TREASURE 1 June 2013

Mervyn R. Binns Jennifer Bryce Elaine Cochrane Ditmar Bruce Gillespie Dora Levakis John Litchen Malcolm McHarg Yvonne Rousseau Casey Wolfe and many others

DJ Fractal by Ditmar (Dick Jenssen) TREASURE No. 1 June 2013

A fanzine published for the June 2013 mailing of ANZAPA and a few others The electronic version, available as a PDF file on http://efanzines.com, replaces the fanzine known as Scratch Pad. Edited and published by Bruce Gillespie, 5 Howard St., Greensborough VIC 3088. Phone: (03) 9435 7786. Email: [email protected]. Member fwa.

Contents

3, 72 Editorial: Dive into the Treasure chest — Bruce Gillespie, with Elaine Cochrane and Mervyn Binns

5 Journey to Tuva — Dora Levakis 15 Postscript: My second visit to Tuva, July 2012 — Dora Levakis

17 Good horn, good brakes, good luck: A month in India — Jennifer Bryce

27 The sound of different drums: My life and science fiction, part 5 — John Litchen

43 Letters of comment Taral Wayne :: Tim Marion :: Steve Sneyd :: Andrew Darlington :: Alan Sandercock Ned Brooks :: Gillian Polack :: Dora Levakis :: Jerry Kaufman :: Andy Robson Elaine Cochrane :: Robert Eliordeta :: Tony Thomas :: Kaaron Warren Patrick McGuire :: Lloyd Penney :: Jenny Bryce :: Steve Jeffery :: Doug Barbour Tara Judah :: Werner Koopmann :: Ron Drummond :: Murray MacLachlan & We Also Heard From

62 Feature letters of comment The real story of Harry Potter and Voldemort — Yvonne Rousseau The loc that would not die — Casey Wolf ‘High Society’ and John Hammond — Malcolm McHarg

Illustrations

Front cover: DJ Fractal by Ditmar (Dick Jenssen). Back cover: ‘Sunset on our houseboat, Kerala’: photo by Jennifer Bryce. Photographs: As supplied by the authors of articles.

2 Editorial: Dive into the Treasure chest

Why change the name of this fanzine?

Because it’s had three names since the late 1990s. After be of interest to SF/fantasy fans and other indulgent 22 years, good sense will prevail. friends. It’s stuff that I treasure, so I assume everybody First there was *brg*, my paper fanzine for ANZAPA else will treasure it as well. (Australia and New Zealand Amateur Publishing Asso- Scratch Pad, *brg*, and Cosmic Donut contain all my ciation). My fanzine under that name began in 1991, own non-SF writing from more than two decades, plus a although I had been a member of ANZAPA, off and on, wealth of material from correspondents such as John since 1968. Litchen and Jennifer Bryce. *brg* and Cosmic Donut have In 1995 I joined the British apa Acnestis with a paper been written primarily for the apas that contain them, fanzine called The Great Cosmic Donut of Life. (taken from including mailing comments. In Scratch Pad, I have been the title of a Ray Nelson short story from the 1960s). That deleting the mailing comments. fanzine continued until the death of Acnestis in 2005. What’s the problem? The problem is the confusion When Bill Burns began his website eFanzines.com, about numbering. Scratch Pad has always had a sequence which hosts a vast number of fanzines in PDF format, I different from that of the two fanzines it contains. It took all the good bits from both paper fanzines and seems much easier to drop *brg* as my ANZAPAzine of wrapped them up into a fanzine called Scratch Pad. general material, and restrict the title to my apazine of What links them all? They contain mainly material mailing comments. Hence: a bright new fanzine called that is usually not about SF or fantasy, but otherwise may Treasure.

Why Treasure?

Life is a treasure hunt. I’ve written that often enough. one of Brian Aldiss’s recent novels, The Cretan Teat, issued Not for money treasure, of course, but for all those by a very small British publisher. It’s a fine novel, which precious items that furnish a mind: evidence of a life well would have been Brian’s bestseller if it had been pub- lived. Elaine and I have a house full of books, fanzines, lished in the 1970s just after the Horatio Stubbs books. other types of magazines, photographs, CDs, DVDs, Blu- When I tried to find it on the Internet, it had disap- rays, and LPs. They pose a storage problem, but if I let peared. Therefore I was very pleased when John Litchen them go, I would be letting go bits of my life. Often their sent me his own copy. Thanks very much, John. most treasured feature has been the effort taken to find Every year David Russell sends, or often brings, from them. I spent nearly 50 years waiting to find a copy of Warrnambool to Greensborough, gifts for my birthday. ‘Memories of Maria’, one of only a few songs written by He has a telepathic ability to pick presents that I will find Roy Orbison for other people, in this case the guitarist really interesting. A few years ago he presented me with Jerry Byrd. I didn’t buy the single in 1962 because I did a small coffee grinder that Elaine and I have been using not have the spare cash. I did not hear it again until about ever since. If David chooses DVDs as gifts, they will be five years ago, when it turned up on a CD of Jerry Byrd’s DVDs I had been meaning to buy. David offers more than best singles. More recently, I borrowed from Tim Train gifts, I think: he elevates gifts to the status of treasure.

Dip into Treasure 1 ...

Treasure 1 is not quite the treasure chest I intended this However, my favourites lists for 2012 have already ap- time around. It was going to feature my annual roundup peared in ANZAPA, so you will have to wait for the next of Favourite Books, Short Stories, CDs, Films, and Music. issue of SF Commentary. Meanwhile, sitting at the top of

3 this issue’s treasure chest are the articles you find here: friend, fine writer, and traveller to exotic places; and travel articles by Dora Levakis, who usually lives in John Litchen with the latest chapter of his life and times. Yarraville, Victoria, but is currently teaching in the Top The letter column is also very enjoyable. End of the Northern Territory; Jennifer Bryce, long-time

2012: sad notes

Archie’s baby photos, 2006.

Elaine writes, on Saturday, 9 June 2012:

A few days ago I found the receipt from the local animal shelter, dated 22 June 2006, for ‘One kitten’. That purry black kitten grew to be our huge, fluffy, beautiful, sweet Archie. In late 2007 Archie had his first bout of acute kidney disease. He spent a week on a drip at the vet’s and although he would have had some permanent kidney damage he seemed to make a complete recovery and he soon regained all the joie de vivre a young cat should have. A few weeks ago his kidneys malfunctioned again. Again a week on a drip and his blood tests seemed to indicate a return to within, or close to, normal, but this time he just didn’t bounce back. We tried everything we could to start and keep him eating but it reached the stage where it would have been cruel as well as pointless to keep trying. Yesterday I had the vet make a housecall to save him the terror of the final trip. He is buried near the bay tree. Give all your beasties a cuddle from me. Elaine

More recent pictures: Archie (l.) 2008 and (r.) 2011.

4 Continued on Page 72 Dora Levakis is a visual artist, project manager, and teacher involving individuals and communities in what she does.

Journey to Tuva by Dora Levakis

far reaches of their greatest wish and to go for it. Why Tuva? Why throatsinging? I wondered how, through habit, we easily become comfortable if not trapped within the parameters of what we regard as our greatest pain and our Life happens. But some years provide delightful greatest pleasure, nobly declaring one must know surprises when everything seems to fall into one’s limits. place. 1996 and 2010 were such delights. 1996 On a practical level I provided means by which saw me pulling out shelved information on a short students could gain results quickly. For most this course regarding breathing and meditation. It enabled them to become confident enough to was the Vibrational Breath Therapy technique, become responsible for undertaking more in- four lessons on how to A-U-M, taught in Mel- volved tasks. bourne by Sri Bala Ratnam. Also, during 1996 I became aware of Tuvan throatsinging. Access All 2010 saw me in Tuva. Fourteen years following Areas, fronted by Paul Grabowsky, an ABC TV my first encounter with the Tuvans, I was there. series on the voice, had aired. One episode fea- I was in the Republic of Tuva and had private tured male singers atop horseback in Tuva, a music lessons in its capital city of Kyzyl: four with place in remote Siberia, creating sounds that Zhenya Saryglar, a male member of the Tuvan seemed to emanate from deep within to surround National Orchestra, followed by ten with the space and yet, at the same time, to split into Choduraa Tumat, the founder of the first ever two, three, or more voices. I marvelled at this. all-female throatsinging group, Tyva Kyzy Where was the sound coming from? How on earth (Daughters of Tuva). did they do it? Before the lessons with Choduraa, I’d spent I played with my throat, pumping through some days in the countryside with her and a U-U-U sounds in rapid succession, as I was now handful of others, driving across the steppe, look- doing when checking for a relaxed throat while ing at yurts dotted in the far distance, staying chanting A-U-M. (My time with Sri Bala Ratnam, overnight in a yurt and also camping in the taiga incidentally, found me for some years afterwards (forest), comfortable that I’d gotten to know her chanting, on his advice, 81 rounds each morning before ‘handing myself over’. with attention to vibrating in my lower, middle, The four-week period of my visit was nestled in and upper lungs, feeling it in my chest, throat, the middle of 2010. January, I’d held an exhibi- and lips.) tion of portraits of ten women aged in the middle The sound and sensation of the rapid U was of a decade, from ages five to 85. The women who most pleasant. It took me somewhere but, as I was allowed me to paint them included Gertie Hud- to later learn, nowhere near the technique the dleston, one of the famed Joshua sisters who, Tuvan people use. incidentally, was shortly afterwards awarded the Now I had two sources of inspiration: on the Northern Territory’s NAIDOC artist of the year; one hand, a course that focused on both the Judith Durham, singer, composer and poet, for- breath and the chanting voice; and on the other merly of The Seekers; my 15-year-old niece hand, the culture of a people hidden in a barely Malinda; and Marshie Perera Rajakumar, chemi- known region in the Russian Federation using cal engineer and owner and director of the Jhoom voice in a way I’d never before imagined to be Bollywood Dance School. I included interview possible. footage of the ten women, giving viewers the I smiled at the meanings attached to inspira- opportunity to see the subjects animated and to tion: to be motivated and to breathe. Inhalation hear what they had to say. and Exhalation. Inspiration and Aspiration. To In April, May, and early June 2010 I lived at, inspire to aspire. This is what the arts can hope and taught all class levels of the primary and to do when much doesn’t seem to fall into place. secondary school in the remote Aboriginal com- munity of Numbulwar in South-East Arnhem By 1996 I’d worked in many schools as a visiting Land. October, November, and early December I artist, aiming to inspire students to venture to the taught at the Aboriginal community of Angurugu

5 Dora Levakis with Choduraa Tumat, founder and director of Tyva Kyzy (the Daughters of Tuva).

on Groote Eylandt. My time at Numbulwar preceded my overseas travel. I still did not know whether I had permis- Tuva sion to visit Tuva. It wasn’t until the first business day of my return to Melbourne, ten weeks later, that I received my Russian visa. This was less At the time I understood there to be fewer than than two weeks before my planned departure 15 Australians reported to have ever visited the date. place. I wished to be within the physical space of In Numbulwar I’d heard that the National Art authentic throat- singers. I wished to meet the Orchestra accompanied by Paul Grabowsky was people and to experience the land and culture in the community of Ngukkar, the former Roper from which this unique singing practice has River Mission, an Aboriginal community two sprung. And I wanted to see if I could include, as hours south of ours. (Numbulwar is the former subjects, some of these people in my next art Rose River Mission.) Our areas had had cyclones exhibition. during Easter, causing damage and longer than In 1996 I hadn’t regarded myself a singer. My normal flooding of many roads. The National Art academic and professional life concentrated on Orchestra’s visit to Ngukkar was part of the fine art, fiction writing, and community projects. Crossing Roper Bar Northern Territory Tour, I was not a singer, but I was free to be a nut with which began with a performance and talk at the sound. Here and there I had been able to weave opening of the Museum and Art Gallery of the in experimental voice. Removing the carpet in my Colour Country: Art from the Northern Territory’s studio meant that silly voices could reverberate Roper River exhibition in which Gertie Huddleston in the space. During full-time art studies in 1975 was represented. A visit to Numbulwar was I created a sound sculpture exploring texture and planned at the end of May, weather and road cadences, and throwing the voice. 1983 I was conditions permitting. allowed to include a music elective while under- I’d put a notice on the school whiteboard her- taking a Bachelor of Arts degree, with a double alding the possible visit. I was keen to meet Paul major in Writing and Literature. The elective had Grabowsky, keen to share my travel plans, keen an experimental music component. We created to offload my anxiety regarding Tuva, keen to projects using voice and found objects for sounds. share the effect upon me of the 1996 episode of I remember how extraordinarily uplifting it was to Access All Areas . orchestrate and hear my classmates sing the A colleague told me I was brave. Brave, while piece I’d created using abstract sounds and un- in remote Australia, to plan a visit to remote conventional notation. I drew upon these experi- Siberia? No. There are things one simply must do. ences when in 2005, now formally qualified as a

6 teacher, I began to bring abstract singing into the waves of low sounds can extinguish a flame. classroom. Was the inspiration to develop such a demand- I reluctantly agreed, for a day, to teach four ing form of singing for a culture of people a Italian classes at a primary school. I can’t speak spiritual one? Certainly, one has to engage physi- Italian. Not to worry, I had been told: the lessons cally, deeply, spiritually, and honestly. Without would be planned with worksheets available; and doubt throatsinging is powerful both for the all classes would, during their final 30 minutes of singer and for the listener. Attacked by a horde of their sessions, practise their Italian song for the Genghis Khan’s, it would not be the swords held end-of-year concert. menacingly erect and ready as they charge, but a The students began to shout their Italian songs collective kargyraa, that might make victims shit at all directions within the four walls of their themselves. Genghis’s general was said to be a classrooms. When I gathered together their voices Tuvan. into abstract sounds, encouraging them to do so Certainly the voice of a good throatsinger goes as one gentle yet powerful voice, the centre of both through me and has made me want to cry. my palms warmed. I had discovered an invigorat- Such encounters are both inspiring and hum- ing yet relaxing activity I could juggle and build bling. upon regularly thereafter with students over the following years. Even now. It is wonderful to always hear at least one student singing as she or he exits a class session. The Tuva journey Even now, I don’t regard myself as a singer. I do not perform in the formal sense, but I do, and will always, thoroughly enjoy exploring breath and sound. 13 July 2010 I’d had an interlude exploring Western Har- monic Overtone Singing, enjoying its possibilities At 2.00 a.m., I was waiting for the train from in the outdoors with likeminded people; and I Beijing to Krasnoyarsk. Got chatting, as I do, to delighted at, and regarded, the many, many peo- a Russian man who said he’d just spoken to an ple on You Tube who shared their demonstrations American who was also going to Tuva. To meet and enjoyment of both throatsinging and har- someone going to Tuva was rare, he said. This monic overtone singing, as delicious. The smiles American guy turns out to know the guy with at the completion of their generous demonstra- whom I’ve been in contact and another American tions endeared them to me as distant friends. who, coincidentally, visited the school at Numbul- war in the NT for one week. He is the tour manager Tuvans have many styles of throatsinging. Those for a Tuvan throatsinging group, Alash. He was best known to the West are: going to Kyzyl, Tuva’s capital, to attend the wed- ding that Sunday between Alash’s manager, Sean G Sygyt: high flute-like singing when sounds dance freely above and around the timbral Quirk (another American), and Sveta, a Tuvan quality of a good throatsinger’s drone woman. The couple already have three children. We flew to Krasnoyarsk on the same plane and G Khoomei: the constricted sound that rises ringing upwards from a tight belly, chest, and travelled from Krasnoyarsk to Abakan in the same throat yet does, at the same time, produce train carriage. overtones All trains in Russia run to Moscow time, so our train left later than was on the ticket. This meant G Kargyraa: a very deep continuous gravelly growl that can vibrate through to hit the pit we got into Abakan four hours later than planned. of the stomach of the listener. In a van was Sean, the guy about to get married, and three others ready to take us all to Kyzyl. The Tuvan technique of singing is physically Beautiful trip! It’s a small world that all these guys demanding, requiring a tight belly, chest, and know each other and also know another throat- throat. Choduraa had arm-wrestled me during singing American who I had admired and e- one lesson, encouraging me to bear down deeply. mailed from You Tube. I was humbled by these (This method has to be attributed to Otkun coincidental meetings. We are invited to the wed- Dostay, the current manager of Tyva Kyzy.) ding. Many throatsingers would be there. Before leaving Tuva I considered what it now Next day I met an Australian woman who has means for me to pursue this interest: to activate been doing a Master’s paper on Tuvan music. I a tired if disused part of myself and draw up a had found a blog by this person a year ago when voice from deep down there. It takes retraining, they were asking advice on how to manage sub- and yes, is said to be akin to learning to wiggle zero temperatures. I’d e-mailed to tell this person one’s ears. I wanted to go to Tuva but was finding it difficult It intrigued me to consider the power of low, getting information. I had received no reply, but guttural sounds, possible only when the lower gut was yesterday told on the phone I would be is engaged and the throat is strong.. introduced to some of the women musicians. This It has been proven that the strength in the PhD student and a few of the other people might

7 water in the pipes is freez- ing cold: hard going at first but very refreshing after the shower. I will not go without washing! And I handwash my clothes daily. Kyzyl is the capital of Tuva and is quite poor: many road repairs and old buildings. I have a room. in the most expensive hotel at around $140 a night. For- eigners need to register vi- sas for every day of our visit here but so far no one has stopped me on street to check. I am openly stared at, and many people have wanted to take photos of me with them. My minimal Tuvan helps, but I wouldn’t get by in the long run with- out help. This place is dan- gerous at nightfall: the Tuvans do drink, and can become violent at night. There are stabbings. I don’t push my luck. It doesn’t get The bride and groom, Sveta and Sean: the wedding at the dark until after 10 p.m. It’s a weird sensation. yurt camp, 20 km out of Kyzyl. 19 July 2010 join us on our forthcoming ten-day trek through the Tuvan country. Six of the days will be on Yesterday I attended the 10-hour wedding of Sean horseback. Involving more people will lead to and Sveta at a yurt camp about 20 km out of lower costs. Kyzyl. I took footage and many photos and am Yesterday I posted some postcards but I was very happy with these, but unfortunately the told it will be unlikely that people will receive batteries for both the camera and the mobile them. We’ll see. phone ran out. This was unfortunate, because the It’s quite hot here, fortunately, as there is no singing on the bus ride home was extraordinary. hot water in the whole of Kyzyl until the 18th. The Young and old joined in together with all forms of throatsinging (and all with perfect pitch!). One of the guys from the Tuvan group, Alash, and some of the woman, including the one next to me, sang melody of the song in a style akin to the Mongolian long song. My understanding of this style is that sung vowels are elongated and emotive. Effective, when singing across the steppe. The gorgeous woman sitting next to me motioned for me to join in but I couldn’t spoil the ambience. Instead I bemoaned the fact that I couldn’t record what they were doing and that a current companion was suddenly overtaken by the vodka etc. he had earlier enjoyed and wasn’t able to stand, let alone use his movie camera. However, I had recorded much of the singing during the wedding celebra- tions. One of the others from Alash, Ayan-Ool Sam, had earlier given me an informal lesson in Khoomei after I told him I’d seen him on YouTube.

Dora being urged by a shaman to have yet another shot of vodka at the wedding.

8 Some of the wedding guests. This photo is a mere section of huge circle made from tables.

He was a sweetheart in the way that he kept a ing an eye. Apparently Lori Anderson had invited watchful eye over another drunken member of his them to be part of the Quiet Music Festival. group and over a tourist, making sure the tourist Driving me to town today, Aldar told me he and I made it to our doorsteps. especially liked the wedding yesterday because it The wedding began formally with white dress was good easy fun. He said that Tuvans nowadays and suit and tie before transforming into Tuvan often get violent. During the evening of the wed- style. The music was at first strident, interestingly ding celebrations, most male guests engaged in Russian. The music that followed was, as you ‘Khuresh’, the Tuvan style of wrestling. All win- might guess, excitingly Tuvan. ners and losers were goodnatured. Every person, foreigner or local, who A few days earlier I’d met three members of a throatsings understands that one has to first find Finnish throatsinging group and was rapt to see his or her Khoomei voice. During the lesson, them here. Being the bold person that I can be, I Zhenya told me my kargyraa was good but that I managed to get a sample of their singing. Another should not go there yet. If I hear myself going into guy from Greece gave a demonstration also of his overtones, stop it. It’s easier he said, for beginners throatsinging and, delightfully, gave me a sample to create a kargyraa sound (a low, deep growl), but of Psarandontis, one of his favourite Greek sing- settling into this will disable one from finding a ers. Steve Sklar and wife Johnna Morrow were khoomei voice. To reach this voice requires engag- also there. Johnna sang a song for Sean and ing muscles in gut and throat. It’s quite exciting Sveta, a song she’d sung at her own wedding. hearing all the examples given to me so far ... To So far I’ve had two formal throatsinging lessons get overtones over sounds that originate and and two lessons on the igil from Zhenya, one of emanate from the mouth is pleasurable but not the people I’d made contact with a few months what these people do. ago. This morning I purchased an igil made by As mentioned already, the wedding was be- Aldar Tamdyn, a member of Chirgilchin, who tween Sean, an American guy, and Sveta, a local makes the instruments for everyone here. I asked woman. Sean has been here for about six years him to work his magic on my igil and filmed him. and has already three children with Sveta. He is A little over a week ago he’d given me a demon- the manager for the throatsinging group Alash, is stration in his workshop and, without asking, a himself a member of the Tuvan National Orches- tourist filmed him. If that was a problem, Aldar tra, and has been given a medal from the presi- was too polite to say. dent for his khoomei abilities and for his work in promoting Tuva. It was announced at the wedding Chirgilchin had been visiting Sydney in June. that the president was gifting the couple a block Obviously I couldn’t have gone as I was in the of land on which they can build a house: a Northern Territory, but did anyone else know? I generous gift as most people can’t afford anything would have flown in for the concert without blink- more than renting an apartment.

9 Viktor walked me down the road to the Post Office where I showed him photos of Australia and my paintings on my memory stick. He said a lot, but again, I didn’t fully understand. While crossing roads he’d courteously put his arm around me. After I showed him a photo of Lance he nodded and said, ‘Moosh’. I suspect he then understood Lance to be my boyfriend. Viktor took me to the internet cafe at Hotel Kyzyl. There I met Aldanay, a worker keen to learn English, who has good basics. After she helped me to print my photos of my paintings, I took this girl to the cafe Vostorg and helped her with English. Tomorrow we should be heading off an a 10-day tour. Five or six days will be on horseback. Will cost around $A1200.

20 July

The trip into the taiga has been post- poned until Thursday, so I’ve come to Hotel Kyzyl hoping to see again Aldanay, to offer her another informal English lesson over a cup of tea. She’s returning tomorrow, so I thought I’d use the internet just the same. It costs 42 rubles for the hour, which works out to be about ... $2.00. I came into town by taxi this time, as my host needed to register pass- ports at the immigration office. It took a while moving from one building to another. First we had to alert them to our intention, then acquire photocopies, then pay Sveta, the bride, with her daughter Sonchalai Quirk. the 2 ruble fee per day, then to take the lot back to the office. While waiting in each of those packed In August 2009, immediately after sending an rooms I noticed young people readily giving up e-mail to a principal accepting a one-day-a-week, their seats to older people. One young boy’s face 13-week engagement teaching puppetry, I got lit up when I spoke, so I asked the boy if he spoke onto the Tuva On Line newsletter and saw an English. This is very rare. He carefully but suc- article on Viktor Kuular, a puppetmaker here in cessfully engaged in a conversation with me. Kyzyl. I printed the article and brought it with me, but was told he wasn’t at the Centre any more and For the first eight days I stayed at the hotel I was it seemed I wouldn’t find him. in a good position to get my bearings, and yet far A few days ago I was walking around Kyzyl enough away from the city centre to allow for a thinking I should really try to find this man. I good 30-to-40-minute walk into town. For the charged up to the museum. Near the front stairs whole of those eight days I had to shower and was a man with wooden dolls and animals spread handwash clothes in cold water. Icy cold water. I on a cloth. I thought he was trying to sell them. came to enjoy the after-effect. When I approached he began to perform the most I am now staying for five nights at someone’s amazing finger puppetry. I asked his name and — apartment, as a home stay, for 600 rubles a day. it was Viktor. I pulled the article out of my bag There was the option to rent the whole apartment and he confirmed it to be about him. I told him I for 3000 rubles a day between myself and an- was happy to find him and he agreed to photos other, but I decided that I wanted the Tuvan and a film. Our communicating was done with experience of being with a family. My host lives difficulty as he can’t speak English, and in fact with her 24-year-old daughter. very, very few people do. Russian is the formal As mentioned, the two of them had just es- language that all people speak. corted us to the immigration office. After checking

10 what they wanted to do, I told the other tourists it to suffer on horseback, particularly when two I’d see them later. of the others who would also be going had led me Another visitor said that music lessons here to feel I couldn’t rely on them if in a vulnerable cost a lot in response to Westerners charging in situation. Yes, these two had been drinking, but their own countries a lot for throatsinging lessons enough is enough. It was a difficult decision. I was they learn from the Tuvans. warned I was going to offend some very important people, a response that actually helped consoli- I had been trying for six months to get information date my resolve. Who was the trip going to be for on how to get here and what was going to be anyway? happening this year with regard to throatsinging. Today I met with Choduraa Tumat, a leading Because 2010 happens to be the International Tuvan female singer. The women are going on a Year for Tourism in Tuva, information was finally four-day trip to meet up with some other women.. posted on the Friends of Tuva website. I’d I asked if I could join them. They said yes, so we e-mailed the FoT a year ago for information but should be heading out on Friday. I will pay 10,000 received a quick reply that they had no idea what rubles, around $A400, and will share costs for was planned for 2010. gifts of chocolate and biscuits. I also met with C.’s After the ten-day tour I will most probably manager and discussed the possibility of includ- continue the home-stay. The home-stay is not ing the women in my next exhibition. I’ve been supposed to include food, but our host has gra- wanting to meet with Choduraa for over a week ciously cooked a couple of meals for us. I’d already now. My request for portrait sittings happened had breakfast this morning, but before leaving for after they agreed to my joining them on trip. the day was presented with a table set with meat Last night I also sat with the Greek guy, who dumplings in a dill and spring onion soup. It was offered to take me to other places. He told me lovely but I was a little embarrassed. about a festival that was staged before we arrived (why weren’t we told about this when discussing 21 July 2010 date options?) and told me how a master ap- proached him on hearing his attempts at Last night I cancelled my participation in the tour, throatsinging and held his hand tightly while he including the horse trek to the taiga! The depar- sang the various styles to him, saying, ‘Do it like ture date had changed three times, and confirma- this!’ I spent some time looking at this guy’s many tion for the price came two nights ago. Because photos (on his camera). I’m expecting to be at my physical worst in a I learned two lessons from the discomfort of week’s time I decided it wasn’t going to be worth last night: to look after myself and to stand strong

A van we encountered upon leaving Kyzyl selling kvas, a drink made of fermented wheat; non-alcoholic and very refreshing. We first found one of these vans in Krasnoyarsk, the first place in Russia I’d visited.

11 A public toilet on the steppe.

with my decisions. I have exhausted myself over daughters of a mother quite competent in the art the past 18 months doing so much at great cost. of Tuvan singing at a time of strong cultural and There has to be room for goodwill and to be able political taboos. I asked if health issues can arise to give some things away — but I’ve exhausted my from the practice of khoomei. One of the women resources too often. indicated that, while anything can be harmful when forced, it is believed that respiratory prob- 27 July lems can develop from this practice. The opinion was expressed that to do khoomei well, one will I arrived back from the trip with the women today, have a god-given gift. You can either do it or you including two of the women from Tyva Kyzy and can’t. a Russian couple and their two children (who Next morning one of sisters showed us docu- publish some of the Tuvan CDs). We had to hire ments and photos from the past. We then drove a driver. For the first leg of journey, Tyva Kyzy’s to visit the yurt of the other sister, who gave us manager drove us. He delighted in saying that lunch. She was going to kill a sheep for us but we Dora will open the door for Tyva Kyzy to get to had said we’re not that important. Australia. The driver for the rest of the trip was a Next day we camped near mountain mineral typical Tuvan. springs. I didn’t climb. Too heady. In the evening, We stopped at Erzin, spending the night in a when at the mountain, we all had to perform. Me five-star hotel: no running water (nowhere out in too. No way would I dare to sing overtone. It would the country has running water!) and outdoor have insulted them. I sang ‘Morningtown Ride’ dunnies: a type of long drop that has a short drop. instead. One has to squat and inch around a previous Last night we drove to another yurt; twin yurts person’s droppings. The short drop means it actually: somebody’s country dwelling. We spent stinks terribly. The temptation to move droppings the night there, toasty and warmed by the wood- away with a stick is arrested by the promise of fuelled stove placed in the centre of the space; its fresh aromas (!). All country toilets, and many chimney protruding above the yurt’s apex.It was here in Kyzyl, are like this. You have to carry a all you would expect from a Tuvan country home good store of toilet paper. Early morning rain with animals and children running around and provides some relief to the smell. up the hills. Everyone has a winter and a summer At this hotel we were met by a woman from the homestead. Cultural Centre who may refer to the visit in the local newspaper. Another two women came to the room, granddaughters of a famous Tuvan singer:

12 30 July apart from that I feel I would be doing no one a service if I patronised him or her at my expense. This morning I took an apartment for myself and The singing lesson today left me feeling as if I’d was very happy that I decided to do this. Two done 100 or more sit-ups. I was engaging muscles nights ago I’d discovered another guy was being that I didn’t know I had. It is hard work but good. brought into the current apartment. I didn’t want I might have mentioned that the Finnish guy who more of those beer-fuelled voices echoing through has been heading the Finnish throatsinging soci- the walls in the early hours of the mornings. The ety in Finland for over 10 years recommended owner and daughter of the apartment have that I have lessons with Choduraa. And, yes, she’s planned to leave today for Mongolia, so the cur- good. rent level of polite peace at night would fall When on the country trip, one of our group, a through the window. The next morning (yester- Russian, asked if I knew Russian. When I replied, day) I received a call from the woman whose tour ‘I’ve come to Tuva, not Russia’, a Tuvan told me I had refused saying that the price for the rooms to ‘watch what you say’. I later learned of financial was going up — no, not from that day, but from reliance and of a pride in being Russian. All the beginning of our taking them. My impulse was children learn Russian, with Tuvan being taught to tell her to go jump, as we’d taken the apartment as a choice. Some families openly want to be at an agreed price. The increase amounted to identified as Russian, regarding Tuvan as a primi- $7.00 a day, which is not much, but the principle tive option — but not so much in the country annoyed me. Nonetheless the other tenant paid, areas. My limited Tuvan is very helpful, and as its so I thought I’d better keep the peace and follow alphabet is very close to the Russian one, I’m able suit. Anyway, I had hoped to leave. As luck once to decipher many shop signs (all in Russian). again (yet again!) found me, I managed to secure ‘Bank’, for example, is phonetically spelled as a lovely apartment all to myself for a tiny bit less bank though the letters are Russian. than the new price for the current place. People often speak to me in paragraphs ... it’s Last night I received a text from a distraught funny that they don’t animate their speech; they young woman wanting to talk. She was being don’t mime to help the explanation. Often we end hassled by an older Tuvan man, whom we know up looking at each other and laughing. I say, ‘Bil and is integral to the network. He had brazenly bess men’ (‘I don’t understand’). grabbed and kissed her, leaving her shocked and While we were in the country the children at not knowing what to do. She was not used to one yurt home sat on top rail of stockyard and saying ‘no’, and didn’t want to make trouble. I laughed at my English. One of the group started insisted she ring a Tuvan friend of ours, as two to imitate my sound so I gave them all an English things had become clear over the past few days: lesson, pointing to things and naming them. This he was testing her boundaries and the locals is a delightful experience among the rolling hills weren’t sure what her boundaries were. We chat- of Tuva. ted at length last night. Interesting how the edge We had driven across the steppe to get to this of one’s comfort zone can be compromised, espe- yurt, Tuvan music playing on CD, the driver cially when one wants to please. I’d acquiesced to throwing in a line of throatsinging here and there the intimidatory demand for more money, but ... and giving his throatsinging version of a didg-

A yurt in Tuva. Note the pole: the bucket with the peg beneath needs to be depressed for so the water will flow. There is no plumbing outside of Kyzyl.

13 eridoo. gentle mayonnaise and beetroot; a salad of The grandmother to these kids motioned to carra ... them and they cleared off down and up the huge shit ... the internet cut off and I lost the rest of hill, far away. These kids were all younger than this e-mail. So what did I say? There was quite a ten. After milking the cows, an older woman bit more. mounted a horse and took off into the distance. Oh well. In a few days I’ll be back home. I would It was suggested to one of us who would have a love to be teaching again, yes, for some income; lengthier stay in Tuva that a month here in the but also to ground myself with kids. But I’ll need country would show how hard women work; dem- to make good start of a couple of paintings. onstrating why throatsinging isn’t traditionally women’s work. 2 August (extra) Have I mentioned that it has been found that Tuvans share the same genes as Native Ameri- It seems they’ve given me an extra 12 minutes as cans? You can see it. The women are exquisite I lost most of last e-mail. I can’t remember all that beauties. was lost ... I mentioned that a dog bit me over a week ago. 2 August It seemed to sense my vulnerablility as I was very ill. A big dog that I thought was friendly, came up Turns out I have to leave Tuva on Wednesday to my waist, sniffed me, growled, then bit me. rather than Thursday to catch the plane out of Luckily, I’d lost weight as I might have lost a Russia at 2 a.m. Friday. More long stretches of chunk of flesh. The bite mark is only just healing time waiting without adequate sleep. There will now. be a minibus taking me from here at 4 p.m. and In the Lonely Planet guide, Sean, the guy arriving at Krasnoyarsk at 5 a.m. I will then have whose wedding I attended, is mentioned as a to wait until midnight that next day to board the contact. Even as an American, Sean has an im- plane out of Russia. I will then have a10–12-hour pressive command of both the Tuvan and Russian wait at both the Beijing and Kuala Lumpur air- languages. During my first meeting with him, ports — longer than the train travel. I’m tired at during those hours driving from Abakan to Kyzyl, the thought of it and my pockets ache. I’m begin- he demonstrated an entertaining ability to imper- ning to see daylight through the bottom of both of sonate others. I imagine his humour and his ear them. for Tuvan have activated his ability to make oth- Today I had a double lesson with Choduraa: an ers at the other end of a phone believe he is a hour on igil and an hour singing; and will repeat native of Tuva. this tomorrow and on Wednesday. Lessons cost I was told today that the average wage here is 1000 rubles an hour, roughly $40.00. It would around 14,000 rubles a month. This is probably have been crazy to come here and not have les- why at least five different Tuvans choked when I sons. I’d indicated earlier that the singing is mentioned the cost of 30,000 rubles for the trip physically demanding, and for me, when I have to the taiga. I guess these people have to find the barely, if ever, accessed some of these muscles, it balance between a fair price to charge for one’s is safer that I learn under the guidance of some- own services and what is a fair fee to ask of one who is a master and, by the way, a damn good Westerners. teacher. Today Choduraa arm-wrestled me while Bye for now I sang so I could engage my deep muscles more Dora. deeply, and I continued in the push-up position. Ha, ha. This, she said, is the method of Otkun Later ... Dostai (Tyva Kyzy’s manager). Yesterday, while photographing and interview- In March 2012, I included Tuvan musicians as ing the women of Tyva Kyzy, one of the women subjects in my solo art show, ‘Of Remote Place’. put her traditional costume on me and another of Portrait paintings, photographs, and audiovisual the women attached her long hairpiece to my displays of interviews and observations of all head. I look like a Tuvan matriarch. The Museum subjects were on exhibition. of Tuva is in the background. In July 2012, I returned to Tuva for further I was right in guessing over a year ago that I material and as guest at the ‘Dembildei’ festival; needed to learn the Tuvan language to help sing the fiftieth birthday celebrations for Kongar-ool in their style. Choduraa uses the Tuvan vowel Ondar, Tuva’s greatest living musical treasure. sounds in each lesson. I’m pleased to say that I With respect to the difficulty of their art, I com- have now memorised all the vowels correctly. peted on stage, alongside native Tuvans, and Eating out is relatively cheap here. The Lonely performed a live mood and portrait painting. Read Planet guide refers to the cafeteria called Vostorg. the story of this trip on the next page. It has an excellent variety of food for around $5.00. I lunched on a cabbage roll stuffed with — Dora Levakis, April 2013 meat and rice, a slice of layered something with pickled herring, a white root vegetable, a type of

14 Postscript: My second trip to Tuva, July 2012

5 July 2012 Lake Chatygai is a huge freshwater lake, but one can only drink the water by pouring some It has been very hard to access the internet this from a bottle into a hand-operated pump. It can trip. I can have 20 minutes or so right now. then be used for drinking and cooking. I am in the room of the group Tyva Kyzy at the Choduraa’s brother had caught a bagful of three Tuvan cultural centre, typing this as the women varieties of fish, affording us one each. His darling practise their music. Five women are singing five- and seven-year-old children were enter- while one also plays the kengirge, a large frame tained by seeing a foreigner and took charge of my drum — the drum standing from floor to knee. camera. The five-year-old followed me around. Another plays the khomus, the Tuvan jaw harp. Here, at Lake Chatygai, I had my first Russian Another plays the byzaanchy, a string instrument banya. This was a two-roomed structure made of with a bull’s head, and two others each play, while logs, with a wood-fuelled heater heating one room seated, a chadagan, a stringed instrument similar and the water in another. I had first to whip my to a zither that is plucked. A pity you can’t hear body with a bunch of aromatic twigs. I’m not sure them ... of its name, but noted that bunches of juniper Kyzyl is abuzz with preparations for Kongar-ool branches are often sold at markets and at road- Ondar’s fiftieth birthday celebrations ... I’ve side stalls for this use in the banya. Using a ladle, agreed to paint live on stage (ha, ha ... do I sound we scooped hot then cold water into a basin to nervous?). Yesterday, I gave him a gift of a dilly pour over ourselves ... You all know the paintings bag made by women in Numbulwar and a box of of Degas of the women at bath, using a tin basin? Aussie macadamia chocolates with koala on the This is what I used. I smile broadly as I type this! box. For those who don’t know, the dilly bag I have had perpetual headaches that began on features around the neck of David Gulpilil in the the Melbourne–Hong Kong–Beijing legs of the trip, opening scene of the movie Australia. The dilly bag and don’t respond to pain killers. I’m fine, but if is made with tightly woven pandanus leaves and not for this I’d be a completely happy bunny string made of currajong bark — it should be able hopping around the steppe ... to hold water. Pardon this, as it’s a rushed email. I returned to Kyzyl two days ago, after spending a little over a full day at Lake Chagytai with four 9 July 2012 of these women, and with Choduraa’s family. Lake Chagytai, at the foot of the northern slopes I had a romantic thought that it would be lovely of the Tannu-Ola Range, is one of Tuva’s largest if I received news while in Tuva that I had been lakes. We’d intended to be there two days, but successful with my recent entries into the Doug along the way, in the middle of the steppe, our Moran Portrait Prize. This is indeed what has hire car, with hire driver, had twice broken down. happened! I have received news that my portrait The first time we waited for over an hour for of Absolom, Kyle and Katrina has made it into the another car to bring a part that would repair the finals. The portrait of Gerald Murnane that I vehicle’s axle. I liked the way all, young and old, wanted to enter into the Archibald — but couldn’t played soccer to pass the time. as it clashed with my exhibition — made it into The second time we broke down, it was for the semi-finals. good. We were 2 kilometres from the lake and This evening I painted live on stage while a were prepared to walk with luggage, but it began musician from Hun Huur Tu played the igil and to rain. A Tuvan man piled the ten of us into his sang. Just before this I sat in the audience think- old Russian jeep and drove us the rest of the way. ing I was crazy for agreeing to do this. My painting He was delighted to hear I’m from Australia, and was largely gestural, as you might imagine, and I called me ‘kangaroo’, something about which two wondered from the few claps whether the of the women are still laughing. (Goodness, you audience didn’t like it. But an elderly Tuvan should hear Choduraa’s amazing singing right woman thanked me, and a Russian man, the now .... there’s a strong chance you will be able photographer for the Cultural Centre, later sat at to in near future!) my table in the cafe beaming from ear to ear as I’m somewhat humbled by, yet again, the good he said, ‘I can tell you are a real artist.’ Isn’t that luck that comes my way in Tuva. I have so far delightful? secured two world-famous Tuvans for my next art These past few days have been abuzz with show, one of whom is the first Tuvan I’d heard of activities around Kongar-ool’s fiftieth birthday. and whom I greatly admire.

15 Friday night was the opening, with extraordinar- were damn good. I’d already heard them practise ily good examples of throatsinging on stage, in the rehearsal rooms of Tyva Kyzy. traditional Mongolian dancing, a shaman’s Today began with a lecture on the history of dance, and a fusion of Tuvan Khoomei and beat- Tuvan music. Choduraa made a presentation, boxing from Shodekeh, an American professional followed by both Morton and Pipa. Pipa spoke in beatboxer who is here as a special guest. A film English while Choduraa interpreted. Morton is crew is following him around, planning to make quite knowledgeable on the discography of Tuvan a sequel to the Genghis Blues documentary that music. Pipa spoke on the teaching of music with- brought Kongar-ool world fame. out notation. We all piled outside for the opening dance and Following this talk, a cute little Tuvan girl came procession. No-one told me that, as a visitor from on stage in traditional dress — what a darling. another country, I was supposed to be a part of Kongar-ool then introduced the judging panel for this. There was an especially made poster with yesterday’s competitors, and so the prize giving ‘Australia’ written in Russian. (I’m hoping I will be began. Pipa and Morton both received a certificate allowed to bring it home.) I was at one end of the and gifts ... and then my name was called ... Okay, crowd, with military men keeping the partitions so it really was a thankyou for participating and intact. I saw the foreigners gather around the showing interest. I walked on stage and received Buddhist prayer wheel in the square and thought, my certificate in Russian script: surname first, Oh, I might have to be there. Then the an- followed by ‘Dope’. The ‘p’ is pronounced ‘r’, and nouncements came: each country was called out, the ‘e’ is the dative form of ‘Dora’, which is to say and the visitor walked a guard of honour with that the ‘e’ makes it ‘For Dora’. Yes, I immediately beautiful Tuvan ladies gesturing and received a saw the comic side of this. I’m a dope — I tried to welcome scarf at the top of the stairs. I was on the perform Dymchyk Khoomei! I’m sure you’ll all line crowd side at the top of the stairs as I heard up on my return to hear how I do it ... ‘Australia’ repeated a few times. A Tuvan carried After I had received my certificate, the cute my poster. I inched my way to the security guard little girl handed me gifts of Kongar-ool’s latest and said ‘Australia’, as I patted my chest. He book (in Russian), a CD of his, and a book of motioned for me to go forward, so I walked along postcards. I then shook the hands of each of the the edge of the crowd to the area where the others judges, shook Konar-ool’s hand, and walked off with posters had gone, and was given the Austra- the stage giggling to myself. As Pipa and Morton lia sign by the Tuvan lady. We then marched into had performed twice — once each as soloists and the cultural centre. Kongar-ool shook my hand again as a duo — they were also awarded the and kissed me. We’d already met. Two days before People’s Choice prize; the same prize that Paul I gave him a dilly bag made by the women of Pena was awarded in Genghis Blues. (I have a Numbulwar; and gave him one of my cat cards. A copy of this DVD and can lend it to anybody who journalist later asked me if I was the one who gave is interested.) Kongar-ool the artwork for his birthday. I was a We performed alongside the Tuvans them- little puzzled. Perhaps someone else had given selves, from the beginners to the advanced. Tyva him a painting. The journalist then told me that Kyzy performed, and the group was awarded a Kongar-ool was showing everyone my cat card lamb. and saying, ‘Look at this.’ That’s delightful too; I’ve come home with Choduraa tonight and ... but his delight in the detail of the cat card may where was that lamb? In the boot of the taxi, the have been the reason he didn’t shake my hand poor thing. Tomorrow her brother will slaughter tonight after my painting act elicited something the lamb, Tuvan style, as is depicted in the DVD more abstract ... Genghis Blues ... All the women, the family, Pipa The whole of yesterday was comprised of sing- and Morton, and I will join in the festivities. (Oh, ing competitions. Wow: so many terrific Tuvans. my god.) I was reassured when a couple I’d already met I’m staying in the most delightful rustic two years ago when I last visited Tuva, a Norwe- environment; I love being here, living the Tuvan gian man and Finnish woman, told me we are way, rather than in an apartment. As I promised comic relief for the Tuvans; that, good or bad, we I wouldn’t take photos, I won’t describe the would be laughed at, but that the Tuvan people environment either. A pity, but I must respect my appreciate foreigners respecting their music friend’s feelings. It’s now 2.30 a.m. and there will traditions; and, with our failed attempts we show be an early start, so I’d better go ... their young people how hard it is for us. So ... I went on stage and received applause for first — Dora Levakis, July 2012, now included in saying, ‘Ekii’ (hello) in Tuvan. Pipa and Morton the combined article, April 2013 were in Tuva for their fifth and seventh times and

16 Jennifer Bryce has been a long-time friend of Melbourne fans without ever joining fandom. She has spent many years as a music educator and researcher, and has taken partial retirement in order to write ... and travel.

Good horn, good brakes, good luck: A month in India by Jennifer Bryce

It’s 5.30 a.m. and golden lights are subdued by fog as my We see so many pictures of rusty-looking trains with plane touches down in Delhi. The shape looming next people hanging out of the windows. And I recall that the to my window is a Spice Jet — a plane specially designed Hindu conception of time is very different from the for transporting spices? Much later I learn it’s the name Western one. But to my surprise, everything works and of a domestic airline. Soon I’m sitting in a little coffee is punctual. Anne’s plane lands and we meet up — shop waiting at International Arrivals for Anne who is exactly according to schedule. A driver from the hotel is coming in a few hours’ time from England. Take life one there to meet us. As I sit in the back seat — can’t do up step at a time. Step One, have a Pepsi. No thanks. I sip my seat belt as the clip is covered over with towelling — I try sweetened milky coffee — the only kind you can get — to figure out which is the correct side of the road to drive my first transaction in rupees. I can hear and smell the on. Ultimately I realise it’s the left. But the only traffic gentle bubbling of oil making Indian delicacies. Not rules seem to be: sound your horn and accelerate ready for those just yet. through any gap in the traffic, know the exact size of your One thing I hadn’t expected in India was efficiency. vehicle as there will be less than a centimetre to spare on each side, bicycles kind of give way to tuk tuks, tuk tuks Street scene in Old Delhi. to motor bikes, motor bikes to cars. Through all of this buses assert their priority, tooting loudly in minor sixths. It’s best to be a cow. It’s pouring with rain the first morning when we set off to validate our rail passes. We plunge into the throb- bing, hectic life that is Delhi, taking a tuk tuk. The driver knows a little English and offers us ‘a very good price’. There are things like taxi meters in the back of some tuk tuks, but none of them seem to work. We have been cautioned to confirm a price before going anywhere. The driver is friendly. After a little while he has a chat in Hindi on his mobile phone. At the station we assume that the main entrance is straight in front of us — everything milling with seemingly hundreds of tuk tuks, people, animals, food preparation. But no, an obliging man confidently leads us down to the other end of the build- ing where another man, seemingly X-raying luggage, asks whether we want the Government Tourist Office — how does he know? — ‘It has moved,’ he says. We are pretty confident that it is in the main station building. ‘No, Madam. It has moved.’ A hint of exasperation. He leads us up some stairs. ‘This is where it was.’ The area is clearly abandoned. ‘I can take you there, it is just a short taxi ride from here.’ — How can he leave that important X-raying he was doing? — A taxi driver is conveniently nearby and agrees to take us to the new office for a very low fee. What else can we do? Off we go and soon we are climbing stairs to what is clearly a tourist office, but not much sign of government.

17 Jantar Mantar Observatory, Delhi: for tracking position of the Moon.

The gentleman appears to be looking at train time- Why weren’t these cancellations headline news? we tables on his computer screen. ‘It is most unfortunate think. We had read The Hindu Times at breakfast. but at present the trains are very unreliable. They are ‘We’ll think about it,’ we say, as we descend the stairs getting held up by the very bad fog. There are many from the rather makeshift office. cancellations.’ At the foot of the stairs we are met by another man Fog? Trains run on lines. Fog might delay them a bit, who happens to have very good English. but, cause them to be cancelled? — Why? ‘Did that guy say he was the Government Tourist ‘Madam, the trains come from the North. There is a Office?’ he asks. lot of heavy fog in the mountains.’ ‘Yes — but we realise it’s not.’ We feel almost smug. ‘Most surprising. Delhi is the capital. Surely most Of course we’re not going to be taken in by a scam like services start in Delhi?’ that. ‘No Madam. You have come at an unfortunate time ‘I can take you to the real Government Tourist ... You should consider cashing in your train tickets. We Office,’ says the man. can provide an excellent service with a chauffeur. He can Once again we are very grateful — and the taxi costs drive you all around Rajasthan for a very good price.’ almost nothing.

18 This time the words ‘Government Tourist Office’ are price. As it is still raining and the museum we had painted on the building. But apart from this, it looks intended to visit is closed, we accept the offer of the tour. much like the previous place. We will make a decision, we say, by the end of the The man we see is called Raj. He offers tea. I ask for afternoon. his business card. And we do have a very good tour. We puddle around Raj pulls open a drawer. I can’t see what’s inside it but the Jama Masjid barefoot. We are taken on a rickshaw he seems to contemplate which card to select. Certainly ride through the Old Delhi market area — thick bunches it says ‘Government of India’ in plain blue print. But of electricity wires drooping precariously above the shop- there are no emblems. None of the usual paraphernalia pers. There is a silver market, a wedding market, and, you find on government stationary. He has crossed out incongruously it seems, a market for medical textbooks. the name Javed on it, and Javed’s mobile number and Back in the car we leave the narrow chaotic streets for has handwritten his own name, with no phone number. some of the British legacy — the architect Lutyens’ vision The most prominent printing on the card, in red, says, (in the 1930s) for a new India. At one end of a long ‘Perfect Holiday Travels’. avenue is India Gate and at the other, Parliament House Anne and I haven’t had a chance to speak privately, and the President’s residence of almost Versailles-like but it is clear that we have both smelled a rat. It is also proportions — a garden of topiary, buttresses that fea- clear that we are quite enjoying this adventure. What will ture Ganesh the elephant. they come up with next? Then, for the first time, I experience a functioning Raj reiterates the story of the most unfortunate situ- Hindu temple — the temple to Lakshmi — Birla Mandir. ation with the fog. Not only could his office provide a car We leave our shoes in a special room and walk up the to tour Rajasthan at a very good price, but he would be marble stairs. When I first see young men jumping up prepared to write to the railway office in the UK that and hitting a bell, I think they are being disrespectful — issued our tickets and ensure that they send us a refund. but it’s the opposite. That’s what you do when you enter For this, however, we should hand in our tickets to him a temple to pray. People offer garlands of fresh golden by the end of the day. flowers to Lakshmi and Shiva. I had expected the outer ‘We’ll think about it,’ we say, as we sip our tea. walls to be bare stone, but they seem to be painted While we think about it, Raj is prepared to provide us terracotta and cream — I find this aesthetically jarring; with a driver for a half day tour of Delhi at a very good it reminds me a bit of the City Baths. But inside there is

Taj Mahal ethereal despite the tourists.

19 vocabulary relating to tourism — in Eng- lish, French, Spanish, and a Chinese lan- guage, for example. To my amazement these people say that they have never been to school — not even at the age of five, and they can’t read or write at all — not even in Hindi. They learned the languages from tourists. Puts us Australians to shame. There is also a persistence, however, in duping tourists at the New Delhi Central Station. When we return two days later to catch the train to Agra — having prudently decided to take the hotel car rather than a tuk tuk — we are met at the entrance (the real entrance this time) by a man seem- ingly checking tickets. ‘Excuse me madam, but you are wait listed,’ he points to ‘WS’ on our tickets, ‘you will have to go to the office upstairs.’ Fatehpur Sikri. Oh no, we stride purposefully towards our carriage. ‘WS’ on our ticket stands for ‘Window Seat’ not ‘wait a richness; cool white marble sets off the vibrancy of the listed’. brightly coloured statues of gods and the golden floral We have another day in Delhi — wonderful Mughal offerings. miniature paintings in the National Museum (the detail At the end of the tour we gently decline the offer to of life reminds me a bit of Breughels with the addition cash in our rail tickets and this is quietly accepted. In the of glittering gods). A path, now covered with crystal, evening we try to go to a concert of Indian music and along which Indira Gandhi took her last steps before dancing, but for some obscure Indian reason a special assassination by Sikh body guards. The Jantar Mantar, a pass is required to get in (no tickets for sale) — surpris- 200-year-old observatory with massive structures such as ing, as it was advertised in the Delhi Diary. We are happy a sundial and instruments to align the positions of stars, to avail ourselves of the hotel’s bar facilities (little do we built by Maharaja Singh II — we will see a similar one in know that this is to be one of the few places where we can Jaipur. get half decent wine). We check with the hotel’s tourism Agra is as frenzied as Delhi — until you enter the desk and all trains are running on time. grounds of the Taj Mahal and then, even with hundreds As well as being struck by Indians’ efficiency I am also of tourists, there is a sense of awe and serenity. We have struck by their persistence and initiative. We will come all seen pictures of this structure, built by Shah Jahan, a across many drivers and other people connected with mausoleum for his favourite wife who died in childbirth. tourism who are able to converse — with a limited Today it looms somewhat eerily out of mist; immense pure white marble yet a gentle touch of femininity with Indian wedding band amplifiers. the floral designs on the arches. I like to believe the story that Shah Jahan designed his own mausoleum, a black Taj on the other side of the Yamuna River that would balance the symmetry of this monument to his wife. A couple of days later we go to the gardens where founda- tions of what may have been the beginnings of the black Taj lie; gardens where the trees are closely pruned to ensure that courting couples will do nothing more daring than sit and talk. It is in Agra that I first become aware of India’s self-sufficiency. You feel as though nothing is wasted. Yes, there are piles of rubbish lying around — it seems to be mainly plastic bags and rubble — evidence of a lack of infrastructure (no wheelie bins or regular rubbish col- lection) rather than blatant wastage. I think of this as I watch women making fuel out of cow pats. The cows graze freely on the banks of the Yumana River. The dung is gathered, dried out over several days and then shaped into disks that will burn well. We go by car to Fatehpur Sikri, some 34 kilometres from Agra. It was the capital of the Mughal empire under Akbar, but only for a short time. Now it is a solid red sandstone ghost town (or rather, palace complex) be- cause it had to be abandoned after about 16 years mainly

20 Udaipur. because of a shortage of fresh water. Around the Sikri a beautifully groomed horse. The music is amplified by Palace Akbar played hide and seek and other games with some kind of generator contraption that is towed by a his wives in the courtyards and gardens, but he also truck. worked towards making India a centre where different The Indian efficiency falls down a little when our train cultures were accepted and melded together. To this end to Udaipur is one and a half hours late. There is nothing he married Hindu, Muslim, and Christian wives. Each much we can do but stand on the platform and wait for group had its own quarters appropriate to its beliefs — it; a few beggars — one crawling — rats scuttling around the Christian quarters, for example, being in the shape in the rubbish, women in saris laden with jewels, young of a cross. In Indian Studies I at Melbourne University men selling food jumping on and off moving trains, and more than 40 years ago we wrote essays about the a horrible burnt oil smell to which I am becoming ‘syncretic’ nature of Indian culture. Here is solid proof accustomed. Over all this a woman’s recorded voice, with of that syncretism. Fatehpur is the religious part of the beautiful English vowels, constantly announces arrivals complex, with a huge temple where we are encouraged and departures, every-so-often inserting, ‘May I have to buy lengths of material to be made into dresses for schoolgirls. The ability to syncretise cultures seems to continue today — back in Agra we have a pleasant meal at a restaurant called Zorba the Buddha. We are staying in one of the amazingly good cheap guest houses one finds in India. We are ‘upgraded’ to a room with hot water. This means that for about $20 a night we have an ensuite with a hot shower (that sprays all over the bathroom) and a toilet with no paper. When we ask for more blankets they are provided. There is a balcony and a leafy courtyard, lit by fairy lights in the evening, where meals and refreshments are provided, it seems, at any time of day. On the first evening we hear loud sounds rather like a brass band coming from the street. We run out. It is a wedding. People are parading and dancing down the street. The young nervous- looking groom wearing a white jewelled hat sits astride

21 your attention please.’ When the train does come, signs some kind of quality assurance. (I had him as a used car on the platform light up to indicate exactly where our salesman.) He travels in this area once a month, check- carriage will stop. Passenger names are on lists at the ing procedures for milk distribution. India has one of entrances to the carriages. Our names are there. Minutes the biggest dairy industries in the world. I hadn’t associ- later we lie in our sleeping bunks, lulled by a gentle ated milk with India — in fact I wasn’t sure whether they rhythm as the train carries us across a darkened milked the sacred cows. They do. After this I become very Rajasthan. aware of the extraordinary number of milk cans carried We wake up in Udaipur, the city of lakes. Many of on motor bikes. these lakes are artificial. They were constructed in the We are to change trains at Ajmer. We should have a fourteenth century — a clever system of damming, couple of hours to see the temple there. First we must whereby one lake overflows into another and no water is store our luggage. The train arrives on time and we look lost. As recently as 2005 the lakes have been dry from lack for a sign to cloak luggage. This is when we meet Mr of rainfall. But we are fortunate. Our hotel overlooks Biswas. There is a small queue with young men milling Lake Pichola, full of water. I’ve never been to Lake around, in the way Indians do, trying to sell us luggage Como, but I suspect this is just as serene. There is a locks at grossly inflated prices. We join the queue and rooftop restaurant and breakfast is included in our after a while realise that at the end is a man sitting at a meagre tariff. Our room has a window nook from which desk in the luggage storing room doing ... absolutely ... we can glimpse the water. It is a touristy place, and there nothing. He is staring ahead. Not at us. He is just sitting is some pressure to buy saris or miniature paintings, but there. After a few moments I ask a woman ahead of me there is also a sense of freedom and it is much easier to in the queue, who looks as though she might speak walk around. We walk by the lake and observe women English, ‘Do we go in?’ washing clothes, slapping them with blocks of wood. We ‘He just needs a few minutes,’ she says. walk into an evening temple service — a constantly rung ‘Oh.’ So we stand and try to ward off the luggage lock piercingly loud temple bell reverberates through one’s sellers. body — forcing a physical participation although, intel- Then, for no apparent reason, it seems all right to go lectually, we are unsure of the ritual. On another evening in. Mr Biswas has had his few minutes. We explain that we walk to a concert of fabulous dancing; intricate work we want to cloak our luggage. Mr Biswas explains that he with a marionette and a middle-aged woman performs a will be taking lunch between two and three o’clock (we water dance, balancing more and more pots on her head had intended to cloak our luggage until two o’clock, but — ultimately about ten. One evening we have an up- it now seems wise to collect it at one thirty, just in case market Indian meal, finishing with cardamom rice pud- Mr Biswas needs a few minutes before he takes his ding served on a bed of edible rose petals. lunch). Our luggage, however, is unsatisfactory. Having When Uzman takes us on a tuk tuk tour we visit lush travelled with no problems from Melbourne and Lon- cool gardens: Surface near fountain may be slipper avoid don via Singapore Airlines and Jet Air, this luggage does photography by climbing on it — a literal translation from not meet Mr Biswas’s standards. It must have sturdy locks. Hindi perhaps? We go to a market where we can’t resist We must buy locks for it otherwise he cannot take it. We buying some fresh vegetables to be made into our own really want to see the Ajmer temple, so there is nothing salad that evening, then we visit Uzman’s ‘family’ — the for it but to buy a couple of the excessively priced locks. connections are uncertain. It seems that his uncle is an We do this. Mr Biswas then writes something in white artist who paints beautiful miniatures, a family tradition. chalk all over our luggage. But do we have satisfactory His wife has her own business painting on silk. A contrast identification? I am not prepared leave my passport with with this is the Maharaja’s vintage car museum — several him, but fortunately Anne has a photocopy of hers which 1920s Rolls Royces, a 1940s MG TC, more recently the she shows him — and we pretend it is all Anne’s luggage. Maharaja seems to have favoured Mercedes. A few kilo- We assume that he just needs to inspect the passport metres out of Udaipur is Tiger Lake — a natural lake that copy. But no, he takes it and pastes it meticulously into is the source of Udaipur’s water supply. We pass through his scrap book. Then, after some deliberation, he selects farmland, the workers wave to us. There are many a rubber stamp and stamps it. We ask why, but he is women labourers building fences, carrying the heavy stones on their heads yet beautifully dressed in be- jewelled saris. Tuk tuk travel is the way to go. You expe- rience so much — the rural smells, the detail of street life, what is sold in the shops, the fruit on market stalls ... And on trains you meet people. We take the train to Jodhpur. The second-class compartments have bunks and many passengers choose to sleep, even if all of the travel is during the day. A rather rotund business man joins us in our compartment. He has a succession of very loud phone conversations in Hindi. He sounds rather desper- ate and I imagine that he’s trying to clinch some deal. At last he takes off his pointy court shoes and goes to sleep. I expect him to snore, but he doesn’t. When he wakes up he is ready to chat. He works for the dairy industry —

22 suddenly unable to understand. He inspects our luggage of famine (I guess he benefited, too, with a pretty com- again. He doesn’t seem to like it very much. He then fortable residence). The palace must have taken ten indicates a high shelf, where we, ‘elderly’ women who years to build, as a boat bringing the furniture from have been compared to tuk tuk drivers’ 86-year-old England was sunk by a German warship. The sunken grandmothers, are to place it (all 30-plus kilos). Mr furniture was replaced by superb Polish Art Deco. There Biswas remains at his desk. We select a lower shelf so that are only photographs of the lavish bathrooms and fabu- we don’t have to lift it so high and this seems to meet lous furniture, but the maharaja’s clock collection is on with his approval — or at least, it doesn’t meet with his display along with many photographs of the 1940s and disapproval. And we are free. But it is nearly one o’clock. ’50s. Also his cars, another Silver Cloud Rolls Royce. We No time to get to the temple. We go for a short walk sit in the gardens eating delicious kulfi (pistachio-fla- outside the station but can’t find anywhere to eat, so we voured creamy ice-cream). end up eating at the station caf — we needn’t have In the afternoon we go by jeep on a ‘village experi- locked or cloaked our luggage. To our enormous relief ence’. As we drive past vast university grounds our jeep Mr Biswas is still at his desk at one thirty and receiving driver, Pushpakar, tells us with great pride that his customers. The formalities for collecting our luggage are brother has been elected president of the university a little less elaborate. student union. This seems to mean a great deal to the We continue on the train to Jodhpur — a rocky family. Jodhpur is an important centre for the study of landscape with rock-crushing and brick-making indus- medicine. Although subsidised, it is still an expensive tries. But the little stations are picturesque, freshly course. The fees are cheaper for girls. We visit villages of painted, and swathed in bougainvillea. Compared to the Bishnoi people, who for centuries have protected Udaipur, Jodhpur seems dark and crowded. Our guest animals. Although we go into some family compounds, house is in the old part of Jodhpur where the streets are it seems that our visiting is not too intrusive. First we go too narrow for cars and everyone has to stand aside when to a family of potters. A young man demonstrates his a tuk tuk goes past. But we come to like Jodhpur, perhaps considerable skill. According to his caste, he has no best of all. Everyone gets on with their business, although choice but to be a potter. No way that he could have most tuk tuk drivers have an uncle who sells saris at a very aspired to study medicine. Pushpakar, who, along with good price. Underlying the bustle there seems to be a his brother attends university, is of the warrior caste. He sense of contentedness. Perhaps we’ve just got used to is studying history, which will presumably benefit his the crowds. We love our old, crumbling, narrow guest work in tourism. Next we go to a very poor family. The house. The steps up to our room are very steep and to woman, a widow, goes through a routine of showing us get to the rooftop restaurant we have to climb several women her saris. The man, her father-in-law, performs a more flights. But what a treat once you are there! We small opium-smoking ceremony that we are invited to look across the rooftops of the distinctive blue buildings join in, but decline. Then to a carpetmakers’ co- to the Meherangarh Fort. Everything is accompanied by operative. They received a government subsidy, which chanting from the nearby Hindu temple. Why are so provided them with solar panels that sit incongruously many of the buildings blue? It is said that the Brahmins on the thatched roof. We are shown the weaving process distinguished their houses by mixing indigo into the and some beautiful mats. When Anne shows interest in usual whitewash, but there was nothing to stop everyone purchasing a rug, payment can be made by credit card else doing it too. Some say that the blue keeps away and they can arrange shipping. Driving home in the mosquitoes. The owner of our guest house is a Brahmin. twilight we see peacocks and some rare black deer roam- Everyone seems to know and like him. ing wild. The streets (if you can call them that) in old Jodhpur Another day we arrange to drive to Osian, about 60 converge upon a market in the midst of which is a kilometres out of Jodhpur on the edge of the Thar distinctive clock tower. We figure that it will be easy to desert. Our particular interest is a large Jain temple and find our way around by using the clock tower as a base a Hindu temple complex said to date back to the eighth so we confidently set out to explore on our first morning. and nineth centuries. The Hindu temple has a lot of But — when it is time to return — all the streets look visitors and is very much in use — it is hard to tell which alike. Their names are not apparent — and even if they bits are really old. A very thin and enthusiastic young were, they’d be written in Hindi. This is where it is man provides a commentary much of which, unfortu- convenient that our guest house owner is well known. nately, we cannot understand. I try to lose him a couple Most people can give us directions and we ultimately find of times — he darts about, up and down quite treacher- our way back. It is not until our third day that we find the ous flights of stairs. I just want a bit of peace. But he’s right street independently, and then there is a violent always there waiting for us — so well intentioned. So we storm and all the lights go out. We pick our way through keep nodding our heads and looking interested as he the puddles lit by the lights of passing (very close) motor- babbles on. Families visiting the temple want to be bikes. We get there. photographed with us — why? We visit the Fort — palatial rooms and courtyards, And now we are on the train to Jaipur, sharing our elaborately decorated palanquins for royal elephant compartment with a family from Jodhpur: Pavlar and his travel, miniature paintings of Marwar life, and superb wife whose name seems to be ‘Lovely’ and their 23-year- intricately carved marble — so much is made of marble, old daughter, who is to do an exam for a life assurance sturdy yet ornate. On another day we go to the Umaid job in Jaipur. Pavlar is an insurance salesman, and cer- Bhavan Palace. This was built by a benevolent maharaja tainly has the gift of the gab. He doesn’t stop talking. in the late 1920s to provide employment during a time Lovely doesn’t speak at all, but seems to understand.

23 Pavlar tells me his life story. He is 66. The government doesn’t provide a good enough pension for him to retire, so, in an interesting twist, he just keeps on selling life insurance to others so that he need not retire. He says he is lazy. Doesn’t have hobbies, doesn’t want to travel, he might as well keep working. Onil, sitting across the corridor, joins in when he hears that I am from Mel- bourne. He has been there on business. He sells soy products. His company makes some kind of nutritious soy paste that is dispensed to starving children by Médicins sans Frontières. We stay in the Shahar Palace Guest House, run by a retired colonel and his wife. Why did I spend so much time trying to photograph peacocks at the Bishnoi villages? They are strutting around the guest house grounds here, accompanied by various kinds of chooks. The colonel maintains his military presence. I expect he Two women staying at the guest house have told us of knows what time everyone gets up and how much hot a clothing shop called Anokhi. It sounds good. We de- water they use. He punctuates his very clear English with cide to try to walk there. After all, Jaipur is an important ‘bloody’. His wife reads novels in the beautiful tropical centre for textiles. One wrong turn and we end up at gardens and supervises the kitchen. At about $35 a night ‘Lifestyle’ — a very westernised shopping complex. We our spacious room opens onto a balcony where we can have a Starbucks coffee sitting near a ‘Hogdog’ stand. eat meals or drink the masala chai, to which I am becom- There is a shoe sale, and I buy some lovely soft leather ing partial. sandals, the 50 per cent reduction making the cost about In the evening, after visiting the Pink Palace with its $9.60. We find Anokhi and have a bit of a splurge. Then many 1950s vice-regal photographs and excellent textile to Albert Hall Museum, opened, not surprisingly, by museum, we attend a Hindu temple ceremony, standing Edward VII when he was still Prince of Wales. At this just a little apart from the worshippers. The men, in their museum I realise how fortunate we are in Australia to various kinds of headgear, seem to pay close attention. have substantial funds provided for such institutions. Some have women at their sides, but some of the women The displays at the Albert Hall are very poorly lit and are left on the outskirts — to gossip, it seems. Are they sometimes lack labels or any explanation. Many of the exchanging recipes? One woman asks another to hold exhibits are dusty or in need of repair. Nevertheless, her skein of wool while she winds it into a ball. there are magnificent sculptures — Buddhas, and Hindu gods Vishnu and Shiva, fine Bikaner ware pottery, deli- cate metal work, and more superb miniature paintings. Jain temple, Osian. The next day, with the colonel’s assistance, we book a car to take us out of Jaipur and up the Aravalli Hills to the Amber and nearby Nahargarh and Jaigarh forts. Amber fort was the original capital of Rajasthan, and consists of many fortified apartments where the maharaja and his family lived. Some tourists ride ele- phants up the final steep hill, but we are happy to go by car. Once again there is intricate, finely cut marble and superb jewelled ceilings — some of the ‘jewels’ are tiny mirrors. There are formal gardens and fountains. The treasury and armory were kept at nearby Jaigarh Fort, and Nahargarh Fort seems to have been a kind of hunt- ing lodge. The name means ‘abode of tigers’, and there are some beautiful frescoes of hunting scenes. Here and in other forts one can walk along secret passages that were built to trick invaders. On our last day in Jaipur we visit Hawa Mahal, the Palace of the Winds. It was built so that women of the court could remain secluded while watching street pro- cessions. It has a beautiful stone façade carved like honeycomb in the shape of Lord Krishna’s crown. The women were carried (on palanquins) up ramps, striated to avoid slipping. They seem to have led a luxurious life lounging around the pools in the courtyard. Winds blew through the honeycombed recesses, creating relief during hot Jaipur summers. Having seen the Jantar Mantar observatory in Delhi, we visit a similar one here in Jaipur. It is a peaceful place, set in gardens, the

24 (Above): A scene from our houseboat trip, Kerala. (Below): Our houseboat.

tourists. We are not particularly well dressed — my sandals are pretty grotty by now and I’m not even wearing my best shirt. We walk along the drive and through some of the 47 acres of gardens, up the marble stairs to the front door. ‘We would like to eat in your restaurant,’ I say — and we are ushered along a corridor to a verandah. High tea and various other things are being served under umbrellas on an expansive lawn. We are discreetly told the cover charge and it is so high that we decide we had better have lunch, even though it’s getting on for four o’clock. I have champagne and Anne has a glass of white wine, we have various kinds of grilled fish, delightful Indian sweets and, yes, good black coffee. As we eat we speculate about the other guests — one group look like Indian businessmen accompanied by someone’s sad- looking overweight wife; all the others are European — older men, several with younger women. All better impressive sundial towering over everything. dressed than us. Do they go outside the palace walls? We have loved the Indian food, although I haven’t On our last night in Jaipur we don’t sleep much, as quite managed to fully appreciate a proper Indian break- we have to get up at 4.30 a.m. for our flight to Kerala. In fast — a lot of us are fussy about breakfast and I can’t the middle of the night the colonel collects guests, quite manage solid rice iddlies or even a chilli omelette. maybe from the station. He shows them into the room We have both missed decent coffee and — yes — I must next to ours and spends forever loudly explaining how admit that the Indian wine we’ve had is, on the whole, a to work the hot water. The trains toot in perfect fifths bit like kerosene. So on this last day in Jaipur we look and augmented fourths. longingly at the Rambagh Palace — a palace restored as This time we really are delayed in Delhi by fog. More an extravagant tourist resort, the hotel where Prince understandable with planes. We have flown there from Charles stayed. Surely it would serve a good glass of wine? Jaipur to make a connection to Kochi via Hyderabad. We take a tuk tuk to the entrance, quite expecting to be Ultimately I am staring out of a window onto rocky turned away. The guards won’t allow the tuk tuk in, but terrain as I eat a stodgy Indian airways breakfast. It seems we are okay probably because we are clearly Western

25 quite appropriate for there to be a strike in Kerala. It is may serve as fans and some plain-coloured glass windows left wing and has had a communist government. Some- that are not the usual leadlight depictions of scenes from thing to do with the unions. No transport apart from the Bible. In the evening we go to a Kathakali dance trains. No taxis at the airport to take us the 30 kilometres performance. Putting on make-up is a part of the act, and to Kochi. The police have organised a special bus to take the audience can look into dressing rooms or sit, as we us to the railway station, then it is up to us ... Not too do, watching a lead dancer paint his face — a lot of green hard. Fortunately our hotel, in Ernakulum, is within and black around the eyes, as he will be a maharaja in a walking distance of one of the stations and just in time scene from the Ramayana. we find out which one. We are met by Jo and Judy — The next day we explore the Jewish part of Kochi. friends of Anne’s from England who will join us on a There is now just one synagogue, but there used to be backwaters boat tour. We are staying in Ernakulum one for blacks and one for whites. The Jewish population rather than Fort Kochi because tourist guide books sug- is severely depleted. Our tuk tuk driver explains that he gest that Ernakulum — the business centre — provides is given 100 rupees worth of petrol for taking us to better value. particular bazaars where we are under no obligation to The next day there is nothing much to do because buy. So we help him and look at various handcrafts from everything is closed — affected by the strike. The ferry all over India — these places are subsidised by the from Ernakulum across to Kochi isn’t running. The government. At the Dutch Palace (built by the Portu- shops are closed. We spend most of the day walking along guese and renovated by the Dutch) we see the most the foreshore and find one art exhibition that is open — amazing murals of scenes from the Ramayana. We are some good contemporary paintings. The government quite tired and return to our hotel. The kerosene-like here seems to support the arts. wine improves with the addition of soda water. We are fortunate that the strike is over the following On our last day in India there are various things to day. The streets are noisy and crowded and a driver attend to. I post back some clothes to make room in my collects us to take us to our ‘rice boat’ for four days of luggage for new purchases. I am surprised that I don’t bliss on the back waters of Kerala. It’s just the four of us, have to declare what is in the parcel — the procedure is plus a captain, his offsider and a chef. Jo and Judy are very straightforward. When, two weeks later, the parcel keen bird watchers and spend a lot of time glued to their arrives, the contents are quite apparent. The fairly flimsy binoculars. I take an occasional photograph of a distant packet has become threadbare during its travels, and kingfisher, or, if not quick enough, a bare branch. I don’t Australia Post has provided a clear plastic bag for the recall another time when I’ve been so pampered. There contents. is no need to think ahead, because someone else has We have a final wander around the streets of Kochi. decided where the boat will go and where it will stop and Many of the old bungalows have become guest houses. when and what we will eat. You don’t want to read We visit the Santa Cruz basilica — it is the beginning of because the scenery is superb. We visit several churches Lent and everything is draped in purple. Then we sit — grand rococo affairs — a lot of Portuguese influence. quietly on the foreshore watching the operation of Chi- The nuns sing beautifully. In one, at a well-attended nese fishing nets that are said to date back about 500 service on a Saturday, there is an attempt at some sort of years. These huge nets are operated by a series of weights. Indian–Christian rock music. Fusion of cultures again. Most are lifted out of the water quite frequently, often The waters are bordered by banana and coconut palms. with just a fish or two. A net-mender sits on the beach We eat fresh lobster and fish baked in banana leaves. At shaded by a clump of trees. Lots of schoolchildren walk night we tie up in a bird sanctuary. Along the narrower along the foreshore path. It must be recorder day, as waterways we get some sense of the village life. People many have their wooden recorders out. Some success- are fishing with simple rods. Most smile and wave, al- fully persuade their adult minders to buy them ice- though a young boy, who probably doesn’t like the creams from a nearby vendor. intrusion, dances around like a vicious tiger, roaring at Back in Ernakulum, Anne wants to take me to a us. Do some of the adults feel that way — resentful of us special restaurant for our last night. It has changed its gliding past, staring at them as they go about their daily name and is very difficult to find — we stride along the tasks? darkening streets. We almost give up, but do find it and The idyll must finish. The boat moors for the last time. are rewarded with a delicious meal — I have fish baked We are collected by car — drop Judy and Jo at a railway in banana leaves followed by Indian halva, made with station to continue their holiday down south, and Anne dates. Oh, and of course some French chablis. and I return to Ernakulum. Schools start at 10.00 a.m. The next day I begin my long trek home. Anne has and it is just before this. As we drive through various left at 5.00 a.m. My plane leaves at a more civilised time. towns, we see clusters of children decked out in their The taxi arrives right on time for the 30-kilometre drive colourful school uniforms. The traffic is very heavy as we to the airport, past a huge Catholic cathedral and close reach Kochi — offices also start work at 10.00 a.m. to it, ‘Lulu’, opening the following week, to be India’s Everything is running. By late morning we are on the biggest shopping mall. In all our time here, we didn’t see ferry from Ernakulum to Kochi, where we wander one food supermarket — but here is Lulu, described as around. I am sustained by a thirst-quenching juice of a hypermarket. I am sure, however, that some aspects of lime and mint. St Francis church is said to be the oldest India will never change as I read one final road sign: Obey European church in India. It houses Vasco da Gama’s traffic signals. Avoid rash driving. tomb. Compared to the churches we saw on the back- waters trip, this one is austere; brocade hangings that — Jennifer Bryce, March 2013

26 The sound of different drums

My life and science fiction Part 5 by John Litchen

All photos supplied by John Litchen

1962 in the state of Victoria was one of the last that there was a pub on just about every corner years of the 6 o’clock swill. That was, for those in Williamstown. Anyone attempting a ‘pub crawl’ who don’t remember or simply have no idea, the never made it all the way around: 26 are too many frantic rush to buy and down as many drinks as to get through even if you only take one drink at possible in the last 15 minutes or so before the each venue. pub (or bar) officially had to close and stop selling Not very nice, but Victoria was famous for its drinks. People would crowd with raucous joy or 6 o’clock swill: rather like the action of a bunch noisy desperation against the bar and buy four or of huge fat pigs jostling each other to get at food five or even six beers, stack them in front of them, dispensed in a trough. or precariously carry them supported in both This also explained why many hotels in the city hands to a nearby table, after which they would proper had restaurants and dining rooms where scull them one after the other before they were all drinks could be served with dinner, and drinkers ejected from the pub by 10 minutes after 6 p.m. from the bar could migrate to the dining room They would stagger out into the street drunk, where they could continue if they ordered some- because coming straight from work to their thing to eat. These customers were often enter- favourite watering hole, without having had any- tained with a floorshow. Even though these places thing to eat, their main object was to drink as also had to close by a specific time after which much as possible before closing time, and this they were not allowed to serve drinks, usually by inevitably resulted in drunks outside in the street 10 p.m., they were very popular, and many jostling and often fighting each other, and more talented performers gained experience working in often than not, drunken abuse at home. It was those floorshows. The same performers would not uncommon that these drunks, having filled then go on to the night clubs that opened later, extended guts with litres of liquid, would be forced where the same diners who wanted to continue to relieve themselves in side streets, alleyways, or drinking would smuggle spirits in under their people’s front gardens as they struggled to walk jacket or in a flask in their back pockets so they back to their parked cars. Streets surrounding could put some oomph into the soft drinks and the more popular pubs stank of stale piss, which coffees ordered at the night clubs. even solid downpours of rain failed to wash away. Zara and I performed in some of the hotel

My recollections of the 6 o’clock swill are of Wil- liamstown, which has more pubs in it than any other suburban area in Melbourne; 26 the last time I was there. There were more than 100 back in its heyday, when Williamstown was the main port of entry for new arrivals (in the 1800s) who headed for the goldfields of Ballarat and Bendigo. The myriad pubs were their first stop after disem- barking from the sailing clippers. Later, when the dockyards with the shipbuilding, wool packers, and other heavy industries, such as railway main- tenance, were the mainstay of workers in the suburb (new arrivals having been shifted to Port Melbourne across Hobson’s Bay), the number of pubs slowly came down to 26. Even so, it seemed

John Litchen playing the congas during a floorshow at Birdland, 1963.

27 venues, but she never went on to the night clubs, comes together exactly as it should and the result where often I went to play conga drums into the is outstanding. early hours of the morning. I don’t know how I The applause lifted the roof off. Even the band managed, but on Thursdays, Fridays, and Satur- members stood up to applaud the dancers. As days I would be at Birdland playing congas and soon as they stopped dancing the young man performing as an accompanist to whoever was came over to me and introduced himself. actually doing the floorshow. I would get home at ‘I’m JoJo Smith.’ 3 or 4 in the morning, sleep a couple of hours, We shook hands. That was an unusual name. and then go to work at the dry cleaner, driving, ‘Do you mind if I play your congas?’ picking up, and delivering clothes between the ‘Be my guest,’ I invited him as I moved aside. I factory and the various agencies scattered across had been sitting on the bandstand with the the triangle between Sunshine, Footscray, and congas on the dance floor. The other musicians Williamstown. of course had chairs or stools to sit on, so they The floorshows at Birdland were always a lot towered above me on the bandstand. of fun, with exotic dancers: strippers (or girls who ‘Stay there.’ He said. ‘You play tumbao and I’ll wore very little) dancing with snakes or some improvise.’ He sat beside me with the higher other prop designed to titillate or thrill the cus- pitched drum between his legs. ‘It’s been awhile,’ tomers. There were singers like Johnny Sum- he added. mers, a great singer who died too young before his Tumbao is a bass drum pattern around which potential could be realised, Ynez Amaya, who later other drums in a group either play counterpoint called herself Beryl Sellers (she was married to the or improvise or do both. JoJo counted one two, house drummer Roger Sellers), and regular per- one two three four fairly rapidly, and I started dead formances by the comedy duo Crocker and on the next count of one, which wasn’t stated. Clarke. They used their performances at Birdland There were only two drums, so he didn’t play to work on their act, which was constantly evolv- counterpoint but launched straight into an im- ing. The outstanding one in this duo was Barry pressive solo that wove phrases and patterns Crocker, who went on to have an amazing solo around the tones and slaps of the tumbao. He career. Musicians or singers and even dancers tapped his foot on the floor (on one and three) so often turned up after their shows had finished, I had a good metronome to help keep time, be- and on many occasions were induced by the band cause if I listened too closely to what he was doing to do an impromptu performance. You never knew I could lose the beat, but the tapping foot kept me what was going to happen, so it was always an on time. He looked at me as we played, and when exciting place to go late at night. his playing reached a crescendo he nodded once It was on one of these nights that a young and said ‘four’, which meant four more bars, dancer who was a lead dancer with West Side which I subconsciously counted. When we Story’s company in Melbourne turned up and reached the end of the four bars we both hit one asked if he could sit in and play congas. He was note on the first beat of the next bar and simul- from New York, and had a charisma that made taneously stopped. The band members on the everyone turn and look at him the moment he stage behind us stood up and cheered and walked in the door. It wasn’t just his clothes, or clapped, and the applause from the audience in the way he walked, or his self-confidence, al- the club was overpowering. though they were obviously part of it. There was JoJo leaned over and gave me a hug and a slap something indefinable that compelled those on the back. ‘Thanks for that. I haven’t played in around to look at him; especially the women, of a long time and I needed to get that out.’ whom he always had someone accompanying What could I say? The guy was a fantastic him. There were two with him that night, dancers player. After that the boss of the club fawned all from the West Side Story cast. over him and gave him a great table, shooing a Why is it dancers never stop dancing? Do they couple of other people out of the way. always need to be the centre of attraction? My Events like that happened often enough to sister at the drop of a hat would break into a dance make Birdland the premier night club in Mel- at whatever party she found herself. Being good bourne at that time. at it, she quickly ended up surrounded by an That was a Friday night. When I got there audience encouraging her to continue. These girls Saturday night, two extra conga drums were next were hardly into the place when they started to mine. I hadn’t seen them before. They had dancing with this young man. Their impromptu scratches and scuff marks on them so they had floorshow had everyone staring at them in rapture obviously been well used, as well as having trav- while the band of which I was a part felt compelled elled a lot. Drums only get scratched and marked to play as best we could. I can’t remember what if they’ve been in and out of vans and dragged we played, other than it was Latin orientated so about from venue to venue. I tapped each one, the congas fitted in. But with those superb danc- discovering they had a very good sound with ers performing we played tighter and more pre- cleaner tones that sounded more melodic than my cisely than we had ever played. It was just one of heavier drums. They were also made of lighter those things that happen sometimes; everything wood than mine so they required less effort to

28 John Litchen and George Olah taking lessons from JoJo at Birdland, 1962. transport. I knew immediately that these drums higher-pitched drum with his left hand while belonged to JoJo. And sure enough he turned up maintaining the lower-pitched right hand drum around midnight accompanied by a different rhythm unchanged. The counterpoint rhythm on dancer, and he played all four drums in another the higher drum went across two repetitions of impromptu floorshow that sent the place wild. the tumbao to produce what sounded like two ‘You’ve got to teach me how to do that,’ I said drummers playing. afterwards. ‘And now we vary it by adding tones from the ‘Me too,’ George said. He hadn’t been there the other drums.’ He said this while continuing to night before and this was the first time he had play both patterns simultaneously. With both seen and heard JoJo play. hands he started bringing in odd tones from the George was the other conga drummer I shared two other drums, one on his left side and the other Saturday nights with. He wasn’t there on Fridays, on his right, so he used both the right and the left but each alternate Saturday he played with the hand to do this while maintaining the two basic band. On the Saturday he wasn’t there he played patterns he had started with. If you closed your with an Italian orchestra over in Carlton. I usually eyes and simply listened it sounded a little like did all the floorshows and would then play with two or perhaps three people playing, instead of the band until closing time. George always left one single person. When played very fast it was about midnight because he had an early start in amazing. the jewellery business he ran. JoJo explained that the various drums in a ‘You have to learn to isolate one hand from the group are given names depending on their role in other,’ JoJo explained. ‘While one hand plays the the group. In Cuban rumba groups the bass drum bass pattern or tumbao the other is free to impro- is called tumbao; the others are called segundo, vise or play a counter pattern to the other one.’ tres-golpes, and quinto, repicador. The repicador He demonstrated by playing a few repetitions is usually the quinto, which is called that because of tumbao with one hand on the lowest pitched it is five tones higher in pitch than the bass drum drum. By cutting the rhythm in half, only the four or tumbao. Repica is the Spanish exhortation to main notes are played with the one hand. ‘It’s improvise using the quinto or another higher called rumba abierta, or tumbao abierta,’ he said, pitched drum in the group. The names given the while continuing to play it with the right hand. drums vary in each country where similar types ‘Then we add the tones of the Repicador or the of conga drums are used in groups. Conga is the second or third drum.’ He started playing on a English name given to the Cuban drums, which

29 generically are called tumbadores. This was prob- of themselves and their families, and the feelings ably because they were first seen played in the of locals who, though stable for years, suddenly streets during carnival with large groups of people felt threatened at every level by these new people dancing in lines and singing in unison. The dance coming into their neighbourhood: themes that was the conga, which in Cuba is known as a resonated with most people in every country comparsa. Conga is most likely an African name, where the show performed. but it was one the English-speaking people That these new people would enrich their soci- latched onto. There was a time in the 1940s when ety, with new music, new ideas, and new foods the conga was a dance craze across the USA. never entered people’s minds at that stage. All There are many names and structured groups they could perceive was the imagined threat. West that relate back to Africa, with various infusions Side Story emphasised it all, while presenting a of Spanish, French, Portuguese, or English mel- classic but tragic love story and thoroughly enter- ody or singing styles throughout the Caribbean taining people with its beauty and exuberance. and the continent of South America. More than Almost everyone who saw it went back to see the enough books on the subject are available for show more than once. Only much later did its anyone interested in delving into the history of deeper impact become apparent. African-influenced music in the New World. Not long after the show’s Broadway run a What JoJo was doing was something we had musical film of it was made, with George Chakiris never seen before. We made arrangements to meet and Natalie Wood. For me, though, the best part at Birdland during the week early in the afternoon was played by Rita Moreno, who played the ever- for some conga drum lessons with him. George excitable character Anita. George Chakiris was and I arranged time off from work to do this. forgettable and never did much after that film, but the others, including Russ Tamblyn, who played In the meantime I saw West Side Story — it was the leader of the Jets (the American gang), went much better than I expected. Fifty years later we on to have outstanding film careers. The filmed all know the story, but back then it was version won 10 Academy Awards. astonishing. It resonated on many levels with I also saw the film when it came out, but didn’t people in this country (as it did in the USA) think it had the same ambience as the live show, because all of us had experienced to varying though technically it was more spectacular. Also, degrees the problems involving integration into a I met many of the people involved in the show as stable society of immigrant newcomers with dif- it was presented in Melbourne, went backstage, ferent cultural biases: the fears that jobs would watched rehearsals, and saw the show many be taken and that our women would be violated times from both in front and from behind the resonated on both sides of the cultural barriers. stage. That the story depicted was an updating of Shake- Cal Tjader later bought out an album with his speare’s Romeo and Juliet was well known, but its inimitable jazz and Latin jazz styling of West Side translation into the concrete jungle of New York Story’s wonderful music, which was for a long suburbs, with Shakespeare’s rival feuding fami- time one of my favourite recordings, probably lies becoming American and Puerto Rican gangs, because it featured two of my favourite drum- was outstanding, setting new benchmarks in mers, Mongo Santamaria on congas and Willie modern dancing and athleticism. The use of mu- Bobo on timbales. They worked with Cal Tjader sic to represent feelings of the the rival gangs was for a number of years before going on to create for me fantastic, as is the montage that crosscuts their own groups or bands, which in their indi- back and forth between the two gangs as they vidual ways set trends in combining jazz, popular prepare for the rumble (a big fight between the music, and light rock with Cuban musical genres. two gangs), while Maria and Tony are anxiously determined to see each other later that night. That It didn’t take long for me to pick up the way of the whole thing ends tragically is a foregone playing that allowed isolation of one hand from conclusion, but audiences watching that per- another. George, though, struggled to get it, and formance on stage were on tenterhooks waiting to eventually he switched back to his old way of see how it all unfolded. playing, which was fine because he was a good The astonishing choreography was by Jerome solid player. When the three of us played together, Robbins and the unforgettable music was by George often played tumbao and I played segundo Leonard Bernstein. Stephen Sondheim created or counterpoint. JoJo of course improvised on the the lyrics for such wonderful songs as Maria, I drum nominated as repicador. Feel Pretty, Tonight, I Want to Be in America If we played bembe, which is a combination of (America), and others. 6/8 rhythms in which the order of the drums is This show changed the genre of musical reversed, being based on bata drumming (relig- theatre, stepping way outside of the previous ious drumming in both Nigeria and in Cuba, and lighthearted froth-and-bubble escapism of almost more recently elsewhere, such as in the USA and every other musical before it, bringing to audi- Puerto Rico); the highest pitched drum played a ences an awareness of cultural themes, racial simple rhythm, counterpointed by the two drums integration, immigrants’ desires to improve the lot of lower pitch, with a fourth drum, the biggest and

30 lowest in pitch, doing the improvisation. Sometimes we would spend Sunday after- noons at my place practising and recording what we played so we could listen back and hear our mistakes. A few times Albert La Guerre joined us, and he and JoJo made some wonderful record- ings. On other occasions Albert, with another friend from Katherine Dunham days, Antonio Rodriguez, a dancer, would come and play drums and sing in my front bedroom. We even got Mum and my sister Zara to sing some choruses for Albert’s Haitian songs, which I recorded. I used an Akai reel-to-reel tape machine. Some years later I transferred these taped tracks to cassette and finally after losing them for many years, found them again in a box of old home movies, so I digitised them and made a CD. The quality is not good, but it is something that can never be re- JoJo and George playing in my backyard, Yarraville, 1963. peated and so for me they are invaluable — a priceless reminder of a past that is now so distant as the band behind faded away, apart from the it seems to have belonged to someone else. drummer who continued to play his version of a cowbell pattern for mambo. As JoJo soloed I When West Side Story finished its season in Mel- switched from the mambo guaracha pattern to a bourne some of the cast stayed on. JoJo was one guaguanco on the two drums. Once this was of them. He organised to do a series of floorshows established JoJo left his drum next to me so I in and around some night clubs as well as appear- could incorporate it into the pattern and play on ing on the Federal Hotel Circuit, which included the three drums. The drummer from the band the Savoy Plaza, the Menzies, and the Federal. We behind would fall silent so JoJo only had the started at the Savoy Plaza. When our ten-minute conga drums to dance to. His dance this time was show finished we quickly packed the drums into very Afro-Cuban in style, as if he were possessed my yellow van and drove around to the Menzies by a spirit. He danced and gyrated as if in ecstasy, Hotel for our second show. Again we would pack then just as we reached a crescendo he would up and move on to the next hotel, after which it collapse onto the floor, the band would come in was close to midnight; we headed off to Birdland, with a drawn-out drum roll overlaid by a screech- where we did the show again. We did this Thurs- ing trumpet, and the lights would go off. That was day, Friday, and Saturday nights. The routine it. was straightforward, a mixture of JoJo dancing, When the lights came on JoJo was gone, wait- playing drums, and dancing. I didn’t get paid for ing for me behind the bandstand. this, but did it for the fun of it, for the experience As the applause died down we packed up and of working in front of a live audience, and for the headed for the next venue, where we repeated the practice of playing drums with different band show. combinations. In most places there were groups We did the floorshows for a couple of months, of four, or sometimes five. It was rarely a trio, after which JoJo moved to Sydney and finally which would have made it harder. returned to New York. We started with a song everyone knew, one that A year or so later I read a good review in Time was a major hit at the time, ‘Hit the Road Jack’ magazine about him performing with his drums by Ray Charles. While I sat and accompanied the in New York. That was the last any of us ever house band with one conga drum, JoJo came in heard of him. with a cool strut and did this funky dance to the first chorus and the verse, then at the end of the The late fifties and early sixties was a fantastic second chorus he would take off his jacket and time for young readers of science fiction. Many fling it to the bandstand as the musicians segued novels covered adventures in space, intergalactic into a fast mambo guaracha called ‘Mama Guela’. travel, and time travel with all its many para- This was a song Latin dancers in New York went doxes. I couldn’t get enough of them. But this was wild over. It was a huge hit for Tito Rodriguez and also the time of the Cold War with the Russians his orchestra during the times he and Tito Puente and the Americans trying to outdo each other with competed and ruled over the dance floor at the detonations of ever bigger and bigger bombs. Even Palladium Ballroom in New York. When ‘Mama the French joined in with their experiments on Guela’ started I switched to two congas while JoJo Mururoa atoll in the South Pacific. Britain, not to went into a fairly fast streetwise salsa routine. be outdone, detonated its atomic bombs in Aus- Then he would grab the third conga drum and, tralia. It was inevitable as the world drew closer swirling it around as he danced, he worked his to total destruction and atomic war that the major way over to sit next to me and commence a solo writers of science fiction concocted disaster

31 stories extrapolating many possible conse- mystery, technological thrillers, and so on, but quences from this ridiculous and insane interna- many of those novels stand up today as examples tional concept of Mutually Assured Destruction of well-thought-out reactions to possible world- (MAD). wide calamities. Of course there was a lot of In retrospect it seems that most of the stories rubbish written then, just as there is today, but I read during the late fifties and into the sixties many of the better books were more engrossing were disaster stories: disasters brought about by than today’s novels, which are too easily forgotten nuclear war or armed conflict using biological once you have read them. Today there is a same- weapons, or in keeping with the times, psyche- ness to them that makes each one blend into the delic drug-influenced chaos and destruction in other, repeating themes and possibilities that Europe (see the stories from New Worlds and have already been considered many times before. Impulse magazines during 1967 and 1968 by At least in the fifties and sixties those themes were Brian Aldiss that later made up his mind-boggling new and frighteningly possible. 1969 novel Barefoot in the Head), as well as Earth Abides (1950) was one of the best of the disasters brought on by massive overpopulation disaster novels. A virus is spread rapidly around (Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner in 1968 the world as a result of air travel (more likely to being one of the best examples, which he followed happen today than it would have then, when air up with other ramifications of overpopulation and travel was relatively new). Most of the population pollution in The Sheep Look Up and The Jagged are killed, with only a few survivors left to start Orbit). Degradation of the environment through again. This is possibly the only novel of this type some kind of rapid climate change or constant that is upbeat: positive rather than negative. It pollution and attempts by humans to change should be more widely available so readers of things were other common themes, and gradually today can see how well a disaster story can be the boys’ own adventures of Arthur C. Clarke and written. Wilson Tucker’s The Long Loud Silence, writers of his ilk faded into the background as the though well written and engrossing, is very down- world-encompassing disaster stories took over. beat by comparison, with its implied theme of So what’s new? These themes permeate SF cannibalism adding a morbid touch of reality. (science fiction, science fantasy, and speculative Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison fiction) more so today than way back then. These (1966) is another story of overpopulation and its days they are often crossed with horror, murder frightening consequences. Some years later it was made into a reasonable movie with Charlton Earth Abides: a much better story than the blurb above the Heston in the lead and renamed Soylent Green. I title implies. think the most notable scene in this film was when Edward G. Robinson (who should have been the star), while dying, watches a HD video pres- entation of how beautiful the Earth once was so he can die while remembering something nice. It was the last film this highly respected actor made, because he actually died two weeks after filming that scene. He knew he was dying when he filmed it, which adds much poignancy to the scene. This is such a bleak film that I doubt if anyone would be game enough to remake it. Other novels from the same era include The Death of Grass by John Christopher, who wrote many disaster novels, using a different premise for each, and extrapolating each into a worldwide catastrophe seen from a British viewpoint. It was 10 years or so later turned into a low-budget film, starring and directed by Cornel Wilde, called No Blade of Grass. The film is basically a motorcycle gang film, and the themes of the novel are mostly ignored, other than the part about everybody starving to death because there is no wheat, rice, corn, oats, or barley or any other grain related to grass that humans use as a staple. Cattle and sheep die, horses die, as well as any other rumi- nant that eats some kind of grass. You can imag- ine what is left for the remnants of society to eat! John Wyndham’s The Day of The Triffids is an outstanding book that deals with many themes, including the oil crisis, illegal genetic modifica- tions of plants, and the Cold War with satellites

32 battling it out in near space which turns most of Cover from a special illustrated edition of The Drowned the population blind. The triffids — the genetically World published by Dragon’s Dream in 1981. Cover and modified plants — escape, preying on the newly interior watercolour paintings by Dick French. blind humans. It was a creepy and frightening story for a fifteen-year-old to read. Although it Burning World, aka The Drought (1964), and The published in 1951 I probably didn’t read it until Crystal World (1966) set new standards in literary 1955. It was made into an atrociously bad film quality. These books, especially The Drowned starring Howard Keel, who was better known for World, crossed over into the mainstream and musicals such as Annie Get your Gun and Seven garnered a wide readership. I was particularly Brides for Seven Brothers. He was at the end of fond of The Drowned World. Overheating of the his career and way out of depth in a dramatic role. world is caused by continuous solar flares heating It could have been a bad script, bad direction, or the planet until the ice caps melt and flood the bad acting in general, but whatever it was, it rest of the world. As usual with a Ballard story finished him off. As far as I can recall he never the main concern is with the lead character as he appeared in a film again. (Recently another much negotiates a continually degrading environment. better realisation of The Day of The Triffids has In this case a warming world is becoming more been made as a mini TV series.) and more tropical, with areas along the equator John Wyndham wrote a series of well-written already uninhabitable as jungles grow massive disaster novels, such as The Kraken Wakes in and ancient reptiles start to make a comeback. 1953, The Chrysalids (about mutants and the Kerans, the lead character, is part of a team effects of widespread radiation, also a common surveying the gradual destruction of old cities. theme of many mainstream as well as SF The survey turns out to be useless because the authors), and The Midwich Cuckoos in 1957, a water levels continue rising. When other mem- scary but subtle alien invasion story where all the bers of the team are ready to retreat to the polar women in a village are impregnated and give birth regions Kerans does not want to go but wants to within hours of each other nine months later to travel further into the ever-increasing jungles in normal looking but increasingly strange chil- search of ... who knows what? This is echoed in dren. I read that just after coming back from a much later book, The Day of Creation, in which Darwin in late 1958. It was later made into an his lead character follows an ever-increasing and excellent film called Village of The Damned. (The broadening river into the jungles in central Africa remake years later with, I think, Christopher in search of its origins. This is more a fantasy than Reeve was not much good.) science fiction. Ballard was not concerned with And of course there was J. G. Ballard, one of the science but with the gradual deterioration of New Worlds’ New Wave writers, who, along with character in situations that show environments Brian Aldiss and others, helped define a new way decaying and falling apart (see also his Memoirs of seeing the world and writing about it. Ballard’s of the Space Age and The Day of Forever). His mini triptych of novels The Drowned World (1963), The stories that made up The Atrocity Exhibition stand

33 as the ultimate condensations of epic disasters in Newsagency, where he worked. I missed out on a format that set new standards for experimental many American writers simply because English modern fiction. I just loved those stories. editions of their books were not published. Some, Obviously they weren’t to everyone’s taste. He however, found their way into English book pub- later abandoned that approach and again became lication. more conventional, yet still unequalled in literary T. V. Boardman was a publisher of a regular value, as he continued to map the world as we series of hardcover books all sporting a lovely know it in various states of decay and self- emblem of a rocket ship passing by Saturn with destruction almost always brought on by ever the words Science Fiction written underneath. increasing numbers of humans unable to deal When you saw that emblem on the spine you with the complexity of the world around them (see knew it would be a good story. Boardman pub- High Rise, Crash, and Concrete Island). The fact lished A. E. Van Vogt’s Slan and The Weapon that as a boy Ballard lived in Shanghai, where he Shops of Isher, and many others, such as Children was born, and witnessed the destruction of this of the Atom by Wilmar H. Shiras. The artist who city by the Japanese and was interned in prison illustrated their distinctive covers was Pagram. camp until rescued by Allied forces, no doubt All his (or her) covers had a brooding dark look influenced his obsession with disintegrating with lots of green and grey that made these books societies and ways of coping with them. Ballard, like Aldiss, remains for me as one of the great British writers in the latter half of the twentieth century. He should be more appreci- ated than he is.

I had thrown out the fruit boxes that held my books and built proper shelves, which enabled me to store my records and tapes, as well as many more books and magazines, my turntable, tape player, amplifier, and speakers, as well as the conga drums and bongos that took up floor space. (I hadn’t added timbales yet.) There was not a lot of room for the bed, or space to move around in. Still, I was happy. It was my room, my own personal space and I could while away the hours reading or listening to music while practising conga and bongo patterns, which must have driven Mum and Dad nuts as they tried to watch TV in the lounge room.

Most of the books I read were British publications. It was difficult to get American books in Australia at that time. The few I did get were paperbacks in the Ballantine range of themed anthologies that Merv Binns was able to import for McGill’s

Weidenfeld & Nicolson’s first British edition of Simak’s classic ‘novel’ City, with its attractive illustration.

34 stand out on the shelf from all the others dis- tions of his stories I could find. The earlier Stur- played there. geon were harder SF, what Sturgeon sometimes Weidenfeld and Nicolson also published called the ‘Macho Sturgeon’, but later he wrote science fiction regularly. It too had an emblem — beautiful sensitive stories that resonated in my electrons spinning around an invisible centre, mind long after I had read them. Two that I will presumably representing a stylised atom — with never forget are ‘The Man Who Lost the Sea’ and the words Science above it and Fiction below. It ‘When You Care, When you Love’. The latter is a published the British edition of Clifford D. portion of a novel about cloning that would have Simak’s City, which was not a novel but a collec- been a great success had it ever been finished. It tion of shorter stories linked together to form a never was. The former, however, as much as more-or-less continuous narrative which could Sturgeon sweated over it and didn’t think it would be loosely called a novel. Though it was copy- be any good, went on to be possibly the best short righted in 1952 it was first published in England story he ever wrote; and which was collected in in 1954, and I bought my copy from McGill’s in that year’s (1959) Martha Foley Award Anthology Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, sometime in 1955. I as one of the best short stories for the year, with was impressed, and immediately searched for all the finest mainstream American stories. There more of Simak’s work. Over the years he built up was nothing macho about these. Most of them a reputation for producing gentle stories that were were highly developed and deeply emotional: ‘soft beautifully written and almost nostalgic in SF’ if you need a category. He also ventured into nature, with many stories using a country or areas no other science fiction writer of the time pastoral setting rather than the darker urban was willing to go, areas that dealt with sexuality setting used by many others. City tells of Earth and psychosis and what could be called abnormal abandoned by humans and robots, leaving the behaviour, and for a young reader like I was this planet to domestic dogs, which become the domi- was very different reading material (see Some of nant species. The stories in this book are those Your Blood and Venus Plus X). No matter what the told by the dogs to each other as they recount subject matter, he always made it seem sympa- history as legendary tales of their predecessors, thetic. If there were others writing similar stuff at the humans and their robots. that time, I don’t believe there was anyone better Victor Gollancz was another stalwart of British at it than he was. SF publishing. Their covers were atrocious and Something I recently discovered and find most unattractive, but at least they stood out as unique astonishing is that Sturgeon never or hardly ever on the shelves of the shops that carried them: revised what he had written. Usually he sent off bright yellow with red and black or blue text. a first draft as soon as it was written. How he must Gollancz published English editions of American have sweated and agonised over the typewriter as authors such as Theodore Sturgeon, Robert he poured himself onto those pages. How much Sheckley, and many others. I still have my copy better could he have been had he revised his first of More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, drafts? Perhaps we would have lost the rawness which cost me 15 shillings and sixpence back in of his work, the strength of the emotion that 1954. It was published in 1953 in America, but poured out of him. He should have been as the Gollancz edition arrived in Australia only famous as his contemporary mainstream towards the end of 1954. I read it early in 1955. authors, but he stayed writing science fiction, It had a slightly different cover to the standard apart from a few Westerns and one atrocious film Gollancz design: some decorative squiggles and a tie-in. To the rest of the world today Sturgeon is blurb that stated, ‘Six minds come together and almost forgotten. form a composite human being. Prophetic? — possibly. Unputdownable? — surely’. The magazines I bought were mostly British, with Who could resist that? I couldn’t, and it was the occasional American one thrown in. I didn’t unputdownable: a brilliant story by a master like Astounding, which later morphed into Analog, writer who dealt not with hard science but with but I did sometimes read Galaxy and Worlds of If. the condition of the mind and its emotions and all The stories in the themed anthologies from Bal- those popular (at that time) concepts of para- lantine Books were mostly American. Even so, normal phenomena, such as telekinesis, levita- there was something about the ‘British voice’ that tion, human gestalt, and the idea that we I preferred rather than the more jingoistic Ameri- shouldn’t dismiss those who appear less fortu- can sound. People raved about Robert Heinlein nate than normal, who could well be mental but I didn’t like him, and read a few of his stories giants so far beyond us that we wouldn’t be able and novels if nothing else was available. I never to comprehend them. read much of his later work. I didn’t like the fact Sturgeon wrote many novellas and only a few that he and many other American writers saw the novels. He wrote lots of short stories. Although I future as American. was heading away from reading short works that But there were exceptions. Authors like Clif- often left me disappointed because they didn’t go ford D. Simak and Chad Oliver were highly re- anywhere, I made an exception for Sturgeon (as spected and enjoyed a wide readership, not well as Bradbury) and bought whatever collec- because they were American but simply because

35 fiction writers have invented more “alien” aliens than these for us to make contact with. Few, though, have been as able as Oliver to convince us that this is the way first contact is going to be.’ I loved Chad Oliver stories, but unfortunately he was not as prolific as other writers. I read all I could get my hands on: Mists of Dawn (1952), The Winds of Time (1957), and Unearthly Neighbors (1960), a Ballantine original paperback. I preferred novels, as well as the serials in the magazines, which I found more attractive than the shorter works. The first serial I ever read in a magazine was The Time Masters by Wilson Tucker, which was serialised in New Worlds and beautifully illustrated by Virgil Finlay. Thank you, Bruce Gillespie, for reminding me of the name of this story. The magazines were illustrated with some won- derful black-and-white drawings, sketches, and images. These were usually done on scraper board, which made them look more like etchings, and technically more difficult to produce than pen-and-ink drawings, which also were often very good but had a very different look to them. The serials were later published as books; for in- stance, Dune, serialised first in Analog magazine, but the accompanying John Schoenherr illustra- tions were not used in the book version. Most of the book versions had attractive and inviting cover illustrations — the American ones, anyway. The British Gollanz editions had plain A worthy reprint of a great story. yellow covers with black and red text on them (ugly as hell, but it was the content that was they were good writers and wrote very beautiful important). An exception was Dune, which ap- novels. Chad Oliver was a Professor of Anthropol- peared in 1965 with a black cover with silver white ogy at the University of Texas in Austin. All his text and a couple of white squiggles across the stories had an anthropological base, and dealt middle representing sand dunes, a dramatic with first human contact with aliens on strange change from the usual yellow jacket. Later I had and very different yet similar worlds to Earth. this book signed and dedicated to me by Frank Frederick Pohl said of Chad Oliver: ‘Other science Herbert himself when he visited Australia and attended a book signing at Space Age Books. I remem- ber him telling me over din- ner that his favourite book was the least popular novel he wrote, a mainstream novel called Soul Catcher. This in my view was the best book he wrote. It was billed as his first ‘major’ novel, whatever that meant. What on earth was Dune, if not a ‘major’ novel? I guess the publishers wanted to dis- tinguish Soul Catcher as a mainstream novel. Much of the book has similar themes to Herbert’s SF novels, and he uses similar methods of

Virgil Finlay’s beautiful illustration for the opening scene of The Time Masters when it was first seralised in New Worlds.

36 taken place with humans and aliens on a different world around a different star, but Herbert didn’t want that. I think he wanted to show the same clash of culture, the same inevitability of the result, and what more emotive way to do it than set it there in his own back yard, his own country?

I think I managed to read almost every science fiction, or even vaguely science fiction, book that was published and made available in Australia until the mid 1960s. After that it was harder to keep up, but I made a valiant effort anyway. After 1975 I became much more selective, because it was simply impossible to read everything. Books like The Death of Iron, by S. S. Held in 1952, I would have avoided if it had been pub- lished later than 1964. The premise is silly: some- thing which was never actually specified or even scientifically plausible affects iron, turning it into soft rubbery stuff, which means that buildings collapse because the iron reinforcing basically dissolves. Anything made from iron or steel be- comes like melting rubber or soft plasticine. The cover shows a half-dissolved steam locomotive slowly collapsing over twisted railway lines, which reminds me of Salvador Dali’s melting watches. Everyone returns to the Stone Age: implements made of chipped rock and bone needles being used to repair clothes. It was an awful story that I read with ever decreasing enthusiasm. I don’t know why I remember it now, except for its name. Its only redeeming feature was its demonstration of how impossible it would be for modern people to revert to a Stone Age culture. There were a lot of stories like that which are best forgotten. This telling his story as he did in his SF novels. Soul one was published between The Day of the Triffids Catcher deals with death and retribution and the and The Kraken Wakes, and most SF fans would clash of cultures that occurred between the native have quickly forgotten it, whereas they never Americans and those who now occupy their land, forget the John Wyndham books which are end- but on a personal level between the protagonist lessly reprinted. and his captured victim. It could very well have There are some books that you never can read, or at least, if started, never can finish. Two of these Not the Nautilus, but a depiction of submariners hunting books are the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and 20,000 sharks from a submarine in the late 1880s. Leagues under the Sea. I tried to read them on a number of occasions, but I did not even want to start Lord of The Rings. I had a look at it once in a bookshop. After a few minutes I put it back on the shelf. I was never into that kind of fantasy, and the more people insisted that I should read it — ‘It’s a classic’; ‘You have to read it’ or ‘It should be on every fan’s bookshelf’ — the more I re- fused even to think about reading it. Years later my wife Monica bought a copy for me as a Christmas present and I was under an obligation to make an attempt to read it. I

37 was in my late sixties, too late in my view to start today. This film captures the grand adventure reading Lord of The Rings. You have to read this presented in the book, with superb underwater book as a teenager or at the very least when you photography and a sense of wonder at the gothic are in your early twenties. I managed to get magnificence of the submarine. The great battle through the first 50 pages and found it turgid and with the giant squid seems now to be rather tacky unreadable. I have never gone back to it since. It and artificial. However, the film did win an Acad- even put me off wanting to see the three films that emy Award for special effects among others, and were so extraordinarily popular and won so many stands out as a major science fiction film along Academy Awards. My son read the book, and with This Island Earth, Forbidden Planet, The War borrowed and later bought the three films on of the Worlds, When Worlds Collide, The Day the DVD, and reckons they are fantastic. Exactly! — Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but not my cup of tea. I did watch some bits of the and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. A later films here and there (hard to avoid in a small film, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) was house when someone else is watching them and a ridiculous load of rubbish written and scripted has the volume up rather loud), but not any one by Irwin Allen which was later rewritten as a novel complete. They looked spectacular and I could see by Theodore Sturgeon, who must have been why they were so popular, but they simply didn’t desperate for money to take this one on. interest me enough to make the effort to watch them. ‘We should dive at Cape Schanck,’ George said Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea is one Saturday night at Birdland. another thing altogether. This is a major book and ‘What’s it like?’ I had to ask. I had not at that has some very interesting things in it. I was a keen stage been there. Situated along the coast snorkeller and skin diver as a teenager, having between the Mornington Peninsula and Western- read Hans Haas and Jacques Yves Cousteau, and port Bay near Phillip Island, which I had been to, was experimenting with underwater photo- it is a spectacular spot with a series of low cliffs graphy. The edition I had was a hardcover with dropping down into the ocean with a similar lots of illustrations in it. It has never been out of terrain underwater: tall outcrops (called bommies print in one form or another since Jules Verne by divers) that continue as ever-deepening rocky wrote it in 1870. It was an instant success. reefs until they are so deep they no longer affect Everyone knows the story of Captain Nemo, both the surface. These bommies are like volcanic demonic and sympathetic at the same time, tak- plugs from which the softer material has been ing revenge for what he perceives as society’s eroded away, leaving the hard interior jutting up wrongdoings, and his incredible submarine Nau- like jagged chimneys. The sea swirls around them tilus, supposedly run on ‘electricity’ generated by as each wave comes in and sucks back around some unknown, at that time, power source. The them as it retreats. There are currents and eddies first American nuclear submarine was named that drag huge kelp fronds down into deeper Nautilus perhaps to acknowledge that Jules water before pushing them back up against the Verne, although he never named his power rocks. The bommies are surrounded by a huge source, came up with the idea that later genera- variety of fish that feed on the seaweed and on tions called atomic power. each other. In the nooks and crannies, holes and This book at first is enthralling, but too much small caves, there are crayfish. of it is repetitious and boring. I started to skip ‘It’s a great spot for crayfish, but it’s fairly deep. pages in search of the more interesting or exciting Not many people dive there, so there are lots of bits. I never actually finished reading the book, crayfish.’ although I kept my copy for years. I could see why not many wanted to dive there Before I could finish reading the book the Walt when we got there the next morning. Standing on Disney film of it appeared in the cinemas in colour the cliff and looking down I saw the water smash- and Cinemascope, and I rushed off to see it. It ing onto and flowing over the tops of the bommies starred the wonderful James Mason as Captain before retreating and sucking back around them. Nemo, and with equal billing as Ned was Kirk It was dangerous, no question about that. The Douglas. An outstanding character played by waves roared and thumped onto the rocks and Peter Lorre and teamed with Kirk Douglas made sucked back with deep gurgling sounds that sent an unlikely comedy duo that stole the limelight. a shiver up my spine. Or was that just the cold The underwater gear was good looking: equip- wind blowing off the Southern Ocean up over the ment you could imagine from 1870 if it functioned clifftops? in the way the modern aqualung works: almost a We had decided to make a day of it as a group. cross between an aqualung and the oldfashioned George had his wife Margaret with him, and with helmet diving suit. The submarine is beautiful in me were my brothers and sisters, Phillip, Zara, a steampunk metal fish way. It absolutely suits and Christine, and Zara’s fiancé Fred, who was the book’s descriptions of the Nautilus, made of keen on skindiving and couldn’t wait to get into iron plates riveted together, able to power through the water. We trooped off down the goat path of a the sea with unbelievable speed. It was one of the dirt track that wound down first on the inside of better films of the 1950s, and still looks good even the cliff, where a small safe bay without waves

38 was located. The girls went for swim there but sucking sounds. There was no sign of George. But didn’t stay in long because the water was icy. (It he was a powerful swimmer and an experienced was early summer and the ocean still retained its free diver so I didn’t worry about him. I turned to winter temperature.) We boys, however, worked watch Fred as he slipped into the water. He joined our way around the bottom of the cliff to the ocean me a moment later with thumbs up to indicate he side where the big waves from Bass Strait ham- had no problem in getting in. mered a series of flat rock ledges. We spent a few minutes diving along the edge We quickly suited up in our wetsuits and of the rock wall marvelling at the fish life when worked our way across slippery rocks to the edge Fred indicated he wanted to go back. He didn’t of a gully. When the waves came in, the water like the strong currents swirling around the space slipped over the top of these flat ledges leaving between the gully opening and the nearby them slimy and slippery with a fine sheen of green bommie. Back on the surface and treading water seaweed and sea grapes that burst and squished he told me he was going back in. under foot as we stepped on them. When the wave ‘Remember to wait for a big wave to carry you sucked out, the water level in the gully dropped up onto the ledge.’ two to three feet. You could see the black surface He nodded and then started to swim back swirling as the water sucked out. The dark brown towards the gully opening. I could see Zara and kelp quivered as the water rapidly flowed over it. Christine standing on the beach above the rock Beyond about three metres the water was deeper ledge watching us. One of them waved. Fred and clearer, with no kelp to obscure the view of waved back as he waited for a big wave. the gully sides. When we first went in I think the tide must Fred was excited and fiddled with his lead belt. have been out. It was turning and starting to move George had a hessian bag, which had a long back in. You could feel the waves were stronger orange cord tied to it as well as to his lead belt. and the currents had more power. He sat on the edge of the rock ledge and slipped I drifted towards the bommie and could see way on his flippers (swim fins), spat into his mask, down George swimming along the side near the rinsed it out with seawater, and splashed some bottom. It must have been at least sixty feet deep. cold water onto his face to cool it before putting He was a long way down. The water was excep- on the mask and gripping the snorkel with a firm tionally clear, as cold ocean water usually is. bite. He waited a moment for the next wave to roll There was no sand or silt to reduce visibility. I in up the gully. When the water level came up to tried to dive down to George but it was too far the edge of the shelf he was sitting on, he slipped down. I hovered there a moment until I ran out of into the water. Almost instantly he was sucked breath and had to surface. George came up beside out as the wave retreated. Within a couple of me. seconds he was halfway along the gully and al- ‘This is a paradise,’ he said as pulled out his ready diving down. snorkel. ‘I’ve got half a dozen already.’ ‘That’s how it’s done,’ I told Fred. ‘Watch the He held the hessian bag open a bit so I could waves. Every so often a bigger one comes in and see the crayfish huddled together, legs twitching floods over the edge. You sit there like George did, and feelers waving. ‘A couple more should do it.’ and then you step into it. The wave will suck you I watched as he dived down again. His method out, no problem. You’ll go right over the top of the was to tease a crayfish out of its hiding place by kelp so you won’t notice it.’ putting something there to attract it. That some- ‘Not a problem,’ Fred said. He sat down on the thing was usually a clam or a mussel that he ledge where George had sat. smashed with the hilt of his diving knife. Scraping ‘You sure about this?’ up the flesh, he would use this to attract a He nodded affirmatively. He had the snorkel crayfish out of its lair. They hated being out in the stuck in his mouth and couldn’t speak. open. If George blocked their way back to their ‘When you are ready to come back in, you have hiding place they would look for somewhere else to sit at the opening to the gully and watch the to hide. He held open the hessian bag which I waves. They’re not all big enough to come up to suppose to them looked like a cave, a safe place the top of the ledge. Wait until a big wave comes to hide so they would shoot into it and stay there. along and ride that one in. Swim with it and grab He didn’t even bother grabbing them. the rocks when you get to the ledge. The water will When he came back up for a breath I told him suck back out and when it has gone you can climb I was heading back in. out before the next big wave comes in. If you are He nodded, gave me a thumbs up and went not out then it will suck you back out.’ down again. ‘Okay, I’ve got it.’ He pulled the snorkel out so I swam back to the gully, waited for a big surge he could reply. ‘You don’t have to tell me again.’ and rode the wave in. It came up higher over the ‘All right, I’ll see you out there.’ I stepped into rock ledge than before so the tide was definitely a wave as it surged up the gully. Within a second coming in. I swam up onto the top of the ledge it sucked me out and I swam along with it until I and grabbed hold of a jutting rock. The water was just outside the gully opening. Further out, sucked away behind me and I stood up to see Zara the waves surged over a huge bommie with greedy and Christine gesticulating wildly and pointing

39 The waters and rocks around Cape Schanck, southern Victoria — infamously one of the most dangerous fishing and diving spots of Australia. Below: Waves swirling around bommies at the base of the cliffs.

towards another inlet. There was a fair bit of wind onto the dry rocks. I took off my flippers. While gusting so I couldn’t hear what they were yelling looking around, I realised I couldn’t see Fred about over that and the sound of the waves anywhere. Shit! Now I knew what Zara and smashing and sucking at the rocks. I stood up Christine were agitated about. I tossed my flippers and unlatched my leaden belt, tossing it up higher up where the lead belt was and looked about for

40 Fred. ended well. Other times there was a bit of drama, There he was in a different gully. I ran across such as the time when we were coming back from towards it and got there just as Fred was being Barwon Heads after another successful day of sucked out again, tumbling over the rocks and catching crayfish. looking dangerously close to being tangled up in Geelong Road was full of traffic with everybody the massive kelp fronds. cutting in and out in a rush to get back to He looked up when he cleared the rocks and Melbourne. A guy cut George off. This pissed him saw me standing by the edge. off, so he sped up and passed the guy, got in front, He was whiter than I had ever seen him. and slammed on his brakes, forcing the guy to He tried swimming in again but the wave almost crash into us. wasn’t big enough. He only got half way up onto George leapt out. When the other man got out the more slippery rocks before being sucked back of his car. George was yelling at him, telling him out again, only to be tumbled over by the next that he had cut him off and why the fuck did he wave coming in. do that. The guy protested and George started ‘Swim out a bit further and wait for a big one,’ hitting him. I yelled at him. He didn’t seem to hear me, and Unfortunately for George he had forgotten to started swimming in with the next wave. do up the button on his jeans and his pants I ran back and grabbed a spear gun that we started to fall down. had brought but hadn’t taken into the water. Traffic backed up behind us. Car horns honked Back by the ledge I stepped down into the opening and tooted. George kept trying to hit the other guy and wedged myself between some rocks and the with one hand while holding up his pants. He edge of the ledge. Holding the gun by the spear didn’t have on any underwear, otherwise he point I reached out towards Fred. wouldn’t have bothered. Meanwhile the man’s He saw me. As he swam in this third or fourth wife and kids had gotten out of the car and were time he grabbed the handle of the gun and hung screaming at George to stop hitting the man. on with a fierce grip. I pulled him towards me as George’s wife Margaret had also gotten out of our the wave sucked back past him and he scrabbled car and was hitting George on the head with an across the slippery with desperate speed. I umbrella to make him stop. I just sat in the car stepped back up onto the ledge and continued and watched it all unfold. I don’t know where Zara pulling him up until he was well out of the water, and Fred were. They were most likely several cars and quite safe. back wondering what the hell the hold-up was Once again I was reminded that a spear gun about. had more uses than simply being used to kill fish. Eventually George let the man go and still We were lucky that George had decided to bring holding up his pants with his left hand he got back a spear gun in case there were no crayfish. The into the car. Margaret barely had time to get in trip wouldn’t have been wasted, because he would the back seat before George slammed the gear in have shot a meal of fresh fish. But with the and we shot off along Geelong Road way ahead of crayfish there was no need for that. the mob of backed-up cars. All the way he kept Within five minutes Fred was out of his wetsuit berating Margaret for hitting him on the head with and soaking up some sunshine and chatting hap- the umbrella. pily about what a spectacular dive spot it was. The ‘You should have helped me,’ he told her. ‘You fact that he could have drowned was already should have hit him instead of me.’ forgotten. ‘What? With his family watching you beat up George came in shortly with his hessian bag their husband and father?’ full of crayfish. We went back to my place in And so it went all the way back until both of Yarraville and Mum soon filled with boiling water them fell silent and refused to say anything to the gigantic pot she kept for such occasions. She each other. cooked the crayfish, while we sat in the yard drinking beer and recounting the events of the George was a wild man. As a boy he survived the trip. Second World War in Hungary, ran away to Swit- ‘You saved my life,’ Fred said afterwards. ‘I zerland where he somehow got himself adopted don’t know how much water I swallowed.’ and learnt how to be a watchmaker, qualifying by ‘You should have waited for the bigger wave the age of thirteen, and in the process managed like I told you,’ I said, and went back inside to get to acquire his second language, German. He then another can of beer and to see how the crayfish went to Canada and worked in the mining were doing. Mum had already made a huge Greek industry. There he learnt to speak English. After salad with heaps of feta cheese and kalamata an accident in winter when he fell down a frozen olives. Half the crayfish were hot, bright red, and tailings dump — so he said; it was most likely the steaming in a pile on the kitchen table while the result of a fight — landing at the bottom uncon- rest were still cooking. scious, his scalp froze by the time the other It had been a perfect day. workers climbed down to rescue him. He lost all his hair and was bald after that. In the early 1950s There were a lot of days like that. Sometimes they he ended up in New York, where he discovered the

41 Palladium Dance Hall and the big bands of Tito throughout. Light sparkled off some of it from Puente, Tito Rodriguez, and others. He fell in love time to time, giving a slight haziness. The water with the salsa music they played. After a couple was also warmer than we expected. There was a of years, he left for Australia, where he had an warm current that drifted down the coast from the aunt and uncle living in Elwood, a suburb of more subtropical areas to the north, which obvi- Melbourne. He opened a gold and silver chain ously kept the temperature higher than we were jewellery manufacturing plant in collaboration used to. There were few fish, and those we saw with them using special knitting machinery he were very shy and quickly disappeared. imported from Italy. (He had to sneak out of his The boys had these new compressed-air spear hotel room in Rome in the middle of the night guns and the damn things didn’t work properly. without paying his bill because he spent all his I had my16 mm Bolex in an underwater housing, money on buying and getting those knitting ma- and I remember filming Fred as he swam over a chines ready for export to Australia.) He discov- gigantic stingray. He looked down, and for some ered Birdland in St Kilda and started playing reason he pointed the spear gun down also. The conga drums there, and that’s where I met him. spear slid out and fell point first on top of the He had already been in Melbourne for two or stingray. It wasn’t supposed to do that! The sting- three years when we met. He had married his ray flicked its tail up and the poison barb must girlfriend Margaret. We knocked around playing have been two feet long. At the same instant it drums and skindiving at weekends for a couple of flapped its giant wings and took off like a rocket, years before he sold his chain knitting business disappearing within a heartbeat into the hazy and moved to Sydney, where he eventually blue distance of deeper water. Fred stared at me opened a watch repair shop somewhere near ashen faced. The sting had missed him by only a Redfern. He also started creating handmade few inches. I gave him a thumbs-up sign and jewellery, concentrating on expensive custom pointed to the camera indicating I had shot this made jewellery. He moved this business to a on film. We would laugh about this later once the luxury hotel foyer in Kings Cross. film was processed and we could watch it on That first year after he moved up to Sydney we screen. He retrieved his spear and swam off in the decided to drive up to Bermagui for a skindiving direction the stingray had gone, through a gully holiday over Easter long weekend. George and into deeper water. another friend drove down from Sydney and If anyone could find some fish to shoot, George joined us. This may have been 1962. Bermagui is would. He came back after Fred and Phillip and I a great fishing town. Its pub’s walls have displays had been out of the water for some time. He had of lots of photos of famous people who went big some fish he had speared which we later had for game fishing out of Bermagui. In one large photo dinner, but his mate who came in perhaps ten standing next to the scales where his catch was minutes after George had trouble getting out of strung up and weighed was the author Zane Gray. the water and had to climb up the short cliff face I had read some of his western novels so I knew on the other side because the tide was in and who he was. Until my first trip to Bermagui I had waves were smashing on the rocks where we first no idea he was a keen big game fisherman. entered. Arriving late at night after the long drive from The next day was bright and sunny. We drove Melbourne we set up a huge tent and promptly out of town south along the coast road until we went to sleep. Early in the morning we found found a beautiful beach about two miles out of George and his mate and we all went diving in a town. A couple of pyramid-shaped rocks made a small bay not far from the camp site. The tide was tiny island about half a mile off the beach. An- out and we clambered down over the rocks and other friend of George’s had arrived with a small used the method of waiting for a big wave to wash aluminium dinghy. They climbed into it with all up onto the rocks then, stepping into it, to be their gear and headed out towards the jagged carried out into deeper water. Coming back we islets offshore. Fred went with them, so there were used the same method: wait for the bigger wave four of them in the dinghy: George, the owner of and have it carry us back up onto the rocks, where the dinghy, the friend who had come down with we would grab hold and hang on until the wave him from Sydney, and Fred. receded. The next several waves were always I stayed on the beach with the girls and Phillip, smaller so we had time to clamber higher up. and filmed the group as they headed off towards The underwater terrain here consisted of huge the tiny island. The beach was clean with rich rounded boulders scattered from the rocky edge white sand. We settled down to wait for the others across a sandy bottom. There were gullies and to finish with their diving. There was a gentle narrow splits between the boulders. You could see breeze and not a cloud in the sky. the water sucking back and forth through them — the sand swirled and made small eddies as the swells above came in and out. There was some Next page: Top: George and me on the rocks at Bermagui near kelp, but nowhere near the amount we were used where we encountered the giant stingray. to in the southern waters around Port Phillip Bay. There was also plenty of plankton scattered Below: My sister Christine, me (kneeling), Fred, George’s friend, and my brother Phillip at Bermagui, Easter 1963.

42 43 About two hours later I noticed the boys were It came back a couple of hours later. Everyone in the dinghy and starting back. had been rescued. They even had the dinghy on ‘What’s that?’ Zara asked. She was looking board, but it was minus its outboard motor. When south, where the beach stretched in an almost it flipped over everything on board had gone to the straight line for several miles. bottom including the motor. The dinghy didn’t There seemed to be a patch of boiling white sink because it had flotation panels built in to water just off the beach. It looked like a fountain prevent that from happening. The boys had hung bursting out of the water. on, and were lucky the waves hadn’t washed them I had never seen anything like that before. It away. They were suffering a bit from hypothermia was coming towards us. but a few whiskeys at the pub soon fixed that. Suddenly sand started to whip up around our They would certainly have a story to tell when they feet, and the white water rushed towards where got home. we were on the beach. A ferocious wind blasted Those were the days! us with fine sand particles that stung all over like vicious mosquito bites. Next to the dry-cleaning shop in Douglas Parade, ‘Those guys are going to cop it if they don’t get Williamstown was a plant nursery. It had a dis- back in time,’ I said. play of subtropical and tropical plants in our shop The water in front of us started to whip up window, where the warmth and steam in the violently. White caps formed, and foam was atmosphere from the pressing machines created ripped off by the ever-increasing wind. It looked an ideal micro-climate for these plants. Dad had as if the wind were trying to suck the water up run some extra steam pipes through the nursery out of the sea. glasshouse, which was located at the rear of their The dinghy was halfway back to the beach premises and close to our boiler. These pipes when the squall hit. It vanished in a swirl of white supplied enough warmth to raise the ambient crashing waves and blasting wind. temperature in the glasshouse a few degrees, I had the camera running and I hoped that which kept any winter chill away from the propa- some of this could be captured. There was abso- gated plants growing there. The nursery owner lutely nothing we could do. appreciated that, and always maintained a good- The wind seemed to swing around the tiny looking display in our window. island offshore. The worst of the churning white The chap who looked after the display was an water followed it out to sea. There was a dark spot, Englishman called Walter Shaw. which must have been the dinghy bouncing along ‘Call me Wally,’ he said when he introduced with the white water. Then it was too far out to himself, and we always did, although most others see. Someone was standing on the island and called him Walt. waving to us. A moment later George floundered He and his wife and son were ‘ten pound Poms’, in the choppy waves crashing onto the beach and having migrated to Australia under that program stood up. He staggered towards us. whereby they contributed ten pounds per person ‘Fred’s on the island,’ he called as he ran up and the government paid for their trip over and the beach. ‘The other two are with the dinghy.’ billeted them in a hostel until they found work ‘At the rate they’re going they’ll be in New and accommodation. Wally had stayed in the Zealand soon.’ hostel in Kororoit Creek Road, where it bordered ‘We’ll have to go back to town and see if we can on North Altona. Terrible accommodation, so I get one of the fishing trawlers to go out and rescue was told, and it got worse later on when the Mobil them. Last I saw they were clinging to the up- Oil Refinery increased its storage capacity and turned dinghy.’ built huge holding tanks that went right up to a George grabbed a pair of jeans as he said this, few hundred metres from the hostel. Perhaps this quickly pulling them on over his wet trunks. He is what encouraged people to find somewhere and Phillip raced up to one of the cars and took better to live. Eventually that hostel was moth- off in a cloud of wind-swirled dust. balled. Years later it was rebuilt in the same By the time they had disappeared, the wind location in spite of many protests that it was started to die down and the waves calmed. The unhealthy, being so close to the storage facility of beach soon gave the appearance that nothing had the refinery. It was used to house Vietnamese happened, that the sudden ferocious squall had ‘boat people’ refugees. never passed by. And as far as I could see out to Almost immediately after arriving at the hostel sea nothing was there. The squall had completely Wally got a job in the control room of the Mobil dissipated. Oil refinery across the road. He monitored the flow We packed our gear and waited. About half an from the processing to storage in the holding hour later a fishing trawler motored up to the tanks. Since this was shift work, he also looked small island offshore and we saw Fred clamber on for work during the days. He worked for the board. It then headed out to sea in the direction nursery next door, where his job was maintaining the squall had gone. We headed back into town the plants the nursery leased to businesses in and down to the wharf to wait for the trawler to Melbourne’s city centre, banks, head offices of come back. large corporations, and so on. The nursery sup-

44 plied plants, maintained them, and rotated them had grown up initially in the residence at the back so the ones beginning to look haggard could be of the shop (until I was seven and we moved to rehabilitated. Yarraville West). Later I worked part time in the Wally was about fifteen years older than me: a shop and learnt the ropes of how the whole bit scrawny, which I assumed was because he process worked; so too did my two sisters and my grew up in England during the harsh years lead- brother Phillip. It seemed natural or inevitable ing up to the Second World War. Towards the end that I would be, that we all would be, working of the war he had been conscripted. Once he had there full time. I didn’t have to like it. I was finished his basic training, he was sent with a interested in books and writing, in art and paint- small unit to Germany, where he participated in ing, and in Afro-Cuban music and its various the reconstruction the Allied forces were doing permutations in different parts of the world. Zara immediately after the war ended. He spent two and Christine were interested in dancing and years there, and learned to speak German. show business. Phillip, out of the four of us, was One day I went into the nursery and found the only one really happy working at the dry Wally in the office reading a book. There was no cleaner. Working in the dry-cleaning business one else there. As it was the middle of the after- allowed us to have money to devote to our other noon it was very quiet. There was hardly anyone interests. I guess we were lucky in that respect. in the street, no customers in the nursery, and we’d finished work for the day and the pressers I never imagined for one second that I would be a had gone home. The nursery always smelt fresh, dry cleaner on and off over the next forty years. almost like being out in the bush, very different But who at any given moment can imagine what from the white spirit and other chemical smells his or her future will be? that pervaded the atmosphere in the dry-cleaning factory. It was a science fiction book that Wally The Age’s Green Pages is its weekly section deal- was reading. That immediately made him a kin- ing with entertainment, containing a TV and radio dred soul. I knew there were lots of people who guide, lists of theatre shows in town, showbiz read SF books — especially as some sold very well, gossip, and much else. One day I saw a picture of far more than could have been bought by true the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. The fans — but I had never met any SF readers other name under the photo said Ynez Amaya, a suit- than Merv Binns and one or two people encoun- ably exotic name. She was performing in a TV tered at the SF section of the counter in McGill’s broadcast at the ABC studios in Elwood. I knew Newsagency. Wally was the first outsider: the first those studios because I had appeared there in a reader of SF that I had met who was not a fan. He dance show with Zara and the girls from her was also the first person with whom I spent time dance school. On an impulse I decided to go over talking about science fiction and books. to the studios and watch her performance. Suddenly we became great friends. We dis- I was of course hoping to meet her. God only cussed books and authors, what we had read, and knows what I would say to her. Being young I discovered we liked similar types of stories. never gave that a thought. I simply went over and Mostly they were adventure, escapist, and space walked into the studios as if I had every right to opera. Although he was English, he was fonder of be there. No one questioned me. One of the secu- American SF than I was. We started lending each rity men near the main entrance to the studios other books, which we discussed at great length, nodded and said ‘Hi. You’re back again.’ He and eventually we talked about writing our own remembered me from the dance show we did a few book. I had always wanted to write, but didn’t months back. I smiled at him and asked him how think I had enough ability. I had a typewriter and he was and walked by without waiting for an had started writing a murder mystery set in a answer. nightclub where girls danced semi-naked in cages Ynez Amaya had recently come over from suspended from the ceiling — typical juvenile South Africa, which explained her exotic appear- bullshit. Wally, it turned out, had published sev- ance. She was one of these people of mixed racial eral stories in British magazines, stories about heritage blended in such a way as to produce a smuggling stuff from England to Europe or vice stunningly beautiful person. versa, but he hadn’t done anything else since In the same studio where we had performed the coming to Australia. He was too busy working two dance routine, she was standing by the piano and jobs and paying off a mortgage on a house in going over her movements within the allowed Altona to find time for writing. With another baby space. Two huge cameras shifted to position on the way there would be even less time, so any themselves for a long shot and a close-up shot. A ambitions towards further writing he had number of people were in the studio: the floor shelved. manager, camera operators, a man holding a padded mike above the singer’s head high enough I always felt out of place working at the dry- to be out of camera shot, as well as the musicians, cleaning factory. It was not something I really and a jazz trio of whom only the piano player wanted to do, but rather it was something I fell seemed familiar. I had eyes only for Ynez. There into because it was part of the family activities. I were a number of other people in the studio as

45 well as a small audience. The recording or broad- who it was beside me. cast had not yet begun, so I slipped quietly in ‘Ynez,’ I blurted. ‘Ynez Amaya?’ through the door and stood near the back of the ‘The name is Beryl,’ she said. ‘That Ynez name studio close to the audience. was something the ABC dreamed up because it A sign flashed indicating the broadcast was made me sound more exotic.’ about to begin. ‘Well, for a jazz singer Beryl is probably a more Someone standing in front of the audience appropriate name.’ said, ‘Quiet please.’ ‘Thanks.’ The floor manager held up his right hand, fist She smiled, and up close like that I was closed. Everyone watched him. He was wearing stunned at how radiant she appeared. She was earphones and obviously listening. ‘Ten seconds,’ even more beautiful than I had imagined from the he announced and started counting backwards. distant view I had seen at the studios in Elwood. When he got to five he fell silent, but opened his Suddenly I was lost for words. I had no idea what fist finger by finger starting with his thumb to else to say. But then the band finished and George indicate the last five seconds. joined us. ‘Hello, Beryl,’ he said as he sat down. I saw the piano player mouthing the count: one She nodded at him, and by then the rest of the – two – one two three just loud enough for the trio band was also sitting at the table for their break. and the singer to hear, but no one else. They The others all greeted her cheerfully. She knew began at the instant the floor manager finished everyone even though I had never seen her at his silent five-count. I was unfamiliar with the Birdland before. Roger, the band’s drummer, gave song but it was beautifully sung in a modern jazz her a peck on the cheek and sat beside her on the style, and the playing of the trio was quietly other side. She seemed overly familiar with him. understated to enhance and not take any atten- They must be a couple, was my immediate tion away from the singer. thought, and for some strange reason I felt re- All too soon it was over. The audience clapped, lieved. and the band members stood up smiling with Roger and I got on really well together as obvious pleasure at a fine performance. Cameras players. He was an excellent jazz drummer, but moved around, and before I could take more than he had also learned some authentic cowbell pat- a tentative step towards the band, the singer and terns for Cuban-based music from JoJo and from the trio vanished. The floor manager was waving some records JoJo had lent him to study. He had his arms above his head. Through a glass parti- mastered the patterns and sounded like an tion in an adjoining studio another performance authentic Latin drummer when we played to- was underway as part of the live broadcast, and gether. It gave a whole different ambience to the in the studio where I was standing cameras were music and to the band. being repositioned and someone else was getting Roger leaned across in front of Beryl and was ready for another performance. I slipped out of about to introduce us when she told him we had the studio into the corridor. just met, so instead he said, ‘John is going to do It was empty. Not knowing what else to do, I the floorshow with us.’ She immediately looked at headed back to the front entrance. I felt relieved me with a different expression in her eyes. Maybe that I hadn’t been able to approach the singer, it was curiosity, Perhaps she had been wondering because in that instant I realised I had no idea what I was doing sitting at the band’s table. what I would have said to her, other than some- Maybe it was acceptance because suddenly I was thing that may have made me look like a dick- one of them and not an outsider. head. Outside and walking towards my van in the George stood up. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. He car park I saw her with the piano player getting never stayed for the floorshow. into a car. They drove past me and quickly disap- Everyone was drinking a soft drink with a shot peared down the narrow street outside the studio. of brandy in it. Quickly they downed their drinks as the lights on the bandstand dimmed and the About a month later I was sitting on a Saturday area of the dance floor brightened. The other night at the table reserved for the band at Bird- people crowding the tables in the club dropped land when someone sat beside me. I was watching their volume a little in anticipation of the show. George play with the band while a couple of bad The band members stood up and quietly made dancers gyrated around the small dance floor their way towards the bandstand. I followed along almost in time to the music. Those lessons and behind and sat behind the conga drums at the various impromptu playing sessions we had had edge of the dance floor. with JoJo had improved his playing. It was much Johnny Summers, a brilliant singer from New better than when I had first met him. The playing Zealand, came out and acted as MC. He got the was cleaner, and more precise. audience warmed with a joke or two and sang the ‘The band sounds good, doesn’t it?’ the girl who popular hit of the day, ‘Moon River’. We did it as had sat at the table beside me said. a bolero, slow and romantic, and a warm sensu- ‘They really are good,’ I agreed, turning towards ous voice. I imagined half the women in the her, adding ‘probably the best in Melbourne at the audience sitting in the dark swooning as he sang. moment’, and almost fell off my chair when I saw Next was the ever-popular almost naked exotic

46 dancer (who was actually born in Russia, but the back of the club one night and no one noticed grew up in Australia) with her two pythons. For- us at all. I can’t remember which story it was. tunately this time they behaved themselves and Bradbury was a genius with words, and could slithered towards the audience instead of my take an idea that had little substance and write a congas. I smiled as I heard the frantic scrambling beautifully poetic story around it that was so from the darkened tables as people tried to get moving it could almost bring tears to your eyes. away from the snakes, only to have them pulled Stories by Ray Bradbury turned up in the most back by the dancer before anything serious hap- unexpected publications. He was one of the few pened. who had crossed into the mainstream without Crocker and Clarke weren’t there that particu- compromising what he wrote, and was known to lar night. Johnny announced Beryl and she a very much wider audience than some other stepped into the spotlight. She sang two songs; a well-known authors within science fiction circles. standard slow jazz ballad that required soft One of his stories, ‘The Fruit at the Bottom of the brushes played on the snare drum, which she Bowl’, was printed in Australian Women’s Weekly followed with the familiar up-tempo version of ‘I’ve when it was a weekly magazine. It must have Got Rhythm’ in which I played. We had not re- confused regular readers expecting a story about hearsed it, but we had all played this so many fruit salad including a recipe. It was a story about times in so many different ways that it didn’t obsessive behaviour and murder and how a com- matter. We swung into it. At an appropriate mo- pulsive habit brought the protagonist undone. ment Chuck, the pianist, indicated that Roger should do a sixteen-bar solo, which he did beau- After a year Beryl told me one night that I was in tifully. Chuck nodded to me just as Roger was love with the idea of being in love with her and not concluding and I did another sixteen bars of really in love with her. That took me by surprise. conga solo. I took some of Roger’s phrases and Maybe she was annoyed that I hadn’t taken our expanded on them before Beryl came back in for relationship further, or perhaps realised I didn’t the final coda and the number was over. It went have the courage to pursue it beyond what it was, very smoothly and the audience responded with knowing that she was married to Roger. Maybe sustained applause. Johnny came back into the she actually loved me at one point and was dis- limelight and sang another popular hit and then appointed I didn’t fully reciprocate. I really did the show was over. love her — I was sure of that — but perhaps it ‘Nice solo,’ Roger commented as we made our later devolved into the idea of being in love with way back to the table reserved for us. her rather than actually being in love. It was a ‘Thanks. You too.’ strange relationship, which Roger knew all about. ‘I mean it. You played a lot better than you’ve That he wasn’t too concerned meant that they had ever done before.’ obviously spoken about it and he knew exactly I didn’t tell him I felt it was Beryl who had what the situation was between us. When she inspired me that night. I could see her studying became pregnant with Roger’s baby we drifted me with a quizzical look. I think she suspected, further apart. We remained friends, but the par- but wasn’t going to say anything, certainly not to ticular intimacy that we had experienced over the Roger. previous year when I had been truly infatuated Over the next few months we chatted together with her was gone. As her pregnancy evolved she while the band played. We became close and I was stopped singing at the club and I rarely saw her sure I was in love with her. I had not felt like this again. about anyone else before. In fact I thought I had I heard much later that she had split up with fallen in love with her when I first saw her photo Roger and had moved back to living with her in the Green Pages. She reciprocated my feelings, parents. I wondered if it had been my fault that and for a while she too was in love with me. the split-up had occurred; a delayed reaction to Unfortunately there was no way we could take our platonic affair. I wasn’t going to find out, it any further because she was married to Roger. because the band members changed and I lost We cuddled and kissed in the dark at the back of interest in playing at Birdland because the music the club but it never came to anything more than changed. The ambience degenerated into a seed- that. Our relationship remained platonic. It could ier, grimier feeling, and it seemed as if the owners be no other way. People thought we were having no longer cared about how the place looked. an affair and we didn’t disabuse them of that idea. Music was changing too; the Beatles and the We simply never spoke about it. I took Beryl as Rolling Stones had appeared on the scene, and my partner to my sister’s wedding to her German hundreds of would-be copycats gigged around boyfriend Fred. It was the first wedding in our town. Birdland could no longer compete with family and it was a massive affair as befits a newer venues that promoted young rock and roll traditional Greek wedding. bands. I discovered Beryl was interested in science Everything was changing. fiction stories and I had found one by Ray Brad- It was time to move on. bury that I thought was profound. I took the paperback with me and read this story to her at — John Litchen, February 2012

47 Letters of comment

*brg* My article about the first two novels of Mervyn monplace in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centu- Peake’s ‘Gormenghast’ trilogy appeared in *brg* 72. ries. And ritual was just about all Byzantium was I intended republishing it in Steam Engine Time, good for. Like Constantinopolis, Gormenghast which ceased publication in early 2012, or in SF was more than a palace — it was a vast warren of Commentary, and write material on the third novel, interconnected buildings and courtyards, and a Titus Alone. This still has not happened.* way of life. You’ll be interested in the attached covers of TARAL WAYNE the three volumes of the first American paperback 245 Dunn Avenue, Apt. 2111, Toronto, edition, from Ballantine. Ontario M6K IS6, Canada (15 December 2011) *brg* One of the biographers of Mervyn Peake com- I found your Mervyn Peake zine informative, to plains about the lack of relevance of the Ballantine the point of clearing up the attribution of Peake’s covers (the first American paperback editions) to the death to ‘brain cancer’. So, it was Parkinson’s contents of the books. Ballantine had been hoping to instead ... who knew? It is still hard to explain ride on the 1968 success of the first American edition why the third book in the trilogy is so much at of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, despite the lack odds with the first two. of similarity between the two trilogies.* I found Titus Alone all but unreadable. Whereas the first two books were saturated in atmosphere and seemed very real, the third book TIM MARION seemed like floating downsteam on a river of c/o Kleinbard, 266 East Broadway, metaphors, and not at all real. Without the drama Apt 1201B, New York, NY 10002, USA of Steerpike’s rise and fall, it was about nothing that really compelled my interest — some Thanks, once again, for sending me the Mervyn abstruse point of philosophy, perhaps? Peake speech. Fascinating reading. Peake’s art is I’ve been reading a two-part history of Byzan- great, too. tium. The parallels between imperial politics in I read the ‘Gormenghast’ trilogy in 1977, three Constantinople and ritual in Gormanghast are years after I read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and striking. Steerpike would have fit into Byzantine I was extremely glad that the former was vastly politics very well. Obscure nationals starting out different from the latter. I must be one of the few as stable boys or office clerks rising to the imperial fantasy readers on earth who never ‘got’ LotR. To throne through ability, intrigue, and many, many me, it was mostly boring, maudlin, etc. I enjoyed murders, then being deposed in turn by the next The Hobbit, however. To this day, I still don’t lean and hungry would-be emperor, were a com- understand the fascination that both my peers

48 and elders have had for the LotR trilogy. To my (about Cousteau’s ship), which I always found mind, someone who corrects me on the pronun- haunting. ciation of ‘Moria’ (it should not sound like Mariah I also liked what Litchen said about both Jack Carey’s first name, apparently, despite the fact Vance and Poul Anderson. I must disagree with that makes it sound more exotic) has very little him on Bradbury, however, and I know this is an going for him in life. LotR was such a bore that it unpopular opinion. Bradbury’s science fiction took me nine months to read it, off and on. was too whimsical, capricious, and tricked out to Gormenghast, by comparison, I practically flew even be considered good literature, much less through; reading it every spare moment. ‘science fiction’. I have to admit I’m basing this I’m glad you only wrote about the first two feeling solely on R is for Rocket, however, which books. You’re right to say that the third book is turned out to be a big disappointment when it was such a different animal that it would require a passed along to me, by my English teacher, when separate article. I was 10. I found the stories to be so poor and I sure hope you sent a copy of this to Ned self-indulgent that I couldn’t even finish the book. Brooks! He’s a big Peake fan, and wrote about new It was Bradbury’s horror stories, however, that Titus Awake book in the latest issue of his zine It were genuinely chilling and I enjoyed. And Litchen Goes on the Shelf. says he doesn’t care for those. He does, however, I’ve just finished East of Eden by Steinbeck, admit to enjoying Bradbury’s Something Wicked and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It This Way Comes, which I regard as a dark was the kind of book that made me sorry when I fantasy/horror story. Litchen writes well about finished it, because I wanted to see what would the movies that were based on the stories he’s happen to the characters next. Likewise, it was read, but apparently he never saw Something the kind of book that made me sad when some of Wicked, a very effective movie: well photographed the more interesting characters died. and acted. I had planned to read The Manchurian Candi- I’m sorry that Litchen didn’t like John Carpen- date, by Richard Condon, after seeing the movie. ter’s The Thing, which I felt was a much mis- However I have just re-watched that old 1962 understood and maligned movie. It wasn’t really movie and no longer find it all that interesting. that gross, as all that metamorphic stuff was (Until now it has been one of my favourite movies obviously just sand and clay and papier mâché; I of all time.) The old paperback I have seems to be didn’t find the alien’s changing form to be all that falling apart — the glue is no longer holding the gross. Litchen says he liked both The Thing and first few pages. the previous version equally well, but it’s obvious (3 January 2012) to me that John Carpenter’s remake stood head and shoulders above the awful, ancient Thing I just pulled a mass market paperback anthology From Another World, where the villain was a silent, from off the shelf: Weird Shadows from Beyond, menacing, ‘Flaming Carrot’ type (reference to a edited by John Carnell and pubished in 1965, silly comicbook character I never see anymore). although I almost certainly bought it 10 or more Litchen seems, at one point, to be asking who years later. It includes two Mervyn Peake stories the first ‘lead operator’ was in the Mission Impos- — ‘Danse Macabre’ and ‘Same Time, Same Place’ sible TV show. I believe he’s referring to Peter — that I have never read Graves, who was, coincidentally enough, the Elaine, did Bruce tell you how much I admired brother of James Arness, who played the Giant your back cover to the latest *brg*? Beautiful! Rutabaga/Flaming Carrot mentioned above (as (12 January 2012) well as Matt Dillon on the TV show Gunsmoke). (21 January 2012) Re *brg* 73: The mark of a good writer is the ability to write entertainingly about subjects in *brg* Tim Marion has also taken over from Dick which the reader has little or no interest. John Jenssen the job of picking up Gillespie’s typos. He Litchen succeeds in this aim, with stories of found 25 of them in *brg* 73! I was going to print massive deliveries of dry-cleaning, performing on them here, plus the corrections. Elaine pointed out drums, various different kinds of Caribbean that, after a year a half, nobody was likely to worry music, skin diving, filming underwater, Jacques too much. Well, I worry, and I’m grateful to Tim for Cousteau, etc. Indeed, there is almost a John the trouble he has taken. No doubt he will be poised Steinbeck type feel about his autobiography. at the keyboard as soon as he receives this new I learned a lot about Jacques Cousteau here, fanzine. Thanks, Tim, for your efforts.* a man who was definitely ahead of his time. I’m ashamed to admit that when I was a kid I almost Although you don’t watch much TV, I assume you always eschewed his TV specials, as all I could are familiar with the Sherlock Holmes series from consider was that he was pre-empting what I British TV in the mid 1980s? Quite excellent: would normally watch. I did not know it was his Jeremy Brett is supposed to have portrayed the idea to create ‘scuba’ equipment or that ‘SCUBA’ definitive Holmes. They’re all on DVD. Jeff and I was an acronym. This just put me in mind to (who watched the episodes originally when they listen to the late John Denver’s song ‘Calypso’ were repeated in the late 80s/early 90s) had a

49 Elaine pointed out to me that most correspondents praise either or both covers for *brg* 73, but even she couldn’t remember the cover of hers to which people were referring. Hence the above reminders.

good time watching the first set, which is called Not necessarily. There is also the equally valid The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, but in the theory that you can have knowledge of what the second set (The Return of Sherlock Holmes) the past was supposed to be like, but when you go picture quality seems to have much less defini- back into the past, you change the events that tion. (But maybe the sound is better.) you know are supposed to happen. This creates How are Merv and Helena Binns? Haven’t what is familiarly known as a ‘divergent timeline’. heard from them in ages. And you have dual memories of both what the (24 January 2012) past was supposed to be as well as the way you just changed it, because you are at ‘the centre of *brg* Merv’s health is up and down, but he did receive the nexus’: that physical or metaphysical point at a personal boost at the Continuum convention in which you yourself are not changed by the time- Melbourne last year when he received the Infinity bending process, and thus you retain awareness Award for lifetime (and more) achievement. We don’t of both pasts. see him and Helena very often, as Merv will no longer I definitely agree with Don Ashby when he drive a car at night. Helena seemed in good health writes, ‘Time travel stories are fantasy, not when last we met. At the beginning of 2012 they science fiction.’ I’m not a physics professor (and, found a much more congenial house than the one they offhand, I’m guessing Don isn’t either), merely a had been living in.* logical-minded reader who has thought a lot about this. It seems to me that part of the burden Don Ashby propounds only one theory of time of going back in time has to do with quantifying travel, and seems to feel that any other theory is just what time is: it’s an artifice by which we automatically invalid: ‘Time travel stories tend to measure the movement of objects through space. annoy me because most writers can’t seem to get If the theory that our galaxy is actually moving is their head around the notion that if someone goes true, that means that the Earth is always in a back into the past that event is ipso facto part of different place than it was before in the sky. If one the character’s present. You can’t change history, were able to somehow transcend time, and get all because if you have gone back in time you are the large celestial objects to move backwards to already part of it. That is why we know it is where they were, there is still the possibility that impossible to interact with the past, because we one could end up in the right time (the past) but do not record it in our history.’ the wrong place (empty space). Indeed, even

50 ignoring, for the moment, the movement of the I’ve been outta circulation awhile. Foreign parts, galaxy, if calculated incorrectly, the Earth could y’know? And if ever we’ve had cause to question be on the other side of the sun from the time why exactly we flip back to Greece year after year, traveller if said traveller moves only backward our trip from Lefkada down through Kefalonia to through time and does not calculate the move- Ithaca provides stunning reasons aplenty. The ment of the Earth through its orbit as well (leaving shimmer of blue seas, so many small green said traveller with a rather chilly welcome, to say islands, including the Onassis-family private the least). island of Scorpios, is truly overwhelming. I enjoyed Jerry Kaufman’s letter, where he Glimpses of dolphins frolicking in the ship’s wake, states: ‘Still, I sometimes think our life is like our and giant loggerhead turtles feeding in Argostoli dreams. While in the dream we usually accept it bay. We chase Byron in reverse. He was in Vathi as real, but when we wake up we either remember (Ithaca) in August 1823, hunting out Homer, then only the highlights or forget the dream entirely. lived four months in Metaxata (Kefalonia), where By analogy, perhaps this life we live is itself a his bronze bust now fronts his white house — or dream and [typo correction] when we die here, we rather, his replica house — the original a victim wake up elsewhere.’ Not an unfamiliar concept, of the 1953 earthquake — but there’s a tasteful but he phrases it well. Byron’s Pizza taverna in nearby Lakythra! Kefalo- There is also ‘effective dreaming’, where the nia itself is rugged enough to tax the leg muscles, dreamer becomes aware that he or she is in a although we took a two-hour hike around the dream and then starts to control and manipulate largely tourist-free headland to the lighthouse the events occurring in the dream. (Is that what and beyond. We were spoilt for choice when it it means to be God, I wonder?) comes to good food too, although the girls com- (22 January 2012) plained of the lack of little shops. And for ouzo- fuelled evenings the copper sun disc sinks over STEVE SNEYD Lixouri like the devalued euro beneath the eco- 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, nomic horizon. Now we’re enduring re-entry to West Yorkshire HD5 8PB, England normality. (19 September 2011) I’ve been reading *brg* 73 during the year-bottom energy slump (called by some Twixmas, between ALAN SANDERCOCK Crimble and New Year), this year deepened by the 2010 Desmond Drive, Decatur GA 30033, USA traditional winter nose-run cold and afteraches of a fall. *brg* In *brg* 73, Joy Window tells of visiting This issue has Elaine Cochrane’s great fractal ‘America’s Deep South’, and calling in on Alan Sander- autumn leaves back cover. Dick Jenssen’s front cock and Jane Monahan in Decatur, Georgia. Maria is cover is implicit with menace-to-come: in the next Alan’s daughter from his first marriage. I first met frame will the dirigible swoop, grapple the ‘expen- Joy and Alan when they were fellow fans living in sive delicate ship’, then haul it into the sky to drop Adelaide, South Australia, in the late 1960s and early to it to its doom on the rocks? 1970s.* I’d forgotten (re the Mark Bould print that Gillian Polack quotes) that H. P. Lovecraft’s Old The main news from around here of late is that ’Uns are part veggie. (I’ve been noticing lately that Jane Monahan (my wife) retired from the CDC HPL is now such a mainstream cultural market back in early September. We then promptly took that his name gets cited without journalists feel- off for about seven weeks of touring in New Eng- ing any need to explain who he was or what he land. Jane’s family has a house up in Northern did, and that he has entered the Elvis etc. New Hampshire, where we stayed for most of that pantheon in the last few years, doubtless an time. I retired from working for the State of irritant to those who felt him their own cultic Georgia back in February of last year, which secret.) means that we are both people of leisure. Luckily In John Cowper Powys’s Porius (UK reprint was we have both worked many years in government by Overlook Duckworth), he uses the term jobs, so we have pensions and don’t have to rely ‘multiverse’ back in 1951. I wondered if it was a on the vagaries of the stock market to keep us in coincidence that Moorcock also uses the term, groceries. We also have a house and cars that are and then saw in the 1999 edition of the Encyclo- fully paid for, so basically things are not too bad. pedia of SF that it is probable that Moorcock got Maria was not in town during Joy’s visit. She the term from Powys, a fine example of the cliché is presently living in Seattle, which is probably that ‘everything is older than we think’. where she is going to stay. She really loves that (27 December 2011) town, and I don’t blame her. She is doing two Master’s degrees at the University of Washington ANDREW DARLINGTON — one from the school of forestry in ecology and Somewhere in Britain the second from the school of urban planning. I think she’s just got a lot of energy! We visited her back our spring, and also took the opportunity to

51 spend an evening with Janice Murray, who hap- will be starting looking for work lateish next year, pens to live fairly close to Maria. all going well. I didn’t realise that it could actually (8 October 2011) be fun for a Medievalist to write a time travel novel. The dissertation is also fun, though I admit, less NED BROOKS so than the novel. My time travel novel has turned 4817 Dean Lane, Lilburn GA 30047, USA out very different to most others, unsurprisingly. Van Ikin knows this, from close personal experi- *brg* 73 has a spectacular Ditmar cover, and a ence, since he’s supervising me. He deserves much sympathy nice use of fractals by Elaine Cochrane on the back too. I once wrote the Mandelbrot set in Other news? There is none. Doctorates tend to TurboBasic, which has good color capability in be all encompassing. Except that the Conflux cookbook is out and available for purchase (online DOS. Later I used one of the fancy professional software programs. through the Conflux website). It’s a limited edi- Jennifer Bryce’s article includes nice photos of tion, and all the profits go to Conflux. Culinary history in the service of fandom! It’s a fan history Bremen, about which I remember only that it had written from a culinary history perspective. I’m something to do with the Pied Piper legend. The town square building looks that old anyway! glad it’s out — I am now retired from banquet design. My mother lives quite near Emory University (21 December 2011) (which drives the property values and property taxes up, as all those professors and graduate students want a place to live). I live about 15 miles DORA LEVAKIS further east. Too bad I hadn’t met Joy Window Numbulwar, via Groote Eylandt, and Alan Sandercock. They could have visited the Northern Territory skiffy museum I live in. Ken Ozanne from Sydney has been here a couple of times. A road trip I forgot that you may have been affected by the through the South now is probably no more huge Christmas Day storm in Melbourne (as seen hazardous than through any other part of the on the front cover of *brg* 74). Sorry to hear you USA — and you are less likely to freeze to death had such damage to the cats’ enclosure netting if stranded on the road. George Locke once asked and that you have the ordeal of having to join the me if it was safe to ride the Greyhound intercity long list of people needing to deal with an insur- buses around the South — I told him I had done ance company. I was later amazed to hear of what it as a teenager and never suffered any attacks by I’d escaped. I had collected my sister and brother Red Indians, highwaymen, or the KKK. on Christmas morning and drove along the There are a lot of birds in the bushes around Western Ring road out of Melbourne just before my house — they particularly like the evergreen 10 a.m. I felt a couple of drops of rain when photinias and tea-olives, where they are safely loading the car and, in the distance saw a weighty unseen year round. A month or so ago I saw a grey cloud. My sister worried that we might be small dark bird flying around the top of the of the driving into rain but, no, it was a beautifully trees in the front yard — it seemed to be going gentle sunny drive. After a break, an hour from ‘Bing Bong, Bing Bong’, like a car’s warning sound Shepparton, received a strange phone call from — perhaps a mockingbird, but I didn’t think they sister in Shepparton asking if we were still would sing on the wing. coming. Of course we were ... It wasn’t until 8 p.m. Joy saw more of the local sights than I have. that she told us there was a heavy storm raging I’ve never been to the famous Aquarium. Or seen in Shepparton when she rang. It wasn’t until an armadillo — I would not touch one, as they can around 11 p.m., as I drove home to Yarraville after carry leprosy. dropping my sister off in St. Kilda, that I heard of John Litchen’s bilingual poem is nice — I can the Melbourne storm on the news. read both versions. Just as well that he could do (30 December 2011) his own translation. I have a bilingual book of Neruda’s where ‘mareado’ (which means seasick, The difficulty of accessing internet is driving me or by analogy any sort of dizziness or confusion) crazy. The days are very eventful and very, very is translated as ‘things went swimmingly’, which long. Much to say but for now, let me share the to my mind is the opposite. good news that my painting of Absolom, Kyle and My favourite of the books John mentions — Katrina has made it as one of the finalists in the and probably the only one I would reread — is The Doug Moran Portrait Competition. The judging Martian Chronicles. and opening will be Tuesday, 24 July, two days (5 January 2012) after I’m scheduled to return to the Territory. The finalists are required to be there ... The 30 finalists GILLIAN POLACK will travel the country, so this will be good pub- Chifley, ACT 2606 licity. My portrait of Gerald Murnane made it as a semi-finalist. I’m ploughing steadily through my doctorate and (8 July 2012)

52 This is the photo from *brg* 74 to which several letter-writers refer. As I say several times, this is not a picture of the top of the cat enclosure being crushed by one big hailstone, but by accumulated hailstones that fell in a very short time while we were visiting relatives on Christmas Day, 2011.

Dora Levakis (right), holding Thomas, and showing (left) her portrait of Gerald Murnane, a semi-finalist in the Doug Moran Portrait Competition.

53 JERRY KAUFMAN are their first album and their all-French album. 3522 NE 123rd Street, Seattle WA 98125, USA I’ve never warmed to Greg Brown, and the Rolling Stones’ Some Girls didn’t impress me as much as Thanks for enjoyable reading of other people’s others. My favourite Stones albums are Out of Our travels. I wonder what Jenny Bryce meant by ‘the Heads, Beggars Banquet, and Their Satanic miniature stonehenge at Avebury’. Has someone Majesties Request (a sadly underrated album). built a tiny replica of Stonehenge there? She can’t But these are all records I first heard many a year be referring to the ring of standing stones, as it ago. covers much more ground than Stonehenge does, as least in memory. *brg* The point of my listing was that the outtakes John Litchen’s new instalment of his memoirs from the Rolling Stones’ Some Girls album, now that is the best, as well as longest, reading this issue. we’ve heard them at last, prove to be better songs I particularly liked the parts about his music than most of those on the original album.* making. I never realised how complex beating on conga drums was, nor how many flavours and I did give some listens to Paul Simon’s So styles of drumming there are. His comments on Beautiful or So What and enjoyed it. But since I his favourite writers were also interesting, and often download an album now and don’t keep any added just the right amount of literary material record of what I’ve listened to or when, I’m never that every Gillespie zine needs. sure just when I first listened to something. I’m (15 January 2012) pretty sure I listened to The King is Dead by the Decemberists and W H O K I L L by tUnE-yArD for We received two manila envelopes from your the first time in 2011, and loved both enough to address a week ago — one large and one small. buy the CDs. (A profile of the woman who records (When I was very young, I thought they were as tUnE-YaRd in The New Yorker led me to her called ‘vanilla envelopes’.) I opened the smaller music. And a couple of years ago they ran a piece one first, and saw it was *brg* 74, flipped it over on the Mountain Goats — thanks, New Yorker.) and read the advert on the back for Steam Engine On to other lists: I have Marta Argerich’s Solos Time 13. ‘Urk,’ I said to Suzle, ‘Bruce is charging and Duos, enjoy the music, but wonder how one $100 for the paper version of SET. I guess I’m not can tell which pianist is which in a duo. I have getting one.’ Paul Lewis’s Beethoven sonatas, but not his ver- Then I opened the larger envelope. sion of the concertos. I bought the sonatas as they Do you actually get any takers at $100? Per- were issued in smaller sets of one, two, and three haps if you comped fewer copies you could ask CDs per set. I remember buying the first one in less for the paper ones. I understand the process Paris at a Harmonia Mundi shop a few blocks from is expensive and so’s the postage. But without our hotel. (I have no idea if they had several shops knowing the actual costs, I can’t judge where you in Paris or only the one.) I have some of Angela decide to set the price. So this is a big thank you Hewitt’s Bach, but not the 15-CD set you have — for sending SET to me for such a paltry letter of I need to listen to her more. comment. And thanks, too for *brg*. The only novel I’ve read from your list is The Curious Incident ..., which had a nice sense of the * brg* The aim of the $100 price tag for a subscription alien about it. There’s now a television series — to SF Commentary, of course, since Steam Engine about an autistic boy who never talks and is a Time has disappeared, except for an off-in-the-never- maths wizard, called Touch — but it never uses never No 14 (index and final letters of comment) — the words ‘autistic’ or ‘autism’. (It’s called Touch is to encourage everybody to download the electronic because the boy doesn’t like to be touched, and version. Airmail postage has gone up again.* when he holds his father’s hand we smile at the breakthrough. But the wider meaning is that we ‘What are we seeing?’ At first, I thought it was all touch one another’s lives in mysterious yet a smushed up dead white cat. But it was actually patterned ways, as demonstrated each episode by a mass of hail? Did it fall in a lump like that, or a new set of numbers the boy fixates on and which did a lot of smaller hailstones blow against the leads his father to help strangers from around the fence and solidify? world help each other.) I have Alex Ross’s earlier book on music in the *brg* Lots of huge hailstones, falling very fast all twentieth century, but not this newer one, be- together, bowed down the netting and quickly formed cause I’ve read all the contents in the aforemen- that huge ball of hail. We were not home at the time, tioned New Yorker. so we did not see this meteorological marvel.* (2 July 2012)

As usual, you and I don’t overlap on the lists During the summer, life here consists of going to very much. On the pop music scene, I’ve listened the Clarion West Friday night parties and other to nearly none of the albums you list, even if I like social events. This week things are even busier, the performers. I like the McGarrigle sisters quite as George R. R. Martin is the teacher at CW, and a bit, but haven’t heard Oddities. My favourites tomorrow night’s reading will be a big event at the

54 Town Hall (I think it’s a 600-seat venue) instead ROBERT ELIORDETA of at University Book Store (seating about 40). Unit 4, 15 High Street, Traralgon VIC 3844 Suzle and I will be ushering, and she will also be troubleshooting. I loved the front and back covers of *brg* 73. All Right now we’re doing weekly visits to the of the articles were interesting. hospital that Stu Shiffman is in after his stroke In my previous letter I forgot to mention the — seeing Stu and talking to Andi Shechter. And author of the Ranger’s Apprentice series. He is an we went to see Prometheus over the weekend as Aussie author. His name is John Flanagan. well. Great visuals, good acting, possibly nonsen- Other books that I have read in 2011 are: sical plot and main idea. And a theme of belief in G Book 1: The Rain Wild Chronicles: The Dragon God and religion versus nihilism. Keeper by Robin Hobb (3 July 2012) G Book 2: The Rain Wild Chronicles: Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb *brg* I met Stu Shiffman when I was in Seattle, and G Pavane by Keith Roberts he seemed a lot younger than I am. And now, thanks G The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the to Andi’s messages on Facebook, we’ve been reading Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien about his struggle to recover from a serious stroke. G Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Glad you’ve been able to visit him.* Marsden G The Dead of the Night by John Marsden ANDY ROBSON G The Third Day, the Forest by John Marsden 63 Dixon Lane, Leeds LS12 4RR, England G Darkness, Be My Friend by John Marsden G Burning for Revenge by John Marsden John Litchen’s cabaret days sound interesting. G The Night is for Hunting by John Marsden ‘Cabaret’ has always been a rumour to me, as by G The Other Side of Dawn by John Marsden the time I was old enough they’d disappeared from G The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini everywhere but the odd holiday resort. I suppose G Batavia by Peter Fitzsimons you could blame the Beatles for that, as everyone G The Lost City of Z by David Grann wanted to play rock and roll. But ‘cabaret’ was for G Conversations with Painters by Noel Barber after-midnight drinkers and quiet cool jazz and G Sinister Twilight: The Fall of Singapore by Noel other sounds that wouldn’t permeate into the Barber streets in the early hours. A telling bit of TV G The Magician’s Apprentice by Trudi Canavan footage from the sixties shows an audience of G Book One: The Black Magician Trilogy: The screaming females and few bemused straight- Magicians’ Guild by Trudi Canavan faced guys clearly showing one guy turning to his G Book Two: The Black Magician Trilogy: The mates and saying, ‘Maybe we could do that!’ Novice by Trudi Canavan (3 March 2012) G I’m currently reading Book Three: The Black Magician Trilogy: The High Lord by Trudi Ca- ELAINE COCHRANE navan. I haven’t finished it yet, as I have only Same address as that of the editor just started it. (19 December 2011) Elaine’s Favourite Books of 2011 It has been busy for me lately. K-mart now has me working from Tuesday to Saturday. Sunday Fiction and Monday is my weekend now. I work from Equ. 1 Priest: A Dream of Wessex 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday to Friday, and I work Equ. 1 Disch: The Puppies of Terra from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday. 3 Kuttner: Robots Have No Tails I worked all the way up to Christmas Eve. As you can imagine, it was very busy on Christmas Non-fiction Eve. I had three days off for Christmas, starting 1 Smoot: Wrinkles in Time with Christmas Day. I needed the rest. Now K- mart is featuring ‘back to school’ stuff. It’s not as Others busy now. We are back to skeleton staff levels now G Thorne: Black Holes and Time Warps that Christmas is over. It puts pressure on us at G Carrington: Down Below the cash registers because there are not enough G Waten: Alien Son cash registers open. It’s hard to do price checks, G Durham: High Albania because there are not enough staff members on G Delany: Heavenly Breakfast the floor selling area. G Gribbin & Gribbin: Richard Feynman: A Life During the Christmas break I caught up with in Science my parents and my two married sisters. My sis- (7 January 2012) ters, with their husbands and kids, visited my parents, so that was how I was able to catch up with them. Mum did all the cooking and it was very tasty. We had Spanish potato salad, Spanish

55 seafood rice, Australian roast chicken, cheese it always should have been, not as it was taught cake and apple pie. On New Year’s Eve I visited to me and all of us for the last several decades. my parents in the evening. It was a quiet one for Am just up to his solutions — am hopeful but us all. doubtful whether anything can work now. (17 January 2012) (8 February 2012)

TONY THOMAS KAARON WARREN 486 Scoresby Road, Ferntree Gully VIC 3156 Downer, ACT 2602

Yes I agree with you about The Artist. Good, but *brg (February 2012)* Great news about the success not the best film of the year, as Stratton Rigg et of Slights — I hope its reputation just keeps growing. al. were telling us. I liked Hugo too and thought Sorry to ruin your day by not being as enthusiastic the visuals were fantastic, but wasn’t over- about Mistification as I should be — I loved all the whelmed by this either. Thought Baron-Cohen’s bits, but it seems the central novel doesn’t work as role, though very funny, almost belonged to a well as it should. Meanwhile, however, I’ve greatly different film — and there was just a bit too much enjoyed the Dead Sea Fruit collection. I still like the sentimentality for me — a common failing, for me, major early stories slightly better than the later of lauded American films. I like the cool European stories, but I enjoy greatly many of the new stories. model better. The Fiji insights were particularly interesting.* But I liked Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar more than most of the critics, mostly for what I thought was I love an honest, thoughtful review, I really do. It superlative story-telling. means a lot to me that the book is considered and read in that way. Mistification is a very, very *brg* For those of us in the know, Tony is one of strange book, and one I really love myself, but it Melbourne’s smoothest radio announcers. He works does break all the rules of novel writing! I’m really as a volunteer for 3MBS. His program Contemporary glad it’s out there. I was just thinking this morn- Visions is on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. I had forgotten ing I should do a mail out to the magicians of the until he reminded me in the following that he also world. It might be something they would enjoy! reads books on Vision, which used to be 3RPH (i.e. It’s curious to track the stories over the years, Radio for the Print Handicapped).* isn’t it? I’m glad that I’m not writing the same thing over and over again, in the same way. And Mungo MacCallum in his new book is very I can only write the way I can write; not the way fluffy, as you say — and says hardly anything new anyone decrees. I’ve been having discussions with — but just right for reading very quickly for a my agent, who, I think, would like me to be more Vision audience. Will finish in under 12 hours, ‘mainstream’. I simply can’t do it, I told her. These contrasted with the eight weeks or so it took me are my passions; this is how the story presents to read the World War 2 history — but this was itself to me. I have to trust in that, and believe in very good, with lots of personal diaries quoted, myself. otherwise hardly available — or only in difficult- It was fantastic to have the Fiji influence. And to-access places. Plus plenty of interesting poli- now, having come back, the Australian influence tics — Menzies, Churchill, Stalin, et al. — and strong again. Hirohito’s surrender document quoted in full. I You haven’t ruined my day at all, Bruce! You’re had never read this before, and it encapsulates such an intelligent commentator, and an honest the other world that the Japanese lived in (still supporter. live in?). They were not surrendering uncondi- (29 February 2012) tionally; they stopped fighting so that peace (always their objective) could prevail. Thanks for my copy of *brg*! Love to see Mistifica- Books I enjoyed recently include Baxter’s bio- tion on your list! So very proud. I had a wonderful graphy of J. G. Ballard, even if it is as untrust- comment on my blog about Walking the Tree. I’m worthy as they say. I realise that my Ballard hoping that the publisher will take note and try reading virtually stopped decades ago, but from to get it into the schools! Baxter’s summaries I’m not sure that I’m missing (4 July 2012) a lot. Also just read Lucy Sussex’s collection Thief of Lives, which I liked a lot, except the title story. PATRICK McGUIRE Dark fantasy largely remains a mystery to me — 7541-D Weather Worn Way, that is, a mystery as to why anybody thinks it’s Columbia MD 21046, USA any good. And I’m currently reading Jeffrey Sachs’s The When I first glanced at Scratch Pad 80 (e-version Price of Civilization — what’s wrong with America of *brg* 74) upon downloading it at the library on (corporatocracy, advertising, obsession, addic- their high-speed connection, I saw mention of tion, etc. etc.) and what Americans can do about your 65th birthday, and I wondered if that would it — a great summary of lots of data from a lot of make you eligible for a retirement income, since fields, centring on economics, but economics as

56 that is when Social Security normally kicks in in LLOYD PENNEY the US. (However, the age of eligibility is being 1706-24 Eva Rd., Etobicoke, Ontario M9C2B2, gradually nudged upward, and there are financial Canada incentives for waiting before taking a pension even if you are eligible.) Now that I’ve actually read Reaching 65 years of age is an achievement, one the issue, it seems that I’m half-right, in that you I shan’t reach for another 12 years and a bit. are now possibly eligible for some sort of OAP, but Happy belated birthday, and we wish you happi- you have to jump through bureaucratic hoops to ness, health and more steady work. qualify. I won’t ever receive Social Security myself, Many like Facebook, and some don’t, but for since until recently the civil service plan was me, it’s been good at reuniting me with lost cous- entirely separate and I don’t have enough ‘quar- ins, old high school friends, and friends from my ters’ of private-sector work to qualify, but I gather earliest forays into fandom. I have written no that Social Security is more automatic than the essays to put on my Facebook page; so many OAP process you’ve been going through. Is this an others forward links to check, or come see, and area where the US has more of a social safety net buy what I’ve written, etc. If I checked every link than Australia? I hope things work out for you recommended to me, I’d have no time for inciden- eventually. tals like eating and sleeping. Facebook is good for You mention having recently seen the restored a social visit, but my writing is for the zines. Zines Metropolis. So did I, on DVD. I gather that it’s true have a limited enough audience as it is, but on that this is the first film version with the plot my FB page, it’s quite possible that no one will restored, but I’m less certain that the original film ever see what I might write. plot was actually unknown. I can’t remember Our weather channel here, The Weather Net- whether Thea von Harbou’s book version is a work, has been showing extensive flooding in novelisation, or if it was written first and inde- Australia, plus a cyclone in the northwestern pendently, so that the film is the adaptation. In area. Is that around Broome or South Hedland? any case the novel has always been available, Add to that droughts and bushfires, and I can’t even in English translation. I read it some years think of a part of Oz that hasn’t been affected. ago. I don’t remember it well enough to be sure Hope the general Melbourne area has been safe. how well it tracks with the restored film plot, but I’ve always liked the music of Harry Nilsson, I do remember that, as in the restored version and but didn’t know about the biographical film. I in contrast to previously available recut version, liked his work in the animated film The Point. the memory of Hel figures prominently. And of (19 March 2012) course, Fritz Lang himself was still alive when restoration efforts were seriously underway. So I think it has been more a matter of finding enough JENNY BRYCE bits of film to put it together so as to tell a plot PO Box 1215, Elwood, VIC 3184 that was already known to serious students of Metropolis. We escaped much of the Christmas Day storm in You also recently again saw They Might Be Elwood but I remember that my mother came Giants. When the January NYRSF gets to you, you home from Christmas dinner at my place to find will see that I made a brief mention there of that all the back of her place (in North Fitzroy) flooded. film. I haven’t seen it for a while, and then only I can’t comment on your popular music listen- on television. I really should see about ordering a ing — but very useful to know about the classical DVD: I already looked, and the local public library boxed sets. I agree with you absolutely about (my main source of DVD viewing) does not have Angela Hewitt and Bach — her touch is almost it. I have not been making much recent progress bell-like. I used to be one of those who preferred on further semi-scholarly sf writing, partly be- Bach on a harpsichord (or indeed clavichord). But cause of conflicting demands on my time and she has converted me. partly because I have been feeling a bit under the One of the comforting things is that one will weather, although not definably ill. On the other never run out of things to read. This is perhaps hand, I have been reading a lot, and that may exemplified by the fact that I haven’t read any of serve as grist for the writing mill eventually. the novels that were your favourites in 2011 — I’m glad the hailstorm was no worse than it was not even Nicholas Nickleby! I did read Hard Times at your place, and my sympathies both to you and recently when I acquired a beautiful old set of to those who were harder hit. In the past, there Dickens that belonged to my grandmother — have been similar summer hailstorms in my leather-bound Thomas Nelson and Sons editions. general vicinity, although no serious ones that She won them as golf prizes around 1909. actually hit my home or car. I do remember fairly Beware — because I tend to forget what I’ve large hailstones coming down on the morning of read (or seen, or heard) this year I have been a day when I was to leave on a long trip (possibly keeping a kind of journal of books read, films my 1999 one to Oz), and my hoping that there seen, plays and concerts attended. So maybe I’ll would not be damage that would upset my travel share some of this at the end of the year. plans (I escaped). (5 March 2012) (21 June 2012)

57 *brg* Jenny came good with her promised article small comet has destroyed your cat enclosure. about her favourites of 2012 — and it will appear in Scary. Even more so that one of your friend’s the next issue of SF Commentary, along with my daughters was hurt by another hailstone. Hope favourites of 2012, and Elaine’s guide to recent she was OK. science books.* Were your cats in the enclosure at the time? No wonder they were terrified. STEVE JEFFERY 44 White Way, Kidlington, Oxon OX5 2XA, *brg* As I’ve explained elsewhere, the collective hailstones formed the mini-comet. In that photo, you England are not looking at one big hailstone. The cats were not in the enclosure because at the time we were Ninety per cent of my reading time is now spent having Christmas dinner with Elaine’s relatives, so the on the bus journeys to and from work. During cats were inside. I’m not sure if they would have been weekdays I rarely bother to turn my home PC on: safe if the skylight had failed and rainwater had I don’t do Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter, and my poured in from the roof.* inbox just seems to filled with special offers from Amazon or eBay or insurance companies. And Vikki is officially a pensioner. She discovered having spent 9 to 10 hours in front of a monitor around the end of last year that a company at work, I can’t face spending the few hours I get pension from a place she worked 25–30 years ago in the evenings staring at another computer was now due to be paid out. After the usual faffing screen. Perhaps a tablet would be the answer. around with people who had taken over the Light, portable, nice screen, expensive. scheme, Aviva, the payments started this year. There are lots of clone tablets around and they She’s still working, but with only two more years almost seem designed for reading on the move. to go at the NHS is seriously looking at the option Vikki bought me a Kindle a couple of years ago, of early retirement before she either goes down but I couldn’t get on with it and returned it in the with an stress-related illness or kills her boss. end. I think that still rankles with her, even We are currently car-less, which has worked though she bought it in a fit a desperation at my out for a while now (we both travel to and from refusal to say what I wanted for my birthday that work by bus), but it does constrain us for visiting year. In truth I wasn’t trying to be difficult or or just deciding to go somewhere that isn’t in contrary; I just couldn’t think of anything I really Oxford. We’ll probably look at this again later in wanted. The books I wanted weren’t due to be the year. published until after my birthday, and I was We went to Merton College Chapel a couple of acutely conscious I had a house full of stuff weeks back to see Commotio again. This is the already, much of which I rarely found time to do contemporary choral group who recorded James anything with. Perhaps what I really needed was Whitbourn’s Luminosity. This performance had a course on time management. Apart from the an African theme in the second half, and featured Yamaha MIDI keyboard a few years ago, we’ve not Bob Chilcott’s The Making of the Drum (the choir had entirely successful track record with buying supported by marimba, drum, and gong) and home electronics. Vikki bought a flat screen TV Peter Klatzow’s Two Songs from the Xam. But a lot for my last birthday, and in the end we had to of comment in the audience (most of it as unin- return it because half the time we couldn’t get the formed as it was predictable) was reserved for the damn thing to turn itself on. It would just sit there appearance on the program of John Cage’s Four2. with the standby LED flashing unless we un- To be fair, it’s not Cage’s most inspired idea, a plugged it and waited 10 minutes before plugging sequence of layered notes held as long as possible, it back on and turning it on and off a few times. based on the letters of his home town Oregon. I After missing most of a Grand Prix, a couple of listened to another version later on You Tube with episodes of Homecoming, and a football match we Cage conducting, and it seems to make more gave in and exchanged it. The new one started sense. But I suspect it’s another of those pieces playing the same trick, but we discovered we where Cage is more interested in the idea than the could get round it by unplugging the Freeview box actual sound of the piece. (This is a criticism I’ve SCART cable from the back of the TV before read recently in Gabriel Josipovici’s Infinity: The turning it on. I still can’t believe it’s supposed to Story of a Moment, a curious book structured as do that, but it works. a halting and largely one-sided interview with the We’ve had a couple of hailstorms here, one a manservant of a recently deceased composer month or so back that came, almost literally, out where he talks about his former employer’s views of the blue, where we watched golfball-sized hail- and (mostly outrageous and controversial) stones bounce several feet back in the air off the opinions on life, art, and music. Unlike Cage, road and the roofs of the cars parked outside. I Josipovici’s fictional composer is more interested was strange to see the garden turn from green to in sound rather than method: one of his pieces, white in a few minutes. But nothing would have 666, involves striking the same note on the piano prepared us for a metre-sized chunk of ice such that many times. Audience reaction is under- as the one in your picture. It looks more like a standably mixed.)

58 Commotio now have four CDs out on Naxos. I am always impressed b y your CD lists. I listen As well as Luminosity, I also have In the Heart of to classical music but without the emphasis you Things: Choral Music of Francis Pott, which they’ve place the best versions, although I usually end up featured several times in recent concerts. with some of the better ones. I’ll get some names Running a Google search on contemporary and titles for you later. I’ve been getting out some choral music recently I also came across Eric interesting groups and individuals in the Whiteacre’s Cloudburst and YouTube links to roots/blues/etc. categories from the library. Did several more pieces, including Sleep, in which he I mention the Deep Dark Woods, a Canadian conducts Polyphony. Worth checking out, I think. group, or the Waifs (Australian group)? Both This year — or last — we have also discovered strong, bluesy. And the Punch Brothers: blue- the Civil Wars, a US country folk duo (there’s a grass with an edge. free live set download on their website, worth it My nephews had Enigma, from awhile ago. I for the between-song banter between Joy Wil- like the 2 CDs I have by them ... And Kathleen liams, John Paul White, and the audience), and Edwards’ new Voyageur rocks solidly. the strange and fey Laura Marling. And Noah and I finally took out a Best Of by Jann Arden, the Whale, a group I’ve heard a few times guesting whom I’d only listened to on radio. She’s very good on radio slots, but Vikki bought me their CDs Last at her best too ... Night on Earth and The First Day of Spring. We watch too much TV but not many movies: Charity shop/car boot music finds have been I do well remember seeing Red Beard many years unusually few and far between this year. How- ago. ever, yesterday I did come home with a Scott (5 July 2012) Walker compilation (an artist unforgivably absent from my collection so far) and a live CD from TARA JUDAH Welsh rockers Man, who I don’t think I’ve heard Personal Assistant to the Proprietor, since the 70s. (I have a vinyl album of theirs with The Astor Theatre, St Kilda VIC one of the most complex origami fold-out inner sleeves I’ve ever seen. This was back in the days Thank you for your emails and for your kind when people could afford to do strange things comments. We are so pleased to see that yes, with record covers, like peel off banana stickers, sometimes the collective voice of the public is loud zips, and rotating discs.) Before that, the gleaning and clear enough to be heard. include Arvo Part’s Te Deum, Messian’s Turan- The sale of the building that houses the Astor galila Symphony, Joni Mitchell’s Misses, Rikki is certainly a positive step in ensuring the long Lee Jones’ Traffic from Paradise, Muse’s Hulla- term future of the Astor Theatre and we are very ballo (can’t believe I didn’t have that one already), pleased with the outcome. P. J. Harvey’s Rid of Me, the Cocteau Twins’ Four (25 August 2012) Calendar Cafe, and June Tabor and the Oyster Band’s Freedom and Rain. (This has an unusually *brg* A year ago, Melbourne’s last great movie pal- bouncy version of Richard Thompson’s ‘Night ace, the Astor, faced a crisis. The owner, a local Comes In’, and a equally unusual, though more private school, wanted to make substantial changes successful, version of ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’, to the building and its uses. A protest campaign was and which Tabor wisely elects not to sing with a begun by George Florence and his staff from the German accent (as I do in my head, and it ends Astor, which led to the unexpected result that the warping into Marlene Dietrich — ‘vat costume school put the building on the market. It was bought shall ze poor girl vair ...’). by a local St Kilda businessman who has been inter- At this point my brain did one of those un- ested in cinema for many years. He may need deep settling sideways shifts and I wondered what a pockets, as the eighty-year-old building needs urgent Chas and Dave cockney knees-up version of this repairs. Until they take place, however, the Astor is done by Bill Bailey would sound like. Or more roaring ahead with an exciting repertory program of scarily, if he already has done it. movies. (24 June 2012) The only trouble is that, because I rely on public transport, I cannot see films at the Astor at any time DOUG BARBOUR other than Sunday afternoons. If I visited on an 11655-72nd Avenue, Edmonton, ordinary evening (two films, which, plus intermis- Alberta T6G 0B9, Canada sion, usually finish after midnight) I could not get home without hailing a taxi (at $60 per ride). I sent I’ve just been reading about 200 young adult and an email about this problem to the Astor, and it has adult novels for the Sunburst award (you can been Tarah Judah who has been swapping emails with check out the shortlists if you want). Also the me. The Astor still does not find it possible to run latest collection of short fiction by Geoff Ryman, daytime sessions on both Saturdays and Sundays, or Paradise Tales, is a masterful collection, with on public holidays, but I did get to see such recent many changes of pace, style, and power. All the books are by Canadians. (Continued on page 61)

59 WERNER KOOPMANN 202c Reiherstieg, 21244 Buchholz, Germany

*brg* Since Werner and I rediscovered each other via the internet, Werner has been sending me lots of things, including an interesting set of SF critical books from the early days before the advent of such academic journals as Science Fiction Studies and Foundation. He has been interested in photos of our garden that have appeared in *brg*, so he sent some photos of his garden, which is a bit more spectacular than ours.*

Here are some pictures of our garden. (8 September 2012)

60 shows as the 70 mm print of The Master and the new G Camille: Music Hole 4K digital print of Lawrence of Arabia. Thanks, Tara G Cardigans: Life and the Astor.* G Corrs: Forgiven Not Forgotten G Corrs: Talk on Corners G Crash Test Dummies: God Shuffled His Feet RON DRUMMOND G Dave Dobbyn: The Islander Somewhere in America G Dinah Washington: Ultimate Collection (3 CDs) G Dusty Springfield: Where Am I Going I’m listening to the opening movement of Havergal G Brian’s Gothic Symphony on YouTube as I write. Earlies: The Enemy Chorus G Rather rousing start! No way I’ll get through all of Echo and the Bunnymen: Get In the Car (CD Single) it tonight, but I’ll try to make my way through it G over the next few days. YouTube has several of his Ed Harcourt: Here Be Monsters G symphonies. A friend of mine in Seattle, Gary D. Eric Clapton: From the Cradle G Feelers: Supersystem Cannon, is a busy choral conductor and maven G Fleetwood Mac: Original Album Series (5 CDs) of British twentieth-century composers, and one G of the foremost experts on William Walton. I’ll ask Gitbox Rebellion: Pesky Digits G Gomez: Album Set (5 CDs) him for his thoughts on Brian. I’d heard of Brian G Great Big Sea: Rant and Roar long since, but am not sure I’ve heard his music G before now — presently listening to the opening Hank Williams: Anthology (3 CDs) G Lemonheads: Laughing All The Way to the of the slow second movement, which is quite Cleaners: Best Of (2 CDs) lovely. I love the huge open spaces that unfold G inside of so many early twentieth-century sym- No Doubt: Return of Saturn G phonies! Opshop: Second Hand Planet G Pali-Chaning/Asokananda: Thus I Have I’ve only dipped my toes into twentieth-century Brits, but enjoy Britten’s string quartets and am Heard: Meditations in Babylon G a huge fan of the Scottish composer John Black- Queens of the Stone Age: Lullabies to Paralyze G Richard Ashcroft: Alone With Everybody wood McEwen, whose quartets are superb, idi- G osyncratic crosses between Debussy and late Julian Cope: Jehovakill G Beethoven. He also has a tone poem for cello and Robert Plant: Manic Nirvana G Ryan Adams and the Cardinals: Cardinology orchestra, Hills o’ Heather, which is pure delight. G Seekers: As, Bs and EPs I’m getting into the twentieth-century Scandi- G navian composers as well — Sibelius and Nielsen, Sheryl Crow: Globe Sessions (Tour Edition) G Split Enz: Frenzy of course, but Van Holmboe too, who deserves to G Split Enz: Mental Notes be much better known. As a symphony lover you G might really enjoy Kurt Atterberg. The relatively Straw People: Vicarious G Van Morrison: The Philosopher’s Stone cheap set of all nine of his symphonies on CPO is G Various: The Atlantic Story: Tell Me What’d I superb. Not sure if you sent me fanzines in ’05 or not; I moved from Seattle to upstate New York Say G soon after we met, under fairly chaotic conditions. Various: The Hal David & Burt Bacharach Songbook Would welcome a chance to read your Brian G essay. Walkmen: A Hundred Miles Off G (6 January 2013) Waterboys: A Rock in a Weary Land G Waterboys: Too Close To Heaven G Zwan: Mary Star of the Sea. MURRAY MacLACHLAN (31 January 2013) 35 Laird Drive, Altona Meadows VIC 3042 *brg* Those 5-CD really cheap sets of a performer’s Here’s recent music purchases in the household. early albums (often his or her first five albums) have I’m still learning about music, which explains the proved very useful in filling out the collection. In somewhat haphazard look. Add to the mix a some cases, such as the Dr John set, I had never heard bargain bin bonanza in New Zealand in Janu- his early albums. In the case of the Neil Young set, I ary ... had the first two albums only on LP. In the case of a G Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals: Live recent set by John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu From Mars Orchestra, I had most of the albums only on tattered- G Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals: The cover LPs, cutouts that were sold cheaply in Mel- Will to Live bourne in the early 1970s. G Bic Runga: Birds Of your list of new purchases, I own only four of G Black Crowes: Freak’n’roll: Live at the Fillmore them, but I’ve noticed quite a few I might buy if I G Bob Dylan: Planet Waves saw them around. I suspect you would say the same G Brunettes: Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks of my list of CDs bought since the beginning of 2013. G Buddy Holly & the Crickets: Collected Al- My favourite CD from 2013’s purchases is Terry bums, Singles & Sessions Allen’s Bottom of the World.*

61 We also heard from ... intended to give Scratch Pad (the electronic ver- sion of *brg*) a quick read, but ‘I wound up Frank Weissenborn (Melbourne) wrote: ‘Good to savouring every bit, nodding in agreement at your see you, Bruce, at your Peake in *brg* 73. I’m Favourites of 2011 plus tasting notes, and staying looking forward to reading the continuing John up way too long into the night. This struck a chord Litchen saga.’ with me: “Heaven in life is a Beethoven piano Michael Ward (San Jose, California) tells me sonata played by the one of the great pianists ...”’ not to send ‘big beautiful zines like *brg* as the William Breiding (Dellslow, West Virginia) cost is unreasonable. Instead I can happily read thanks me for printing and sending hard copies the PDF version. I’m planning to find some sam- for him. He has already sent me some fine articles, ples of a number of the popular CDs you mention. and, rather embarrassingly for me, still has an In re Ian Covell’s answer to “How did you read and article sitting there from 1998 in the Metaphysical listen and watch so much?” I can only say I try to Review never-quite-published file. get outside of the house a lot.’ Barbara Roden (Ashcroft, British Columbia) — Bruce Gillespie, 24 April 2013

Feature letter

The real story of Harry Potter and Voldemort

Yvonne Rousseau

YVONNE ROUSSEAU observation: ‘I see no difference.’ In the novel, it PO Box 3086, Rundle Street Mall, is important that Hermione then arranges for Adelaide SA 5000 Hogwarts’ magical first aid to reduce the size of her teeth to what pleases her. I’ll mention here that I am not a great admirer of Later, in The Goblet of Fire, the appearance of the Harry Potter films (in contrast with Sally the actor playing ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody (or, rather, Yeoland, who seems to have liked all of them). In playing Barty Crouch Jr disguised as Alastor particular, I loathed the first two — where, for Moody) is a very bad choice: completely alien to example, Harry’s bad treatment by the Dursleys the original character — although in the novel is not conveyed, and where Hermione is not the itself I wondered how someone of Barty Crouch big buck-toothed loudmouth represented in the Jr’s character contrived to imitate Alastor novels. Moody’s eccentric and imaginative and generous- I realise that it would be frowned upon if Daniel minded manners. Radcliffe were starved to make him as skinny as On the other hand, Alan Rickman was a won- he ought to be initially, and that the heights of the derful choice for Severus Snape. I’m totally in love actors can’t be adjusted in order for the boys to with his performance. become taller than Hermione only when their Nevertheless, I didn’t actually like any of the adolescent growth hormones get going. Harry Potter films until I saw Harry Potter and the Nevertheless, I’m ready to believe that Warner Half-Blood Prince. After loathing the first three Brothers was merely being conventional when it films, I disliked The Goblet of Fire so much that I chose as Hermione the then 10-year-old Emma decided to stop watching the series. The Half- Watson: shorter and slighter and more winsomely Blood Prince was surprisingly good, however — smiling than the 11-year-old Daniel Radcliffe cho- and when I tracked back to The Order of the sen for Harry. Indeed, the 11-year-old Rupert Phoenix, I was pleased to find that it, too, was Grint who played Ron also looked shorter than better than the first four. Later, I enjoyed the first Hero Harry. part of The Deathly Hallows, but disliked the The changed appearance meant leaving out the second part, which I found noisy and boring. cruelty of one of Snape’s finest moments when Soon, I trust, I shall hear of the questions Malfoy’s ‘Densaugeo’ charm misses Harry and raised by your own marathon viewing of all of the instead causes Hermione’s teeth to grow down Potter films — although I doubt I’ll be able to past her collar. I greatly appreciated Snape’s cold

62 Severus Snape was a student at Hogwarts at the same time as James Potter (Harry’s father) and Lily. As Harry is shocked to discover, James behaved towards Severus in an unpleasantly bullying way, causing Severus to hate him. Already (and always), he loves Lily (who grew to love James although at first she was repelled by his showing off). Snape’s feelings towards Harry are therefore very painful: he sees in Harry the likeness of the hated James Potter — yet Harry’s green eyes are identical with the beloved Lily’s. Severus Snape used to be a Death Eater (a follower of Voldemort) but rejoined the other side before Voldemort’s downfall (indeed, ever after Lily’s death) and acted as spy at great personal risk. Voldemort had no idea that Snape was disloyal when he killed him. He merely supposed that it was necessary to get rid of him before the wand-hallow would place its full powers at Volde- mort’s disposal. In their youth, Dumbledore and Grindelwald were both hoping to achieve mastery of death, by means not of horcruxes but of hallows. Harry was the final descendant of the legendary Peverell who owned the hallow which was a cloak of invisibility. Another of the hallows, the resurrection stone, was incorporated in the ring which Voldemort (who failed to recognise the hallows, although he coveted and obtained the elder wand) had used as one of his horcruxes. In their final battle (after Harry returns from seeming death), Harry informs Voldemort that it was Draco Malfoy, not Snape, who removed the answer them satisfactorily. elder wand from Dumbledore, and that Harry is (7 January 2012) now in possession of Draco’s hawthorn wand (and, indeed, when their curses collide, the elder *brg* My main reaction to the last two (stretched to wand leaves Voldemort and goes to Harry’s hand, three) movies in the Harry Potter series, without while Voldemort is killed by his own curse re- having read any of the novels beyond the first, was bounding on him). utter confusion. By the end of the filmed series I still Snape’s feelings for Lily are revealed (although had very few answers to all the questions that had Harry does not realise this) by the form his patro- been raised in the first novel. So I asked Yvonne nus charm takes in the forest, as it leads Harry whether these questions were answered by the end to the Sword of Gryffindor: of the last gigantic volume. In the following letters, she is responding to my various confused and confus- And then the source of the light stepped out ing questions.* from behind an oak. It was a silver-white doe, moon-bright and dazzling, picking her way I wasn’t utterly sure which parents you regarded over the ground, still silent, and leaving no as being hated by which character. Although hoof prints in the fine powdering of snow. She Voldemort kills Harry’s parents, it isn’t because stepped toward him, her beautiful head with he hates them, but because he intends to kill the its wide, long-lashed eyes held high. infant Harry, after a prophecy has led him to Harry stared at the creature, filled with believe that the boy will otherwise be his downfall. wonder, not at her strangeness, but at her Little does he know that with this act — under the inexplicable familiarity. He felt that he had mystical influence of the maternal love of Harry’s been waiting for her to come, but that he had mother Lily (whose life Voldemort took only be- forgotten, until this moment, that they had cause she insisted on trying to shield Harry) — he arranged to meet. [...] He knew, he would have has made the body of Harry himself into a horcrux staked his life on it, that she had come for in which part of Voldemort himself resides (in- him, and him alone. cluding the ability to speak Parseltongue). This They gazed at each other for several long part (miserably whimpering) is finally expelled moments and then she turned and walked when Harry allows Voldemort to direct a killing away. curse at him, without attempting to defend him- ‘No,’ he said, and his voice was cracked self.

63 with lack of use. ‘Come back!’ ‘After all this time?’ She continued to step deliberately through ‘Always,’ said Snape.’ the trees, and soon her brightness was striped by their thick, black trunks. For one Snape is not among the revenants from the trembling second he hesitated. Caution mur- resurrection stone who surround Harry and pro- mured: it could be a trick, a lure, a trap. But tect him from the Dementors as he approaches instinct, overwhelming instinct, told him that Voldemort: instead, James, Sirius, Lupin, and this was not Dark Magic. He set off in pursuit. Lily accompany Harry to the scene where he Snow crunched beneath his feet, but the allows Voldemort to use the elder wand against doe made no noise as she passed through the him. Later, in their final confrontation, Harry tells trees, for she was nothing but light. [...] Voldemort that Dumbledore chose to be killed by At last, she came to a halt. She turned her Snape, and arranged it months before he died: beautiful head towards him once more, and he broke into a run, a question burning in ’Severus Snape wasn’t yours,’ said Harry. him, but as he opened his lips to ask it, she ‘Snape was Dumbledore’s, Dumbledore’s vanished. from the moment you started hunting down Though the darkness had swallowed her my mother. And you never realised it, be- whole, her burnished image was still im- cause of the thing you can’t understand. You printed on his retinas; it obscured his vision, never saw Snape cast a Patronus, did you, brightening when he lowered his eyelids, dis- Riddle?’ orientating him. Now fear came: her presence Voldemort did not answer. They continued had meant safety. to circle each other like wolves about to tear each other apart. When Snape is dying (killed by Voldemort not ’Snape’s Patronus was a doe,’ said Harry, as a traitor but as a necessary sacrifice), he asks ‘the same as my mother’s, because he loved Harry to take the silvery blue thoughts spilling her for nearly all of his life, from the time out of Snape’s mouth, ears and eyes (Hermione when they were children. You should have provides a flask). Snape then slackens his grip on realised,’ he said, as he saw Voldemort’s nos- Harry’s robes: trils flare, ‘he asked you to spare her life, didn’t he?’ ‘Look ... at ... me ...’ he whispered. ’He desired her, that was all,’ sneered The green eyes found the black, but after Voldemort, ‘but when she had gone, he a second something in the depths of the dark agreed that there were other women, and of pair seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed, purer blood, worthier of him —’ blank and empty. The hand holding Harry ’Of course he told you that,’ said Harry, thudded to the floor, and Snape moved no ‘but he was Dumbledore’s spy from the mo- more. ment you threatened her, and he’s been work- ing against you ever since! Dumbledore was Harry afterwards participates in these already dying when Snape finished him!’ memories, using the Pensieve in the Hogwarts head’s office. He finds that Dumbledore (in his Thus, Snape is a villainous teacher but a brave portrait, after death) instructed Snape to get the and selfless hero. sword to Harry without himself knowing why, and Happy Twelfth Night! without letting Harry know that Snape was the (7 January 2012) one delivering it. Before this, when Dumbledore was persuading Snape to kill him in due course, Voldemort does indeed impinge on the world out- he told Snape about the fragment of Voldemort’s side Hogwarts (and the Ministry of Magic is there- soul that is attached to and protected by Harry. fore obliged to be unusually frank with the Muggle Dumbledore conveys that he has kept Harry alive Ministry about the causes of recent disintegrating because he must die at the right moment to defeat bridges and other catastrophes). Voldemort de- Voldemort. Snape is indignant: tests Mudbloods (although — or perhaps because — he has a portion of Mudblood ancestry himself) ‘But this is touching, Severus,’ said Dumble- and, even before his official return, Death-Eaters dore seriously. ‘Have you grown to care for the at the Quidditch final are tormenting some Mug- boy, after all?’ gles, floating them in the air and thus revealing ‘For him?’ shouted Snape. ‘Expecto patro- the knickers of a mortified Muggle mother). After num!’ Voldemort’s return, we see people brought into From the tip of his wand burst the silver the Ministry of Magic to be checked for Muggle doe: she landed on the office floor, bounded genes and then to be dealt with in a sinister once across the office and soared out of the manner. window. Dumbledore watched her fly away, Anyway — I’m glad to have been of assistance and as her silvery glow faded he turned back in hinting at how much is left out of the films, and to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears. sorry about the mixed tenses of my hurried

64 replies. Be Good News?, briefly discussed by Jennifer Thank you for your lists! I’ve looked through Byrne on the ABC-TV First Tuesday Bookclub of the lists of novels and books, and note that the 4 November 2008, which we were watching be- collection of Kaaron Warren’s stories that I’ve cause Vida was interested to see one of the guests, obtained is Dead Sea Fruit (2010). Sophie Cunningham, whose recent book, Mel- Although I haven’t read Kate Atkinson, Vida bourne, we have been reading. and I saw the title you mention, When Will There (7 January 2012)

Feature letter

The loc that would not die by Casey Wolf

CASEY WOLF Aurora and environs still feature houses, com- 14–2320 Woodland Drive, Vancouver, mercial buildings, and even towering neon signs, British Columbia V5N 3P2, Canada from the 1950s and ’60s. The commercial section has lots of elbow room, and the bungalows are I enjoyed the Peake experience. I have been curi- tiny and bursting with character. They may be ous about the Gormenghast books, but have mouldy and overgrown in places but to my eye they are beautiful. never picked one up. Have to say I now know I However. I did not go down there to ogle archi- won’t. I suspect they are not my thing at all. Still, did like reading your thoughts on them. I felt like tecture or pursue the past. I was there to hang with the womenfen. the needle scratched to the end of the track pretty Knowing fans, I was a little nervous I might not abruptly, though. I want to know about book three! Wah! get much sleep: late nights with bottles and munchies, you know, witty conversation and no (22 November 2011) thought of tomorrow. Popcorn rolling across the Four days ago Fran Skene, Janet Wilson, and I floor. It may have something to do with the fact trundled from Vancouver to Seattle at the that at 55 I was probably the youngest there (I won’t guess at Elinor’s age, but let’s say there was prompting of Jean Weber, who was briefly in town on her whirlwind tour through the USA. Fran, a considerable span between us), but no one Janet, and Jean holed up at the Days Inn on seemed inclined to party much past 8 o’clock. Janice, though, was awake into the wee hours Aurora and I stayed with Janice Murray and her two white and black felines, Ruthie and Tina. (you know, 10:30, 11:00), when I was drifting off. They live in a 1963 motel that has been converted This was my first hurrah after months of focus- ing on my health, and I really enjoyed it. to apartments. (An era of outdoor walkways, wood Basically, we had a relaxacon. No agenda other panels, ceramic tiles in the bathroom, and abun- dant windows. A lovely home, indeed.) Elinor than eating and talking and enjoying each other’s company. All of the others are current members Busby and Lin Simpson met up with us — Elinor of AWA (A Woman’s APA), and I was a member on both Monday and Tuesday, Lin, who had to ferry over from Vachon Island, on Tuesday only. briefly in the ’80s, so at Elinor’s prompting we put together a one-shot for the APA while gathered at I like Aurora. It’s on the old highway running her wonderfully bookish (and artish) home. One the apparent length of Seattle and it is far more charming than the interstate highway that has at a time we closeted ourselves in a bedroom and replaced it. Charming not in the meandering typed a few paragraphs into the computer while the others rattled away in the living room. Jean countrified way you may be picturing but in the broad straight no-nonsense thoroughfare of had a craving for ice cream so Elinor broke out yesteryear sense. Unlike Vancouver, which is in- some very dubious-looking fare from, she said, years ago: frosted-over vanilla and rubbery choco- satiable in its self-renewal, ripping down perfectly good and often precious buildings in order to late, if I remember rightly. I stayed well clear of block out endless malls and leaky-to-be condos, them but Jean forged bravely ahead, eating the rubbery stuff with chocolate sauce. (She sur-

65 vived.) (Though there was a prolonged lie-down on and one of them is strumming a guitar and sing- the living room floor ...) ing. This is a first. We have a wonderful long While this was going on I was making my way enclosed yard abutting the railway cut and lined through the first couple of Elinor’s bookshelves. I with trees. Amazingly, in the twenty-odd years I’ve am still smacking my lips over the variety of lived here no one has had parties there but me, tempting morsels there, most particularly over a and only a couple of people have even stretched very old copy of Castle Rackrent and a detailed out on the grass to read a book. So it is great but Historical Guide to Dublin from the mid 1800s. I weird to have other people enjoying the yard. (I would have loved to have time to look through all just wish he was singing something I wanted to of the shelves. listen to.) Somewhere in there I had the idea of us writing Though I occasionally receive or download digi- a renga to go into the zine. Rengas consist of tal versions of fanzines, I find I don’t read them. alternating long and short lines, written by suc- If you go fully electronic I’ll have to try. For me cessive authors. The lines are independent in lounging about reading a zine is a luxury activity, theme. The idea isn’t to create a narrative, but to something I do to relax, and there’s nothing re- riff off the previous line at some peculiar angle. laxing about the weight of the computer and the So, say, Jean says she is ready to take a nap, the blare of its light. Reading Wm Breiding’s loc, I next person may say something about carpets found myself fantasising about wrenching free (which have a different sort of nap) — that kind from the internet entirely, as I used to fantasise of thing. Anyway, we forged ahead with our poor, about going to live in the wilds. Ah, the blissful harmless renga, though lord knows if it ended up freedom! But I don’t know if I’ll ever do it. There resembling any sort of a poem at all. When we see are many people and groups with whom I can only the final product, we’ll have to make our own connect effectively by being online — even some judgments. It was all very fannish and fun. in Vancouver. No one organises anything using One pleasant outcome of the whole thing, be- telephones anymore, so if you are not on email, sides having an enjoyable time visiting with you don’t know what is going on. everyone, was that I acquired a copy of Phyllis After finishing Sunburst I launched into a Gottlieb’s first book, Sunburst (1964), which I’ve couple of books I borrowed from Janice Murray been meaning to read. It is a little surprising to while in Seattle. Janice is a huge fan of the me that only the Canadians know who Gottlieb Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. She was. She was contributing to the American SF has her For Keeps copies and a box full of loaners magazines before any other Canadians were, and and giveaways. I resisted for years, but in 2011 I continued to publish SF and poetry until a few came home with a copy of Cordelia’s Honor, which short years ago: a grand old lady of Canadian SF. contains the first two books in the series. She A humbling reminder. assured me the later ones were even better, but I happily consumed the book over the next it was important to start there. couple of evenings. I wasn’t hoping for much, I liked them. They are intelligent, adventure because it was her first book, but I enjoyed it. filled, sometimes surprising; basically good reads. There were all sorts of things I liked, from the So last week I brought back The Warrior’s Appren- genre — young people with ‘psi’ powers — to the tice and Vor Games (bad pun). I liked TWA a lot way she approached her characters, to the writing — many unexpected and pleasurable turns in itself, and also her assumption of a certain level character and plot, a very likable protagonist, and of education and brightness in her readers. And again, well written. VG didn’t grab me as much, it was a good story. There was a bit of sociological but it was still good. If I hadn’t been fresh from speculation that made me cringe, but in the TWA I’d have had no dissatisfaction — it was a context of the times the book was fairly enlight- perfectly good novel; it just wasn’t as, well, novel ened. as its predecessor. Anyway, I’m hooked, so I guess I’m particularly pleased to have at last read I will be visiting her again soon. It is good to have Sunburst because Canadian Speculative Fiction, light but good reads to go between things like which has long had the fan-voted Aurora Awards, Northanger Abbey and Nuala O’Faolain’s My a few years ago got the juried Sunburst Awards, Dream of You. This is a mainstream novel that I named after this novel. At last I can nod sagely found a real page-turner, brilliantly written, and and say, ‘Hrm, yes. Gottlieb’s 1964 novel, first very affecting. Weeks after reading it I still find serialised in Amazing, also in ’64. Not a bad little myself pondering the book. book. Hrm. Yes.’ O’Faolain was an Irish journalist. This was her Wish I’d been at the Nova Mob for your Gor- first novel, published in 2005 when she was in menghast talk. Speaking of which (being there, her fifties. It is written from the perspective of an not Gormenghast) I’m going to try again this year Irish travel writer who left Ireland in distress to come out for a visit. Resistance is futile. I’ll be when quite young and has spent her somewhat at your door. Hope to see you soon. dissipated life in England, sabotaging romantic (26 July 2012) relationships, avoiding family, connecting most with her boss and co-workers. She goes back to How odd. There are actual people in the backyard Ireland to research a story she read in a law tract

66 from the Famine times, of a plantation wife ac- myself. I’ve rejoined the Vancouver Paleontologi- cused of having an affair with her Irish groom. So cal Society, signed up for a course on Roman we have the present time life of the character, first Britain at SFU, signed up once again for Eileen in England, then in Ireland, her young life, what Kernaghan’s writing group in the fall, and have a she is unearthing about the Famine times, and lot of small projects going on. There are of course her imaginings about this supposed affair. I found ups and downs, but I am so thrilled getting to do the whole thing fascinating, and very human. things that have nothing to do with my health, I O’Faolain doesn’t flinch from difficult topics, but feel like I’m on summer vacation. she also doesn’t despair over them. I think it is I’m looking forward to the Pallahaxi Players often the author, more than the subject matter, Readers Theatre, which I started last year at that makes it so painful to read about people’s VCon. It is an homage to Mike Coney in a couple struggles, or devastating times in history. Some- of ways — both in borrowing the name ‘Pallahaxi’, how O’Faolain is able to look at the whole picture, and in that it emulates the Lonely Cry readers and allow the reader to look with her, and to be theatre he spearheaded for several years at the glad in the end that she did. Lots in there. And con. Last year I wrote the play, but this year Matt did I say enough times how beautifully she writes? Hughes has done us the honour, which is great. (In case you are wondering, as I did, she is not the He has written radio theatre before, so this will be daughter of Sean O’Faolain, but of another writer, more professional than my seat-of-the-pants fool- Tomas O’Faolain, whom I haven’t read.) ishness, but if his short stories are anything to go I normally don’t like watching concert films. I’d by it should be quite humorous as well. (I’m about rather be there or listen to a CD. But a friend, to find out; I have the play open in another tab.) knowing I had been a Bowie fan many years ago, (3 August 2012) handed me his DVDs of the final Ziggy Stardust concert (1973) and A Reality Tour (2003). I decided The LoC That Would Not Die: to take a polite look and ended up watching them back to back, then spending a lot of time in the I was unwilling to go to bed last night. After next weeks catching up (via that cursed internet) finishing my letter to you I ended up reading the on what Bowie had been doing in the decades whole of *brg* 74. I was pleased to read your since I wandered off, especially by tracking down praise of Nicholas Nickleby. I recently picked up a interviews of him that spanned his career. wonderful old hardcover edition for $5 at Spar- Eventually I had stuffed so much information tacus Books (along with a pocketbook of Nor- into my head about him, and dragged up so many thanger Abbey, by Jane Austen — a bizarre and memories of those times, that I decided to make in the end very satisfying read, for $2 — rare use of it in a story. That was gratifying. I feel a bit bargoons in Vancouver, I assure you). It is from doomed packaging it up for the auction block, the Charles Dickens Works series from A. L. Burt, though. It isn’t fantasy, and it isn’t mainstream. New York, and of course mentions no publication (Eileen Kernaghan tells me it is Magical Realism.) year. Early last century, anyway. But I have never This throws readers off, who either want it to be read a book by Dickens and I have to admit I set up like a normal fantasy or dismiss the odd worried I might find it a slog. So I am happy to bits and rationalise it in various ways. This hear that It Lives, for you. doesn’t bode well for editorial acceptance. But you I was reading about the Curragh Wrens of never know. Room Magazine took a couple of my Ireland, lost women who were treated so terribly weirder ones, so maybe this will sell, too. there, worse than camp followers in England or Speaking of publishing, I’ve noticed a trend in India. Dickens sent a reporter to write in great the last few anthologies I’ve had stories in. There detail about their living conditions (among the seems to be a shift to desegregate the various gorse bushes), to be published in his newspaper, streams of speculative fiction and put them to- the Pall Mall Gazette. That he cared to intervene gether in one book. I can live with this when we on their behalf is two-thirds of the reason I want are talking about science fiction and fantasy, but to read his book. I am very disturbed by horror and cruel stories I think you read more books, listen to more generally, and I avoid reading them. I can no music, and watch more DVDs in a year than I do longer do this if I want to check out the other in ten. Maybe I do more yoga than you. offerings in the books my stories are in. Is this I’m reminded to tell you of a favourite movie, just my random experience, or do you think which I have not seen in several years but would horror and excessive brutality are working their love to watch again. Its Korean name is Jibeuro; way into ‘mainstream’ speculative fiction? Or is in English it is called The Way Home; the director the genre itself simply becoming more vicious? is Lee Jeong-hyang. There are two main actors in In April 2011 I was telling you about how tired the film. One is a boy who, if I remember correctly, I was. There is apparently something invigorating is around eight years old (he won an award for his about getting cancer. It really lights a candle performance), and the other is a woman who is as under you. I am still tired all the time — I think old as the hills. She is a tiny, bent thing who it’s part of the fibromyalgia — but I feel quite apparently had never even seen a movie when stimulated in other ways. I just have to pace recruited to act in this film. She plays a mute, but

67 not deaf, grandmother to a boy whose mother has brought him from Seoul and left him in the moun- tains for the summer. He is angry and bored, his only playmate is his video game, and he takes it out on his grandmother. She, on the other hand, simply loves him. This sounds cheesy but it is not. Watching this woman and the patience and kind- ness in her face when he is freaking out, I was very moved. Remember that she is mute, too, so there is not a lot of dialogue. I have never seen anything like Jibeuro. A quiet, beautiful movie which I highly recommend. I did see two movies this year, though, that really stayed with me, as well as a few others I enjoyed. I read My Brilliant Career for the first time, and liked it a lot, so awhile later I watched the movie. I was happy with it, too, as it was pretty faithful to the original, and the actors were quite engaging. The next night I watched an unknown movie trawled from the library, Dean Spanley. It took my mum (who was in town taking care of me after the surgery) about three minutes to realise the dean was the young suitor from the night before (Sam Neill), nearly 30 years later. If you have never seen this movie, get it. It’s a New Zealand production, I believe, set in England at the turn of the last century, maybe as late as 1920, and is based (quite loosely) on a Lord Dunsany story in which a man recalls his previous life as a dog. I have now watched it maybe four times and it gets better with each viewing. Australians may be pleased to see Bryan Brown alongside Sam Neill, Jeremy Northam, days listening to their superlative duets and was Judy Parfitt, and a wonderfully old Peter O’Toole. very engaged by the stories they wove with their lyrics. I think ‘NaCl’ is one of the greatest love *brg* If you go back to *brg* 63, you’ll find that Dean songs, not to mention science songs, of all time. Spanley was my favourite movie of 2009, and that I The name Bernice Rubens (Mr Wakefield’s Cru- wrote about it at length there. This led other readers sade) sounds awfully familiar. I think she may to discover the movie, and write about it in later have written a strange book I picked up on the issues of *brg*. Dean Spanley is one of those great discard rack at Pulp Fiction, The Ponsonby Post. movies that continues to discover its own audience.* (Yes, I’ve just found it. Same author.) It takes place largely in the ex-pat community in Indone- A movie I caught online (CBC videos) a few sia. There is death, there are droll observations— months earlier was a BBC production, The Road a very interesting though not in always satisfying to Coronation Street, about Tony Warren and the book. struggle to represent working-class Manchester A better one in a related genre, though, is Colin on television at a time when that class and that Cotterell’s Anarchy and Old Dogs, which takes accent were considered taboo. Every time I see place in Laos among aging revolutionaries a this one I get a lump in my throat, but it is also couple of years into the new regime. It isn’t the funny and fast-moving and, again, very well first in the series, but it’s the one I read. I found scripted. it fascinating, human, and sometimes gut- That photo shows a very impressive hailball. wrenchingly funny. Not often communists get to (Something a storm coughs out, I guess.) be ordinary people and their regimes not evil. I’m glad you think so highly of the McGarrigle (6 August 2012) Sisters. I spent many a happy hour in the olden

68 Feature letter

‘High Society’ and John Hammond by Malcolm McHarg

MALCOLM McHARG 85 Ridge Road, Kilaben Bay, NSW 2283

This year I’ve written on my thoughts and feelings after the recent screening of a favourite film from 1956, High Society, and its linkages to some of my passions and interests. Movie and music nostal- gia for High Society are perhaps best summed up by quoting Montgomery Clift admitting his love for Elizabeth Taylor in George Steven’s A Place in the Sun: ‘I love you. I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you. I guess maybe I even loved you before I saw you.’ I can’t do better than that. In the years when I swam regularly at the Beaurepaire Swimming Pool (at Melbourne Uni- versity) I would frequently see the late Zelman Cowen in the change rooms. We would say ‘hello’ to one another; he was always personable, even friendly. As of Thursday, I’ve been reflecting on the vicissitudes of life. I can fall from a 12-foot ladder, knock myself out on a brick wall, then collapse on a compost heap and almost sponta- neously recover, as a consequence, from a chronic disabling back impairment (in 2003). Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum, putting up Christmas decorations, falls from a tall ladder fracturing skull, breaking ribs and puncturing his lung. Similar circumstance but two very different outcomes. How lucky am I? I trust the two of you are well (Bruce, you look trim in your Facebook photo) and in good spirits given the circumstances we share, the uncertain- ties of aging. — Busby Berkeley for example — along with (19 December 2011) exposures to Asian auteurs such as Kurosawa and Ray, along with French ‘new wave’ films, I’ve been hooked on movies from the starting of Italian cinema, and Russian cinema. school (1943): films such as Bambi (1943, my first With the ubiquitous media digitalisation, the ‘going to the movies ’ experience), The Big Sleep quality movies canon formated in HD is now (probably 1946, the first adult film to overwhelm abundantly accessible: on DVD and Blu-ray; TV; me) and The Third Man (1949) are exceptional TV on demand; and streaming/downloading of memories from the period of kid to early days of movies direct to laptop, tablet or PC. The best film adolescence. These three movies, today, still rank outcomes, of course, are the social experiences of highly as favourites. movie going: meeting friends, conversation over With each decade, ‘going to the movies’ experi- coffee or a glass of wine; as a patron, eyeballs in ences became richer and deeper. Leaving New the dark assimilating video images on a large Zealand for Melbourne was a life-augmenting screen. In the highly competitive cinema-going experience in unforeseen ways. Melbourne, from market, exhibitors of quality films are diversifying 1957 onwards, brought new Hollywood insights the moviegoing experience with HD films from

69 past eras. two levels. While it ’s still about the interpersonal By way of example, SBS over the last three dynamics of marriage and remarriage, you know weeks has screened two Kurosawa movies (The up front to expect more than a romantic comedy. Seven Samurai, 1956, and Ran, 1985), and one A six-minute overture precedes the commence- Itami movie (Tampopo, 1985). The (Mel Gibson- ment of the story. Secondly, HS is set in a resort owned) quality cinema chain Dendy, in the same famous for high society mansions — colloquially period, has been screening High Society (1956). known as ‘summer cottages’ — in the town of My high school years mark the transition from Newport, Rhode Island. In 1954, a local socialite kid to adult, as I began making decisions on founded, and with her husband financed, the important personal interests and passions largely First American Annual Jazz Festival, what we independent from parents and teachers. ABC know as the Newport Jazz Festival. broadcasts out of Sydney — probably via Radio Dexter, in HS, a jazz musician and songwriter, Australia —were significant influences for musi- has links to a highly significant Newport resident, cal appreciation beyond mainstream classical. John Hammond. As a musical, HS is modelled, in Over the period from 1950 to 1955, I explored part, on the golden age of the American songbook. the landscape of jazz, and also came to love Three all-time great popular performers — Bing popular music of the type now known as ‘The Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong — American Songbook’. I would listen to jazz pro- sing an original score from Cole Porter, one of grams most weeks. America’s great songwriters. Porter, like Ham- Another ‘out of the blue’ jazz influence was mond, belonged to the tribe of very rich; his John Wilson, teddy boy extraordinaire and older grandfather had been the richest man in Indiana. brother of Stephanie, my first serious girlfriend. HS’s musical backing comes from Armstrong John lived a block away. He was the only person (playing himself) and his All Stars band, along I knew with a systematically collected set of jazz with orchestrations from Nelson Riddle and Con- records. He became a mentor, probably without rad Salinger. realising it, for my understanding of the true We who saw HS on first release in 1956 remi- significance of performers such as Duke nisce over songs that, for some of us, are markers Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Billie of our courtship years. Sinatra is at his peak Holiday, Miles Davis, and even Frank Sinatra. singing ‘You’re Sensational’; Crosby and Sinatra Here, as with movies, going to Melbourne would in a first-time collaboration sing ‘Well, Did you prove to be a life-augmenting experience. Evah!’; Sinatra and Celeste Holm sing ‘Who Wants One of the good things about today ’s life, living to be a Millionaire?’; and Crosby and Grace Kelly on the shores of Lake Macquarie, is membership sing ‘True Love’. of the Watagan Mountain Film Society: films of quality for discerning viewers. Helen and I were If you listen carefully to the HS dialogue, you will fortunate to be admitted as members, perhaps hear occasional reference to the name ‘Ham- because we’re also members of the Lake Mac- mond’. The Bing Crosby representation of C. K. quarie U3A choir. Several of my favourite couples Dexter, in part, is a depiction of John Hammond. are members of both. John and his sister Alice are to be seen in a film The Society’s December screening was the of the same year as HS, The Benny Goodman Story 1956 musical romance, High Society. Look up a (Benny and Alice married). Recently, there have review for this film and, chances are, you’ll read been numerous references to, and in some cir- that it’s a remake of The Philadelphia Story (1940). cumstances footage of, John Hammond in The Those of you who have seen both films, however, Blues, the Martin Scorsese seven-part documen- will discern this is not quite the case. Both draw tary series on the history of blues music. I have their script from the same Broadway play — The to thank the ABC (again) for what I know about Philadelphia Story — a romantic comedy about John Hammond. About 20 years ago, early in high society, marriage, and remarriage. As Scott January, a jazz-loving fellow traveller in Mel- Fitzgerald wrote: ‘Let me tell you about the very bourne rang me at work in Sydney and said words rich. They are different from you and me.’ The to the effect, ‘Malcolm, switch on ABC radio’ play’s female lead, Tracey Samantha Lord Haven, (Margaret Throsby’s interview program on is based on a Philadelphia socialite married to a national ABC Classic FM). The broadcast was friend of the playwright. The male lead, C. K. already into the first of five (I think) 50-minute Dexter Haven, when married to Tracy, had a programs on John Hammond. vulnerability to excessive alcohol consumption. If I can use the term ‘fabulous’ in its pre-cliché Katharine Hepburn, with help from Howard meaning of ‘legendary’, then I can tell you that Hughes, purchased the film rights for The Phila- John Hammond was born, in 1910, into fabulous delphia Story. The film — starring Katharine Hep- wealth, specifically Vanderbilt wealth. ‘Fabulous burn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart, and wealth’ is perhaps an understatement. Wiki- directed by George Cukor — was highly success- pedia’s Vanderbilt family entry states, ‘The Van- ful with the critics, the box office, and Academy derbilts remain the seventh wealthiest family in awards. history.’ In 1892–95, Cornelius Vanderbilt II built High Society is different from the Cukor film at ‘The Breakers’, the largest (70 rooms) and most

70 opulent mansion in Newport, today the most sure. visited attraction in Rhode Island. Vanderbilt The upmarket Society Restaurant in New York wealth includes building the splendour of Grand City became an element of Hammond ’s strategy Central Terminal, New York City. to make African-American music part of main- John Hammond was more than a jazz-loving stream popular music. Every musical act at the socialite. From the 1930s to the early ’80s, he was Society, over a decade, was supplied under the much more noteworthy as a musician, music Hammond auspice. Restaurant patrons who liked critic, and record producer. ‘In his service as a what they heard became champions for African- talent scout, Hammond became one of the most American music. influential figures in 20th century popular music’ At 31, Hammond became a co-founder of the (Wikipedia entry). Council of African Affairs; Paul Robeson served as John Hammond is further distinguished (in CAA chairman for most of its existence. the US) for one of his over-arching social justice Norman Grantz, the famous jazz impresario philosophies: ‘I heard no colour line in music. To and producer from the late ‘40s, further bring recognition to the negro ’s supremacy in jazz reinforced Hammond’s policy of racially inte- was the most effective and constructive form of grated bands, equal pay and, for Grantz as impre- social protest that I could think of.’ sario, only racially integrated accommodation. His piano studies commenced at four years of Grantz became wealthy in the process. Music age, the violin at eight. John, in his teens, became lovers will be familiar with at least two of Grantz’ ‘interested in the music sung and played by the record labels: Verve (founded in 1956) and Pablo. servants, many of whom were black ’. During high The Newport Jazz Festival precedes High school years he would visit Harlem on non-school Society by two years. Billie Holiday was a stand- days and listen to what was then called ‘black out performer in the festival ’s first year. 1955 and music’. Attentive audiences for black music at 1956 were noted for two outstanding perform- that time were limited largely to blacks (of course), ances: Miles Davis with ‘Round Midnight’ (1955) musos, and music aficionados. Through these and Duke Ellington’s Orchestra for, among other Harlem visits, John came to know, personally, things, ‘Diminuendo’ and ‘Crescendo in Blue’ many musicians and performers. Hammond (1956). would later say that hearing Bessie Smith, when As a talent scout, in 1960, John Hammond he was 17, changed his life. discovered the 18-year-old gospel singer Aretha Franklin, and was responsible for her debut re- At the age of 21, John Hammond left college to cording. The following year, at the insistence of establish a career in the music industry. He was his wife and over the objections of Columbia label the first to record Bessie Smith. Another early record executives, he signed Bob Dylan, initially breakthrough accomplishment was help in or- referred to by the record executives as ‘Ham- ganising a racially integrated band for Benny mond’s folly’. Goodman: white band leader, mixed race band, Thank you, ABC, for the introduction to John across-the-board white pay rates. Hammond. Forgive me if my memory has failed At age 23, Hammond in Harlem heard the me in some respects. And thank you, Watagan 17-year-old Billie Holliday. Her recording debut Mountain Film Society, for screening High with the Benny Goodman Band followed shortly Society. A discerning choice. after. Look up Frank Sinatra on YouTube singing Also around this time John entered Yale, ‘You’re sensational. That’s all. That’s all. That’s studying violin and then viola. all.’ At age 27, he brought the Count Basie Band to New York from Kansas, giving it national expo- — Malcolm McHarg, 1 January 2012

71 Continued from Page 4

John Straede, 2006. (Photo: Dick Jenssen.) Bruno Kautzner, 2004. (Photo: Dick Jenssen.)

The trouble with In-Your-Facebook is that you may be from the same problems that killed Archie? No. Her talking to your Friends, but you don’t often talk to your kidneys were functioning normally, but she had some friends. You send a random message into the aether; it’s kind of infection, and some kind of liver dysfunction. She seen by some of your Friends, but most of your friends had suffered from lots of bouts of cystisis of the bladder are not on Facebook. They’re in ANZAPA, or on the when she was very young. This seemed to have recurred. various e-lists or the SF Commentary mailing list. So here Three rounds of antiobiotics seemed to fix that, but she are some matters I’ve jotted on Facebooks but not yet was still very reluctant to eat. The vet gave a diagnosis of covered elsewhere. ‘pancreatitis’, and suggested we do our best to coax her to eat! After lots of experimentation, Elaine discovered Thanks to friends who sent commiserations on the death that Polly would eat small quantities of her own type of of Archie. He’s actually been missed most by Flicker, cat crunchies, plus a couple of cans per day of the most Harry, and Polly. They all became fussy about their food expensive varieties of Dine. for months. Nobody would eat the usual beef strips, so Flicker and the others went back to eating beef strips, we had to try other things, including cans of the luxury but they demanded the superior, more expensive variety food we had bought to try to tempt Archie to eat during from the supermarket. And Flicker wants to eat his his final fortnight. Later, they wanted only kangaroo crunchies away from the spot where he used to eat them. meat bought from Safeway. Every now and again he goes searching for Archie Polly went on strike altogether. Was she suffering throughout the house, and gets very grumpy with us because we haven’t brought Archie home yet. Harry sits Roger Weddall, early 1980s. (Photogapher: unknown.) by my chair, where Archie used to sit, and waits for a special comforting pat. Archie was a very valuable small cat. He was part of their gang. Polly isn’t, but they still get upset when we take her to the vet’s for yet another expensive examina- tion, or if we leave her the whole day before bringing her home. Things Are Still Not Right.

Death has been much on our mind this year. In a box next page, I’ve printed Merv Binns’ tribute to three old friends who have left us this year. One of them, Ian Crozier, I have never met, although I’ve been hearing his name ever since I joined fandom in 1968. Bruno Kautzner is someone I would never have heard of if he had not bumped into Dick Jenssen on the street in Carnegie in the 1990s. Bruno had been a member of the Melbourne SF Club many years ago, but had lost contact with everybody from those days. Dick encour- aged him and his wife Keren to join the monthly film group hosted by Race and Iola Mathews. We had dinners

72 Memories of Ian Crozier by Mervyn R. Binns

Just about sixty years ago, I met Race Mathews, Bob ventions in Melbourne. McCubbin, Lee Harding, and Dick Jenssen, who I had It is one of those ironic moments that the movie of discovered shared my love of reading science fiction. The Hobbit is due for release, which reminds me that Race and Bob and maybe others had decided to form when I was a dyed-in-the-wool SF reader, fantasy had a club for SF fans and invited me to join them. As an little appeal, but Ian kept on insisting that I read The employee of the then McGills Newsagency bookshop I Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I finally gave in and was in a good spot to find more interested people. Soon read them. Thanks, Ian; anything to do with The Lord after starting up, Ian Crozier joined us and finished up of the Rings will always remind me of you. producing the club magazine Etherline. He did a great In 1999 Helena and I spent a few days, at the job putting all the information on stencil, which I invitation of Ian and his wife Judy (who passed away printed on a Roneo duplicator that we bought. Club some time before Ian, we believe), with them when they meeting details, book reviews, news about SF books and were residing at Porepunkah, near the picturesque magazines, and more were included. Copies were sent mountain town of Bright, soon after we got together. I to members and SF fans in other states and in the USA had not seen them for over 40 years. I believe they and Britain. Ian corresponded with and included in- moved closer to Melbourne and their family in more formation from fans such as Bob Bloch and many other recent years. We have had a number of house moves fans here and overseas. Etherline was a duplicated work since and lost contact with them. Helena (then Mar- of art, considering the trouble Ian went to, to put a garet Duce) also heard about The Hobbit and The Lord stencil together for me to then run off on the old of the Rings from Ian, when he visited her in the Victo- duplicator. He had to cut and splice stencils and add rian country town of Alexandra in the late 1950s, illustrations and headings, which was a painstaking following being told of her interests in SF by Mervyn exercise. He edited just on one hundred issues until he Barrett, a penfriend in New Zealand. (How she came decided family and work were more important, and he in contact with Melbourne fandom is another long dropped out in the late 1950s. I remember that the story.) MSFC held meetings in a room above Ian’s office as a Ian Crozier succumbed to lung cancer on the 27th customs agent, in Lennox Street, Richmond, for a year of November this year. or two in the very early days. Chess and darts were our major activities, while we were planning our first con- We also lost a very good, very special friend this last vention in 1956. week, John Straede, to a brain tumour on the 24th of Etherline I think did as much as anything and any- November. Another old friend, Bruno Kautzner, died body to put Melbourne and Australian fandom on the of leukemia in April 2012. Like many other people they map, while also publicising and establishing the Mel- were friends we made because of their being SF fans bourne SF Club (Group as it was called initially). Fan- and being associated with the MSFC (Bruno from the dom grew, and many other fanzines were produced in late ’50s and John from the early ’60s). The club and Australia in the following years, but I truly believe Ian’s SF in general has given me a life and friends, many of efforts, and those of such as Graham Stone in Sydney, whom I still see, for which I can only be very grateful. Don Tuck in Tasmania, and other early Australian fans, led to the growth of fandom in Australia and in the — Mervyn R. Binns, 6 December 2012 long run, to us holding eventually four World SF Con-

with them in Carnegie and they visited us at Greensbor- remarried, to Truda, and they bought a farmlet at Bunyip ough. It was a great shock to find that somebody so filled in eastern Victoria. We met them because John had with energy should have become very ill very fast, strug- remained a friend of Dick Jenssen during the years he gled to return to normal life, then have been knocked had been living in New South Wales. In Bunyip Truda’s out by acute kidney failure over one weekend. main business haas been cat breeding, but she and John John Straede was someone I met regularly at Mel- also enjoyed the life of busily retired people. John’s bourne SF conventions until he and his then wife Cheryl appetite for collectingDVDs and Blu-rays was much more went to New South Wales in 1972. John became a world- voracious than mine. He developed a room in the house class astronomer. Shortly before he retired and returned into a theatrette with its own very large screen. For some to Melbourne, Cheryl was killed in a car crash. John years Elaine and I visited John and Truda each year for

73 Christmas celebrations. Truda has an amazing ability to until the last week of the trip. He made many friends for cater for groups of 20 or 30 people. It was a great shock himself and for Australian fandom. He returned home to discover early this year that John was suffering from a in great pain, and went into hospital shortly after his brain tumour. After initial surgery, it seemed as if he return. would have some years of life left, but that was not to be. It is still difficult to realise that Roger has disappeared. In mid December, we will be visiting Bunyip for a cele- Every now and again we keep expecting him to knock on bration of John’s life. the door, come in, and laugh and say, ‘Sorry I was gone for awhile.’ On 3 December 2012 it was exactly 20 years since Roger I realise that I still have not published Roger’s DUFF Weddall died. In 1992, Elaine and I knew from May report, which he left in the form of cassette tapes re- onwards that Roger’s life would be greatly shortened. corded during his trip. I had meant to publish the report However, he undertook his DUFF trip to America in in time for this anniversary, but I had expected to be able August and September that year, and enjoyed himself to retire this year.

A visit to Maldon

On Sunday 4 November 2012, I actually left Melbourne for a few hours. I hopped aboard a country train for Castlemaine. My sister Jeanette Gillespie picked me up and drove me to the nearby town of Maldon, holding its annual Maldon Festival, which includes the Maldon Folk Festival. We went to a little church in the town. People gathered and began singing gospel songs, usually una- companied. Various people waved their hands around, and encouraged people to sing and stand up and sit down again, and it was all a bit exhausting. Halfway through the event the singing stopped, and famous Australian folk singer Danny Spooner presented to my sister Jeanette the Graham Squance Award for lifetime service to the folk music community of Victoria. Trans- lated into SF terms, Jeanette finally received her Chan- dler Award! Jeanette has been running folk festivals and clubs and performing for over 30 years. She also edited the folk music fanzine, Folk Vine. Her partner Duncan Browne has also received the award, as has Danny Spooner himself. She joins an illustrious group of win- ners. Jeanette gave a very nice speech, and we all had to start singing again. (I can’t sing, which is why I feel embarrassed when I attend Jeanette’s folk music events.) Our old friend Frances Wade, who now lives near Jeanette and Duncan, drove me back to Castlemaine to catch the train home. Jeanette Gillespie receives the Graham Squance Award. Her partner Duncan Browne is in the background.

2013: two or three days I took off

Until the beginning of February 2013 I had no paying Windows 98 led to the problems I faced. I did reply that work, or any hint of future paying work. At the beginning a more realistic deadline would be 12 April, a week after of February I received an email from a client for whom Easter, but the client insisted on 22 March. A difficult I had done nothing for about four years. He asked me if task was attaching the Word styles to the documents. This I could finish a huge editing job by 22 March. I felt that is a designer’s/typesetter’s job, but publishers have been technically I might not be able to do the job because I’m asking editors to do it for at least 15 years. For most of still working in Word 7. Indeed, working in Word 7 on my clients, however, it has proved quicker and more

74 economical to ask a junior editor in the office to style the manuscript before sending it out. When it took me 6 and a half hours to style the first chapter, but only 4 hours to edit it, the production editor gave in, and did the styling himself. From then on, the job was smooth sailing, ex- cept for editing the Permissions list. The client wanted this compiled in Excel, a blind spot of mine. This was a time-consuming and annoying job, which could be done only after I had edited the book, sent out the edited chapters to the authors for checking, and received back the chapters. I took very few days off from the beginning of Febru- ary until the end of March. I had finished compiling and sending out the February ANZAPA mailing before I started the new job.

Day 1 of time off

I spent one day undergoing my regular colonoscopy — or what should be my regular colonoscopy. Because my father died at the age of 69 from bowel cancer, I’ve been trying to be checked every five years since I turned 50. I was checked when I turned 55 (actually 56, since it took a full year from GP’s appointment to the actual colonoscopy at St Vincent’s Hospital). I moved to Greensborough, and when I turned 60 my new GP put in a request to Austin Hospital to arrange the procedure. Nothing happened. I reminded my GP of this a few years later. I’ve never been able to afford private health insur- ance. Eventually she found a private facility in Heidel- berg that can do the procedure for a flat fee. On the day before, I stopped eating solids, swallowed sachets of gloop to clean out my system, and drank liquids all day. I did not feel hungry (I suspect that the gloop itself includes appetite suppressant). I was allowed to imbibe nothing but a few sips of water on the morning of the colonoscopy. Elaine’s brother-in-law George drove me over there. I did not have to wait long. I did not actually meet the surgeon who had interviewed me a week or so before. I met only the anaesthetist and his team. He injected me, put the little mask over my face, and I went out like a light. When I woke up, I was led into a nearby room, and sat there for about an hour until George picked me up. Then home — to a light meal. Result? No polyps.

Days 2 and 3 of time off

During March, Casey Wolf visited from Vancouver. Elaine and I had first met her just before Aussiecon 2 in Hotel, looking lost. I thought she would be pissed off by 1985. Elaine was working with Esther, whose girlfriend the SF scene, and that we would never hear from her was Carole, who asked Esther if she could introduce her again. Instead, she got involved with the Vancouver fan sister Casey to science fiction people while visiting Mel- group, began writing SF, and kept sending me letters of bourne. Elaine and I, Esther, Carole, and Casey enjoyed comment. In 2005, during the Bring Bruce Bayside trip, a great Thai meal at a restaurant near us in Collingwood. when I was visiting Alan and Janice Rosenthal in Seattle, At that time it was one of the two Patee Thai restaurants Casey drove down from Vancouver, and spent an after- in the inner suburbs. (The other one is still open in noon catching up. That afternoon was one of the high- Brunswick Street, Fitzroy). lights of the trip. Later, she sent me a copy of her fine Casey attended Aussiecon 2, but she knew nobody book of short stories, Finding Creatures and Other Stories, except me and a friend of hers. I was always busy doing published as by C. June Wolf (Wattle & Daub Books, something, so occasionally I would find Casey and her Vancouver). friend wandering the corridors of the Southern Cross Every time Casey arranged a visit to Australia to visit

75 her sister and friends, some major event stopped the trip. Ethiopian restaurant in Brunswick Street. Great food, She has not been in good health recently, but finally in great company. 2013 she was able to make the trip. She brought with her Casey was taken off to Tasmania for a week in (or one of the longest extended bouts of hot weather we’ve near) the wilderness — and reasonable temperatures, ever had in the south-eastern states. It was hot and humid while the hot spell in Melbourne just went on and on. while she was visiting the tropical areas in far northern The following Tuesday, she braved the Melbourne sub- New South Wales; then the heat really set in when she urban train system and the never-ending heat, and ar- arrived in Melbourne. We talked on the phone, but she rived at Greens borough for an enjoyable lunch at Allan was taken up country, then back to Melbourne. It was hot House. This is the improbable name for a stylish Viet- in beautiful downtown Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, on the namese/Chinese/Thai restaurant that opened on Main Tuesday afternoon when I met Casey for afternoon tea Street two years ago, but which Elaine and I hadn’t tried and book touring, but that didn’t stop us nattering all until recently. After lunch, we walked back to 5 Howard afternoon, moving from one bookshop or cafe to an- Street to visit our House of Cats, lots more talk, then other. The next night she joined a small group of us — Casey set off home. I wonder if Elaine and I will ever see Elaine, me, Bill Wright, and Tim Train — at the Nyala her again?

Gig regret

Dave O’Neil is a Melbourne TV comedian I never watch Court, 17 February 1973, for $5. on TV, and his radio voice is so garbled as to be almost My most tooth-achingly awful example of ‘total gig incomprehensible. But he’s just been hired to write the miss’ comes not from rock music but from classical page 2 column in The Shortlist, the unaccountably re- music. The time is the late 1980s, when restaurant meals named EG entertainment supplement from the Mel- and concerts were affordable. Elaine and I had both had bourne Age every Friday. busy days. We went out to dinner. We were halfway His latest column (26 April 2013) puts a name to an through a fine meal when we remembered that for the emotion I’ve felt from time to time: gig regret: ‘when you same night we already had bought tickets for the Musica have the chance to see a band, pass on the opportunity Viva concert by the Beaux Arts Trio, the greatest piano and then regret it for the rest of your life’. trio in the world, who would be playing an all-Beethoven Here’s Dave’s story of his ultimate gig regret: concert. Yes, we did catch their Sunday afternoon con- cert the next weekend, but it was not the same. All we During the summer of 1974, my dad drove us to the could think about was the missed concert. The Beaux Inverloch foreshore, where my older brother was Arts Trio broke up a few years later. desperate to see this ‘new’ band. Dad said to me: ‘Do Dave O’Neil talks about the other type of ‘gig regret’: you want to see the band or get an ice-cream?’ I chose the concert you caught, but wished you hadn’t. I’m glad the latter and missed an early incarnation of AC/DC. to say this has never happened to me. For the last 20 years I can’t remember the flavour of the ice-cream but my I have been missing concerts because of the exponen- brother still goes on about how a young Angus Young tially increasing ticket prices, and because of my sheer stripped off his cothes and ran into the ocean. Yep, laziness in buying tickets. Some of the best concerts I’ve gig regrets. seen have been free, thanks to, first, Steve Smith, and then, Dave Clarke, at Reading’s in Lygon Street, Carlton. In sympathy, I can think of all the bands and perform- Every now and again they have offered me free tickets to ers I might have seen, but didn’t. Emmylou Harris, hear such luminaries as Branford Marsalis, the Charlie several times. Lou Reed, many times. Loudon Wain- Haden Quartet, and Angela Hewitt. wright at the Continental Cafe, because I was suffering The net result of my life of gig regrets is that I had not from my worst cold in a decade. The Rolling Stones in been to a huge loud rock music concert since Elaine and 1996 — because the cheapest seats, way up the back of I went with some fans to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse the main stand of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, were in 1985 at the Festival Hall. Therefore it is appropriate $99 each — but thanks to Leigh and Valma, I did attend that ... the Rolling Stones’ afternoon concert, Kooyong Tennis

My ultimate gig ...

... was seeing Neil Young and Crazy Horse, 28 years later, by sending me by email a ticket to see Neil Young and on 13 March 2013, at the Plenary, Melbourne Concert Crazy Horse at the Plenary on 13 March. Of the roll call Centre ... and for free. Frank Weissenborn astounded me of recent favourite visiting performers to Melbourne,

76 Neil Young and Crazy Horse would be top of my list, but The first half of Neil’s Loud Stuff had finished with the ticket price was out of my range. Frank has been an apocalyptic light show. After the acoustic set, the paying me in instalments to edit his recent works, so second half began with Live Rust old favourites, such as instead of handing me cash he rolled a few of these ‘Powderfinger’ and ‘Cortez the Killer’. Then Neil and payments together, and bought the ticket for me. the band went into hyper-phase. Neil was actually smil- The Plenary in the Melbourne Convention Centre is ing! The band pulled out a medley of songs based on familiar to most readers as the hall where the main events Neil Young’s love of rock and roll. Everything went of Aussiecon 4 took place. It’s a long walk from Spencer louder. The songs included obscurities like ‘Barroom Street. I would have thought it too small for a modern Blues’ from the mid seventies. Then came the obligatory rock concert, but it has good line of sight from all seats, walk-off, then the encore — a 20-minute version of ‘Like and a large standing-room area in front of the stage. a Hurricane’, Neil’s best song. The sound? I had forgotten to take my ear plugs, We staggered into the night. I had wondered if the which meant that the very very loud sound was JUST TOO concert might have stretched a bit over the scheduled DISTORTED for my elderly ears. Is this deliberate distor- finish time of 10.30. I looked at my watch: 11.45 p.m. tion peculiar to this concert by Neil Young and Crazy Could I run back to Southern Cross Station in time to Horse? Probably not. It’s just what everybody else in the catch the last train? I looked around for Frank. His seat audience expected. When I saw Neil Young and Crazy had been in a different section. We had nattered at Horse at Festival Hall in 1985, the amplification had interval, but this time I lost him in the crowd. Bugger it! been just as loud, but quite clear. Ah well. My eardrums I could ring him tomorrow. Off I went, and actually are shot, I suspect, but I didn’t realise it until then. To reached the platform 10 minutes before the last train enjoy rock concerts in future, I will stick to watching left. them at home on DVD with the speakers turned up to 3. I doubt if I will ever go to a Big Concert again — unless The Plenary event is now being touted as the best Neil I win Tattslotto or somebody offers me a ticket to Bruce Young and Crazy Horse concert for ten years. It featured Springsteen or the Melbourne concert of the just- most of the songs from his latest double CD, Psychedelic announced Rolling Stones ‘50 Years Is Not Too Many’ Pill, including the mighty ‘Walk Like a Giant’. This shows world tour. But, adding two earplugs that I forgot to take that the songs on Pill are the best Neil has written for with me on the 13th, I would repeat the Neil Young many years. experience any time it was offered. Fortunately, the band gave the audience a relief break One question remains. All the blokes on stage on 13 where Neil sang four songs with guitar or piano. Those March are older than me and most of the audience. How four songs were worth the price of the ticket (which I can they voluntarily subject their body systems to all that didn’t pay, but you know what I mean). They included racket, night after night? good old ‘Heart of Gold’ from 1972’s album Harvest, just to rev up the crowd, and a delicious rendition of ‘Ramada — Bruce Gillespie, 26 April 2013 Inn’, Neil’s most moving song from the new CD.

75 TREASURE 1 June 2013

Mervyn R. Binns Jennifer Bryce Elaine Cochrane Ditmar Bruce Gillespie Dora Levakis John Litchen Malcolm McHarg Yvonne Rousseau Casey Wolfe and many others

78 Jennifer Bryce: ‘Sunset on our houseboat, Kerala’