I suddenly prophet. He entitled a chapter of The have fully understood. His father's felt more akin to him than to the Quest for Grace not 'My Discovery of drinking and his mother's response to Australians who would not let him Australia' But 'The Discovery of Aus­ it may have been the cause. But pri­ die in peace.' (p25 1) tralia'. He frequently wrote of looking vate troubles can lead to prophetic Ryan , himself afflicted with fever on others with 'the eye of pity', but insights, and an understanding of pos- and soon to be sent home, concludes was not comfortable when others ible sources of shame in the life of that war i futile and that all his war looked upon him in the same way. Manning Clark does not diminish his efforts have been a waste of time. Grandiosity provokes antagonism achievement. Ryan's allusion to the 'lush and suffo­ among those who see it as evidence of Clark confesses his sense of shame cating jungle', where Clark the tall a colossal ego rather than the masking often in his writings, but nowhere poppy grew, may bean indication that of a fragile self. Grandiosity impinges more clearly than in The Quest for the psychological roots of his action on our own vulnerability. Grace, when he describes his mock­ are to be found in his war experience One of the mles of the addictive ery of boys in his class at Geelong in New Guinea. Rya n alludes to the family is 'Don't tell'. Clark was trou­ Grammar. He depicts himself as suc­ fact that Manning Clark could not bled throughout his life by his moth­ cumbing to the schoolteacher's temp­ enlist for health reasons, and wrongly er's refrain, 'There are things in my tation to play to the gallery, getting alleges that Clark did not inquire into life, Mann dear, I hope you will never the students to laugh at one of their the war experience of others. What know anything about.' own number, a strategy that distracts the significance of this might be to When he writes of his mother's them from directing their mockery at Rya n, one can only surn1ise. death, he says: 'No one must know their teacher. He appears to select as The Book of Ecclesiastes was writ­ how great my grief, how great my his victims boys who are like himself, ten by an oldman who felt that all was loss.' Clark frequently wrote that the 'Tom Potts, who talked like a buffoon vanity. But Peter Ryan, at the end of expression of feelings was dangerous. ... from an engaging uncertainty about his war memoir, has this experience This is undoubtedly tme for a child in how to behave'; Robin, a shy boy who in his early 20s: 'I realised that war a dysfunctional family, but is prob­ blushed easily: 'I called him "Rhubarb accomplishes nothing but the degra­ lematic in adult life. Unresolved grief Robin". To my shame, I enjoyed the dation of all engaged in it. I knew that and the repression of powerful feel­ laughter of the class, not foreseeing Les Howlett's death had been in vain, ing can create a sense of being in a then the suffering he endured for this that the loneliness of spirit and suffer­ great void, 'the kingdom of quirk of nature until drink desensi­ ing of body I had forced myself to nothingness'. tised him and painted a pennanen t red endure had been to no end, and that on his face.' (The Quest for Grace, the selfless devotion of my native com ­ M ANNJNG CLARK WAS SHAMED in pp124-1 25) panions had been, in the final analy­ his family of origin by many of the Clark then describes the shame he sis, useless (p25 1).' The sam e man, things that have shamed Australians. feels about his shaming of others, tak­ many years later, looks back on a He saw himself as a representative ing on excessive responsibility for the major achievement of his life as a Australian and said: 'I happened to impact of his thoughtless behaviour profound mistake and is ashamed. Yet have had the good fortune to experi­ on 'Rhubarb' Robin's future: 'The news he fails to recognise his own face in ence in childhood all the conflicts of his death added another item to my that of the suffering, shame- bound, which were central to the human ex­ long list of self-lacerations in those courageous Manning Clark, and will perienceinAustralia.' (Boyer Lectures, nights when dreams project onto the not let his old friend die in peace. 1976) private picture screen of my mind the Australia is an addictive, sham e­ The extreme Calvinism of Sydney shameful moments of the past.' (p 124- bound society and it is fitting that one Anglicanism alienated him from all 125) of our national icons should bear the fonns of Protestantism. Like so many People have been hurt by Clark's evidence of shame. This does not di­ Australian intellectuals of his and ear­ sharp disparagement of their friends, minish his achievement: A country lier generations, he challenged but their relatives, perhaps themselves. It whose heroes are without flaw be­ nevertheless internalised the myth of is right, I believe, to set the record comes dangerous. Manning Clark's British superiority. He was no cultur­ straight, but it is worth trying to do so shame touches our own. We must al cringer, but he was one of the wound­ without bittem ess, to break the cycle own it. ed. So many Australians were exposed of shame. Peter Ryan has failed to do to and hurt by the myth by virtue of this. Manning's shame has triggered Rosamund Dalziell is writing a doc­ their intellectual promise, which his own. Curious about Ryan, I sought toral thesis at the Australian National earned them a passage to Oxford or out his war memoir, Fear Drive My University, on shame in contempo­ Cambridge. Patrick White was mor- Feet. On the last page I found some- rary Australian autobiography.

V OLUME 3 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 41 R EVIEW EssAY ------~- ~.---r------PAUL K ANE

The end of Ern Malley The Ern Malley Affair, Michael Heyward, University of Queensland Press, 1993. ISilN 0 7022 2562 2 RRP $32.95

and anthologies (not to mention the Chatterton's forgeries and the puta­ well-known portrait by Sidney Nolan tive epic of Ossian constmctecl by in 1973), then it seems fair to say that James Macpherson, both occurring in in the past 30 years there has been a the 18th century and both having growing wave of interest in the hoax. important repercussions. Hughes That wave has now crested and, in­ makes the point that historica lly Em deed, seems to have crashed upon the Malley does not carry the same cul ­ shores of our awareness. Heyward' tural weight as those earlier hoaxes, exhaustive study of the hoax undoubt­ nor was it perpetrated for the same edl y marks the high-water point of reasons. They were really testimoni­ this recent interest--or, to shift the als to nationalist ideals and iden titic , Ewwucmo AumAUAN ruOAo,.,;, metaphor: insofar as this book is a whereas Em Malley was conceived possessing a modicum of curiosity, well-chiseled monument to the Ern solely to 'debunk the present'. could fail to have heard of the Ern Malley affair, we may suppose that This critical and speculative ap­ Malley hoax by now, if only because Ern Malley is now finally dead. proach to the affair is not, however, of the recent publicity surrounding Michael Heyward has re-interred him. one that Heyward himself pursues. the publication of Michael Heyward's This is not to deny that Ern Malley With the exception of an afterword book on the 'affair'. Em Malley, as we will continue to be of interest to some, and some brief analyses of the poems, all know, was a fi cti onal poet whose but Heyward's book answers so thor­ the bulk of the book is taken up with complete works were concocted in a oughly so many of the questions sur­ a narrative of the events of the hoax. single clay in 1943 by two unknown rounding the hoax that the affair loses Heyward is content to tell the story, poets, James McAuley and Harold some of its generative mystery and which he docs in three parts compris­ Stewart, and subsequently published mystique. The cataloguing data on ing nine chapters. As might be expect­ by the unwitting Max Harris in his the copyright page lists this book un­ eclfrom a book so carefully researched, avant garde journal, Angry Penguins. der a heading of 'Literary forgeries and there are new details and some sur­ The eventual clisclosureof thehoax mystifications' (the latter term surely prises; most interesting is the bring­ and its sensational aftermath, which embracing an impressive array of ing to light of the Ern Malley collages included a trial for 'indecent adver­ texts), but perhaps it would be better put together by Harold Stewart (and tisements', is generally thought to have to list the book under 'clemystifica­ reproduced for the first time in this dampened, if not drowned, all enthu­ tion '. book ). These collages are witty and siasm for 'modernist' literary experi­ Everything you ever wanted to delightful s urrea list works and ment in Australia for 20 years. Ern know about the hoax (and then some) s uggest just how s t rongly Ern Malley was the most important Aus­ is presented in almost microscopic Malley exercised the e re a ti ve tralian poet who never lived. detail, complete with footnotes and impulses of Stewart and And yet-so goes the refrain-'Ern scrupulous endnotes. After almost 250 McAuley. Malley Lives!', and there is no lack of pages of narrative and analysis, is there editions of the poems (entitled The anything more to be said on the mat­ I NTH IS DIS OVERY and elsewhere one DarlRobert Hughes' doubt) cut clown to publishabl e ize, Book of Modem Australian Poetry introduction sets out one of the prob­ and still the amount of detail can and they have been reprinted once lema tics created by the hoax: what is oft en seem extraneous and numbing. again as an appendix to Michael Hey­ the nature of this particular hoax and All in all, in his meticulous articula­ ward's book. how does it compare with other fa ­ tion of the events and the background If one tallies up other references to mous literary deceptions? The obvi­ to them, Heyward can be said to have Ern Malley in books, critical articles ous comparisons are with Thomas done for Ern Malley what J. Living-

42 EUREKA STREET • OcTOBER 1993 ston Lowes did for Coleridge in The wants to interpret Ern Malley for us, tached word on Ern Malley' as Hughes Road to Xanadu. going beyond the confines of mere claims. Heyward's narrative approach in discursive criticism. Again, fair In all fairness, it would hardly do this book is not a conventional one. enough, but the coyness sensed before to fault Heyward for something he He opens with an imaginative recrea­ comes forward now triumphantly as a never set out to accomplish: the book tion of Ern Malley's death and the mode of enthusiasm: Ern Malley is is not meant to be a magisterial criti­ attendance paid by the sister, Ethel. given not one but several characters cal study but a more popular (though Curiously, the first chapter proceeds and all but apotheosised, to the point still definitive) rendition of the Em as if we knew nothing about the hoax that the penultimate paragraph be­ Malley affair as an historic and cultur­ and might think the Malleys were real gins, 'We are nearly certain Ern Mal­ al event. This Heyward does well. It is enough; indeed, the entire first sec­ ley never lived ... ' only when he ventures into ill-consid­ tion, in introducing all the major char­ How we get to that risible point of ered interpretations that one feels he acters, is coy about the hoax. 'uncertainty' is through a series of falls short of his own best capacities. It is only with the beginning of the increasingly fuzzy assertions about Clearly, to sustain a discussion second part that Em Malley is sudden­ art, imagination, the so-called Zeit­ about Ern Malley as cultural icon, it ly exposed to us as 'the biggest literary geist, the intentionalist [sic] fallacy, does not help to collapse repeatedly hoax of the century'. This strategy and the very nature of parody. This is the simple ontological distinction be­ allows Heyward to spend a good deal unfortunate stuff and it mars the real tween Ern Malley as a fiction and Em of time establishing the immediate accomplishment of the book, espe­ Malley as a real person. It may seem and larger contexts and to have some cially as the prose itself begins to break clever at first but it has the opposite postmodern fun, but the coyness down and loses its edge in mixed met­ effect intended since we gradually lose makes the procedure seem oddly lame. aphors and solecisms. The last 14 pag­ the sense of artistic verisimilitude and Perhaps some overseas readers might es of the book should simply have thereby miss the full dimensions of be taken in by the joke and delightful­ been cut out. What insight, for in­ what Stewart and McAuley created. ly surprised, but then one would have stance, are we meant to gain by the What the last pages do convey is Hey­ to scrap Hughes's plain-speaking in­ following statement? ward's passion and enthusiasm for his troduction and tone down the pub­ 'Malley flips between being the project, and one senses an infectious lisher's publicity. That can't be what Australian Jules Laforgue, the futile elan overtaking the author Heyward has in mind. disconsolate mind that haunts the ""r as he nears the end. As it turns out, the coyness here future while forgoing all the glory, and isn't just proleptic or confined to the the Australian Groucho Marx, the .1. HE END OF ERN MALLEY (as mys­ first section; it runs through the whole mercurial wit who observes how the tique) opens up new possibilities. The of the book and points to a larger living stand upright by habitual in­ entire incident and aftermath is rich question. Throughout, Heyward slides souciance and then wants to mourn at in implication. It calls out for a com­ back and forth between representing his own funeral. ' (23 7) parative study of hoaxes, along the Ern Malley as a hoax and speaking of In comparison with the careful lines begun by Robert Hughes; it is him as if he actually existed (which prose of the preceding chapters, this ripe for investigations of literary iden­ mirrors a slippage between third-per­ seems as if it were written by someone tity and literary property; it suggests a son and first-person narrative tech­ else. Two paragraphs before that, Hey­ point of departure for an analysis of nique). This is not a confusion on ward has a genuinely good critical the dynamics of collaborative work; it Heyward's part (though it is easy thought: points to cultural studies of how groups enough to fall prey to such a confla­ 'Perhaps a more useful way to spec­ of poets or critics appropriate cultural tion), but is instead a deliberate at­ ulate about the value of Malley is to icons for purposes of literary politics; tempt to blur-playfully, one as­ ask whether anything in his poetry and so forth. Future studies may well sumes-the distinction between real can stand comparison with the strong­ take up some of these points and and unreal. In itself, it makes a kind of est examples of the kind of work he others. point: Ern Malley is more real than the satirizes, George Barker's Calamiter­ What such studies should not do is hoaxers imagined and has a genuine ror, say, or Dylan Thomas's "Fern take up the old canard about the Em literary identity. This is fair enough, Hill"?' (236) Malley hoax setting back the cause of and for most of the book Heyward is Yes, this would be useful, but he modernism and experiment in Aus­ quite good about wending his way drops the idea immediately and lapses tralian literature by 20 years. That is through the thickets of confused back into jejune speculation. The end simply bad literary history; it betrays thought about the hoax and the po­ result is that Heyward has set before an insularity about the larger currents ems, especially with regards to claims us as complete a record as we are of literary movements worldwide, and and counter-claims about their merit likely ever to get of the events of the it doesn't stand up to either fact or and mode of composition. Ern Malley hoax (certainly no mean logic. One need only examine cursori­ As a level-headed commentator achievement), but he has not furthered ly what was going on in Britain and Heyward is an excellent guide. But our understanding of the meaning or America to realize that the late '40s when we get towards the end of the implications of the event as much as and the '50s were periods of conserva­ book, in the final chapter, it is clear one would have hoped-and it is cer­ tive retrenchment, and that Australia that Heyward has other ambitions: he tainly not the 'first complete and de- was no different in this regard. The

VOLUME 3 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 43 Penguin flap at first hand hoax was not the 'grea t catastrophe' or Malley answers to some of these im­ L E TUMULT OF THE WAR YEARS produced a lurid 'catastrophic blow' to Australian cul­ pulses, that he is, among other things, variety of extravagances in crime and morals, and ture it has been described as. It was an incarnation of the archetypal what Barry Humphries so felicitously called 'the certainly traumatic as an experience ro mantic poet who seems to stand in yarts' suffered similar onslaughts. for Max Harris, but one penguin does direct proximity to the wellsprings of Observing these antics as an undergraduate at not a renaissance make. inspiration, whose experience is rep­ Melbourne University I was reminded of Eric Gill's Em Mailey can no longer be enlist­ resented hyperbolically in spiritual dictum, that prior to the industrial revolution every ed in the cause of cultural radicalism terms, and who seeks an unmediated man was a special kind of artist, whereas after the (whatever one thinks of such a pro­ experience of poetic transport. Insofar industrial age had swept the craftsmen into the new gram), not least because of Heyward's as Em Malley partakes of that figure of factories, every artist-so called- became a special book: the hoax is now so thoroughly the romantic poet, he is truly a reve­ kind of Man. Encouraged by the new forn1 of artistic historicised it loses much of its fo rce nant, a ghost com e back from prior gnosticism, John Reed and Max Harris embarked on as an avant garde icon. In so dem y­ Australian poetry: we confront him in a quarterly magazine which they called Angry Pen­ thologising Ern Malley, Heyward ha the work of Charles Harpur, Christo­ guins. It was opulent, expensive, and spoke with the in effect demystified him. But, if no pher Brennan, Kenneth Slessor and brazen authority of the confidence man. longer an object of mys tification, is others. At the time I was editor of Melbourne University there a sense in which Em Malley Of course, there is something not Maga zine. My associates and I smelled a rat, and remains within the realm of the mys­ quite mys terious about the way this when it fell to my lot to review a volume of Harris' terious, or perhaps the mystical? Is icon reappears, since we are familiar poems, published by Reed and Harris, I described it this yet another area for further explo­ with the way romanticism continues as meaningless and worthless. ration? And can it be approached to function as the founding moment Our voice, however, was a small one. Keith without instigating yet an- of our own epoch. What is more mys­ Murdoch, father of Rupert, was at that time Mel­ other mystification? terious, however, is the recursive as­ bourne's most influential media mogul, and his pect of what might be broadly tem1 ed infatuation with 'modern art' had cushioned Mel­ c ONSIDER THE following excerpt 'mystic' elements (both negative and bourne's artistic community against what Robert from Em Malley's 'Preface and State­ positive) in Australian poetry, a fea­ Hughes was later to call'The Shock of the New'. In ment', which Stewart and McAuley ture present in contemporary poetry any case, some of us were known to be Catholics, and sent Harris: as well (a list would include, among therefore priest-ridden, conservative and pretty ig­ 'There is, at this moment, no such others, Francis Webb, Gwen Harwood, norant to begin with. In the face of all this the arrival thing as a simple poem if what is Judith Wright, Randolph Stow, Les of Em Malley on the scene was an occasion of joy and m eant by that is a point-to-point Murray, John Foulcher, and Kevin delight. We had long believed that the Angry Pen­ straight line relation of images. If I Hart). Em Malley is always best seen guins menagerie were intellectual frauds, but it was said that this was so because on the as a symptom rather than a cause, and grand to have it proved by themselves so completely. level where the world is mental oc­ here again he points to something in I should add that there were those in the art world currence a point-to-point relation i Australian literature that appears to who rose to attack the Angry Penguins on their own no longer genuine I should be accused run deeper than literary politics and ground. George Bell, great painter and teacher, Harold of mysticism . Yet it is so.' literary fashion . Herbert, beautiful water colourist and critic, would This invocation of the mystic is The nature of that more original have none of them. The one I admired most, howev­ meant to be obfuscation, but remem­ and originating cause would take a er, was the dedicated Communist Noel Counihan, ber that both Stewart and McAuley book to pursue adequately, so perhaps who believed that his artistic talents should be used had some rather arcane interests of it is better to end with that simple for the expression of his political message. Paradox­ their own, as borne out by their read­ gesture towards another aspect of the ically, this put him on the same track as the small ing in Rene Guenon, Ananda K. Coo­ Em Malley affair. Having resisted quot­ group of Catholic artists at the time. Noel insisted maraswamy, Carl Jung, Taoism and ing from the poems thus far, it seems that there should be a firm intellectual basis for all gnosticism. Stewart later moved per­ permissable to close with an evoca­ art. I met him only once in those days and we spat manently to Japan and became a mem­ tive passage, from Malley's Egyptian hostility at one another, he being a red-hot Comma ber of the Shinshu Buddhist sect, while Register: and me being a Catholic Action cryptofascist. Time McAuley converted to Catholicism, It may be for nothing that we are: smoothed our differences, and when he died a few largely through contact with Europe­ But what we are continues years ago, leaving behind a treasure store of vigorous an missionaries in New Guinea, where In larger patterns than the fro ntal and brilliant works of art, I think we had forgiven one he developed a deep interest in the stone another for the follies of our youth. 'mystical experience' of Sister Marie­ That taunts the living life. Max Harris found his proper level as newspaper Therese Noblet. Of this period, McAu­ From taunting to haunting, the columnist and bookseller (Mary Martin Bookshops). ley writes: Em Malley affair has lived on as a Hearing recently that he was in poor health I called 'In the late 1930s and late 1940s I cultural event. The hoax and the po­ at his Adelaide shop and left my card with best felt within myself the attraction of ems themselves are indeed indicative wishes for his health. As a critic for The Australian what one might call a revolutionary of- in Robert Hugh es's telling he had been kinder tome, I have to confess, thanlhad poetic- vitalist, lawless, a thing of phrase-' the well-wrought Ern'. ever been to him. • passion, impulse and wild humour.' It does not take much ingenuity to Paul Kane, from Vassar College, NY, -Niall Brennan see that the imaginative figure of Ern is visiting Monash University.

44 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 1993 BooKs: 1

SAM WATSON steel within, as Evelyn spends most of her young life pushing sheep and cat­ tl e through this land's most unforgiv­ ing comers. At a time when some of The era of Evelyn her white counterparts would have been content to sit on a shady veran­ Over My Tracks, Clms Walsh, Penguin, 1993. dah, sip tea with little fingers crooked rr ISBN 0 140233 1939 RRP $16.95 appropriately, and talk about the lat­ est dress designs, Evelyn Crawford .1. HERE IS A COMMON MJSCONCEPTION significant personal impact upon the was out the back o' Bourke with a herd that Aboriginal society is a male-dom- Queen of the British Commonwealth. of windblown and thirsty bullocks. ina ted world, where 'men's business' Within the Aboriginal communi- She and her man raised a large reigns supreme. That is a shallow and ty, education is a long process. We are family- 13 children plus one grand­ erroneous perception, oft en put for- constantly reminded by our 'old aw1t- child- and apparently they were nev­ ward in the service of a more subtle ies' that the day that we stop learning er too far from actual poverty. But agenda. Every Aboriginal, male or fe- is the day that we die. Evelyn Craw- material wealth was never really a male, knows from the earliest point of ford used her life in the camps, mis- driving force within Evelyn's life. m emorythatourentiresocietyis noth- sions and stations of the 'back of Throughout the book she seems to be ing but a transient platform that rolls Bourke' to hone her own deep under- content with the bare necessities of forward upon the awesome strengths standing of the human condition. She life and never seems to be unhappy of our women elders. did not need diplomas or pieces of with her lot. Even when she is earning This a pure tmth and a universal sheepskin from fashionable institu- a reasonable wage as a public servant fact. It is beyond dispute that the very tions of learning; rather she borrowed within the Education Department, she hub of Aboriginal experience is the from her own experience and applied does not race into town and spend up family unit: but the cmcible within those lessons of life to the classrooms on the latest luxury items. Evelyn which that hub was tempered and of western New South Wales. appears to measure wealth in the depth forged, was the heart and soul of the She spent her life around the most of the love that binds her to herfamil y: black woman. Thecountry, landscape lowly of beasts, droving cattle and not in jewels, fa st cars or fancy man­ or people are not that important; the sheep across vast distances for very sions, but in the well -beingofher own m ost abiding constant within the little pay. But she rnost certainly did blood and the smile of a friend. Aboriginal world is the Earth Mother. profit from those long and often lone- This book should be mounted and Evelyn Crawford, and the women ly hours in the saddle. The very sam e preserved within the Stockman's Hall who raised her, make for compelling fla sh floods, droughts and h eart- of Fame. Perhaps then future genera­ subject matter. Chris Walsh has pre- wrenching tragedies that would have tions may know the tmth about who sented us with a most human and broken most of us, m erely served to really tamed the most savage frontier moving account of this remarkable fine tune Evelyn's mettle for her later clall. • woman's life. In Over M y Tra ck s healings with government ministers Walsh writes of Evelyn Crawford, her and senior public servants. And in her Sam Watson grew up in Brisbane. His childhood in the dusty outback, her later years when she was a leading most most recent work is Th e Ka­ teenage yearsasanaccomplisheddrov- educationalist, working at the coal- daitcha Sung. er and the rich tapestry of her marriage face of state education, she still used a to a man who really was her 'best refreshing, homespun philosophy to mate'. launch exciting new initiatives and Sorrento Victoria Yet this book is written so well, found TAFE colleges. For private sale: that Evelyn Crawford's unassuming Born of the Baarkanji tribe, Evelyn artist's holiday home. earthiness dominates every page. In only received the most basic educa- Unique 2 storey 4 BR fam il y home anyone's terms, this humble young tion. Indeed her first classroom was a on high block, 26m frontage, 3 tomboy really did rise to be a person of rough-hewn shed thrown together mins. to Bay beach, shops. 1st high degree. Evelyn's elders and even from spare parts. It was so daunting floor, 2 BRs, stud io BR (master BR her peers were contantly aware that that it almost broke the spirit of the 9m x 3.5 m w ith en su ite). Private here was a special person, someone young, white teacher. Yet this episode deck, Bay views, vau lted ce il ings. who had been 'touched by the old again was used to illustrate the abso- Groun d floor, large lou nge/OR, people'. Herfatherreliedmostheavily lute unflappability of black women. open F/P. Large fam il y/billiard upon her, especially during that peri- Evelyn'sgrandmothersteppedintothe room, Kitchen, 4th BR, bathroom. od when he separated from Evelyn's breach and made everything all right, Two gas wa ll furn aces. Access off mother. Otherpeopleinher life, white with a minimum of fuss. lounge to covered verandah 12m and black, sought her out for advice, Evelyn's parents, indeed most of x 3m. Low main te nance. and such was that deep force that her immediate family, were station resided within her that this tribal workers. So it was inevitable that she Phone: ( 03 ) 589 5458 woman from the wrong side of the would gravitate to that harsh and man­ Price: $175,000 nation's most dusty tracks made a dominated world. Again we see the Peter Cartwright

VoLUME 3 N uMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 45 BooKs : 2

MicHAEL M cGIRR the backs of tmcks. We observe details such as the fact that the last street sealed in metropolitan Melbourne was one in Richmond that had somehow been overlooked until the 1980s. Such A -word in the particulars add up to a different sense of place. There is nothing in fourney­ ings about the quality of road surfaces. right place There is rather more about gardens. 'My m other worked very hard,' says one interviewee. 'She loved her ga r­ Journeyings: the Biography of a Middle-Class Generation, 1920-1990, den and weal ways improved the house Janet McCalman, Melbourne University Press, 1993. we lived in- we felt that was proper.' ISBN 0 522 84569 X RRP $39.95 Indeed, the street was the place to­ wards which the middle-class turned its back. At one point, McCalman remarks 'IWAeD' Tee eND off,

46 EUREKA STREET • OCTO BER 1993 presumably, can be go t at only in of the aristocracy. It is privacy elevat­ wom en as evidence. In her introduc­ fiction. ed to an art form. The middle-class has tion she explains her purpose: the Apart from one teacher at MLC been more workmanlike than that. wom en's stories are part of ' a national who, in 1936, took 23 girls away to There was only one house in Camber­ drama taking place between the 30s explore central Australia and brought well that gave birth to Barry Hum­ and the present da y' and they are 'a a gun with her so she could shoot beer phries. This is the tale of all the rest. • reminder of the value and richness of bottles on the C han, there is a notable diversity and difference in national lack of eccentricity in [ourneyings. Michael McGirr SJ is a regular con­ cohesion'. We can only be grateful fo r Perhaps eccentricity is the calling card tributor to Em eka Street. stories which illuminate Australia's tmly extraordinary history of settle­ m ent and the dailiness of multicultur­ alism . Since the early '80s there has BooKs : 3 been an efflorescence of such tale­ telling, although Henderson seems not MARGARET COFFEY to have come across much of it. It is not tme that 'the stories of ordinary wom en migrants have rarely been The measure of friends heard'. There has, thank goodness, been an enorm ous amount of publish­ From All Corners, Anne Henderson, Allen and Unwin, 1993 ing, broadcasting, social and econom ­ ISBN 1 863735 100 RRP $17.95 ic research, theatrical and other artis­ tic representation. As for the 'national drama' with which these stories intersect, it is ren­ A NNt H tNDmmN "" ' gift f m to find a niche in the life of the suburbs dered with such idiosyncratic inten­ friendship, judging by her book From surrounding the university. It was a tion and interpretation that it almost All Corners. The six wom en who are niche shared by Anne Henderson as overwhelms them . I began to believe her subjects have been her friends for Lilah 's student lodger under a regime it was invoked as a li cence to deliver up to 25 years. They come from Italy, of punctilious fmgality broken by the broadsides: neither Geoffrey Blainey China, Hungary, Britain and Vietnam visits of Fr D' Arcy: 'Days before, Lilah n or the contemporary Catholic and their lives are testimony to the worked out her menu and starched Church com e out well and nary a rich seam of story that li es in the her voluminous linen table napkins politician, of any hue. Very few peo­ settlem ent of Australia. .. .' Six years after her arrival in Aust­ ple, it seem s get things right. (Indeed, Rita had the foresight to leave ralia Lilah entered the contemplative Blainey's views are treated with a vul­ northern Italy four years before war Order of Mt Cannel, where fo r 22 garity that can only harm the debate broke out. She and her sister paid their years she has lived out one of the rarer about the character of migrant intake. way to Melbourne on the P&.O ship life experiences on offer in Australia. An example: ' ... Judy was confronting Orion, and once here joined their broth­ She is an Australian citizen. for the first time a Jewish inheritance er in his fmit and vegetable shop. Judy cam e from Hungary. N ow in a Catholic convent in Sydney in the Anne H enderson encountered Rita 2 7 she is engaged with cosmology from language of the ancient Rom an s. It years later, as the m other of her the distance of a pre-Vatican ll enthu­ was a multicultural experience fit to schoolfriend Anna. By then, the years siastic conversion to Catholicism and shock Geoffrey Blainey.') as an enemy alien, of economic hard­ a spell as a Dominican. Lily was born It must therefore be all the more ship and sheer physical exhaustion in Chinai she could never have antic­ disappointing that From All Corners were on their way to vindication. N ow ipated the quality of her present cir­ has not been well-served by an editor: Rita, an Australian citizen, lives in 'an cumstances. The most recent arri vals it is a fractious text, with parts of architect-designed hom e in Kew ' and among Anne Henderson's gallery of speech disputing one another, and sto­ two of her daughters mn Alta Vita, friends are Nhung and Phi, refugees ry sequence stmggling with context. 'renovating Australian homes around from Vietnam. When they arrived in The friendships described are not like fine imported Italian homewares and Melbourne in 1979 they were taken in that- there is a strange convergence Schiffini -designed kitchens-the first by Henderson's m other. Subsequent­ of values at work which made m e in Australia'. A third daughter is a ly, their own mother and two other refl ect that being tmly multicultural pharmacist. sisters joined them . Through applica­ might also be about accepting that Lilah has an upper-class British tion and ambition they and their ex­ sometimes immigration doesn't worki background but her manner of arrival tended fa mily have becom e securely not everyone wants to assimilate, and in Australia was entirely proletarian: placed in the professional classes. They people aren't always 'successful' or she came by assisted passage in 1964. are all Australian citizens. even 'right-thinking'. But that's OK Lilah was fortunate to have connec­ Australia has always been multi­ too, isn't it? • tions such as Dr Eric D' Arcy, then a cultural, Anne Henderson says, and lecturer in philosophy at the Univer­ she proffers her own family back­ Margaret Coffey is a producer and sity of Melbourne, which allowed her ground and the stories of these six presenter fo r ABC Radio National.

VOLUME 3 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 47 THEATRE

GEOFFREY MILNE Flying the flag rr Forty years of the Melbourne Theatre Company

.1. HE MELBOURNE THEATRE Com- Valentine (a production which origi- play, the premiere of Mary Morris's pany has emerged from a five- month nated atPerth'sHole in the Wall Thea- adaptation of Blabbermouth, must be spell in which it did not mount a tre back in 1989). added to the list. Although not part of single new production of its own. Be- Cynics might have concluded that the MTC subscription season, this co- tween I Hate Hamlet, which opened the company had lost its way, that the production with Arena Theatre Com- at the Victorian Arts Centre in early recession had forced it off the rails. pany was a special youth event for the November last year, and M. Butterfly, Nothing could be further from the Melbourne International Festival. which opened there at the beginning truth: by the middle of this year, the The season thus comprises three of April this year, MTC workers did MTC was back in vintage form. Hav- 'classics', three Australian works (in- not sew a single sequin, rehearse a ing safely opened its 40th anniversary eluding a world premiere) and four single new line, craft a stick of furni- season in May, with the Australian contemporary plays from abroad. The ture or scenery, or fashion any of the premiere of the New Zealand play- balance here is close to the company's lighting, wigs and stagecraft wonders wright Renee's Wednesday to Come, 40-year pattern, which John Sumner that have made the company famous byJulythecompanywasinfullswing, always reckoned at 'one-third classi- for four decades. with a production of the seldom -seen cal writing, loosely referred to as works It should be added that, unlike Marston Jacobean comedy, The Dutch written prior to the present century, some of its recession-stricken over- Courtesan, and the long-awaited and revivals of 20th-century works; seas counterparts, the company never buy-in of Black Swan's Bran Nue Dae one-third Australian new writing closed its doors. It simply sent its fro m Perth. and one-third new writing army of employees on leave and 'co- At the same time, it was in re- s fro m overseas.' produced'-i.e., bought in-a succes- hearsal for what turned out to be an elegantproductionofthe INCE RoGER HoDGMAN took over rarely-produced Much the helm from Sumner in 1987, the Ado About Nothing and trend has been for a decrease in the for a distinctly 'over the number of classics and an increase in top' adaptation of Australiancontent. From1988to1992, Goethe's Faust, which the classics amounted to barely 22 per had not been seen before cent of the repertoire, contemporary in Melbourne. During plays from abroad held their own at 34 that period, 64 perform- per cent and Australian plays (includ- ers were on the payroll, ing revivals and adaptations by Aus- along with substantial tralians of other works) occupied 44 backstage personnel and per cent. Ten of the Australian plays the hordes of staff in the were world premieres. During that South Melbourne work- period, a dozen productions (roughly shops. one in seven of the total) were co- Although July and productions or buy-ins. August saw a heavy em- The MTC statistics compare phasis on the 'classics', favourably with those of the compa- theanniversary season as ny's interstate counterparts in the a whole reveals some- same period. The Sydney Theatre thing of the company's Company's Australian content repre- Much Ado About Nothing, sion of productions from interstate broad programming policy. As well as sen ted 29 per cent of its total output MTC-style. companies. the five productions already men- (again with ten world premieres), the From left: Frances Thus Melbourne audiences saw tioned, the season includes the classics32 per cent and contemporary O'Connor, Alison White the likes of the Sydney Theatre Com­ Queensland Theatre Company's pro- works from abroad 39 per cent. The and Pamela Rabe. pany's brooding production of Ariel duction of David Williamson's Bril- STC co-produced or bought in nine Dorfman's Death and the Maiden, liant Lies, a new production of Will- productions, at the same ratio as the Photo: MTC. the State Theatre Company of South iam Nicholson's Shadowlands, from MTC: roughly, one play in seven. The Australia's stage adaptation of the London's West End, and two recent StateTheatreCompanyofSouthAus- 1930s film, High Society, and yet American dramas, Tony Kushner's tralia's repertoire was led by the clas- another return season of Willy Rus­ Angels in America: Part I and Herb sics, which occupied41 percentofthe sell's Liverpool monodrama, Shirley Gardner's I'm Not Rappaport. A tenth total. To some extent, this could be

48 EUREKA STREET • OcTOBER 1993 lN MEMORIAM attributed to the personal taste of ar­ pany's work over a long period of time. tistic directors John Gad en and Simon Apart from the recent increase in Aus­ John Truscott, 1936-1993 Phillips; in any event, it is a high tralian content, the only other factor fi gure in Australian terms. that stands out is the increasing level The MTC, like other state theatre of co-productions and buy-ins of other 0 N THURSDAY 9 SEPTEMBER l sat in the companies, has always tended to be companies' work. Born of economic Melbourne Concert Hall and realised that it was seen as a writers' theatre, in the sense necessity as it is, production-sharing haunted. The ghost was that of Jolm Truscott, that playwrights and the titles of their is looked down upon in som e quar­ film and theatre designer extraordinaire, and de­ plays are always the focus of the com­ ters. It certainly leads to less work for signer of the interiors of the Victorian Arts Cen­ pany's work and the principal feature production staff, although a touring tre. We had buried the man on the previous day, in its advertising. (I am not ignoring production extends the work opportu­ but his powerful presence was everywhere! looked. here the tendency on the part of all nities for actors. Production-sharing I kept thinking that, if only I turned ill the right companies to combine this feature, also certainly helps keep open the direction he would appear, white scarf draped when the occasion warrants, with doors of theatres that otherwise might elegantly around his neck, tweaking a flower back 'name' actors like Hugo Weaving, close. in position, moving a lamp. Robyn N evin, Bmce Spence, Jacki But there is another side to this. In As stage supervisor of the Arts Centre, I worked Weaver and Pamela Rabe). a country which finds it hard to think with John on the completion and furnishillg of the Thus it was that during the 1960s, nationally (except, perhaps, ill rela­ venues. It was an experience both exhilarating the MTC developed a lengthy explo­ tion to the economy and sport) tour­ and terrifying. I respected and admired his vision ration of the works of Edward Albee ing enables theatregoers to see the and creative energy, and faced his rages when both and Harold Pinter, for example, along­ best of what goes on in other states. were thwarted by the constraillts of budgets or the side those of the company's own actor One of this country's finest directors, necessary compromises of pragmatism. But when and writer Alan Hopgood. During the N eil Armfield, has only directed one the storm was over, John would reappear at my '70s, David William son and Alex Bu­ production that I can remernber in door and cry: 'Then let's make it wonderful in zo's works were seen as frequently as M elbourne, but- thanks to the spite of the restrictions!' He demanded of others those of Tom Stoppard or Alan Ayck­ MTC- at least two of his Sydney pro­ his own devotion to the search for perfection. (Oh bourn, and in the '80s and '90s the ductions have been seen in Melbourne. the hours spent trampillg round Melbourne to company developed long- term rela­ Again, thanks partly to the MTC, filld the right piece of carpet for the conductor's tionships with Australian writers like Melbourne theatregoers have had a podium!) but their successes were acknowledged Ron Elisha and Janis Balodis, while chance to see some of the rem arkable with delight and generous praise. continuing its 21-year relationship Aboriginal drama emanating from I worked agaill with John on his first two with Williamson. WestemAustralia-not only BranNue Melbourne International Festivals. I watched him Of the overseas playwrights who Dae but also Jack Davis's The First take it out of the elite arts circles into the streets have regularly appeared in the MTC's Born Trilogy, which remains one of so that it would be a celebration for the whole city. seasons, Arthur Miller and Te1messee my theatrical highlights of all time. (And had to hide ill the pub for an afternoon after Williams have remained promillent I believe that the only way Aus­ breakillg the news that we couldn't hang a chan­ among the Americans, as have Caryl tralia can pretend to have a 'national delier from the Assembly Hall ceilillg to give the Churchill and Ayckbourn from Brit­ theatre' is through touring, and that­ chamber music series the right period atmos­ ain. Shaw was once a firm favourite, apart from the Bell Shakespeare Com­ phere. ) and Ibsen and Chekhov still pop up pany- the only way that can happen I shall remember John always for his passion from time to time, as does N oel Cow­ is through co-operation between com­ for beauty and style. He believed that everyone ard. Oscar Wilde's The Importance of panies. Perhaps the best development had the right to a little magic, to have their spirits Being Earnest is the company's most in this respect has been the federal lifted by the richness and colour of life. He saw frequently produced play, but the most government's Playing Australia pro­ visions and dreamed dreams, and ill pired all of us frequently produced playwright, in gram, which provides funds to enable with them. Mediocrity and meanness were for Melbourne and anywhere else in Aus­ selected Australian drama to reach a him the ultimate enemies. Everything should be tralia, is still Shakespeare. wider audience. Bran Nue Dae was done at the highest possible level, or it was not Another welcome feature of re­ Melbourne's first glimpse of that pro­ worth the energy. cent MTC programming policy has gram in action. At John's funeral they sang songs from Camelot been the revival of some fine Austral­ This indicates the wider function and 'Somewhere' from West Side Story. 'Not a ian plays. A production of Alan Hop­ of a company like the MTC. It is no hymn in sight,' I whispered to my companion. I good's And the Big Men Fly stood up longer merely a provider of entertain­ was wrong. They were John's hymns, because pretty well ill 1988, while Dorothy ment to Melbourne (remember the they told of a magical world where beauty and Hewett's This Old Man Comes Roll­ days when it billed itself as Mel­ perfection and love reigned. They sang of paradise. ing Hom e and JackHibberd'sA Stretch bourne's Fifth [TV] Channel?); it is a I hope that the paradise ill which John now finds of the Imagination gave audiences in vital participant in the development himself has come up to his standards-though I 1990 a chance to reassess the impact of a genuinely national theatre. cannot resist the suspicion that the angels are of both of those important influences busily employed with a grand refurbishing of the on playwrights who came after them. Geoffrey Milne is head of the division heavenly mansions. • In many ways, then, the present of drama at LaTrobe University and a MTC repertoire is typical of the com- drama critic for the ABC. -Pamela A. Foulkes

V OLUME 3 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 49 EXHIBITIONS

DAMIAN COLERIDGE

'A deep sonorous thing'

exhibition). This is why Griffin and to this, and in due course a dais was T onNt '"'"'"m by Clifton Pugh, a madonna by Goclfrey Miller his wife, Mary Mahoney Griffin, de­ put in place in the dining room. and a Justin O'Brien triptych were just signed all the furniture and fittings This was indicative of the shift some of outstanding works from the and why each student had a separate that occurred after the construction of Newman College art collection ex­ study and bedroom, which Griffin felt the first stage of the college. Thereaf­ hibited in the Melbourne Uni­ ter the works of art added to the versity art gallery from July to college collection tended to be September. The paintings, sculp­ of local interest only-illustra­ tures, photos and furniture gave a tions of the coll ege and com­ graphic account of the troubled memorations of the founding relationship between modern art fathers-so that 20 years later, and religious tradition (or,for that when submissions were called matter, any tradition). for the design of the chapel, It is a relationship character­ Griffin was invited to resubmit ised by ' dramatic tensions', his original design though there according to the art historian Ber­ was no intention of accepting nard Smith in his introduction to it. This time the college com­ Christopher Marshall's outstand­ mittee was clear about what it ing catalogue. A familiar enough wanted, and it decided on Tho­ story you might think, but what mas Payne's traditional Goth­ the collection and the catalogue ic design. Not a bad choice as it reveal is that these tensions were turned out, because Payne was at their most intense in the choice sympathetic to Griffin's design. of the design for the college in He produced a chapel which 1915, and in the planned redesign took, as Griffin had done, Cat­ of the college chapel in the early alan Gothic as its model, then 1960s-whcn modern art and the stripped it back till there was a Australian Catholic tradition es­ suggestion of the modern in it. tablished some sort of rapproche­ Twenty years later, the ment. chapel was once again the site The second thing that struck of tension. In 1961 Michael me was that for works of art in Scott became the fifth rector of the exhibition, context is every­ Newman College. At this point, thing. Furniture, portraits of col­ in the chronology of the exhibi­ Photo of Michael Scott lege rectors and designs for stained tion, the quality of the work by Marl< Strizic. glass windows were all conceived improved dramatically. Some as parts of a whole, a 'complete, of the most interesting works­ orchestrated, aesthetic and spir­ by Eric Smith, Roger Kemp and itual experience'. In a sense this was would encourage both 'responsibility Leonard French-were given to the presiding spirit of the place and a and individual consciousness of free- Michael Scott in recognition of his key to understandingwhat the college dom'. support for their work. During the architect, Walter Burley This democratic spirit extended 1950s Scott, as one of the fo unders of Griffin, was on about. into the dining room, where there was the Blake Prize for Religious Art, was to be no high table or dais and every­ a key player in the development of a I N GRIFFIN'S CASE this spirit was in­ one was to sit at the same level. What modern, devotional art. The Blake formed by his theosophical beliefs, Griffin and many other modern artist Prize was, in a sense, an Australian and in particular, his belief in adem ­ were seeking-Le Corbusier, Kandin­ response to the European sacred art ocratic spirituality which emphasized sky and Mondrian among them- was movement, the most striking crea­ that the spirit could as well be experi­ a more universal, more democratic tion of which was the Church of Notre enced in the students' rooms as in the spirituality that would transcend what Dame de Toutc Grace, at Assy in chapel. (This is why Jane Carolan's Griffin referred to as cui tic practice. France. recreation of a typical student's room Critics like the college's principal ben­ This is part of the background to in 1918 adds another dimension to the efactor, Thomas Donovan, were alive Michael Scott's grand plan to redesign

50 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 1993 the Newman College Chapel. Among French wasn't involved in this, as he centre, the birthplace of myth, the other things the high altar and its had been in the proposed redesign of shelter ritually consecrated?' She sug­ surrounds were to be relocated and in the Newman College Chapel. Presum­ gested it was a question being asked in their place was to be a huge stained ably what the bank wanted from Le­ American painting of the 1950s and glass window. Both Leonard French onard French was a Leonard French, a 1960s, but I also think of it as a ques­ and Eric Smith did designs for it and good, big Leonard French. I suspect tion being asked, in quite different many years later French described his that any mention of 'a deep sonorous ways, by the work in the Newman vision of the window as 'a deep sono­ thing' is inappropriate here. College exhibition. rous thing'. For all sorts of reasons the These days, it is more than likely The exhibition and its catalogue chapel plans weren't realised-they that if this impulse were to be realised look to a past, but also, they are a first were too ambitious, too expensive and it would occur through private pa­ step towards Newman College acquir­ too late-though what did come of trons purchasing a number of works ing contemporary works to add to a them was the small chapel, or oratory, by an artist like Roger Kemp and in­ collection which has been on hold near the dining room. CWton Pugh stalling them in a special viewing since Michael Scott's departure in designed it with Michael Scott's help, space. This was a suggestion of Chris­ 1968. Since then, of course, the project and together they achieved Scott's aim topher Marshall. The model for it was that was modem art has passed into of 'a simple, uncluttered not the Church of Notre Dame de history; but no doubt the postmodem n truth in decoration.' Toute Grace in Assy, but the Rothko will make for all sorts of uncanny, Chapel in Houston, Texas. In 1964 Mr dramatic tensions, particularly at a r uGH WAS A CLOSE FRIEND of Scott, and Mrs John de Menil conceived the moment when there is an interesting and this friendship encouraged his in­ idea of hanging the sombre, last pic­ lot of artists about who are looking to creasing sympathy for abstract art. tures of the Am erican abstract painter 'modem art's own preferred syncretic But it was a sympathy that didn't Mark Rothko in a specially built chap­ spiritualities'. come easily to a man, who had for el, 'a refuge of peaceable meditation'. Who knows, perhaps Newman some time, maintained a public com­ In the light of the Newman Col­ College is in for another intense time? mitment to figurative, devotional art. lege collection, it is interesting to re­ Certainly it might be interesting to Consequently, as Bernard Smith has flect that the Rothko Chapel, opened renew the conversation, long broken pointed out, Scottintemalised the ten­ in 1972, makes real a dream that orig­ off, between contemporary art and sions between modernism and tradi­ inated with the Romantics-with religious tradition. Of course it will be tion because he couldn't simply walk someone like the 19th century Ger­ more a dialogue of equals now, but I away from it like others in the church man painter Runge, who planned a couldn't think of a better place for it and so resolve the tensions by denying series of new religious icons, to be than in the Newman College of Wal­ the existence of modern art and its housed in a specially designed chapel, ter Burley Griffin and Michael Scott. 'own preferred syncretic spiritualities'. with specially designed music. A cen­ Increasingly there was the question of tury later, in the early 1960s, the • how far could Scott go along this way American critic Dare Ashton asked Damian Coleridge is an ABC present­ of a 'highly individual and universal the question 'where is the symbolic er and producer. spirituality' I The exhibition catalogue leaves off at at 1968, the year that Michael Scott departed from Newman College If you want to be different and the year in which the National then serve others with generosity, Gallery of Victoria opened in its new premises on St Kilda Road. Its inaugu­ giving all for Jesus Christ, ral exhibition was called 'The Field', a by proclaiming his Gospel, survey of colour field abstraction. It living in community was obvious from that exhibition that ..-~ a younger generation of artists didn't with special care for the poor. • share the interests of Scott and his • artist friends. Times had changed, as • was apparent in the late 1970s when a Jesu i~ s 'deeply, deeply religious' work by Leonard French was hung above the tellers in the new headquarters of the Please send me information on Jesuit priests D brothers D then State Bank of Victoria. Nrune ______Age ____ The bank officials certainly want­ ed to build a splendid complex hous­ Address ------ing the bank and a galleria lined with State ______Postcode ______Phone ------high quality shops-in that sense it was a forerunner of the contemporary Please detach and send to: quest for a total shopping space-but Brother Ian Cribb Sf, Jesuit Vocations Director PO Box 149, Hawthorn VIC 3122, Australia J5es893

VOLUME 3 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 51 although Bill Clinton has sheepishly tem . (An odd thing about the film is confessed that he liked it. Kids may the way in which officialdom is always not know much about intertextuality benign and dutiful, even avuncular. of the nudge-nudge variety, but they No doubt that is a touch of realpoli­ can smell a phoney. They will stay tik.) away from this film in droves, and There are only four professional Arnie will have to start oiling his pec­ actors in the film, which was shot in a torals again. village in northern China, not far from -Mark Skulley where its director spent his childhood. A strong sense of individual character permeates most of the film, testifying Elusive quest to the rapport that the director and the The Story of Qiu fu , dir. Zhang Yimou professional actors were able to estab­ (independent cinemas), tells the story lish with the villagers. Qiu Ju is bea u­ of its eponymous heroine's dogged tifully played by Gong Li, who has Arnie's banana peel campaign for justice on behalf of her appeared in previous films by Zhang husband, who during a dispute with (Tu Dou, Raise the Red Lantern). With The Last Action Hero (Hoyts) dir. his village chief is injured where it still few means at her disposal- simply John McTiernan, stem s from Arnold matters, even given China's one-chjld because of the conventions of the char­ Schwarzenegger's desire to be more policy. The kind of justice sought by acter she is playing-she creates a than a dea th-dispensing hunk of beef­ Qiu Ju is not the sort the law dispens­ robust, humorous, strongly feeling cake. Sadly, it is a bloated, failed es. The problem is universal: institu­ wmnan. attempt at capturing the spirit of Warn­ tional justice is about institutional -Margaret Coffey er Bros' Roadrunner cartoons, in redress, not about the balance between which the indefatiga ble Wyle E. Coy­ ote kept coming back for more. Soggy tales In a plot line suspiciously similar Eureka Street to that of Woody Allen's Purple Rose Film Competition Waterland, dir. Stephen Gyllenhaal of Cairo, the film tells how a young (independent cinemas). Graham boy (A ustin O'Brien) enters the movie Who could forget that pair of Swift's first (and best) novel did some­ world of his hero, Jack Sla ter intrepid travellers, Bogart and thing remarkable. It sprawled langu­ (Schwarzenegger). This allows Arnie Hepburn, in The African Queen ! ourouslyyet grippingly, telling a tight­ and McTiernan (director of Die Hard Tell us what they're saying to ly knit story from many perspectives and The Hunt for Red October) to each other and we'll award two while taking time to tell its readers throw in amazing stunts and a mas­ tickets, to the film of your choice, almost all they would want to know sive body count during the fantasy fo r the answer we like best. The about the biology of the Atlantic eel, sequences, and to show their caring winner of August's film competi­ or the history of brewing in the fens. side when the characters are back in tion was Tric Skinner, of Kam­ In Stephen Gyllenhaal's cinemat­ the 'real' world. They have a fine time bah,ACT, who thoughtthatW.C. ic adaptation the eels are relega ted to sending up the action genre, includ­ Fields was thinking: 'Hnun, look­ a cameo appearance, but that sense of ing a spoof of Hamlet in which Arnie, ing good with fiv e kings. But has purposive spra w1 i s re tained-and this in Terminator-mode, gives Claudius the dealer got five aces?' in a film that is, like the novel, of fairly what for. modest length. Movie jokes abound. The boy Tom Crick (Jeremy Irons), is a warns his hero not to tmst a character history teacher whose idea of teaching played by F. Murray Abraham be­ history has become telling his charges ca use 'he killed Mozart'; the them e tales from his childhood in the fens of music from The Twilight Zone is East Anglia. The stories gradually tell pla yed on television at a spooky mo­ us what's wrong with him and his ment; there are snippets from Ingmar wife Mary (S inead Cusack), as well as Bergman's The Seventh Seal; a car­ locking us into a fascinating elrama in toon cat plays a sleazy cop; and Bo­ personal dignity on the one hand and their own right. gie's image makes an appearance. As the freedom of authority on the other. The devices used to remind us that well as Abraham, the supporting cast When Qiu Ju 's overtures to the the flashbacks we ee are stories being includes Mercedes Ruehl, Charles village chief fail, she travels up the told to children are at times a little Dance, Art Carney, Anthony Quinn, mngs of legal appeal. And literally self-conscious-a scene in which Pitts­ and Ian McKellen, plus cameos by travel it is. As she tmdges from village burgh schoolchildren of the 1990s are Tina Turner, Chevy Chase, Sharon to district to city, it's hard not to be bussed through an East Anglian town Stone and Jean-Claude Van Damme. impressed by the size of the business in 1911 could at any moment have The film cost about $100 million of governing China and by the stead­ degenerated into a rem ake of Chitty to make and has been a flop in the US, fastness n eeded to deal with the sys- Chitty Bang Bang with a bus in tead

52 EUREKA STREET • OcTOBER 1993 of a car-but on the whole the film humour and violence, reality and fan­ works very well indeed. The stories The road home tasy. are worked and reworked, just as are The films opens with a scene of the canals of the fen country, and a shocking violence that visually de­ splendid cast and taut direction show Olivier, Olivier, dir. Agnieszka fines the world of police photogra­ us how both story and landscape can Holland (independent cinemas). This pher Wayne Dobie (De Niro) and divert the flow of people's lives. film from the director of Europa, ChicagocrimefigureFrankMilo(Mur­ - David Braddon-Mitchell Europa is a beguiling and disturbing ray). Much of the fi lm's appeal comes story of disappearance and return, from the fact that these two fine ac­ woven from folklore motifs and from tors are playing against type: Wayne themes of sibling rivalry, sexual jeal­ is timid and cautious, forever doubt­ Hot chocolate ousy and diabolical suggestion. ing his own courage (hence the ironic Nine-year-old Olivier, the spoilt nickname 'Mad Dog' given to him by Like Water for Chocolate, dir Alfonso younger child of Serge, a country vet, his colleagues), whereasFrankisruth­ Arau (independent cinemas) is a won­ and his wife Elisabeth, wanders off less and amoral. derful magical realist story, a tale of into the idyllic French countryside one The third party in an intriguing forbidden love set in Mexico during day to take lunch to his grandmother. threesome is Glo- the 1910 revolution. It has been com­ But, unlike Little Red Riding Hood, he ry (Thurman), a pared to the best work of Gabriel Garcia fails to come back. savvy but fragile Marquez, and like the recent Spanish A boy who seems to be Olivier bartender in film famon, famon, it celebrates the turns up six years later in Paris, work­ Frank's nightclub, relationship between food, sex and ing as a h omosexu al prostitute. with w h om social mores. The title Like Water For Inspector Druot, the lonely, chivalric Wayne falls in Chocolate refers to the Mexican meth­ detective who had vowed to find Elis­ love. The ro­ od of making hot chocolate by boiling abeth's son for her is delighted, but the mance grows and re-boiling water with cocoa; but boy's return resolves nothing. The from most unusu­ the phrase is also used to describe mother's desperate desire for a return al soil: Wayne ac­ someone who becomes agitated or to 'nom1al' family life with Olivier at cidentally saves sexually aroused. its centre is threatened by the equally Frank's We, and is Tita (Lumi Cavazos) is the young­ desperate desire of the boy's sister, pres en ted with est daughter of Mama Elena (Regina Nadine, to learn the 'truth' about his Glory for a week Tome), a tough widow who runs a disappearance. as his reward. The successful ranch. According to tradi­ The characters' need and capacity 'gift' highlights tion, Tita may never marry, but must for love allows Olivier, Olivier a curi­ Frank's contradic­ care for her mother till her death. The ously optimistic ending: in a terrible tory nature; this trouble begins when the handsome situation everyone, except perhaps gregarious gang- :::;;~~!!Ill~.:_ Pedro (Marco Leonardi, of Cinema Serge, gets what he or she wants. Even sterwhowantsto · Paradiso fame), asks for Tita's hand. so, the sweet notes of the horn playing be a stand-up co­ Mama Elena refuses and offers her over the closing scene caused me to median is quite eldest daugther, Rosaura (Yareli Ariz­ shudder. Living with the truth, even capable of 'own­ mendi), instead. Pedro accepts, but painful truth, may be better than ing' people. only so he can stay near Tita. happiness of this kind. Although Tita is sent to the kitchen, where - Jane Buckingham Frank's ruthless- she literally channels her grief and ness simmers throughout, his tenta­ passion into her cooking. As she bakes tive friendship with Wayne introduc­ Pedro and Rosaura' s wedding cake her Role reversals es the possibility of compassion and tears fall into the mix and cause every­ generosity. On Wayne's side, the quest one who eats the cake to grieve for Mad Dog and Glory, dir. John Mc­ is for courage. The film's climactic their lost loves. When Pedro gives Naughton (independent cin emas). scene should resolve the issue on both Tita a dozen roses, she uses them to MeNa ugh ton received critical acclaim sides; inexplicably, however, this piv­ make quail-in-rose-petal sauce and in many quarters for his debut film as otal moment is the film's weakest. everyone who eats it is aroused by a director, Hemy: Portrait of a Serial That aside, with intelligent dia­ Tita's passion and desire for Pedro. Killer. His considerable skills are on logue scripted by Richard Price (The In fact Gertrudis (Claudette show again in Mad Dog and Glory, a Color of Money and Sea of Love), and Maille), another sister, is so aroused film that provides a fascinating oppor­ Martin Scorsese and Barbara Da Fina by the dish that she runs out to have a tunity for Robert De Niro, Bill Murray as co-producers, Mad Dog and Glory cold shower-and the heat of her body and Uma Thunnan to strut their stuff. has an impressive pedigree. That the ignites the wooden shower stall. And strut they do. In contrast to film did not succeed in the USA is For Arau, the human spirit is like a Hemy, with its bleak, chilling expose puzzling but irrelevant. Reward your­ box of matches waiting to be ignited. of evil, Mad Dog and Glory incorpo­ self with a moment or two of glory. -Tim Stoney rates light and darkness, love and hate, - Brad Halse

V OLUME 3 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 53 v()J( ll\( )\

I~- .. ~' ~'""'.. ~····· . ~ ' /: ~ ; : ~ ,' ' '~ ~ ~ ' ·: , . ' . . ~ .; .. '' -' •. ' '' ::..! ~~ .~ ,· ~ ····-· '' Abroadly spealting 'MII\L TiLHll( ' ANAD

54 EUREKA STREET • OcTOBER 1993 Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no.17, October 1993

Devised by Joan Nowotny ffiVM

ACROSS 1 Argument brings about change in the situation. (10) 6 Consider m e returning with the journalist. (4) 10 To contain the risk implement strict economies. (5) 11 Provide fuel and charge round it to produce political grouping. (9) 12 Prepared to study the question? (5) 13 Love between boy and girl shows their view of life. You might call it metaphysical' (10) 15 A foundation for graduates is essential. (5) 17 In ga thering snow like an eskimo, Di cumulates a small portion inside. (7) 20 Bird on course pleases golfer. (5) 22 A male with some skills, in time, is able to be handled. (10) 23 Girl with a hundred others in the same social group. (5) 25 There has been no let-up ever since ants created confusion non-stop. (9) 26 Caught leg, or arm perhaps, on the way up. (5) 27 United Nations' act can cause downfall. (4) 28 To make a change, Healy re-let the apartment, somewhat airily, I'd say! (10). Solution to Crossword no. 16, September 1993 DOWN 1 Give an account of French writer. (8) 2 Whose child is 'loving and giving'? (7) 3 Vacant seat? No! Member is in yet again! (5) 4 Speaks in fanner unfinished basilica with authority from Rome. (2, 8) 5 A hundred reclined to see Cassius in the ring. (4) 7 Tip up in a heap, ruining the inscription. (7) 8 Sort of business that made a fool of the Primate. (6) 9 In the tournament, perhaps more ties would be annoying. (8) 14 Dull talks' Cruel destruction of interest in this arrangement! (10) 16 The sight of eucalypts rising over the headland produces complacency. (8) 18 Making some changes, Sybil sent detailed order, thus acting reasonably. (8) 19 Tempted to arrange ten dice gam es. (7) 21 Secular note going up produces a reaction that's icy! (7) 22 Does Mimi lie unguarded in part of the play? What an environment' (6) 23 Suffered many a pain in finding the hidden store. (5) 24 Could be tense, but it's over! (4)

AEEJ subscription form Please send m e Eureka Street:

for one year ($45 for 10 issues, or $40 cone. for two years D for pensioners, students and unemployed.) D ($85, or $80 cone.)

Narne ......

Address ......

Postcode ...... Country ...... Tel...... Date ......

Enc. chqjmoney order D Or debit: Bankcard D Visacard D Mastercard D

Card no: Ll~--~_L~~~_L~ L_J__L __L_j__L __ L_~~-- Card expiry date ...... Signature ......

'We are forced to renounce our sovereignty in favour of Post orders to: Jesuit Publications, PO Box 553, Eureka Street, a magazine of truly global reach.' Richmond VIC 3121. Payments in Australian currency only. An intervievv, not a point of vievv.

Paul Murphy presents a balanced interview. His questions show background knowledge, not personal opinion. So you can make up your own mind. For reliable current affairs six nights a week, watch Paul Murphy. Paul Murphy. Dateline. Monday - Saturday 7pm.

We can,

if you Will. Few forms of funding help the l3ureau better in its long term planning and delivery

of family se rvices than w ills and bequests.

The l3urea u, established more than 50 years,

helps Ca tholics and non-Ca tholic families CAT HOLIC 1-'AM I LY \X;EI. Ft\R E llL;RE:\L alike \\'ith professional se rv ices w hich

include marriage. family. child and gri ef F()r furthLT inf(lrmation counse lling; child and youth support; please write to: pre-marriage programs; adoptio n and RL·ply l'aid ~oS pregnancy counse lling services. lkquc., l OITit·L·r.

C:llilolic F:unily \V'L'II:u·,. llurc:au. If you arc making o r updating your w ill

1' .0 . !lox - . Nonh Carlron. \ ic .10~ 1 please remember the families tha t we can

Tel: (().)J (>62 20.$5 Fa x: IO.)J (>62 1~ .1 1 help, if you w ill.