Jesuit Jubilee Conference Evangelisation and Culture in a Jesuit Light
Friday 28 July-Sunday 30 July 2006 St Patrick's Campus, Australian Catholic University, liS Victoria Pde, Fitzroy
Major Speakers include
Fr Daniel Madigan SJ Director of the Pontifical Institute for the Study of Religions and Culture, Rome
Fr Frank Brennan SJ AO Institute of Legal Studies, Australian Catholic University
Program begins Friday 7pm and ends with Mass, celebrated by Bishop Hilton Deakin, at 4pm on Sunday.
Provisional charges, including light meal Friday, lunches and refreshments: Full conference $1 00; Friday evening, $25; Saturday or Sunday only, $50 (unwaged $60, $15 and $30, respectively). Conference dinner (optional) Saturday night. For more information contact Jesuit Theological College. Telephone OJ 9341 5800 Email [email protected]
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T. 32 Redemption in East Timor m Groenewegen and Roger Borrell )> eureka street fj u:'ri :ka stri :t/ Sian Prior speaks with an Australian "'--< nun who is helping inmates at Becora "')> I have found it! The exultant cry z of 'eureka'. A way, a public road in COLUMNS Prison find ways out of the darkness. 0 --< I a city or town, a path to a rebellion. 34 Tru e fakes m 7 Summa theologiae Simon Caterson on the way that fiction 0 A way of questioning, a place of Andrew Hamilton Liturgy in a time 5 discovery, a distinctly Australian can somehow become fact. () of terror -< forum for conversation and new 46 Going to jail 8 Archimedes ideas. There are many paths, but Brian Doyle on incarceration, Tim Thwaites Positive thinking there is only one Eureka Street. American style. 10 By th e way Brian Matthews One m ore time around POETRY 11 Ca pital letter 22 Ouyang Yu The Kingsbury Tales: Jack Waterford Country character the storeman's tale 22 Danny Fah ey Revolutions 50 Watching Bri ef Juliette Hughes Eight-legged freak-out IN PRINT 36 Vintage 2005 THE MONTHS' TRAFFI C Jennifer Moran on three annual 6 Adrian Caesar Terrible paradox anthologies of Australian writing. 7 Anthony Taylor Searching for Suggan 38 Drawing from the text Buggan Peter Pierce reviews The Diaries of Martin Elliott A missionary's 9 Donald Friend, Volume Three, edited lonely ramble Acting editor Robert Hefner by Paul Hetherington. Graphic designer Maggie Power Chi ef executive officer Tom Cran it ch 40 Like warriors of old Business manager Mark Dowell FEATURES Ja cqueline Healy on Geoffrey and Marketing/advertising manager Cami lle Collins James Bardon's Papunya: A Place Made Subscriptions Denise Ca mpbell 12 Redefining th e Austra li an nat ion Editorial, production and administration After the Story. assistants Gera ldine Battersby, Lee Beasley, David Corlett says that Australia is Clare Gichard within reach of a chance to engage in 42 Riding out th e Romantic Storm Film editor Siobhan Jackson much-needed policy reform. Philip Harvey reviews Ann Poetry editor Philip Harve)' McCulloch's Dance of the Nomad: jes uit editorial board Andrew Hamilton SJ, 14 The yea r of living dangerousl y A Study of the Selected Notebooks Greg Baum, Virgi nia Bourke, Jane Mayo Troy Bramston examines the fraught last Carolan, Tom Cra nitch, Robert Hefner, Ja ck of A. D. Hope. Waterford. days of the Whitlam Government. 44 On down th e line Patrons Eureka Street gratefully acknowledges 17 Th e grea test ga me the support of C. and A. Ca rter; the Michele M. Gierck reviews Arch and Peter Rodgers on where cricket trustees of the esta te of Miss M. Condon; Martin Flanagan's The Line: A Man's W.P. & M.W. Gurry is heading. Experience of the Emma Railway; Eureka Street magazine, IS SN 1036- 1758, 18 A sorry tale of human bondage A Son's Quest to Understand. Aust ralia Post Print Pos t approved Slavery is still a way of life for many 45 A disaster waiting to happen pp349181 /00314, is published six times a year in Niger, reports Anthony Ham. by Eureka Street M agazine Pt y Ltd, Denis Tracey on Ronald Wright's 300 Victoria Street, Richmond VIC 3121 20 Mystery of th e monastere A Short History of Progress. PO Box 553, Richmond VIC 3121 Four days in a French convent were Te l: 03 9427 73 11 Fax: 03 9428 4450 email : eureka®jespub.jes uit.org.a u not enough to satisfy Isabel Huggan's http://www.eurekastrcct. eom.au/ curiosity. THE SHORTLIST Responsi bility for editorial con tent is accepted 47 Reviews of the books The Penelopiad; by Andrew Hamilton st, 23 Plea from Pakistan 300 Victoria Street, Ri chmond Mathias Heng's extraordinary images Saving Fish from Drowning; No Printed by D ora n Printing of people left homeless by Pakistan's Place Like Home; and Breastwork: 46 Industrial Drive, Braeside VIC 3 195. Rethinking Breastfeeding. © jesuit Publications 2006 devastating earthquake. Unsolicited manusc ript s will not be returned. 24 Tracking twins Pl ease do not se nd o ri ginal photograph s or art work unl ess req uested. Req uests for permission Gillian Bouras examines the FLASH IN THE PAN to reprint material from the magazine should intertwined lives of two extraordinary 48 Reviews of the film s be addressed in writing to the ed itor. Brokebacl< 19th-century sisters. Mountain, Jarh ead and Munich. Thi s issue 26 Tension and grief in the Ca ribbea n Cover: Photo by Mathias Heng Kent Rosenthal reports on the plight Cover design: Maggie Power PUZZLED Cartoons: Dea n Moore, pp35,37, of Haiti's impoverished people, and how Darby Hudson, p43 it's not being helped by the media. 51 Joan Nowotny Cryptic crossword comment Peter- N orden Commonwealth death tally T mNATWNS mTH' CnMMONW 4 EUREKA STREET MARCH- APRIL 2006 That sad nation has been placed in a most parlous position in regard to provid The poorer for it letters ing the basic necessities for its 13 million people. Yet, in 20 years' time, it will have It is with a considerable sense of loss that to cope with an extra 13 million more I take note of your letter [informing sub than those who are already in need. The scribers of Eureka Street's move from print stressed womenfolk are currently bur to online magazine]. In fact, it has taken The getting of values dened with an average of eight children me the best part of a week before I had each. The population increases at 2.8 per the heart to take up my pen to respond. The article by Freya Matthews ('The art cent a year. Not that your decision came wholly as a of discovering values', Emeka Street, Anthony Ham wrote that Niger was surprise: I could not help but notice that January-February 2006) is interest a land of plenty in 1950s. For the then Eureka Street, like many another quality ing and thought-provoking but I wonder population it might very well have been . magazine, had been struggling to survive. whether it really advances understand Even without the environmental preda Although I wish you well in your new ing of the subject. I suspect the writer tion foisted on the countryside, so ade venture, I will not be joining you in it as I takes the same position that is also criti quately described by Anthony, the basic still prefer the printed page to the compu cised in others. For example, towards the needs of an extra nine million since then ter screen. But I shall miss reading-and end of the article we read, 'Children who would impose heavy burdens. quoting-Eureka Street. become such independent thinkers will Colin Sa mundsett So much for my personal disappoint be well equipped to respond appropriately Farrer, ACT ment- but there is another aspect which I to future situations ...' There is, in this, would briefly ask you to consider. I bought a quite clear value placed on 'independ my first copy of Eureka Street (it was the ent thinking'. There are many who would Vale the joy of print one with Dean Moore's marvellous Easter question that. tide cover) at a news-stand. Not long after Others may well advocate instead that It was with great sadness that I read your becoming a subscriber I remember being children need to first lea rn the mores and letter outlining changes for Eureka Street. thrilled to see a lady reading the maga values of their culture. These may empha While understanding that it was a hard zine in a public space. This physical pres sise such things as honouring parents, obe decision that you have made with care ence of Eureka Street meant something. dience to authority and responsibilities to and thought, I will miss the hard copy As one who has particularly valued family and community. In one sense this immensely. Eureka Street's strong stance on social is really no different to the importance I carry it with me on trains, trams, buses, justice, it seems to me especially regret of learning the oral and written language planes, in the garden at coffee times, in table that a 'magazine of public affairs, of their society. Without such grounding waiting rooms, in bed for 20 minutes the arts and theology' should become they can never learn to use language cre before falling asleep. invisible, as if it were going underground. atively and in ways that enable them to I have always looked forward to the In my view this leaves not only many of communicate with others. physical pleasure of opening the packet, your readers, but the nation as a whole, I think it's a bit unfair to describe browsing and then mentally deciding the poorer-and more vulnerable. Brendan Nelson's proposal as something order of reading the most stimulating J. M. T. Groenewegen that would lead to asking children to and rewarding of articles, etc. from such NORTH RYDE, NSW 'swallow a state-sanctioned nine-point a wide range of people. Online will have code'. I also suspect it is nai:ve to think nowhere near the same attraction. children can talk through the issue It is a sad indictment of our current Correction of morality without first having some community va lues that I can go into the grounding in a moral code of some sort. local small country town newsagent and It was Sir Eugene Goossens who was It's like asking them to talk without ever find 20 almost identical glossy produc associated with Sydney identity Rosaleen having learnt speech. tions on 'lifestyle', all of them equally Norton, not Sir Charl es Mackerras, as Joe Goerke vapid and consumerist-oriented, yet D. L. Lewis stated in his review of Robert Lesmurdie, WA barely find one publication that has any Holden's book Cracl causes for that country's 2005 famine. And Roger Borr ell '>end In: l'Urek.lr" i<''>puh.j<'suil org .• lll or it is good information indeed. Port Fairy, VIC 1'0 Ho "i >I, Ri< hmond VI( 11.21 MARCH- APR IL 2006 EUREKA STREET 5 dioramas. Though the purpose of these always falsely represented; its honour is the months' is avowedly again to show 'what it was dishonest and its glory meretricious, but really like', they remind me of nothing so the challenge to spiritua I endurance, the traffic much as playing with toy soldiers when I intense sharpening of all the senses, the was a kid. In the WWII galleries, you can vitalising consciousness of common peril stand in a simulator, which gives you the for a common end, rema in to allure those noise sensation and vibration of a Lancas bo ys and gi rls who have just reached the ter Bomber taking off. Very exciting. age when love and fri endship and adven Terrible paradox The point I'm making may seem obvi ture ca ll more persistently than at any ous: if you take the terror, killing and later time. WAR GAMES A RE NOT CI-I ILD 'S PLAY maiming out of war, what you have is something like a kid's game, a parade with When I taught undergraduate midship drums and bugles, or a church remem men and cadets at the Australian Defence brance service. The emotions evoked by Force Academy, this passage always cre D OWNSTA 6 EU REKA STREET MARCH- Ai>Ril 2006 shock, battle fatigue, post-traumatic stress summa syndrome and the impact this has had on the lives of thousands of Australian theologiae families over the years. Something about the difficulties of homecoming after war would be salutary. I also would like to see the Discovery Room try at least to intro duce into its rationale the idea that wa r Liturgy in a time of terror isn't all fun and games. The Englishmen of Vera Brittain's gen eration were schooled in such a way as to embrace the idea of sacrifice in war fo r country and Empire. It would be nice to A M BOD NG M ARCH- APRIL 2006 EU REKA STR EET 7 flattest and driest country on earth, old boy,' he said in his languid Oxford drawl, 'but there's some excellent trout fishing, archimedes and it's got its own Shangri-La.' This Shangri-La of Hammond's had the curious, equally unforgettable name of Suggan Buggan. He told me it was near Positive thinking the Black- Allan line. The line, I was to discover, is that straight stretch of the NSW-Victorian border running from Cape Howe to the nearest source of the Mur S UMMeR AND 8 EUREKA STREET MARCH- APR IL 2006 were paved. There was much less snow It's a tough nut to crack, and if I had Against this background a friend and but many more visitors, and it was now a the answers I wouldn't be writing this. decided to walk St Cuthbert's Way: national park. But it may be time to revise our thinking two Australians tramping 96km from And there lies the conundrum. If each about our Shangri-Las. southern Scotland to northern England, of us seeks our Shangri-La, will there be midweek in mid-November. The trail any Shangri-Las left? -Anthony Taylor opened in 1996, a rare joint effort by local The days of white exploration had bureaucracies. They all wanted tourists to ended when James Hilton wrote Lost visit the Borders, a barren region outshone Horizon-the realisation of this could by the Highlands to the north and York have compelled him to write it. Another shire to the south. world war was looming, an escape to a A missionary's Rodney and I begin in Melrose, where perfect utopia was alluring, as it is now. Cuthbert, seventh-century monk, began After the war, there was the bomb. The lonely ramble his ministry. As we set out, I consider atomic age had all those men climbing, IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ST CUTHBERT what this man might teach today's ram when John Hammond found his version of bler. He was a tireless missionary who James Hilton's paradise. Perhaps what was roamed far and wide. He loved nature driving me to seek it were the tensions of and solitude, took life at a slow pace and our own beleaguered age. But wherever TmBW MARCH- APR IL 2006 EUREKA STREET 9 by the wa One more time around I, I 0 EUREKA STRE ET MARCH- APRIL 2006 capital letter Country character 0 NE m THE SET-nECE QUEST>ONS "ked of wouJd-be c•det allowed to compete in an open market. The contest between journalists at The Canberra Times in the early 1970s was about the two parties is particularly fierce in Queensland and Victo the future of the Country Party. Out of sheer sentiment, but ria; at state level there is scarcely the pretence of coalition. The also because the answers told one something about the appli defection of Julian McGauran from the Nationals to the Vic cant, I always asked the same question when I was interview torian Liberals-and his declaration that there is scarcely any ing and appointing 20 or 30 years later. The party had by now difference between the ideological approaches of the coalition become the National Party and was a very different creature parties-has spurred fresh discussion about the party's future, from that of Jack McEwen; its popular vote had fallen by nearly and about whether the Nationals would be better merging with 70 per cent, and its numerical representation in the federal par the Liberals. liament had halved-and that in a bigger parliament. But the It will not happen. But the Nationals will continue to sort of speculation that gave one a sensible answer in 1970- decline, even if their capacity to concentrate votes continues about changing rural demography, about changing rural and to give them seats in parliament. It will not happen because regional economics, about differentiating the National product any merger would promptly create a new party that would con from that of senior Liberal coalition partners, and about the tinue to take votes away from the merged entity. That's quite contradictions between pretending to be for free enterprise and apart from the capacity of new breeds of independents, such as believing in 'orderly markets'-held through all the while. Peter Andren, Tony Windsor or Bob Katter, to take seats from My grandfather was a founding member of the party nearly complacent Nationals. It will not happen because the party's 90 years ago, and, although he stayed in until his death, he never leadership could not maintain their power, influence or capac ceased to say how much it had disappointed him. The party he ity to acquire perks for themselves in a merged body. Not one had thought he had joined at Casino was to be something of a current National Party minister would be in Cabinet or the Peasant Party-an alliance of cockies, townspeople and rural ministry on intellectual merit, political skill or worthwhile labour with conservative morals, a vaguely socialist small ideas or ideals. It will not happen because some concentrated enterprise perspective and a deep suspicion of big business, rural interests, such as the sugar lobby, could never achieve, manufacturers, big cities and domination by powerful inter particularly from a Liberal Party of open-market orientation, est groups. Instead, he said, the NSW branch of the party was the boondoggles taken for granted in parts of rural Australia. fairly promptly seized by large squatting interests, particularly Indeed, the big problem can be seen in two ways. A dedi from the New England area, and had never effectively promoted cated National, for example, fears that the party is too much the interests of rural people, as opposed to those of big farm submerged inside the coalition, is seen by voters as being no ers. Moreover, it was heavily anti-Catholic in northern NSW, different from the Liberals and not successful in achieving spe with, as he said, the right of Catholic members such as himself cial benefits for rural constituencies. McGauran has aided this restricted to a veto over which wealthy Protestant was going to perception, but so have any number of Queensland Nationals, misrepresent him. not least the Barnaby Joyce push who think the best way the But the character of the party varied around the nation. party can maintain its vote is by loudly clamouring for atten The Victorian branch was more strongly dominated by small tion and being seen to achieve particular outcomes. This out farmers, the Queensland branch far more market intervention rages rural Liberals and more dedicated National coalitionists. ist. Branches in most of the other states had declined to next But the anger of many Liberals is also about fundamental eco to nothing by the late 1970s: the West Australian branch was nomic differences, and about the National Party's continuing never much more than a tiny rump. As various leaders faced fondness for intervening in markets, ambivalence about eco the fact of rural population decline, and the increasing lack nomic liberalism, and shamelessness about feathering nests, of efficacy of state-subsidised marketing schemes for wool, including its own. wheat, milk and other produce, efforts were made to broaden Indeed it might all come together in the inquiry into the the party's appeal. Australian Wheat Board's dealings with the Iraqi oil-for-food There were, in doing this, inherent economic contradic program. One can be fairly sure, given the flatness of the deni tions that accentuated the fact that the party's competition for als, that no one will ever prove that John Howard and Alex votes has always been primarily with the Liberal Party, not ander Downer knew anything about kickbacks or corruption. Labor. And that has been a competition which, at federal level With FAQ Nationals, however, intimate knowledge of murky in particular, the National Party has been losing: the Liber deals is pretty much SOP. • als have always held more rural seats than the Nationals, and continue to take seats away from them whenever they are Jack Waterford is editor-in-chief of Th e Canberra Times. M ARCH- APRIL 2006 EU REKA STREET 11 politi<' I David Corlett Redefining the Australian nation With the unlinking of the politics of asy lum from the debate over national identity, Au stralia is now within reach of an opportunity to engage in much-needed policy reform I LAH 2005, AusTRALIA's most Howard Government to redefine the Aus is taken to include the likes of Kath and famous asylum seeker family, the Bakhti tralian nation in response to the way it Kim of Fountain Gate, for whom the bat yaris, hit the headlines again. Nine was constructed under Labor and, partic tle is about deciding which of the intermi months after they had been forced from ularly, under the leadership of Paul Keat nable goods to buy next while excluding Australia to Pakistan, Fairfax journalist ing. But in many ways the Hawke/Keating those whose disability pensions are threat Paul McGeough revealed that the Afghan governments continued work begun under ened by current reforms) has been fought government had itself concluded that Whitlam and-arguably more impor out on a number of fronts including on the Mrs Bakhtiyari was indeed, as she had tantly-Fraser. Under Liberal and Labor questions of Aboriginal reconciliation and claimed, an Afghan. The fa mily's sup governments since the early 1970s, the the stolen generations, and in the history porters jumped up and down, shouting, 'I Australian nation had become increasingly wars, between 'black armband' and 'white told you so.' imagined as an inclusive place, a place in blindfold' historians. It has also been The Australian Government stuck to which, within certain limits-notably a fought out in the asylum-seeker area. its line that the Pakistanis had said that commitment to institutions such as the Because of this link between the poli Mr Bakhtiyari was a Pakistani, and that rule of law and parliamentary democ tics of asylum. and the politics of national was the end of the matter. Then, after an racy-difference was tolerated and even identity, it was impossible for those who ABC Lateline interview was aired, the celebrated. The fences associated with were interested in a more inclusive, more Government sought to even the score Australia's emerging immigration deten compassionate nation not to be interested with the same I-told-you-so line. Alamdar tion regime in the early 1990s marked in the way the politics of asylum was Bakhtiyari had apparently admitted that the outward limit of that tolerance: if you being played out. But engaging in the con the family had lied. arrived here without prior authorisation, flict for the nation did not always serve in The following day Alamdar's confes especially if you arrived by boat, you were the interests of developing better public sion was all over the media. Unfortu going to be treated harshly. policy in the asylum-seeker area. Indeed, nately, the ABC's admission that it had The struggle for the nation under for some people, the distinction between incorrectly transcribed the interview and Howard is, then, not only a response to the the politics of asylum and the politics of that the boy had said that he blamed his previous Labor administration, but a break national identity and their roles within predicament on his 'lawyers' and not his from the past two-and-a-half decades of these two-as advocates for individuals 'lies' received a whole lot less attention. both Liberal and Labor governments. and as activists for change both in asylum Notwithstanding this regrettable mis Importantly, it is a conflict in which a policy and in the national imagination take, the treatment of the Bakhtiyaris was group of people called 'ordinary Austral became blurred, as in the Bakhtiyari case. reminiscent of the fate that befell them ians' are pitted against the 'elites'-a mis There have recently been some posi while they were in Australia. nomer because it includes a pharmacist tive policy developments, most notably I began my book Following Them in rural New South Wales and a builder those negotiated by the Liberal Party Home: The Fate of the Returned A sylum on Victoria's Surf Coast but excludes the backbencher Petro Georgiou and his hand Seel< ers with a chapter about the Bakhti most powerful media commentators and ful of supporters. These have resulted in yari case. My conclusion was that the fam some of the wealthiest businesspeople in the release of many asylum seekers from ily had been caught up in a larger conflict the country. long-term detention. There is increased than one simply concerned with their well Keating-and to the extent that he hope for those people who were granted being. It was a conflict about how Aus was continuing the work of earlier prime only temporary protection after being rec tralia ought to respond to asylum seekers. ministers, they too- backed the special ognised as refugees by Australian immi But it was also more than this. It was part interest groups, including Aborigines and gration officials. of a larger battle about how the Australian mu lticulturalists, of the elites. These The Pacific Solution is also largely nation ought to be defined. I wrote that elites terrorised ordinary Australians obsolete. the family was positioned 'at the butt of a with their politically correct views, chas How should we understand these recent battering ram designed to demolish Aus tising them for their history of stolen land changes? What allowed them to occur? tralia's onshore protection regime and, to and racial exclusion and preventing them To be sure, the mid-2005 changes were the extent this symbolised it, the Howard from speaking freely about the direction the result of a number of factors. There has conception of the Australian nation'. in which they wanted their nation to go. been a slow thaw in policy for some time. The struggle for national identity is The fight to reclaim the nation for August 2004 amendments, for example, often understood as an attempt by the Howard's 'battler ' (another misnomer if it meant that temporary-protection visa I 2 EU REKA STRE ET MA RCH- APRIL 2006 holders could apply to remain in Australia boat arrivals in the late 1980s and early cal assistance, and with no welfare enti on grounds other than the ongoing need 1990s-and from the response to the so tlements. Because of this, they have little for protection. It is also true that the con called 'fourth wave' of asylum seekers-is chance to live-or even to return should tinuing indefinite detention of still con that public stoushes can harm the cause they be found not to be refugees-with siderable numbers of people was becoming of developing better policy in this area. dignity. There are possibly hundreds increasingly difficult to defend, particu The reason for this is that m any Austral maybe thousands-of people who live larly since the boats had stopped coming. ians are not supportive of a more generous with the trauma not only of the experi I have suggested in The Sydney Papers approach, preferring a hard line against ences before coming to Australia, but also that the key to the recent changes was the unauthorised arrivals. Political parties of their time in Australia. tragedy of Cornelia Rau. It was the Rau case that would seek too liberal a policy in this Then there are the mechanisms of that pushed the operation of our immigra area would, it seem s, only do so in a pub silent exclusion, such as the interception tion system into public consciousness in a lic way to their electoral detriment. at overseas airports of potential asylum more m eaningful way than has occurred With the unlinking of the politics of seekers, which, without much in the way before. Rau led to the Palmer Inquiry. And asylum from the debate over national of hard evidence, we can only suspect is Palmer and Rau gave political momentum identity we are now within reach of the preventing such people from even access to the Georgiou group's push for reform. most significant opportunity to engage in ing Australian territory, not to mention Something else has also occurred policy reform for arguably the past dec the protection determination process. to m ake change possible: Australia's ade, or even longer. And there are those towards whom, as approach to asylum seekers is no longer Maybe the cooler political environ I argue in my book, we continue to have an important site in which the battle for ment, combined with the recent revela obligations, because we returned them the nation's soul is being fought. tions of bureaucratic blunders and the prematurely to situations of danger and There are two reasons for this. First, contrition that the department is now insecurity or because we sent them back the boats are no longer coming. Since early displaying, mean that the time is right for as broken people. • 2002, only four asylum seeker boats that real policy reform to take place. have made it to Australia, the most recent And there are plenty of areas where David Corlett is a research associate in including 43 West Papuans. Whether reform is needed. Large numbers of asy politics at La Trobe University and the you believe that there were other factors lum seekers are currently living in the author of Following Them Home: The involved- including, for example, the fa ll Australian community without the right Fate of the Returned A sylum Seek ers of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, a bet to work or to access publicly funded medi- (Black Inc, 2005). ter relationship with Indonesia resulting in authorities there discouraging boats from leaving, declining asylum seeker numbers internationally, the sinking of the SIEV X- the Government is convincingly able to claim its policy of stopping the boat arriva l of asylum seekers a success. ReJax More broadly, the Government is now With-God unambiguously supreme in electoral - and- terms and indeed in its attempt to rede Minister fi ne the Australian nation. to Yourself This is a discom fo rting analysis for those who would w ish Austra lia to be more inclusive of the 'other ', m ore gen erous, more respectful of human rights and dignity. But it seem s possible that through its very dominance the Government m ay be more willing to engage in a genuine SAT Sabbatical Program debate about policy reform in the asy • Rest Self-contained, free and llcx iblc modules arc lum-seeker issue than it has before. This Time • Be Nurtu red specifica lly des i gned to ass ist indi1·iduals is the positive side of the decoupling of • Be Free to integrate theology, spirit uality, human to ... de1·elopm ent and ministry with their the politics of asylum from the politics of • Play national identity. lived ex peri ence. • Pray Four-month and Nine-mont h probrrams The highly politicised nature of the • Share New Idea s asylum-seeker issue has done little to SAT • School of pplied Theology assist in the creation of a more eff ective Graduate T heological Union and more just system of offering protec 2400 Ridge Road • Berkeley CA 94709 tion to those who need it in Australia. 1-800-831-0555 • 5 J 0-652- 1651 One of the things we learn from stud email satgtu <1!. aol.com ying the response to the Cambodian website www . sat~rtu .o rg MARCH- APR IL 2006 EU REKA STR EET 13 The final year of the Whitlam Government was tumultuous, but despite enormous obstacles and ultimate dismissal, the government implemented a visionary and far-reaching policy agenda that forever changed the face of Austral ia T,,' 975 CAB 14 EUREKA STREET MARCH- APRIL 2006 Gough Whitlam in 1975: 'Well may we say God save the Queen, because noth ing will save the Governor-General.' Photo courtesy the National Arch ives of Austra lia increased rapidly. At home, commodity rambling 20-page submission in May he wanted to go further, and proposed to prices and profits fell, and the balance of argued that controlling inflation should Cabinet that the totemic abolition of uni payments was an ongoing concern. be the primary goal, and advocated using versity and college fees could be reversed, In July 1974, Treasurer Frank Crean, wages policy, monetary measures and the pharmaceutical benefits scheme could running the Treasury line, argued to Cabi reducing the deficit. However, he urged be restricted and the child endowment net that the outlook was 'grim' and that the his colleagues not to 'surrender any sig abolished. These ideas were rejected. country faced 'an inflationary crisis'. He nificant part of our major social programs Other cuts were found. Despite Hayden's advocated reducing expenditure, increas and cultural advances', saying that 'it is goal of a $2.5 billion deficit for 1975-76, ing taxes, and other monetary measures. far better to be defeated while attempting it was projected to be $2.8 billion. It later Neither Crean nor Whitlam was able to to implement Labor policies than to be expanded to $3.5 billion . convince Cabinet. Jim Cairns replaced defeated after surrendering them'. Inexorably linked with the economic Crean as Treasurer in December 1974. In his memoirs, Whitlam said Cairns debates was the so-called 'loans affair'. It In late 1974, the Governor of the was 'undergoing an agonising reappraisal was this scandal that led directly to the Reserve Bank told the Treasurer he was of long-held personal and economic dismissal of the government. Fraser said 'concerned and apprehensive' about the beliefs' and espou sed 'the economics of the 'loans affair' provided the 'reprehen economy and feared that rising unemploy love'. Whitlam said Cairns failed to sup sible circumstances' it needed to delay ment and inflation 'could become much port his own submissions in Cabinet. He passage of the supply bills, unless the gov worse and the potential damage could be was sacked over the 'loans affair' mid ernment called an election for the House very severe'. year. Cairns was also dogged by media of Representatives. In 1975, Cabinet was divided over eco speculation about his relationship with The scandal began in 1974, when the nomic strategy. There were the economic his assistant Junie Morosi, for whom he Minister for Minerals and Energy, Rex troglodytes who failed to understand the had declared 'a kind of love'. Connor, secured approval for a US$4 bil changing economy and were wedded to When Hayden became Treasurer in lion dollar loan to fund national resource their policy ambitionsi Crean, who had June 1975, he was already well versed on projects. Cairns had also made inquiries argued for the adoption of Treasury's what action needed to be taken. In mid- about substantial loan raisings. Connor's deflationary approachi Cairns, who was 1974 Hayden argued to Cabinet that 'fis loan would be negotiated by a Pakistani unsure how to respond and also racked cal expenditures' needed to be 'pruned money trader named Tirath Khemlani, with personal struggles and marred by heavily'. The spending proposals, he said, who would source the funds from Arab political scandat Whitlam, who did not 'seem too grand in scale for the present investors. The decision to attempt to offer strong leadership in Cabineti and circumstances'. Now Treasurer, he argued secure the funds was done without Loan Bill Hayden, who recognised the need for the 'economic malaise' was due to 'rapid Council approval and outside of Treas expenditure reductions and a mix of other inflation', but acknowledged 'a significant ury's normal channels. Khemlani would measures, and who would become the contributing factor has been our attempt earn a US$100 million commission if he third Treasurer in less than three years. to push ahead a little too quickly with our secured the loan. In fact it is Hayden who emerges from the social and economic goals. He said the Treasury argued forcefully against the Cabinet records as the most clear-eyed deficit was heading to 'about' $4.8 billion, loan, saying Khemlani was 'highly sus and prescient political analyst of all the and would cause 'pervasive psychological pect', and made a 'note for file' express figures of the era. shock' in the community. Cutting expend ing 'doubts about the legality' of the loan, The key issue was reducing expendi iture was the only way forwardi the 'sim arguing it was perhaps a 'sting' operation ture. In 1973-74 expenditures had increased ple Keynesian world' many ministers were or 'a confidence trick of elaborate pro by 20 per cent-the largest increase in two accustomed to was long gone, he said. portions'. Concerns were also raised by decades. In 1974, Crean had argued to Cabi Further, Hayden argued to Cabinet that the Attorney-General's Department and net that the proposed 32 per cent increase if drastic measures were not taken now: the Reserve Bank, but this advice was in expenditures for 1974-75 was 'economi ignored. An Executive Council meeting Our drive for social and economic reform cally irresponsible' and would lead to 'the in mid-December 1974, with Governor through redistribution will be discredited worst of all worlds'. In February 1975 Cairns General Sir John Kerr absent, authorised for a decade or more. Our record as a gov warned Cabinet that budget expenditure the loan arrangements. ernment will be jeered at and our capacity would now likely increase by 42 per cent. However, Khemlani could not secure to manage the basic affairs of the country He said the deficit would be 'several times' the funds. Connor's loan authority was ridiculed. If we don't courageously and the estimated $570 million. revoked in January 1975. But he later responsibly handle the present economic But it was soon clear that Cairns won approval for a US$2 billion loan. problems successfully, we will be seen was anything but clear about what to do Details soon leaked of the government's to have wasted our chance to fulfil these about the economy. In early 1975, Cairns plans, and when no funds were secured, promises we held out and talked about so warned Cabinet that 'the economic situa the authority was revoked on 20 May. In articulately for so long. tion is very bad', yet argued there were 'no October, the press revealed that Connor quick solutions'. While acknowledging By June, $2 billion in savings had been had continued to negotiate with Khem the need to reduce expenditure, he argued identified. Tom Uren said in a letter to lani after the authority was revoked. Con that the implementation of the govern Whitlam that the cuts to his programs nor was forced to resign. ment's policies must be paramount. In a were 'totally unacceptable'. Hayden Meanwhile, Cairns had also sought to MARCH- APRIL 2006 EUREKA STREET 15 ra i e overseas loans and had offered Mel Whitlam also presented a letter sent to train the events that led to the dismissal. bourne businessman George Harris a 2.5 him by the nephew of the then NSW Gov It is what prompted Fraser to delay sup per cent brokerage fee. Yet Cairns denied ernor, Sir Roden Cutler. It argues that ply. Better oversigh t of ministers and the the existence of any letters confirming Cutler had advised Kerr aga inst dismiss heeding of advice not to proceed with the these arrangements. But letters did exist, ing the government. Whitlam also argued loan might have avoided the scandal. and when it was realised he had misled Par that Kerr's claim- that had he discussed Yet, the denial of the legitimacy of the liament, he was sacked from the ministry. with Whitlam his plans, Whitlam would government should also not be forgot ten. The Cabinet papers illuminate all of have contacted the Queen to have him Within months of com ing to office, Oppo these events, particularly the associated sacked- was nonsense. Whitlam pro sition Leader Billy Snedden and Senate departmental fi les held in the Attorney duced papers appointing and withdrawing Leader Reg Withers had embarked upon General's Department, Treasury and the Queensland Governor Colin Hannah's dor a strategy to delay passage of supply in Prime Minister's Department. m ant commission, which enabled him to order to force the government to an elec The most significant event of 1975 act as governor-general in Kerr's absence. tion, which it achieved in 1974. was the dismissal of the government. They show that an appointment cannot be Then there are Kerr's secret negotia The sequence of events is well known. terminated, but can only come to an end tions with Fraser, his deception of the The opposition was continuing to delay when another is appointed, and that these Prime Minister, his collusion with the passage of the government's supply bills. steps took time. He also presented former Chief Ju stice against the Prime Minis Fraser called for a House of Representa governor-general Paul Hasluck's personal ter's wishes, his ambush, and failure to tives election. Whitlam phoned Kerr on notes showing his candid discussions with let Pa rliament resolve what was a parlia the morning of 11 November and said he Whitlam, and questioned why Kerr could mentary deadlock. intended to advise a half- senate election not take him into his confidence. Fraser also better understood Kerr's in person later in the day. Kerr, accord Following the dismissal, Fraser agreed psyche. Fraser used his meetings and ing to new accounts, spoke to Fraser and not to initiate any new policies, or hold any phone calls with Kerr-sanctioned by essentially outlined his plans before tell inquiries into the previous government, Whitlam- to apply political pressu re on ing Whitlam . At about 1pm, Kerr, armed until after the forthcoming election. The Kerr, saying that if he didn't intervene, wit h the supporting advice of the Chief Cabinet papers show that 'certain com the opposition would say the Governor Justice of the High Court, Sir Garfield Bar plaints' had been made to Kerr and that General had 'failed his duty'- wick, dismissed Whitlam and installed he referred these to Fraser for 'advice'. A Perhaps the real legacy of the dis Fraser as 'caretaker' Prime Minister. (This request by new Treasurer Phillip Lynch missal is that a precedent now exists for advice was also supported by judges Sir for information on the previous govern a government elected by the people to be Anthony Mason and Sir Ninian Stephen ment's expenditures was rejected by 'cer dismissed by a governor-general elected although not k nown at the time.) Supply tain officers' in the department, and they by no one. was secured. A no-confidence motion in petitioned the Governor-General for advice No period in Austra lia's history has Fraser was passed by the Hou se of Repre on the 'caretaker guidelines'- Labor mem had so much attention as the Whitlam sentatives. Kerr dissolved both houses of bers John Wheeldon and Doug McClel Government. The scale and breadth of its Parliament on the basis of 21 other bills land wrote to the Governor-General about achievements, led by a rem arkable leader, being rejected. The Queen was kept in the similar incidents. Fraser responded that yet spoiled by scandals and su rrounded dark and later refused to intervene. At the his government would 'strictly and scru by high dram a, and ultimately dismissed election held on 13 December, Labor was pulously' adhere to the guidelines. in controversial circu mstances, have pro routed; its vote fe ll by 6.5 per cent and 30 While the latest release of Cabinet vided much fo dder for journalists, com eats are lost. papers may provide a few new clues to mentators and scholars. The papers show that the strategy to the coup, that is not their primary sig Despite the scandals, the frenetic 'not call an election in the House of Rep nificance. What is significant is that the style of government and the dismissal, resentatives' was endorsed by Cabinet. warning signs for the government were this government now wa rrants a m.ore A special 'ad hoc' committee wa s also there from the beginning; indeed, many detailed and considered analysis. But cen established to deal with the crisis. Cabi of the later problem s which culminated tre stage should be the legacy of the entire net authorised 'expenditure control meas in the dismissal, perhaps, could have government, not lea t the substantial pol ures' as supply was drying up and began been avoided. This is the real tragedy of icy achievem ents, now with additional planning for pay ment of salaries through the Whitlam years. insight thanks to these Cabinet papers. • private trading banks. Treasury advised The drive to implement far-reach that salary payments could be met up to ing reform, almost regardless of the eco Troy Bramston is a policy adviser in the 30 November. Whitlam said at the embar nomic consequences, or consideration of private sector. He has written articles for goed release of the papers that the Loan the need for gradualism in implementing Eurel 16 EU REKA STRE ET MAR H- APR IL 2006 lll(IOil Peter Rodgers The greatest game A ND T H< H o m g"hm d to got hoc, 'Cricket is the Lord's work,' said its 'Lord, might it be possible to have grumbling among them selves. defenders. The others fell silent. a word in private?' asked the youngest They approached the Lord saying, 'Now But not for long. For the feeling that member of the delegation, a handsome, don't get us wrong and we're really grate Cricket wasn't all it might be gradually clean-cut man in his early 90s. ful fo r the way you got us out of Egypt. gained strength. Teams were hard to mus 'Well, I suppose so,' sa id the Lord. But quite frankly things get a bit quiet in ter, very few turned up to training, and 'Wh at's your name?' the desert, especially at weekends.' crowd attendances dropped sharply. A del 'Moses,' replied the man. 'What's your point?' asked the Lord. egation was despatched to meet the Lord. 'OK, Moses, see that hill over there. Be 'Well,' said the people, 'we wondered if 'What is it now? ' H e demanded. at the top at midnight.' we could invent some sort of game-.' 'We thank You daily for all You have 'Thank you Lord.' 'I'm the inventor around here,' the given us,' the delegation leader intoned. Next morning, as the people gathered Lord reminded them sharply. 'But,' he paused for a moment, 'the truth around their campfi res to cook breakfast, 'Of course, of course,' said the people. is that, um, Cricket in its current form is Moses appeared, a look of triumph on his 'Sorry. Perhaps You could create a ga me to not holding the community's attention .' tired fac e. provide carefree family entertainment and 'And why not?' asked the Lord tetchily. 'Here at last is the answer,' he pro encourage a sense of team spirit amongst 'Well it goes for a bit too long and often claimed, unfurling a chalk-white parch the young.' it goes nowhere.' m ent. The people gathered around and 'Let me sleep on it,' said the Lord. 'I'll 'All right,' said the Lord, 'I'll see what read aloud in wonderment. let you know tomorrow.' I can do. Again,' he added, with heavy One- One Cricket- the rules 'Does the Lord really sleep too?' asked emphasis. 'But I really don't know how Each side shall consist of 12 players, one of one little boy in the crowd. any of you will get to Heaven if you can't whom shall be nominated as umpire; Each 'Shhh', his mother warned. keep your mind on one thing even for a side shall bowl a maximum of one over; The next morning the gong sounded few days.' No bowler shall bowl more than one ba ll; and the people assembled promptly. 'Thank you Lord,' the delegation No batsm an shall face more than one ball; 'OK,' said the Lord, 'I've come up with sighed in unison, anxious to be away. The position of wicketkeeper shall rotate a game called Cricket. It'll be played over 'He's in a great m ood,' one of them after each ball; Whoever is wicket keeping five days and will be called a Test.' whispered sarcastically. shall assume the position of tea m captain; 'There He goes aga in,' muttered a mid 'Quiet! ' the leader snapped. 'Have n't Whenever the ball is hit, no matter how dle-aged man, 'always testing us. Can't you heard of omniscience?' near or fa r, the batters must run; A ball hit He give us a break just for once? And five 'Oops, sorry. Do you think He might to the boundary scores five runs, plus any days, how ridiculous!' have-?' additional ones run by the batsmen while 'That's enough, dear,' soothed his wife. 'Forget it! Just watch your tongue.' the ball is being fi elded; A ba ll hit over the 'Here are the rules,' the Lord contin But the Lord was as good as His word . boundary on the full scores lO runs, plus ued. 'I've had them carved into these stone And so One-Day Cricket came to pass. any additional ones run by the batsmen tablets. Mind you study them well.' 'Halleluja h, Hallelujah,' the crowd while the ball is being retrieved; Ba lls hit 'Yes Lord,' replied the crowd, 'thank cried out. 'God is the greatest and so is 50- to or over the boundary must be returned you Lord for Cricket. We shall play it in 0 vers-a- Side Cricket.' Contentment lay without delay by spectators. Thy name.' across the community like a thick wool And they did. And they were content len blanket on a cold clear night. As they fi nished reading, the people and peace and healthy sporting attitudes And then, amazingly, the rumbles of fell to their knees. 'Oh Lord, provider bound the community closely together. discontent started all over again. of all that is good, we give thanks for But after a while, fresh grumbling 'A whole day to watch one game, what One- One Cricket. Through it You have could be heard. a waste!' ensured that never aga in will our inter 'It's a silly game,' a few of the men 'I could pick half my olive harvest by est wane or our concentration lapse.' said . 'It goes for so long and sometimes the time the game's fi nished' ' I wonder about that, thought the Lord, there's not even a winner and they call it a 'The crowd behaviour's just disgrace I really wonder. But He kept His doubts "draw". What a stupid word . Or occasion ful. Why don't they ban the sale of pome to Himself. • ally, on the fourth or fifth day, it gets a bit granate juice at the grounds?' interesting and then there's a dust storm So another delegation was despatched. Peter Rodgers writes reg ularly on Middle or a flash flood and still there's no result.' 'What is it with you lot?' the Lord Eastern affairs. His latest book on the 'But we asked for it in the first place,' asked in exasperation. 'Can't you keep Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Herzl' some of the other men chided. your mind on anything for more than five Nightmare: One Land, Two People 'We asked for something that would minutes?' (Scribe). He has also written prize kill time, not drag it out endlessly.' 'No,' the delegation replied sheepishly. winning short fiction. MARCH-APRIL 2006 EUREKA STREET 17 Anthony Ham A sorry tale of human bondage In drought-ravaged, impoverished Niger, slavery is still a way of life for many F AnMA" ON< mTm lucky on". ing what other people do.' And then were cited as common punishments for Every day since she could walk, without she smiles. real or imagined disobedience. Some slaves exception, she has worked from before Asibit, another former slave in her were tied in chains or to a stake in the sun sunrise until long after sunset. She has 50s who managed to escape and whose or to the neck of an animal for days on end. never been allowed to eat, get married or parents were slaves before her, already Most knew someone who had been thrown have sex with her husband without some knows how to live in freedom. 'I have clown a well and left to drown. one else's permission. She doesn't under never known happiness until this month Tagou Amagal, from Tcssaoua in south stand the concept of money because she of freedom,' she says. 'Now I can go to bed ern Niger, was born a slave. Her parents has never had any. Fatima is 53 years old. when I want. No one insults me. Now were slaves. Now 90 years old, she tells of Fatima lives in Niger, a landlocked that I am free I can do as I please.' a life in which she has never known free West African state that was, until fam In Niger, a staggering eight per cent dom. 'I have suffered torture; as you can ine thrust it to international attention in of the population-870,363 people-are see, one of my legs is life less. My children 2005, one of the least-known countries slaves, according to an authoritative are used as bedposts, made to carry the on Earth. But even in good years, Niger report by Timidria, a local anti-slavery master's bed throughout the night.' stands on the brink of perpetual emer NGO with affiliations to Anti-Slavery Islamana, from Gadabeji, can only gency, a sand-scoured country whose only International (ASI). watch powerless when her two daughters natural resource-uranium- is a dirty Later verification of these figures sug 'are treated like goats. The master invites word on international markets. Green is gested that some double counting was men to sleep with them.' a colour you rarely see here-hardly sur involved. Studies also found that the final Slavery of this kind has existed in prising given that just three per cent of figure included people who are slaves by West Africa for centuries. The arrival of the country's land is suitable for agricul birth and social status and who are offi European traders in Africa from the 15th ture. That three per cent, huddled into the cially owned by masters but who do not century accelerated the trade in slaves, extreme south-west of the country, will live under their daily supervision. Of resulting in the mass transportation of an soon be engulfed by the Sahara Desert in those who suffer from the worst form of estimated 11 million slaves to European its southward march. slavery, Timidria fou nd 46,382. colonies in the Americas. Niger's human landscape is no less Stories told by slaves to Timidria offer When the French-Niger's former colo grim. According to the United Nations, up a bleak vision of hell in describing the nial rulers-arrived at the beginning of the it is the worst place in the world in which world which Fatima and Asibit left behind. 20th century, up to three-quarters of the to live. The average Nigerien earns less To be a slave in Niger means many population in some areas of what is now than a dollar a day and 85 per cent of the things. If you are a woman, it means you Niger were slaves. The French army and adult population can neither read nor will be raped and your children will be administrators came with lofty ideals write. One out of every three Nigeriens taken from you at the age of two to elim slavery was abolished under French law in is malnourished. inate family bonds. You will most likely 1848-and they did succeed in largely end If Niger is, among nations, the poorest never see your child again. If you arc a ing the commercial trade in slaves. of the poor, then people like Fatima are man, you will either be castrated or given They did little, however, to free those truly the wretched of the Earth. the role of 'stud', forced to impregnate already held captive. In some cases, Until recently, Fatima was a slave, a slave women to produce more slaves for French officers even paid their soldiers in forgotten vestige of an institution that the master. Thus is slavery perpetuated slaves-concubines, porters and domes continues to stalk Africa like a dark across generations. If you are a child, you tic workers-from among Niger's con spectre of the continent's past. But even are born a slave and you will be set to work quered people. though Fatima spent all but the last few from the moment you can walk. You may Since the early colonial era, distress months of her life-more than five dec never in your life enjoy a day of freedom. ingly little has changed. The impoverished ades-in captivity, she is lucky. She man All slaves-women, men, children governments of Niger since independence aged to escape. who were interviewed by Timidria had in 1960 have had neither the means- Niger Now she must, like a child, learn been beaten. Many had been branded with is a vast country of poor roads and remote what it means to live in freedom. When hot irons like cattle. The denial of food or desert settlements-nor the inclination asked her plans for the future, her answer medical care was routine. Public undress to eradicate slavery. After all, traditional is simple: 'I shall try to live by watch- ings or other ritual forms of humiliation chiefs-Niger's most powerful slave own- 18 EUREKA STR EET MARCH- APR IL 2006 ers-continue to exercise de facto power to attend the ceremony nor to speak to For a man who at the time was president throughout much of the country and even the media. of Ecowas (the regional grouping of West serve as the government's representatives Then, in early May, the head of Timid African states) and whose economy is kept and judges of law. ria and winner of ASI's Global Anti-Slavery afloat by foreign aid, confirmation that But it didn't have to be like this, and Award for 2004, Ilguilas Weila, was arrested slavery was widespread in Niger would for the briefest of periods after 2002 an end along with five other Timidria workers. have been a grievous embarrassment. to slavery in Niger seemed within reach. Six days later, four were released, but Mr In June, after six weeks in prison- and That was the year that Timidria began Weila and his colleague, Alassane Biga, at a time when Niger was gripped by a with the full knowledge and blessing of were formally charged with spreading false famine which Mamadou would also deny Niger's government-to conduct 11,000 information, attempted fraud and falsely existed- Ilguilas Weila and Alassane Biga interviews nationwide in order to ascer eliciting money from foreign donors. were finally released on bail. The charges tain the full extent of slavery in Niger. Romana Cacchioli of ASI denounced against the men are still pending. The release of Timidria's preliminary the arrests as part of 'a concerted cam So it is that slavery survives in Africa report in 2003 sparked outrage in Niger's paign not only to discredit the reputation into the 21st century; that an entire coun media and prompted the government to and work of Timidria, but also to silence try is held captive by hereditary chiefs introduce an am endment to the crimi efforts to end slavery in the country'. whose prestige depends upon the owner- nal code whereby slavery became illegal for the first time in Niger's history. Under the new law, slave owners were liable to prison terms of 30 years unless they released their slaves. A working committee of the govern ment-dominated parliament praised Tim idria for its work, called on the media to publicise the report and demanded that govern ment agencies and traditional chiefs actively seek to stamp out slavery. In December 2003, dozens of slaves were freed in a public ceremony near Tahoua in central Niger. Among those experiencing freedom for the first time, there were tears of joy as Timidria dis tributed certificates attesting to their status freed slaves, along with money to assist them in starting a new life. The only sour notes were sounded by government soldiers, who confiscated the equipment of journalists report ing the ceremony, and the grumbling of the local governor, who told report ers that slavery did not exist in Niger. Then it all started to go horribly wrong. In March 2005, with journalists and local dignitaries already assembled, Niger's government abruptly cancelled a ceremony in In Ates, close to the Malian border, to free 7000 slaves-95 per cent of the local population. The government human rights commission-the co-spon sors and organisers of the event-said that the cancellation was because 'slavery Niger's democratically elected presi ship of people and by a president who is as does not exist in Niger'. Niger has a caste dent, Tandja Mamadou-who was in 2004 desperate to remain in the international system, the commission said, which is singled out by President Bush as a shining spotlight as his people are to survive; that often mistaken for slavery. example of good governance in Africa women like Fatima and Asibit are forced Reports began to emerge from the area remained silent on the issue. But it was an to run for their lives, here, somewhere where the ceremony was to have taken open secret among Western diplomats in close to the end of the Earth. • place that the slaves and their owners Niger that those who disrupted slave-free were intimidated by government soldiers ing ceremonies and arrested Ti midria's Anthony Ham is Eurelw Street's roving and told under threat of violence neither activists were doing Mamadou's bidding. correspondent. M ARCH- APRIL 2006 EU REKA STRE ET 19 journcy:l Isabel Huggan Mystery of the monastere Four days in a French convent were not enough to satisfy the curiosity of this w riter L , 'AY THAT " LONG " you congregation of Saint Michael's was an gate opening into a cobblestone courtyard remain curious about life, you stay young. exotic minority that merited scrutiny. seemed too ready to close. What if we had If that's true, I've just lost a few decades Catholics were a mystery for the rest of nothing to say to each otherz and am back in my late teens-the age I us who were not. We heard they spoke Latin She met me at the door to the h6tel was when I last saw Sister Margaret-Mary, and worshipped idols, and we knew for sure lerie, wearing a dark headdress and a who was then 13 and known as Meg. We they committed the unpardonable sin of cream-coloured ankle-length robe caught probably never spoke but were familiar playing bingo in the church basement. We at the waist by a belt on which hung a long in the way children are in small towns, smelled the incense if the windows were wooden rosary. Her face was shining with even if their lives never actually collide. open when we passed and it made us giddy welcome. Laughing, kissing each other So I am deeply curious about why fate with excitement and curiosity. on the cheek three times in the fashion of has arranged that, all these years later, I remembered all this as I read that first the south, we began: she is now in my life, and I in hers-and letter, and when later she invited me to 'Sister ... um, Meg?' surprised beyond words to find myself, a visit her convent, which has an attached ' Isabel!' lapsed Protestant with vaguely Buddhist h6tellerie to accom.modate guests, I 'I'd have known you anywhere!' tendencies, kneeling in prayer in the might have gone immediately had not ill 'You haven't changed!' chapel of a Dominican convent. health intervened-two rounds of neuro There we were, late-middle-aged I may not understand why, but at least surgery that kept me homebound and in women far from home, and our delight I know how: it's because, in 2003, I pub Sister Margaret-Mary's prayers, for which in seeing each other was childlike in its lished a memoir called Belonging. Among I was, and am, grateful. Finally recovered exuberance. It was as if we were carry its themes was the idea of home, the place in October last year, I decided to go to ing with us the entire town from which we are from and the place we are now-in thank her for those prayers. I felt the long we came; faces, voices, memories swirled my case, the south of France where my sweet tug of nostalgia, and also a sense of around us as we held hands and looked husband and I have settled in the foothills obligation: to her, to the old teacher for into each other's eyes with wonderment. of the Cevennes. Back in my hometown his kindly intervention, and to the small What was this all aboutz in Canada, my old chemistry teacher, town that nourished us. But most of all I The Sister in charge of the h6tellerie now 96 and in a seniors' residence, read felt a duty to my own gods of chance and was summoned and immediately took Belonging with interest, for his daughter serendipity spinning their web around me up to a plain but comfortable bed and I were childhood friends, and one of the planet. I may not adhere to any con room with a window looking over a broad his regular visitors is Sister Margaret ventional doctrine, but I do believe this: river and smoothly rolling hills outside Mary's mother. Together, they figured being part of a delicate filigree of remem the town. As suggested on the convent's out that her daughter's convent is only a brance and reconnection makes growing web site, I had brought my own sleeping few hours from where I live: he had my old worth the effort. bag and towel, quickly unpacked them address, and thus it was passed to Sister And so, late in the northern autumn, and went down to the dining room for Margaret-Mary who wrote a brief, inquir I boarded a train that took me out of the the noonday meal: green salad, mush ing note two years ago. Cevennes, passing by savagely beauti room omelette with potatoes, bread and 'Do you remember me?' she asked, ful landscape-rocky crags and cliffs, cheese to follow, apple sauce for dessert, and there was something so wistful about forests turning yellow and bronze, wild biscuits and coffee. On the table, a pitcher the question that I replied quickly in the rivers foaming down mountainsides and of water and a bottle of robust red wine. affirmative-after checking an old school through green valleys. When I arrived at My first meal was solitary but from then yearbook from 1961, located with other my destination (an undistinguished and on I always had company-women on souvenirs in the attic. Yes, there she was, sombre provincial town), I asked direc retreat, visiting relatives, parish priests in the first grade of high school when I tions to the monastere, hoisted my back and good conversation. Guests do not eat was in the last, and I could recall her par pack and walked along in the brilliant with nuns and, unless they've come to ents and her family, and even the name midday sunshine, full of apprehension. I see a particular Sister, have little contact of her church, Saint Michael's. Her fam had booked a room for four days: what if I with the order. Sister Margaret-Mary and ily was Catholic and, in our town with a couldn't stand it? Suddenly, the high walls I would meet twice a day-for an hour or population of 2000 where there were 13 of square-cut stone around the convent more in the late morning and again in the churches and 12 of them Protestant, the seemed forbidding, and the heavy iron late afternoon-but the rest of the time I 20 EUREKA STREET MARCH- APR IL 2006 would be on my own. I could walk by the as about the general state of 'being a nun', bed at nine after Vigiles, I am filled with river, stroll through the town, or sit in the about which I knew nothing except from a profound sense of well-being. ga rden to m editate or to read. films and books. Some of that information The Sisters of this Monastere have a rep Before leaving home, I'd decided to bring was wildly attractive (Audrey Hepburn in utation for their fine a cappella, but they a book I was finding difficult, reasoning The Nun's Story influenced a generation do not sing for others, they sing for God. that with fewer distractions I would focus of Protestant girls to dream of being Cath Over the course of my visit (even getting my attention more intently. The book, The olic with high cheekbones) and some of it up in the pitch dark for Laudes at 6:15am), Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, I'd sad and shocking, such as Karen Arm this realisation took hold as I sat at the purchased after reading His Dar], Materi strong's poignant memoir Through the back of the chapel, hearing their voices als, a controversial trilogy for children in Narrow Gate. Never, until now, had I the rise from the hidden choir stalls-like which the author, Philip Pullman, uses opportunity to talk with anyone who had morning mist swirling up from a river plot devices based on quantum physics: chosen-or been called-to celebrate God knowing that they could not see whether alternate realities, parallel worlds, infi with her life. others were listening. This seemed so dif nitely expanding possibilities. I'd found Her life . ferent from the churchy singing I recalled myself curious about the workings of Pull Every waking hour spent in the pres from my Protestant girlhood, urged by the man's mind, and realised I had to go to the ence of other women in the service of choirmaster not only to enunciate clearly source of his ideas; hence, Greene's book, God the Father, God the Son, and God the but also to smile and reach out to the con which deals with current notions about Holy Spirit. Not to m ention Mary, and the gregation with the holy force of song. Our space and time-what is called space Saints. Every day spent in an unbreak hymns and anthems were cast like nets time. With scant scientific background, I able chain of prayer and worship, every to bring sinners in, chorus after chorus. knew that even m aterial written for 'the day held firmly in the chains of faith. Here, the nuns weren't even trying, but general public' would be hard going, they were gathering me in. and it was. Here were concepts I'd Still, questions plucked at never encountered, and not only my sleeve. How can my soul that, most of what Greene describes respond to this music at the same is invisible, reliant on mathemati (, ... I sat at the back of the chapel, time as I continue to be critical cal substantiation instead of actual hearing their voices rise from the of the Church itself: outmoded, observation. even dangerous attitudes toward However, unable to refuse, I hidden choir stalls . .. 'J 'J women, birth control, condoms, also accepted reading material in divorce, homosexuality? I look at the h6tellerie: books and maga my hands, folded in prayer over zines tracing the lives of saints the bench in front of me, and am and martyrs, including Sainte Therese de Year after year within the confines of the struck by my wedding ring-a band of Lisieux, whose ornate reliquary of bones cloisters and the gardens, in a pattern so precious gold. Everything related to the is constantly circling the globe, bringing perfect it never needs altering because mining of gold-environmental pollution, miraculous cures to believers from the one size fits all: everything is done to the inhumane working conditions, destruc banlieues of Paris to the Seychelles. At glory of God. After I've been there a while, tion of family- should lead to rejection of first I found the saintly histories so quaint I try this idea on to see how it feels-the this substance and the harm it causes. Yet and strange-miracles are not part of the simplicity and the clarity of purpose is I look at the ring, and think 'beautiful'. Yet Presbyterian tradition from which I come so attractive, it slips over me as easily as I hear the liturgy and think 'beautiful'. and, to me, self-induced suffering in the silk, yet when I try to move I discover it In four days, what do I learn? Not name of love seems peculiar- that I only is too tight, too constricting. But when I enough to satisfy my curiosity. I know I skimmed them as relief from Greene's study my new friend's serene demeanour, must come back, and back again. First, weighty concepts. Slowly, however, I saw I understand that for her it has been the Sister Margaret-Mary and I have begun astounding similarities between these only choice. a friendship neither of us could have two, seemingly polar, extremes. So much In the chapel, where I go five times predicted and I want to see where that is unseen. So much must be taken on a day when offices are sung, a life-sized will take us. Second, being in this place faith or in the belief that numbers do not Christ hangs on a slender cross behind allows me to embrace the ambivalence I lie. The world is full of mystery we seek the altar, the long muscles in his arms feel, posed between incredible religion to explain, and so much that happens is stretched and pulled by the nails in his and incomprehensible science. A Roman unexplainable. Discoveries in science can hands. Such suffering-and what appears Catholic convent m ay not be where I suddenly invalidate ideas we've held with to be glorification of torture in aid of belong for more than a few days, but in conviction: no, the Earth is not the centre mankind-when contemplated at the this setting my mind roams freely-seek of the universe. One must keep the mind same moment as the exquisitely sung ing, finding, taking notes. • open to all possibilities. music of the liturgy, confuses me, and I Why was I there? Curio ity, no doubt, withdraw into a neutral, agnostic state. Isabel Huggan is an award-winning Cana not so much about Sister Margaret-Mary Nevertheless, my heart soars as light dian writer who now lives in France. Her (not until she'd spent several years work floods through the st ained glass windows most recent book, Belonging, is available ing in France did she realise her vocation), as Vepres is being sung, and I when I go to through Random House Australia. MARCH- APRIL 2006 EUREKA STREET 2 1 p(H t r\ Danny Fahey and Ouyang Yu The Kingsbury Tales: the storetnan's tale In Kingsbury, when sumn1er is not yet available And spring is but another season of pollens or hua fen Revolutions In the lead up to An occasion Full sick I am, That makes the warehouse storeman heart like a stamped upon grape, head lost in the backwaters Increasingly uncomfortable where regret dwells like ancient pike As he prepares for eager to feast. More Christmas sales and boredom I have lost the path. The longer I stay, he says I have sundered the light. I have become my father In this country in the eyes of my son! The stupider I grow If you know what I mean Full sick I am, Money made us juices dried up, Us made money thoughts a pack of barking dogs fighting over my bones. And money made money I have failed the test. I hated ballet dancing I have embraced the dark. But when I started I hear my father's voice I was only 5 as I shout at my son! And made my way To the top Full sick I am, tired to the core, Then I quit shedding tears at night At 20 while my son sleeps - For this is a profession wanting to embrace him You eat youth rice in promising to manage things better You have to be young and knowing In it it is not easy to untangle knots To make it woven in me years before Or else my son ever saw the light of day. You become a storeman Like me Danny Fahey Or a stockbroker Like Cunxin or Tsunhsin Keeping Faith Is never part of the deal The important thing is keep your kids alive Ouyang Yu 22 EU REK A STRE ET M ARCH- APRIL 2006 I T's wRnT£N MARCH- APR IL 2006 EUREKA STREET 23 journcv:2 Gillian Bouras Tracking twins A UTUMN m CAMBR 24 EUREKA STREET MARCH- APR IL 2006 their interests, chief among which were lated into modern Greek, and hired a cou and his disciples. Theological and eccle travelling and the learning of languages: rier named Angelos, who then engaged siastical circles were enthralled; the text at the time of their deaths they had mas two servants to act as cook and waiter. was to the 19th century what the Dead tered 14 between them. Five horses and four mules catered for the Sea Scrolls were to the 20th. Once an incentive to learning, travel party and its luggage, the latter animals Professors Burkitt, Rendell Harris and later became a distraction in time of being cared for by three muleteers dressed Bensley and the twins then set about the trouble: in 1868 Agnes and Margaret, in what has become part of Greek national task of transcription with such dedica dragging a reluctant Grace along with them, dress, the Albanian fu stanella. tion that the work was published in 1894. journeyed to Egypt and Greece in order to From the balcony of my house in the Similar dedication went into the transla recuperate from the shock of Smith's death Peloponnese I can see a white rectangu tion of the whole document, 358 pages in and from the strain of 18 months' strict lar shape set against a mountain some all; Agnes spent 17 years on this work, mourning. Nothing daunted the twins: ten kilometres away: the Voulcano mon and the sisters made four more trips to they endured rat-infested cabins, rows with astery. Here the twins spent the Easter of St Catherine's, visiting the monastery for river-boat captains, tumbles from the backs 1883, used their London-acquired modern the last time in 1906, when they were 63. of camels and the disquieting knowledge Greek to engage in spasmodic theological The twins' publications run to five-and that several travellers had been killed by arguments with the monks, and gazed out a-half pages of titles, but in 1917 Agnes's bandits along the track from Jerusalem to over most of Messenia, which, they noted, final word on her discovery was published: Jericho a mere week before they went that was studded with villages. It still is. The Light on the Four Gospels from the Sinai way themselves. Agnes had become gravely Voulcano was the southernmost point of Palimpsest. ill with fever in Vienna, but recovered, and their travels. They trailed their slow way To the end of their lives the twins went on to keep her diary assiduously: back to Athens, calling in at Corfu during continued to work and to see themselves Eastern Pilgrims was published in 1870. the voyage to England. as pioneers for women, and as servants Unsurprisingly, the travels were part of Some years later, desiring a distrac of God. During World War I they helped a mission: to prove that 'any woman of tion from Agnes's recent bereavement, Belgian refugees and studied Russian. ordinary prudence (without belonging to and wanting to investigate rumours of a Punctilious worshippers at St Colum the class called strong-minded) can find haphazard wealth of ancient manuscripts, ba's Church, they followed the lessons in little difficulty in arranging mat the sisters travelled to St Catherine's Hebrew and Greek. Every morning they ters for her own convenience'. Monastery, arriving in Cairo in January read the Bible; the rest of the morning and 1892. During the ten days' journey across the evening were devoted to their schol IN1883, having survived a voyage dur the desert, safety was not an issue, for on arly work, which included the writing ing which all the windows in the ship's meeting any Bedouin or would-be brigand of letters to academics who shared their saloon were broken, several stewards Agnes brandished a portrait of the late and interests, while the afternoon was given injured, and the ship itself briefly headed heavily bearded Samuel Savage Lewis to over to their many callers. the wrong way, the twins spent four great effect. In widowhood Agnes and Margaret months in Greece, an interval that pro The monks of St Catherine's were gen shared a double bed with individual ter duced Agnes's successful Glimpses of erally cavalier about the niceties of the ritory marked out by a tape tied down Greek Life and Scenery, illustrated by table. So it was, according to legend, that the middle. Margaret, the second-born, Margaret's sketches. Having checked the they served the breakfast butter on torn who always considered herself a mere spots that are still favourites (Sounion pieces of parchment or vellum. And so it adjunct to her sister, died in 1920. 'How took days instead of hours, and Aegina was, again very probably according to leg very inconsiderate of Maggie!' remarked meant yet another hair-raising and stom end, that Agnes realised that her butter was Agnes, for they had decided, in the natu ach-churning sojourn across stormy being served on a fascinating palimpsest. ral order of things, that Agnes should be seas) and having thoroughly investigated (Agnes could read Syriac, Margaret Ara the one to die first. Separation had always Athens and much of Attica, the twins bic.) The topmost layer narrated the lives been unthinkable: even after a quarrel undertook an extensive tour of the Pelo of female saints and dated from 778AD, but they would still go shopping together, ponnese. among the blurred edges of the lower layer with Agnes, always the dominant sister, Although they were formidable net Agnes perceived the Syriac for Evangelion, walking six feet ahead of Margaret. workers who seemed never to go anywhere Mathi and Luca. At her excited request Agnes survived Margaret by six years, without letters of introduction to peo the monks produced matching bits and a lengthy period marked by silence, con ple such as Dr Schliemann and assorted pieces, which she and Margaret laboriously fusion and melancholy: the unique loneli abbots, in Athens the twins could find no steamed apart; they then took at least 350 ness was very hard to bear. It came to an woman who had ever been to the Pelopon photographs of the text. end in Agnes's 84th year. nese, which then had very few passable When Agnes and Margaret arrived Of the twins their friend Aelfrida Till roads and a reputation for being a brigand back in Cambridge, experts confirmed yard said, 'They were like each other and infested wilderness. But they organised that Agnes had discovered an ancient Syr like no one else-' How right she was. • their side saddles and portable beds from iac text of the four Gospels, dated not later England, their Keating's powder defences than the fifth century. The language used Gillian Bouras's new book, No Time for against bed bugs, their flannel sleepwear, is the literary form of Aramaic, and so Dances, a memoir of her sister, is due out a bundle of New Testament tracts trans- contains the authentic accents of Christ soon from Penguin Australia. MARCH- APRIL 2006 EUREKA STREET 25 tlw world Kent Rosenthal Tens ion and grief in the Caribbean Deep angu ish and frustration, not a desire for violence, is the plight of Haiti's impoverished people C OMMON nERWTYm of H•iti First reports on the incident stated between the UN troops and the make it easy and convenient for the that 'protesters in Ouaniminthe refused crowd, the tension and sense of media to portray it as a place of sense to allow the bodies to be repatriated', giv grief and injustice became over less violence, so it almost went with ing the impression that the protests and whelming and some residents out notice when a recent confrontation violence started the moment the truck started throwing stones. There between UN stabilisation mission forces escorted by UN mission forces entered was gunfire, but it still hasn't and residents of Ouanaminthe, near Haitian territory. been determined whether the northern border with the Domini The reality is otherwise. As the photos it was UN fo rces or a civil can Republic, was depicted as 'violence show, and anyone at the event on 12 Janu ian who initiated fire. I, along as usual'. ary can attest, residents formed a peace with other bystanders, includ But who's being violent to whom? On ful procession in front of and behind the ing three members of the Hai 10 January, 24 Haitians died of asphyxi truck to accompany it to the cemetery tian embassy, fled for cover in ation in the back of an enclosed van as with the intention of witnessing the bur a small wood-and-tin house in they were being transported illegally ial. (photo 2) front of the cemetery. (photo 5) from Haiti to the Dominican Republic, As I stood in front of the UN tank In the confusion that fol and another died later in hospital. They that was fending off anyone attempting to lowed, one youth was killed. were victims of human traffickers, a net enter the cemetery, one frustrated and dis An investiga tion is under way work of military and civilians in both traught man turned to me and asked, 'How to determine whether it was a countries, with participants ranging from do they know I don't have a son among the UN soldier or a Haitian police border checkpoint guards up to the high dead in that truck?' Authorities had iden officer who fired the fatal levels of government and industry hungry tified only one of the deceased. shot. Several civilians were for cheap Haitian labour. Another m an pointed to the heav injured and protests continued But the death of these 25 illegal Hai ily armed UN soldiers to make sure I throughout the day. The UN tian immigrants was not the end to the was aware what was happening and that Spanish contingent's military tragedy. The dead needed to be brought the event was somehow recorded. 'Look base was attacked, its windows home and buried, and authorities on both what they (UN forces) are doing! They smashed. Ouanaminthe's sides of the border bungled the effort. don't care about Haiti. Take a photo of main streets were aflame with Authorities had allegedly been planning this.' (photo 3) burning tyres. to cross the border with the bodies in the In hindsight it seemed liked a danger The lighter-skinned Hai quiet of the night to bury them secretly. ous situation where it was advisable not tian embassy official and I Maybe it would have been better that to be, but when I looked at the faces of the waited it out in the house near way than carting them in a truck embla people in the crowd, it was not a desire to the cemetery for fear we could zoned with a Dominican flag, escorted be violent that I saw, but a deep anguish be mistaken fo r Dominicans or by UN tanks and jeeps, and then forcibly and frustration. Spanish (UN). Jesuit Refugee preventing the crowd of mourners from As I moved closer to the truck to take a Service workers tried to col witnessing the burial. (photo 1) photo (photo 4), beyond the invisible barrier lect us but protesters blocked 26 EUREKA STR EET MARCH- APR IL 2006 all access. During a lull in the protests we The media also need to be blamed for emerged to find that the UN had taken their complicity in prolonging stereo the bodies to a cemetery on the outskirts types and injustice in Haiti. As the biased of the Dominican border town of Dajab6n media reaction to the attempted burial in to be buried in a mass grave. the Ouanaminthe cemetery shows, unin The Dominican Republic's irrational formed journalists often cross the fine line and unjust migration policy continues to between objective reporting and opinion provoke more and more tragedies such as to dabble in complete falsity and sensa this one. Sixty members of the military tionalism. It's more convenient to make on border surveillance duty were arrested a quick call to a mobile phone from the after the event, but they are merely scape comfort of an air-conditioned office and goats in a larger web of economic and ask a photographer at the scene to email political interest. a graphic. Despite the advantages of new From 1989 to the present, 80 Hai technology, this form of cyberjournalism tian citizens have died and 98 have been is perpetuating stereotypes through its wounded in six tragedies related to the lack of contact with reality. illegal human trafficking. We talk about violence and terrorism The interests and benefits to be gained when we are really referring to poverty by the traffic of Haitian workers for the caused by injustice, corruption and indif Dominican agro, industrial and con ference. Look at the grief on the face of struction companies are such that these the man at the UN military barrier at people are brought in at any cost and in the Ouanaminthe cemetery. He might any condition. remind you of someone you know. • Kent Rosenthal SJ is cur rently working with Jesuit Refugee Service in Ouan aminthe, Haiti. POSTSCRIPT: Three people died in election-day inci dents on 7 February, and although voting results were not known at press time, former president Rene Preval, a one-time Aristide ally, was favoured to win. Photos: Kent Ro se nthal MARCH- APRIL 2006 EUREKA STREET 27 ' I ( L .... Graham Ring The law of the land In land-ownership disputes in Australia, the deck remains stacked against holders of native title I T'' Aucu" '966 • nd Vincent Lingi"i unprecedented in the parliament's his and designated borders between their has had enough. The Gurindji stockmen tory'. People wept. Lowitja O'Donoghue properties. These habits were no doubt working on Lord Vesty's Wave Hill cat said the Act was 'the greatest proof yet of comfortingly familiar to the middle tle station to the north-west of Tennant the probability of reconciliation'. class, middle-aged whitefellas on the High Creek are getting paid a pittance. Lingiari The preamble to the Act is almost Court bench who decided that native title leads his people in a walk-off and sets up poetic. It speaks in part of 'ensuring that had survived. camp on traditional land at nearby Wattie Aboriginal people receive the full recog By contrast, the Wik people of the Cape Creek. What begin as a 'pay and condi nition and status within the Australian York Peninsula lived a traditional hunter tions' stoush quickly becomes a struggle nation to which history, their prior rights gatherer lifestyle. They had hunted, for land rights. Eight years later, the fight and interests, and their rich and diverse fished, practised ceremony and visited has been won as Prime Minister Gough culture, fully entitle them to aspire'. their sacred sites since time immemo Whitlam arrives at Wave Hill to present The contribution Eddie Mabo made rial. In whitefella terms, their land was Lingiari with a title deed. The 'handful to this renewed momentum for land jus desperately marginal, sustaining cattle at of sand' photo, featuring these two great tice cannot be overstated. Edward 'Koiki' the miserable rate of one beast for every leaders, is to become an icon in the battle Mabo was born and raised on the island 25 hectares. The Queensland government for indigenous land justice. of Meriam Mer in the Torres Strait. Mabo had leased the land to pastoralists since In the heady clays of the early 1970s a tired of being paid £17 a month for work the mid-1940s without causing anyone new and cxciti ng vision held sway. Amid ing on the trochus luggers at a time when undue concern. the blossoming of Australian culture and railway workers on the mainland were In 1996 the High Court Wik decision identity there were calls for a better deal receiving £25 a fortnight. So he moved allowed the possibility that hunter-gather for Aboriginal Australia. But high school to Townsville and drove the eponymous tribes on the Australian mainland could students still studied Blackstone's dictum, native title claim that would overturn the enjoy native title in co-existence with and learnt that land 'desert and unculti doctrine of terra nullius. The High Court pastoral leases. All hell broke loose as vated' could be claimed simply by occu decision of June 1992 underscored the pastoralists and state premiers were con pancy, because no legal code or land tenure fundamental truth that this country was sumed by fear and loathing. existed. Any moral qualms about the dis peopled by communities with complex Wild talk abou ndecl as malice and possession of the Aboriginal people had to systems of traditional law and custom mischief became the currency of the be subjugated. Our whole system of prop thousands of years before the Europe debate. Western Au tralian Premier erty law depended on it. So 20 years slipped ans arrived. Tragically, Eddie Mabo died Charles Court suggested that Mabo-type by and indigenous Australia languished. before the judgment was handed clown. claims might be made on suburban back However, the notion that our first peoples Six months after the Mabo decision, yards. National Party leader Tim Fischer were entitled to something more had taken Prime Minister Paul Keating flagged his leapt into the fray with both feet. Speak root and would continue to grow. intentions on a hot day in Sydney's Red ing at a party conference in Wagga Wagga, In the early hours of 22 December 1993 fern Parle 'It was we who did the dispos NSW, he suggested that the Keating gov the Senate erupted in applause. Techni sessing. We took the traditional lands ernment's position on Mabo could lead to cally senators are not supposed to clap. and smashed the traditional way of life. the 'breaking up of Australia'. He added Protocol demands that they should instead We brought the diseases. The alcohol. that the dispossession of Aboriginal peo strike the table in front of them with the We committed the murders. We took the ple had been inevitable and was not some flat of their hand and chant 'hear, hear' children from their mothers. We practised thing to be ashamed of. in a robust and affirming manner. But discrimination and exclusion.' So it was In this toxic climate, John Singleton this was special. After more than a year that Keating and his Aboriginal Affairs created his 'Twister' advertisement for of tortuous negotiation with indigenous Minister, Rob Tickner, were midwives at the National Farmers Federation. The leaders, pastoralists, miners, state govern the difficult birth of the Native Title Act little white kid and the little black kid ments and myriad other interested par 1993, which gave legislative expression to played the party game until they become tics, the Native Title Act would become the Mabo decision. so entangled that they toppled over. Then law. Don Watson describes the scenes Eddie Mabo's mob on Meriam Mer the voice-over warned 'The Wik leci of jubilation in the galleries as 'probably were islanders who cultivated fruit trees, sion-it's not a game', in a tone heavy 28 EUREKA STREET MARCH- APRIL 2006 with the certain knowledge of imminent vanquished, the preconditions are created and grave danger. fo r the speedy and generous resolution of John Winston Howard is not a man future claims. given to visionary gestures of rapproche Uncle Jack Kennedy, a senior Wotjo ment with the first peoples of this coun baluk elder, deposited an affid avit with the try. In April 1997, the populist Prime court. He said, 'I'm looking forward to get Minister unveiled a Ten Point Plan to ting some of my country back before I die minimise the damage he feared Wik so I can die knowing I have done what the would cause. He also left open the possi elders expected of me. If the Wotjobaluk bility that the Racial Discrimination Act continue to follow (the crea could be bent to protect property rights if tor spirit) Bunjil, then things that became necessary. will go on as the old people But amidst all the histrionics, one would want.' In a tragic echo thing was never in doubt. If any inconsist of Mabo, Kennedy died only ency arose between the rights of native months before the consent title holders and the rights of other licence determination was final holders, then the rights of the latter would ised. His profound contri always prevail. This principle is expressly bution was acknowledged stated in the legislation. by a chair left symbolically In December 1998, Mr Ju stice Olney empty at the 'on country' in the Federal Court determined that court hearing. the Yorta Yorta native title claim had In making his orders, been 'washed away by the tide of his Justice Merkel said that, in tory'. The judge placed great significance this case, the 'tide of his on the accounts of squatter Edward Curr, tory' had not washed away which were written 40 years after events any real acknowledgm ent of took place, preferring them to the oral traditional laws or any real evidence offered by contemporary Yorta observance of traditional Yorta people. A subsequent appeal to the customs by the applicants. High Court was unsuccessful, leaving the He added that 'the present Yorta Yorta nation devastated. case is a living example of In December 2005, Justice Ron Merkel the principle now recognised of the Federal Court travelled to Horseshoe in native title jurisprudence Bend in Victoria's Wimmera region to for that traditional laws and malise the fi rst determination that native customs are not fixed and title has survived in southern Australia. unchanging. Rather, they Most Wotjobaluk and Wergaia people will evolve over time in response appreciate the formal recognition of tradi to new or changing social tional ownership afforded by the consent and economic exigencies ... ' determination, and the three sm all but cul It would seem that in matters native Prime Mini ster Gough W hi tlam and Gurindji elder turally significant properties transferred title, the only certainty is continuing Vincent Lin giari at the historic Wattie Creek hand in freehold by the Victorian government. uncertainty. back of th e Gu rin dj i's trad itional lands in 1975. Ph oto cou rtesy the National Archi ves of Austral ia. But in practical terms they've been given Justice Callinan observed in the High precious little. Ten years after the claim Court's 2002 Mirriuwung-Gajerrong deci was first lodged, native title was deter sion that native title is so 'complicated, mined to exist on a narrow strip of crown shifting and abstruse that it continues to land either side of the Wimmera River. In require the intervention of this court to making the agreement, the claimants for resolve even the most basic issues'. In the feit forever the right to make any native same judgment, Justice McHugh sa id that title claim on the remaining 98 per cent of 'the deck is stacked against native title hold the initial claim area. ers, whose fragile rights must give way to Even on the precious two per cent, the the superior rights of the landholder when Wotjobaluk and Wergaia will not own the ever the two classes of rights conflict'. land, nor have any exclusive rights over it. Meanwhile the battle for land justice However, the upside to this unspectacu continues. lar agreement is that the wider Victorian community 1nay well see that they have Graham Ring is a Melbourne-based writer nothing to fear fr om native title. With the who specialises in issues of indigenous 'take your backyard away' bogeyman thus justice. MARCH- APR IL 2006 EUREKA STREET 29 art Donna Leslie cultural gap between Aboriginal and non Aboriginal Australians. Indeed, a retro spective of Onus's work presented by the Queensland Art Gallery in 2000- 2001 , and a display at Melbourne Museum, In Honour of Lin Onus, (1 June 2002- 1 June 2007), gives recognition to his wonderful artistic legacy. Onus was an artist who had Coming home to the land that special ability to touch the lives of many Australians and to do so in creative and unexpected ways. The very fact that Artist Lin Onus had a way of stimulating empathy by giving he was an Aboriginal artist makes his life and work all the more interesting. people something to con nect with-not merely on an intellectual A study of the art of Lin Onus reveals an level but at the level of the heart interesting certainty: he often takes us on a journey into the histories and cultures of Aboriginal Australians, using themes and recollections that provide an opportunity for gaining a deepening insight into out comes of colonisation processes and con temporary realities. It also, importantly, takes us on a journey into the land as a powerful place of healing and restoration. Onus returned to the theme of Barmah (his father's country) in the final period of his life, and this homecoming seems to tell us that he was looking at the land as a place where he could symbolically take refuge, a site where he could find spiritual sustenance and meaning. In the large painting on linen, Barmah Forest, 1994 (now in the collection of the Aus tralian Heritage Commission, Canberra), Onus introduces the viewer to the jigsaw pieces that were a recurring symbol in his art, speaking of his need to rediscover lost pieces of his Aboriginal heritage. He seems to ask the viewer to engage with the work in a way that demands effort. We see how he communicates a sense of the living energy and the lifeblood of the land, yet it is also a land where something is missing. If you look closely, you'll see that Onus has painted jigsaw pieces that don't quite fit. In an unpublished chronology of Lin Onus's life (1998/99), Onus's widow Jo and his son Tiriki explain that changes to the land in the form of 'farms, tourists, carp, and cows' gave Onus a sense of the impossibility of Portra it of jack Wunuwun, 1988 attempting to 'retrieve all the riches that © Lin O nu s Licensed by VI SCOPY, Austra lia, 2006 were once present' in his father's country, prior to colonisation. The jigsaw pieces A m e ADE "" PASHD since the that do not match seem to be a reminder tragic, premature death of artist Lin Onus of the impossibility of returning to a land (1948-1996). Time has revealed the depth unchanged by colonisation processes. and breadth of his work, which was so Although Onus imparts a strong message inspired by the power of the land and of of cultural loss and Aboriginal disposses Aboriginal tradition, together with an sion, he also, however, conveys a message acute awareness of the need to bridge the of the eternity of land and of the ongoing 30 EUR EKA STREET MARCH- A PR IL 2006 cultural relationship that exists between cult, but he wanted this sharing to be one adopted father that he painted Portrait of Aboriginal peoples and the Earth. The land where people could have the opportunity Ja ck Wunuwun, 1988 (now in the Holmes is related to as a country not only where to relate truly to the message he was try a Court Collection, Heytesbury), seated we may all return, but a place of cultural ing to convey. Jo and Tiriki Onus report before an ochre palette; it is a compassion richness, depth and comfort. that Onus came to believe that he could ate, beautiful tribute and expression of In early works of his father's coun reach a far wider audience with art used respect. The elder is depicted with a gentle, try, however, Onus conveyed his sadness as a political and social tool than with the relaxed expression, surrounded by imagery over the way the land had been divided. alternative of 'talking to groups of peo belonging to his country. In the top left He invited the viewer to take part in an ple about the plight of his people'. He was corner, the design is broken by a contrast empathic appreciation of Aboriginal con convinced that art could transcend the ing night sky, into which Onus has painted nection with land, and in the shifting limitations imposed by other media. Art a single star, representing the Morning emotions relating to its inaccessibility. promised also to reach a global audience. Star, because Wunuwun was custodian The theme of land division becomes appar It is interesting to note that while Onus's of the traditional story associated with it, ent in paintings such as TWice upon a work might be understood for its politi and was famous for painting the Morning cal and social significance, it is equally Star series. It was the elder's empathy with important that it be understood for its Onus's sense of cultural deprivation which Onus W(1nted to ren1ind spiritual value. Its spiritual strengths rest led to a relationship that would from this in its ability to communicate Aboriginal time onward sustain him. people of the tradition relationship to the land. While land may In Lin Onus's retrospective catalogue, beneath the surface ... be understood as a place of healing, it may Urban Dingo: The Art and Life of Lin Onus also be read as a site of reconciliation. (2000), curator Margo Neale reports that Although Onus explored a range from 1986-1996, Onus made 16 'spiritual time, 1992, where Onus depicted one sin of imagery relating to dispossession, he pilgrimages' to Garmedi. He began to title gle piece of barbed wire to symbolise the described himself primarily as a landscape his works using the language of his adop fencing-off of land and its inaccessibility, artist until 1986, when his life's direc tive family, and his work developed into over the image of a landscape containing tion was influenced deeply by his encoun a combination of images of land depicted a ca mpsite without animal or human life. ter with the late Yulungu elder and artist both in Western style and Aboriginal sym It seems as if he was attempting to paint from Garmedi outstation in Central Am bol and story. In paintings such as Arafura the colonial, enforced removal of Aborigi hem Land in the Northern Territory, Jack Swamp, 1990, Onus depicts the interplay nal peoples from their traditional country, Wunuwun, who adopted Onus as his own between Aboriginal and non-Aborigi contrasted by the framing of carved, cer son. Wunuwun was able to offer Onus a nal visual languages. Here, photo-realis emonial trees that are a poignant reminder kind of cultural sanctuary by welcoming tic images of water lilies are interspersed of the prior occupation of Aboriginal peo him into the Yulungu kinship system. with rectangular fragments reminiscent ples on the land and of an ancient herit This relationship provided Onus with of Onus's idiosyncratic jigsaw. age. In other paintings, such as the small the opportunity to learn Aboriginal tra Onus's depiction of land has been gouache on illustration board, Mutjing ditional knowledge, which enhanced his interpreted by art historian Sylvia Klein (Fath er's country), 1992-93 (now in the own Yorta Yorta experience of the world. ert as not only a 'means of retrieving and collection of the Queensland Art Gallery), Through Wunuwun, Onus was given crea rewriting history', but also vitally impor Onus made reference to the designs found tion stories that he was permitted to paint, tant because he responded to the land as a on traditional tree carvings in South-East and an Aboriginal language he could also 'cultural archive'. Indeed, it is the source ern Australia, by overlaying a hilly land access. It seemed to Onus that his experi and the centre from which we can spir with the deep regular grooves of the axe. ence of tradition was 'like a missing piece' itually regenerate. In Onus's works, the Then he illuminated everything of a puzzle had been found and had 'clicked land may be read as a gateway into rec with a single bright star. into position' for him culturally. In her onciliation. Land is a healing medium book Aboriginal Voices (1990), author Liz because it is a place that remains inside 0 NUS WANTED to remind people of Thompson quotes Onus affirming his the heart. Although it mattered to Onus the tradition beneath the surfa ce of eve belief that 'traditional art will remain the that detailed knowledge of his Yorta Yorta rything. He had a way of stimulating foundation on which everything is built language and ceremony had been lost to empathy by giving people something to .. -' Indeed, it is Onus's cultural reconnec him, his work expresses a seeking to come connect with-not m erely on an intellec tion with tradition that ultimately gave home and a desire to reunite with the land tual level but, importantly, at the level of him the opportunity to find some of the as an integrative place of personal, spir the heart. He wanted people to feel with missing pieces he was searching for. These itual empowerm ent. • him and to understand the Aboriginal pieces seem to hold the key towards heal experience and Aboriginal cultural life, ing some of the many losses that have been Donna Leslie is an indigenous Austral through engagement with works that experienced by Aboriginal peoples in so ian, belonging to the Kamileroi people dealt at times with subjects consciously many areas of Eastern Australia, where the of NSW, and a Research Fellow in the intended as a learning experience. Some tremendous onslaught of British invasion School of Art History, Cinema, Classics times these subjects, such as the theme of was first experienced from 1788 onwards. and Archaeology at the University of dispossession, are challenging and diffi- In 1987 Onus was so inspired by his Melbourne. MARCH- APR IL 2006 EUREKA STREET 31 behind bars:1 Sian Prior Redemption 1n• East Timor With the encouragement of an Australian nun, inmates at Becora Prison are finding ways out of the darkness of their crimes into th e li ght of new hope W ,"' mnNG 'N Tm g"'den' of to meet their crimes, so that a relationship people. Michelle describes the destruc the Xanana Gusmao Reading Room in could be established between us first. My tion she found in Dili as 'overwhelming', Dili, East Timor, and it 's about 33 steam idea was not to change them but to create but with the approval of her Australian ing degrees in the shade. Even Dili's ubiq a safe place within the prison where they based order, she began conducting Eng uitous crowing roosters sound weary of could come and change themselves.' lish classes in burnt-out buildings. the heat. But Sister Michelle Reid is look I first met Michelle Reid by chance in 'Sometimes I had 80 people in a ing cool and relaxed in a pair of bright a Dili cafe in June 2004, and it was some class, everything from 50-year-old Falin pink cotton pants. The colour of the pants time into our conversation before she til resistance fighters who'd come down exactly matches her shoulder bag, made mentioned that she was a Catholic nun. from the mountains to 15-year-old kids. by one of the convicted criminals she At that first meeting, she had described English was the main language of the UN has been working with over the past four to me how she sometimes had to trick the personnel, so the Timorese saw it as a years in Dili's notorious Becora Prison. local taxi drivers into taking her to the road into future employment.' I find myself wondering about the man jail, so fearsome was its reputation in the In 2001, with the country still under who has carefully sewn together the pink East Timorese capital. UN control, the Director of Prisons invited purse for his Australian teacher. Was he When I interviewed her on my return Sister Michelle to organise classes for the a member of the pro-Indonesian militia visit in 2005, she laughed at the memory. convicted prisoners in Becora. She began mobs who tortured and massacred thou 'Yes, I used to have to say, "Just a little bit teaching English and art, but soon real sands of East Timorese after the 1999 vote further up this street, not far now." But ised that the m en had practical skills they for independence? Or is he a convicted rap I've never felt fearful for my own safety could share with each other. There was a ist, in this country where violence against in the jail. People are amazed when they tailor who volunteered to teach sewing, women constitutes about 40 per cent of see a prisoner and a guard holding hands and a carpenter who showed his fellow all criminal offences? when they're talking, but that's quite nor inmates how to make furniture. With a It's quite possible that Michelle Reid nul. There are a lot of Timorese cultural grant from the British Embassy, they ren doesn't know what crime this man has attributes that are beneficial for a calm ovated one of the prison buildings, which committed. Since the first day she bega n environment in the jail.' became their workshop centre. visiting the prison to run workshops for Michelle Reid is a Good Samaritan Sis 'The prisoners had a competition to the inmates, she has been far more inter ter of the Order of St Benedict. She origi name it, and they came up with From ested in redemption than in sin. nally travelled from Sydney to East Timor Darkness to Light, because it depicted 'I never made any inquiries about why in April 2000 to find out how her congre their journey from the darkness of their they were there,' she tells me. 'I wanted to gation might be able to help the newly crime into some form of new hope.' be able to meet the men as individuals, not independent but traumatised Timorese Gradually a relationship of trust 32 EU"EKA SmEET MA"CH- APR IL 2006 Sister M ichelle Re id, left, and the rebui lt Ava Maria church in Suai, below. Photos by Sia n Prior developed between the men and 'Madre the distance involved. But eventually he how high his motivation was in wanting Michelle', as they called her, and they was able to talk about what had happened, to read, and to belong to the group.' began to volunteer their stories. Many and he joined our ar t classes and found When I interviewed Sr Michelle in had been involved in the major massacres that he has a real talent. He is due for July 2005, she was preparing to leave East of September 1999 in villages such as Los release in six months' time, and he wants Timor. After four years at Becora Prison, Palos in the east, and Suai in the south to join the Arte Moris art school in Dili she was handing over the workshop pro west, where more than 100 people (includ when he gets out.' gram to be continued under the auspices of ing three Catholic priests) were murdered Sr M ichelle's role in the prison grew to the United Nations Development Program by pro-Indonesian militia in the Ava be much more than just a workshop facili (UNDP). She was candid about the chal Maria church . One former militia member tator. The men were worried about fa mily lenges facing the Catholic Church in this recounted how he had cut off a man's ear members left behind in the villages, and nation where poverty and unemployment and forced him to eat it. He had hoped that whether they were suffering any retalia are endemic, fewer Timorese are entering this would humiliate the victim enough to tion as a result of their crimes. the priesthood than in the past, and many other denominational groups are coming into the country and 'threatening their numbers game'. w. THAN AVERAGE birth rate of eight children for every Timorese woman, and a sm all but growing AIDS problem, Sr Michelle says birth control is a 'big issue'. She compares the Catholic Church in East Timor to Australia in the 1950s, and believes that recent demands from the Timorese bishops for the governm ent to make prostitution illegal were 'not po i tive for women in that industry, who are the victims'. Michelle Reid was preparing to return to Australia with very m ixed feelings. The prisoners have become her extended fam ily, changing her life as much as she has helped them to change their own lives. 'I remem ber two years ago, one of our Sisters asked me when I was coming satisfy his commander, and that the muti 'We took photos of the men to send home, and I said, "Not until I've learnt lated man would then be released. home to their fa milies, and we worked the lessons I'm supposed to learn." The 'But then the militia commander said, with the Red Cross in getting travel fund Timorese have completely changed my "Now you must shoot him/' and so he ing for families who hadn't been to visit the world view. We seem to spend ou r lives did. Many of them were under threat, or prison for two years. Our program enables trying to be more efficient in order to save their families were, so they've committed the prisoners to earn some money from time in order to work more. The Timorese a crime under duress. But I never heard selling the things they make in the work have a great gift of just sitting and being any of them say, "I'm innocent." They shops, which they give to their families to with each other, and they're not consumed accept their guilt, they know what they pay for supplies or children's school fees.' with the pursuit of material things.' did, and why they're there.' Not even a prison break out could As we say our farewells at the library Another prisoner had been convicted shake Sr Michelle's faith in her pro gate, Sr Michelle slings her pink bag over of murdering his brother. The man had teges. In August 2002, while she was on her shoulder and offers one final thought: lost several brothers and sisters, three of a return visit to Australia, nearly 200 'Working in the Be cora Prison has changed his children and his father, as a result of prisoners escaped from Becora Prison, how I operate with people, too. I'm more the violence and repression in East Timor including some of Michelle's workshop aware of not telling people how to do in the late 1990s. When his mother died participants. Some of them marched on something, but rather trying to create an and he became distraught with grief, the Parliament, demanding improvements in environment where something good hap man's surviving brother told the local vil prison conditions, and most voluntarily pens. I probably thought I had too many lagers that he was crazy and shouldn't be returned to Becora. One returned escapee answers, but now I've learnt to keep my allowed into their mother's house. A fight was most anxious about having to tell mouth closed and see what emerges.' • ensued, and his brother was killed. Madre Michelle that someone had taken 'He suffered serious depression in jail/ his library book while he was gone. 'It's Sister Michelle Reid returned to Australia says Sr Michelle. 'His family weren't able simple-if they don't return a book, they in December 2005. Sian Prior is a to come and visit because of the cost and don't get another one. But it showed me Melbourne-based freelance journalist. M ARCH- APRI L 2006 EU REKA STR EET 33 literature Simon Caterson True fakes We all know about the supposedly true books that turn out to be fakes, but perhaps even more remarkable is the way fiction can somehow become fact IN•84•, A cRown GA T HERm " the books may be real for some people but torical novel that purports to recount the N ew York docks anxious for news of a the fi gure of the author was invented by events leading up to the disappearance of young girl in England who was terminally a middle-aged couple and impersonated in a group of schoolgirls near Mount Mace ill. 'Is little Nell dead?' the passengers public by the sister of one of its creators. don, Victoria, in 1900. who had just arrived from England were The news that the fi lm rights to Gre Picnic at Hanging Rock has sold mil asked as they disembarked. The concern gory Roberts's Shantaram have been lions of copies since publication in 1967. It was real, but the child was not. She was a snapped up by Hollywood star Johnny is commonplace to assume that the story character in Charles Dickens's novel The Depp after huge sales here and overseas has some basis in fact, but it seems there is Old Curiosity Shop, which at the time is proof of the success of what could be none. Writers who've combed the archives was being published serially in monthly called the reverse hoax. Shantaram is a looking for traces of a real-life event have instalments. novel, but it is no secret that the story is had no luck in fi nding one, yet tourists Few deaths in fiction have provoked based very heavily on the colourful life and literary pilgrims fl ock to the area con such an outpouring of emotion among of the author as a notorious criminal and vinced that the book speaks true. One lit readers-understandable in an age when fugitive, and indeed this is a vital part of erary detective, Yvonne Rousseau, claimed the infant mortality rate was much higher its mass appeal. that Picnic at Hanging Rock is an elaborate in the West than it is now-though subse As a highly successful home-grown code, beginning with the revelation that quent critics of the novel poured scorn on true fake, Shantaram joins The Bride the names of the four lost girls all began what they viewed as cheap sentimentality. Stripped Bare, Tme History of the Kelly with anagrams of the same four letters. Aldous Huxley cited Little Nell as a Gang, Schindler's List and, going back a Author Joan Lindsay encouraged specu- prime example of 'vulgarity in literature', bit, Picnic at Hanging Rock. Internation lation in her carefully worded 'disclaim er': with the death scene of the child being a ally, The Da Vinci Code has won count Wh ether Picnic at Hanging Rocl 34 EUREKA STREET MARCH-APRIL 2006 True History of the Kelly Gang he fiction has a life of its own in publishing legend. ried woman, as she is. Her subsequent alises the biography of a real person. The entertainment industry as a whole denial that the book is an autobiography Ned Kelly's sexuality is a matter of con makes constant siren-like appeals to our begs the question as to why she sought jecture, yet Carey invents a daughter to credulity. 'Based on a true story' is a com anonymity in the first place. Certainly whom Kelly has written letters supposedly mon tag line in movies and the assertion she was not retic nt about discussing how preserved by the State Library of Victoria, of authenticity is considered a strong sell shy she felt when writing the book. the actual depository for the Jerilderie Let ing point. The publicity for the film Rab By dissolving the usual distinction ter, armour and other important Kelly arte bit-Proof Fence went a step further than between fact and fiction, have authors facts. Carey's Ned is a recognisably modern most, stating without qualification that and publishers discovered a powerful new heterosexual family man, a sort of SNAG the movie was 'A true story'. No feature marketing tool for their books, or is it precursor, and not quite the psychological film by definition can be true in the same a case of going back to the future, as so enigma that history has left us with. way that a documentary might claim to often happens in cultural history? Are we Carey's Booker Prize for True History be, no matter how faithful the film-mak that much more sophisticated than the repeated the success of Thomas Keneal ers are to the events depicted. It cannot readers who wept over Little Nell? ly's Schindler's List, a novel that similarly be the events and characters them selves, Cynics might wonder whether the made no secret of its ba sis in fact, but was but rather a representation of them in cin real fiction here is the book itself or the still accepted by the judging panel as hav ematic form, with all the eff ects, music, hype that surrounds it. What we read in ing qualified for a prestigious and lucra acting and the other tricks of the trade. a novel may be just a m ade-up story, but tive fiction prize. A reverse hoax could easily be we should never underestimate the power Such was Keneally's success that one arranged. Merely making the author's that writers have to seduce us. English critic was moved to lament that identity a secret, for instance, can stimu Once we consent to our disbelief 'there will now never be a simple fac late the reader's imagination. Nikki Gem being suspended, we may be no longer tual account of Oskar Schindler', a back mell's The Bride Stripped Bare is fiction, in complete control of our imaginations, handed compliment to the novelist's but the circumstances in which it came much less our emotions. Perhaps this is ability to pick up a story and make it his into existence fuelled speculation as to especially true of the novel that claims own. Meanwhile, the story behind the the quotient of truth in the story. not to deceive. • story-Keneally's 1980 encounter with Gemmell herself claimed to want to Holocaust survivor Leopold Pfefferberg in remain anonymous in order to write more Simon Caterson is a Melbourne free the latter's Beverley Hills luggage store- candidly about the secret sex life of a mar- lance writer. MARCH- APR IL 2006 EU REKA STREET 35 Vintage 2005 The Best Australian Essays 2005, cdncd by Robert Dcssaix. Bh1ck Inc, 200:1. rss 1 863 9SIIb 0, RRP $24.9'1 The Best Australian Poems 2005, edited hy Les Murray. Black Inc, 200'1 . ISBI\ l 863 9'il02 4, IUU' $24.95 The Best Australian Stories 2005, edited by Frank Moorhouse. Black Inc, 200:1 . ISBN 1 863 9'ill0 'i, lUU' $24.95 D uBmNc soMnmNc the be";, for example) and what might be called problematic-it's eye-catching but there informed commentary (Robert Manne's are always naysayers and lobbyists for energetic summation of the culpability the left-out and, with a competing 'best' of Murdoch newspapers in promoting the in The Best Australian Poetry 2005, pub war on Iraq, perhaps, or Kate Jennings's lished by UQP, it might be time to find a cheerfully written but very depressing better collective title for these essentially account of the US Republican Conven valuable annual collections. tion). The result is an eclectic mix of eru Frank Moorhouse, who has edited The dite discussion, acute observation and Bes t Australian Stories 2005, comments some moments of beauty. pre-emptively that most readers would There are 28 contributors and 24 of intelligently construe the term 'best' as these essays have already appeared, or will an aspiration. No, I think not. It's a judg appear, elsewhere, drawn from literary ment, but squeamishness about that is and cultural magazines, and newspapers; Australian or unAustralian, depending one was delivered as a seminar paper. on your point of view. Some essays could have leapt sec This is the second year that separate tions- Robyn Davidson's about belonging self within his land as he contemplates editors have handled each of the collec and representation of the landscape could the tragedy that unfolded with the tsu tions following the bitter split between have worked as well in 'Creative Acts' and nami on Boxing Day 2004. former editor Peter Craven and publisher Martin Thomas's 'Looking for Mr Math The blurb on the back of The Best Aus Morry Schwartz. Robert Dessaix has ews', about the difficult search for the tralian Poems 2005 says editor Les Mur grouped the essays into four sections: subject of his biography, would have clone ray is Australia's greatest poet. He says, in 'I Remember When .. .', 'Creative Acts', well there too, with its frustrated hope his preface, that he agrees with those who 'Meditations' and 'The Way We Live Now' and spore-filled papers. believe there is a boom in poetry-writing and written a short introduction to each. Kerryn Goldsworthy's essay on Gra in Australia, 'perhaps even a small golden Moorhouse has opted for a memorandum ham Kennedy is fresh and invigorating; age emerging'. from the editor and Les Murray, in Th e Janine Burke in 'Divine Bodies: Love, About half the poetry chosen came Best Australian Po em s 2005, for a pref Lust and Longing in Freud's Collection' in submissions, the other half from Mur ace, and both are a little defensive, get informs with lightly worn scholarship. ray's reading of poetry-publishing jour ting in first this time around in the light Helen Garner, in her discussion of danc nals and from collections. There is one of some criticism of their choices in the ers, 'In the Wings', makes each graceful poem per poet, arranged alphabetically previous year's editions. movement apparent, evinces the wonder (by poet). Two poems are published post The essays tend to be ruminative and the sheer effort of weightlessness. humously-one by Bruce Beaver, who died and gentle, rather than polemic. Dcssaix Creed O'Hanlon's 'Northing' is a com in 2004, and the other by Mary Gilmore, clearly prefers persuasion, and though pelling piece of writing about travel and whose poem came to light recently after in general I agree, the passion that leaps roots and trying to make sense. Some being misfiled in 'someone else's manu from the page in Robert Hughes's discus times what is not written is what makes script box at the Mitchell Library'. sion of the sculpture of Richard Serra did an essay more poignant, as in Brenda Murray says it seems true that most leave me feeling wistful that I hadn't been Walker's 'The Long Fall into Steel' in poets live in Victoria but he presents a swept off my fe et more often. which she leads us to the contemplation good cross-section with nearly 120 poets Dessaix has allowed the definition of mortality and love. writing about politics, domesticity, rela of essay some latitude, including what Suzy Baldwin's unease with Australia, tionships, and culture. might be regarded as reportage (Anna its landscape and its place in her con Our recently realised fears of swim Kricn's 'Trouble on the Night Shift', sciousness is an interesting contrast to ming with sea monsters surface in which first appeared in The Monthly, Mark Tredinnick's poetic placing of him- quite different ways in Peter Kocan's 36 EU RE KA STREET MAR H- APRIL 2006 'The Deep' and Judith Beveridge's 'The artful ambivalence so that her charac Shark'. There is lovely humour in Clive ters' faults or frailties are forgiven; and James's joyous celebration 'Anniversary Patrick Cullen's three linked stories (he Serenade'. Bruce Dawe's sickening 'The is the only writer to score more than one Blue Dress', John Foulcher's carefully story, but the three, I think, are neces observed 'The Woman Alone', Katherine sary) carefully eviscerate the unspoken Gallagher's poignant juxtaposition of things of relationships. lost love and terror in 'On the Road from There were moments or vignettes in other stories that were interesting or lovely, but I can't say I felt transported, or even very grateful, to have read several. Moorhouse has opted for the same alphabetical arrangement as in the poetry collection and this strikes me as too random for stories. One might as well sort them alphabetically by story or place them randomly if one doesn't care for the subtle rubbing up of one against another. • Jennifer Moran is a Brisbane-based writer of fact and fiction. She was formerly lit erary editor at The Canberra Times and books editor at The West Australian. Kathmandhu', Robert Gray's carefut formal placement of words in 'Among the Mountains of Guang-xi Province, in Southern China', Anthony Lawrence's searing 'Live Sheep Trade', Margaret Harvey's nostalgic, acute 'These Fibro 1'M LOOK'It\l& foR 1H£. Houses' and Peter Goldsworthy's gen erous, warm 'Dog Day' exhibit some of K\ND Of REL.A llON~H\P the diversity of this collection. Bronwyn \H f\\ Wof\1'1" R£Q Ul RE. Lea turns what could have been a nar Cl-OSUR~ WH€"-1 \1" ENOS 1 cissistic study into beauty with piercing image and mythology made concrete in her poem 'Bronwyn Lea'. Murray includes his own 'The Mare on the Road', a quixotic moment of awful decision that well bears rereading. I became a bit wearied, in the col lected stories, by the banal nastiness of so many characters. Conflict was reduced so often to small meanness, trashy misjudgments and petty betrayals as men and women did damage to each other. Some stories shone above this, of course, illuminated by excellent writ ing, or a moment of transcendence. Janette Turner Hospital's 'Blind Date' h ad me feeling every beat of young Lachlan's longing for his father; Gil lian Mears writes with sensitivity and MARCH- APR IL 2006 EU REKA STREET 37 lwok-;:2 Peter Pierce Drawing from the text The Diaries of Donald Friend, Volume Three edited b, P W TH THE 'UBUCATWN of the become long-term fixtures in Friend's Friend combined a taste for rough sumptuously produced third volume of life. The warnings of well-wishers were trade with an intense snobbery. In Cey The Diaries of Donald Friend, the grandly never heeded. One by one the youths lon he fusses that 'I will have to buy a car conceived concept of the National Library treated Friend as the 'rich fool' that he ... I must also get a servant'. His family of Australia is three-quarters of the way despised in himself. Usually they began had been rich (although much was lost in to completion. This is not just the portrait as his models. Drawings converted them a probate case) and he is clearly better off of the artist in his own words, but through into cash which Friend returned with than most of those around him. Still he his drawings as well. Together they are interest. He was clear-eyed about his was obsessed with getting and spending: proof that Friend was not only one of the entra nccment and entrapment, depicting 'All I want is love, sex, money,' he dis most eloquent and acrid of commentators himself as 'a middle-aged pederast who's armingly confides. The diaries provide on the social and artistic worlds in which going to seed', but unable to change. fascinating information about the econ he uneasily lived, but also among Austral The last lover to whom we are intro omy of the art world- prices paid, com ia's leading 20th-century artists. duced, the loathsome thief Stewart Hol missions taken, the relationship of the Astutely edited by Paul Hetherington, man, is memorably described by Friend artist with critics, dealers, other painters. the diaries cover 17 years of Friend's life as being like winning 'some appallingly And Friend is sensible of the larger econ (1949-66) on three continents. There arc demanding and infuriatingly inconven omy: how his shares are faring, what the two trips to Italy, a five-and-a-half-year ient thing in a ra fflc, such as a desert, or Korean War will do to the market, how sojourn in Ceylon, intermittent visits to an angry crocodile'. to juggle the payment of income tax in the artists' retreat at Hill End that he did While periodically he lacerates him both Australia and Ceylon. For all that, so much to popularisc, and an attempt to self as the creature of 'long, unintelli he seems to acquire money cannily, only settle in Paddington in the 1960s. In this gent and unhappy obsession', so Friend to give it away cavalierly-to lovers, fam period there were diverse friendships, is unsparing of others. Hetherington ily, friends and other unworthy causes. for example, and to stay with allitera remarks that even the diaries' gossip He earns like an artisan; disburses like tion awhile, with James Fairfax, Ian Fair is 'valuable as cultural history'- This an aristocrat. weather and Peter Finch. As Friend moved understates their pungency and the ways Besides the material side of Friend's from his mid-30s to beyond his 50th in which they illuminate the foibles of vocation, the diaries give insights into his birthday, one aspect of his life remained so many notables, in particular their aesthetics. A London show forces him to lamentably constant. Hetherington com vain self-projections. Sometimes Friend reappraise his distaste for Abstract Expres ments that 'almost inevitably, it seemed, generalises, describing men at a party as sionism. Like all artists he has an eye on his love became too claustrophobic an 'homosexual in the Melbourne manner, the competition. The 'rotund' Fred Wil experience for his lovers'- Friend's prob which is a mixture of raddled effeminacy liams finds favour, as does Fairweather, lem-which Hetherington might have and discretion'; deriding censorious Eng with whom he struck up an intermit identified as also the dramatic and emo lish neighbours who object to 'coloured tent but admiring acquaintance. Bob tional core of Shakespeare's sonnets, was people arriving' at his flat as possessed Dickerson, on the other hand, is 'a weird, that of 'the ageing man who is attracted of 'manners devoid of curiosity, minds ex-pugilist dauber'; Albert Tucker 'that to but cannot control, or finally possess, devoid of judgment'- Another, who bombastic bearded fake of a painter'. Of the youthful boy'. hates the idea of homosexuals near her the promoters of Albert Namatjira Friend Volume Three presents a succes property on the Isle of Capri, is 'Gracie angrily exclaims that 'it's a sad sight to sion of such boys. Some arc anonymous, Fields, that vaudeville monster from the see a simple mission black taught the such as 'a strange dangerous tough lit Midlands'. Closer to home, Frank Clune trick of painting in a dreadful silly way, tle sailor from Aberdeen'. Others, such is 'that gross monster', while Friend's made famous, and then dragged around as Attilio (sketched 'Sulking'L he of the mother is 'a useless old effigy who would the city ... by a rabble of publicity hunters 'Neapolitan guttersnipe soul', would be better dead'. and politicians'. If Robert Hughes paints 38 EUR EKA STREET M ARCH- APRIL 2006 ! • concedes, if hardly in the language of the tourist brochure, that 'there is a distinct fascination about the mildewed, damp, fungus-rotted appearance of the place and its people'. Friend illustrated his diaries. Often we are surprised and delighted by a line drawing, or coloured depiction of people, and of built, sometimes jerry-built land scapes. No Australian artist has drawn with more brilliance than Friend; has achieved more substantial effects with what misleadingly appears to be languid attention. The drawings in the diaries are an integral part of them . They are never regular, or dutiful. They seem to emerge naturally from the text. Perhaps they are better regarded not so much as illustrations of what Friend had written, but as a re-viewing, reimagining of that material. Certainly they are an enhance ment of writing that sparkles with mal ice, sours with self-contempt, honestly confronts the problem s of the artist's craft. By putting Friend's diaries in the 'quite appallingly', Friend revelled in his turned out to be 'a n illusory, post-lapsar public domain, the National Library of company, respected his critical acumen ian Eden'. Perhaps in a remote region of Australia, and Paul Hetherington, have and was delighted when Hughes wrote the his own country, rather than in his rest enriched the national culture towards monograph Donald Friend. Nolan's work less travelling and attempts to settle over which Friend was so ambivalent, in he found uneven. Drysdale he valued seas, Friend came closest to contentment. which he strove for fame, but felt him highest, though not without reservations. This was Far North Queensland, where he self forever on the margins. • Drysdale was his oldest friend among fel had lived and travelled in the 1930s and low painters, although the friendship is 1940s and to which he happily returned Peter Pierce is Professor of Australian waning as this selection of the diaries from June to Septem.ber 1954, for some of Literature at James Cook University, comes to an end. By then, Tim Drysdale, the time in company with another long Cairns. 'that little swine', whom Friend minded time painter friend, Margaret Olley. Stay in Ceylon, has committed suicide, as had ing with his Islander adoptive family, the Drysdale's first wife. Sailors, Friend rejoiced in 'the tales and In his introduction to the Diaries, scandals of the coloured world of Cairns'. Hetherington notes how another strand In Port Douglas he decided that 'the exu in Friend's life had been seeking para berance of nature and the accidental dises-in the Torres Strait islands, in effects of decay provide the picturesque Nigeria, latterly in Ceylon. Each of these ness' of the locals' environment. And he MARCH- A PRIL 2006 EUREKA STR EET 39 I ' Jacqueline Healy Like warriors of old Papunya: A Place Made After the Story, Geoftrev Bardon and f;Imes Bardon. The Miegunyah Pre~s, 200-1-. 1 \Be\ o \22 "' 1 1 o X, R R I' $ r20 The Western Desert Movement had its edge through painting. These men were tographs. Many of these have not been beginnings in the use of rubbish materi employed at Papunya to do menial tasks published before. The book has numer als on which to paint; the human agents, such as chopping wood and sweeping ous remarkable photographs of the art the painters were people rejected from a yards. Some had previously worked in the ists, their families and the community. society in its esteem for its values and pastoral industry; others, such as the Pin There are previously unseen photo they were very much aware that the tupi, had made contact with white society graphs of the painting of the murals of white authorities considered them rub only in 1960. Many of these men spoke no the Honey Ant Dreaming on the wall of bish too.-Geoffrey Bardon English. On masonite and building scraps the school at Papunya that reveal groups they began to paint designs derived from of senior men working collaboratively. ceremonial practices that revealed knowl This was the first major public display edge of their law and country. by the senior men for the children in the G WHREY BARDON'' Papunyac A Some 25 artists began working with school and a great affirmation of Abo Place Made After the Story captures a Bardon, and this publication is a tribute riginal cultural identity. It was a turn pivotal moment in the history of Austral to their achievements. Paul Carter in his ing point in the lives of these senior men ian Aboriginal art: the beginnings of the introductory essay considers the publica and artists. Western Desert painting movement. This tion of the documentation of these early Bardon's personal reflections reveal movement altered the course of Austral paintings of the Papunya Tula movement that these early works were created in ian contemporary art and changed the as equivalent to recovering the frescoes a harsh and desolate place. The Welfare way Australia and the rest of the world painted by Giorgione and Titian that once Branch of the Federal Department of the viewed Aboriginal art and culture. James graced the Grand Canal. There is no ques Interior in the early 1970s considered that Bardon in his eulogy for his brother Geof tion of the cultural significance of these Aboriginal people and their culture were frey in May 2003 described this book as paintings. They were not art for art's sake, dying. The white administration showed 'a vast and benign planet approaching us in a Western sense, but a resolute asser little respect and often contempt for the even as I speak, so as to change the lives tion of Aboriginality. people in the settlement. Bardon recalls of all Australians forever'. Geoffrey Bardon has two previous senseless acts such as white people feed Geoffrey Bardon was a yo ung and publications on his time at Papunya: ing kangaroo to their dogs when Aborigi naive schoolteacher who came to Papu Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert nal people were starving for luzl 40 EUREKA STREET MARCH- APRIL 2006 the meaning of the shares with us the resilience of Aborig elemental forms of inal culture. The sobering part of Geof circle, dot and circle. frey Bardon's account is that this culture In the section on the flowering occurred despite government Water Dreaming there policy. It took the courage of a young art are eight versions of teacher and the tenacity of senior men images of the water to empower a community that had lost dreaming by Long Jack hope. In the words of Bardon: 'The ris Phillipus Tjakamarra ing of the painters' spirits in 1972 was to reproduced from Bar make the painters new men, like warriors don's field notes. In of old, and in many ways they were quite all there are 115 illus fearless about the stories they painted in trated versions of the the great painting room.' This is the leg Water Dreaming. The acy of Papunya Tula. cataloguing of the paintings emphasises Jacqueline Healy is director of Bundoora paintings by Bardon was a complicated the cultural significance and the collec Homestead Art Centre. She is undertak process due to language barriers and tive ownership of these stories. ing a doctorate at the University of Mel restrictions on the content of the work. Initially the art market was not a bourne in the marketing of Australian The artists had to resolve issues concern catalyst for painting. The first group of indigenous art from remote area com ing the depiction of ceremonial objects paintings was taken to Alice Springs in munities. and rituals. Bardon worked through September 1971. An intriguing aspect of an interpreter in many instances and this account are the details of the forma recorded only the aspects of the stories tion of the company Papunya Tula which that the artists were willing to share. For was established to support and sell the example, Bardon commented: 'The rep artists' work. Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri was resentation of the Wallaby and Kanga spokesperson for the men and it was at the roo Dreamings are significant because of artists' request that an Aboriginal organi their treatment of "dangerous" material sation separate from the white admin and the way the men deflected the gravity istration of Papunya was established. of the subject matter by joke telling and Geoffrey Bardon ensured their wishes ribaldry.' Bardon's commentary provides were followed. insights into the debates surrounding the Papunya Tula in Pintupi means Honey sharing of this cultural material. Ant Meeting Place, the name given to the Significantly Bardon grouped the company formed to support and market paintings of the same dreaming together. the art from the community. This was to There are images depicting Water, Fire, be the inspiration for the establishment Spirit, Myth, Medicine, Ritual Dance, of many Aboriginal art centres that exist and My Country (Homeland Dreaming). today throughout remote area Australia. The senior men also painted women's, For anyone interested in Austral children's and Bush Tucker stories. Under ian Aboriginal art, Papunya: A Place these categories each painting is accom Made After the Story is essential read panied by an explanation of its style and ing because it brings to life the period meaning. There is a colour image of most when this art movement was born. But works as well as diagrams that indicate the book has wider application because it MARCH- APRIL 2006 EUREKA STREET 41 bool s. -t Philip Harvey Riding out the Romantic Storm Dance of the :\Jomad: A Study of the Selected Notebooks of A. D. Hope, Ann McCulloch. l'and;Jnus Books, 200.'1 . ISW\ I 740 7111(iK -,, 1uu• S4 "i L ,HRST CUMPS< into the p 42 EUREKA STREET MARCH- APR IL 2006 In wonder and in pity; then began: Your melancholy half-prose was a venture 'Was this then verse I heard, so lame, so Doomed from the start: What more is broken there to sayl' 'That none could tell its measure or make Ann McCulloch's editorialising is not it scan? intrusive. She champions Hope and lets him Word s obey him alone who leads them do the talking, though ironically her criti dancing, cal remarks employ the very language of Not him who works to your drill-sergea nt theory (post-colonial, feminist, queer) that plan.' her subject would have blasted in a satire of perfect pentameters. Also, a final proofread To what extent Hope was at variance 'You cannot hope to ca ll forth their would've helped. Hope finds himself a last with his age is still hard to say; some are entrancing defender of 'ivilizations' and talks phys happy to accept that he was actually typi Hid music, nor breathe life into their ics with 'Sir John Ecclesix'. Amongst the cal of his age. One thing is certain, as Vin clay poets, Dante writes in 'terja rima' and Eliot cent Buckley once put it, 'Other poets .. . Until the word of metre sets them is spelt 'Eliott', which is not any Elliott that expressed admiration of his power; his glancing, Eliot would have recognised. • form s intrigued them ... they created an utterance, they enforced their central 'Glea ming with light on their celestial Philip Harvey is the poetry editor of concerns with lateral perceptions.' The way. Eurel And so Dante and his guide Virgil question the forlorn figure of Hope's imagination, finally reacting to one of Eliot's hard sayings: The poetry does not matter! The thing was sa id, I thought my master caught his breath in token Of anger or impatience, but instead He gazed at our poor shade when he had spoken MARCH- APR IL 2006 EUREKA STREET 43 Michele Gierck On down the line The Line: A Man's Experience of the Burma Railway; A Son's Que~t to Under~tand, Arch and Martin Flan,lg probably spend our lives trying to under A RCHFLANAGAN,' ceti 44 EUREKA STREET MARCH- APR IL 2006 books:6 De nis Tracey A disaster waiting to happen A Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright. Tex t, 2005, ISBN 1 920 X8579 X, RRI' $24 to find all the dodos in a vicinity you had E.A T UAST 40 HARS expe M ARCH- APR IL 2006 EU REKA STREET 45 hc>hind bars:2 Brian D oyle Going to jail Y U >NHR THROUGH ' dom in tho a half-second they settle down but soon 'OK,' says Moreno. back where a big sign says ALL PRISON they are crashing around again. 'You have any personal effects, Mr. ERS MUST BE SHACKLED. Prisoners The blonde man watches them but he Moreno?' who have never been to the jail generally doesn't say anything. 'N o sir.' go to the front door and press the bell and The man with the personal effects 'OK then. Come on in.' are told by the crackling intercom to go cradled in his arms is surrounded by The door opens and the men walk in around the back, which they do. To get a knot of friends who are not going to single file under the sign that says ALL to the back door you walk through the jail this evening. The friends are all jok PRISONERS MUST BE SHACKLED. car park, where there are cop cars and ing and laughing and the man going to Three of the m en with personal effects tow trucks. At the back door you wait jail banters a little too but then he falls in plastic bags go first, and then the man with the other prisoners. silent. who had been walking the dog and smok N ew prisoners are admitted at seven After a while a police officer shows ing, and then the m an with his personal in the evening. up with a roster of the prisoners who are eff ects in his arms, and then the blonde There are seven men waiting by the to be admitted this evening. He reads man, who kneels down for a moment to door tonight. Five are white and two are off the names one by one and as he reads hug the two boys before he goes through brown. The youngest might be 20 years your name you line up by the door. When the door. Last is Mr Moreno, and then old and the oldest might be 60. Four men he has read the names of six of the men the policeman. have plastic grocery bags with The door closes with a sigh and their personal effects and one a hiss. man has a brown paper bag with As soon as the door clicks the his personal effects and another ... I wolk up the street blonde woman walks away fast m an cradles his personal effects thinking of caged people and and the boys run ahead of her, the in his arms and the youngest man older boy chasing the younger one. has no personal effects that I can why 1ve cage people ... The friends who had been joking see. and laughing drift away slowly, One man waits by the door for and the woman in the car drives a moment and then strolls over to away fast, the dog peering at me a car across the street. There is a woman he prepares to open the door, but the sev from the back seat. in the car, in the driver's seat, and he says enth man, the man who looks like he I walk up the street thinking of caged som ething to her but she doesn't look at might be 20, says to him, 'My name is people and why we cage people and about him or speak to h im . The man opens the Moreno.' the people who love the people w ho get back door of the car and snaps his fin 'I beg your pardonl' says the police caged every hour of every day in Amer gers and a dog jumps out and nuzzles his n1 an. ica, and then I walk past a slew of young hand and the dog and the man walk off 'Moreno.' oak trees all flittering and glowing in around the block, the man lighting a cig 'Sir, I don't have you on the admitting the late summer light, you know how arette as he goes. list.' in August the sunlight bends and every One of the men by the back door of 'I must be here seven o'clock.' thing seems lit up from the inside like the jail is standing with a woman and 'Moreno?' you're in a movie? • two sn1all boys. The m an and the woman 'Moreno. I have a letter.' and the boys all have short blonde hair. 'May I see the letter?' Brian Doyle ([email protected]) is the editor The woman is talking quietly to the 'I don't have the letter now. Moreno. of Portland Magazine at the University man. The boys are maybe six and four Seven o'clock.' of Portland, USA, and the author most years old and they are running around The policeman talks to the intercom recently of The Wet Engine, about 'the and knocking each other down and bick for a moment and then he turns back mangle & muddle & music of hearts'. ering and laughing and whining. The to the young man and says, 'Well, we His book The Grail, about a year in the younger boy tries to spit on his brother don't have you on the admitting list for life of an Oregon vineyard, will be pub but he misses. The woman says some tonight, sir, but come on in and we will lished this year by One Day Hill Pub thing terse and firm to the boys and for square this away, OK? ' lishers in Victoria. 46 EUREKA STREET MARCH- APR IL 2006 thshort list The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood. Text Pub No Place Like Home, editetl By So nja lishing, 2005. ISBN 1 920 88595 l, RRI' $22 Dechiam, Jenni Dcveraus, Heather Millar and Eva Sa llis. Wakefield Press, 2005. ISBN My brain often hurts just thinking Margaret 1 862 54686 X, RRP $19.95 Atwood: it's one of those distinctly heavy names, with words like Booker, Feminist 'I can't believe that just over a body of water and Literature dancing around behind it. No is the difference between heaven and hell,' su rprises, then, when Atwood-along with writes Irene Guo, aged 12, in 'Linda's Story'. Achebe, Byatt, Winterson and Tartt, just to Many of the short narratives in No Place name a few-was asked to contribute to a Like Home are stories of escape from hell new Myths series, in which Atwood rewrites ish situations, whether from regimes such Homer's Odyssey as her own Penelopiad. as the Taliban in Afghanistan or communist China, or from What was surprising, however, was my initial disappoint war in Iraq or Sudan. With the current debate over Australia's m ent: the first person prose from beyond the grave felt awk decisions to detain asylum seekers, this powerful collection ward and childish; and irritatingly, I could feel Atwood's pres makes the reader proud to be Australian, but also brings home ence behind every word. Could see her, pen poised, thinking, the fact that simply arriving in Australia is not the end of the How can I construct this as a feminist text! hardship for many refugees. Having said that, this story is difficult to resist: it has Written with the simplicity and honesty of children and drama, rage, jealousy; not to mention adultery, violence and a young adults, these are stories of hope and joy at the possibility good old-fashioned giant Cyclops. A fantastic, melodramatic of a better life in Australia, but also a reminder that Australia yarn; much like an episode of Neighbours, but with less Toad does not necessarily welcome all refugees with open arms, at fish and more Trojans. times treating refugees little better than did the regimes they And how brilliant that a story, first told an unfathoma risked their lives to escape. Najeeba Wazefadost brings home ble number of years ago, still finds its way onto our Da Vinci just how inhumane our detention policy can be in 'Surreal Code-infested shelves. Read it for Atwood's breathless feeling istic Nightmare': 'We came to get freedom. We were locked for the macabre, and her aggressive reweaving of myth, thread in detention centres, treated like criminals for no reason. The ing new colour and light through the old and faded. detention centres are really punishment centres for non-exist - Brooke Davis ent crimes. They should be closed down.' There are stories of racism and hatred, hope and love, war and its aftermath. It is essential reading for contemporary Aus Saving Fish fro m Drowning, Amy Tan. Har tralians regardless of how we came to be Australians. perCollins, 2005. 1~~~" 0 007 219!i9 X, R R P - Merrin Hughes $29.95 Narrated from beyond the grave by an eccen Breastwork: Rethinking Breastfeeding, A 1! tric San Franciscan socialite, Saving Fish son Bartlett. University of Nnv South W;lles from Drowning tells the story of 11 American Press, 200:1 . r~BN 0 8()t-; ..J.0%9 3, RRP $39.9:'1 tourists who disappear into the Burmese jun gle. Bibi Chen was to lead the tour until she is B REA T R K 5 w 0 Breastfeeding is presently caught between found dead in her shop window in the novel's sentimental representations and clinical opening pages. Before they leave, the group toast Bibi and ask circumscriptions from scientific discourses, that she travel with them in spirit, not expecting her to do just leaving scant room for the acknowledge- that. As their spirit guide, Bibi is an omniscient witness to the ment of actualities-particularly for women events that follow, and to each character's individual thoughts in contemporary society. Alison Bartlett and misunderstandings . creates a generous intellectual and relaxed Amy Tan found inspiration for the story at the American space for critical and sensitive exploration into a diverse range Society for Psychical Research, where she learned of a medium of cultural themes drawn from postmodern and feminist per who claims to have channelled Bibi's account of the doomed spectives-without the theoretical jargon. travellers. As a writer, Tan was unable to visit Burma-renamed Passe modernist perspectives on breastfeeding are shown Myanmar by the military junta in 1990-while researching to be holding us back from becoming a more civil society. the book, so she relied on second-hand sources to create a pic Revealed at another level are lucid and illuminating connec ture of the country. The title is borrowed from a story about a tions with complex social issues such as race relations. Given m an who claimed that by taking fish out of the sea, he was sav that current representations of breastfeeding are fraught, Bar ing them from drowning. It's a fable about the dangers of over tlett contends with the subject beautifully. Her overall asser simplification and arrogance such as that of governments and tion- that even hegemonic narratives such as medical sci outsiders who offer alternative suffering disguised as salvation ence can never be conclusive in reality- is vitally convincing. to people like the Burmese. The novel is allegorical, vividly Breastwork is a journey deep into our cultural and social land imagined, compassionate and engaging. scape, a welcome and refreshing read for new mothers. - Cassy Polimeni - Kate Chester M ARCH-APRIL 2006 EUREKA STREET 47 Heat h Ledger and Jake Gyllen haal, left, in Brokeback fldsh in the pan Mountain. jake Gyll en haa l, right, in }arhead, and Eric Bana, with Ami Weinberg and Geoffrey Rush, in Munich. Lonesome cowboy blues Ultimately, it is a fi lm about silence, or rather being silenced, and the damage this silence does to all those who fail to hear or speak what both has to be, and can never be said. Ennis is so trapped by the impossibility of being who he is and not being who he is that his voice barely reaches past his lips; far from being stoic or laconic, his silence is a howl of pain that escapes only twice. It is a fine and beau tiful film, often deeply moving, attentive to the unspoken tides that shape and mis shape its characters' lives, both measured and affecting. It is not, however, in any sense radical, or a 'breakthrough' film, as some have suggested (mainly with refer ence to its portrayal of two men in love with each other). Indeed, probably the saddest thing about this sad movie is that such reactions suggest that the social con straints that cause its characters to suffer so have not changed all that much at all. Brol 4U EUREKA STREET MARCH- APRIL 2006 into repressing individual thought (th is lead a team of Mos rarely seems to work) and submission to sad assassins, with their superior officers. the mission of elimi Anthony 'Swoff' Swofford (played by nating the remaining Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain, member of Black Sep Donnie Dorko) is one such jarhead-a tember. His handler, fresh recruit into the gung-ho world of the Ephraim, is played in a US Marine Corps. His tale is the story of convincing and amus the average soldier on the modern battle ing style by Geof field. He joins an elite squad of snipers and frey Rush, and there spotters whose main role is 'target acqui are some excellent sition'-to wit, the marking out of targets moments between the for jets to drop bombs on to. two. Bana has done Just before the first Gulf War, Swofford incredibly well with is stationed with his unit in Saudi Arabia, this difficult role-his where camp life is hard and the personali character is patriotic ties of his unit and the character of his staff and determined, and sergeant (a convincing performance from the gradual psycholog Jamie Foxx) come into play. The boredom ical deterioration of and frustration of waiting to be thrown Avner feels genuine, into war is portrayed well, and the psycho to a point. logical deterioration of a group of people On one hand, waiting to die or kill becomes apparent Munich seems to though one is drawn to believe that what be making a case the jarheads really want is respect, pur for murder as an pose, identity, and a decent salary. acceptable tool so long Sniper Swofford has a classic rela as it serves political tionship with the Marines: he hates the expediency, and this bureaucracy, despises the food and condi point is written down tions, but comes to lust for conflict and on a piece of paper, tied kills. Jake Gyllenhaal's performance is to a brick, and thrown excellent-his relationship with his spot through the audience's ter Troy (Peter Sarsgaard) has some poign front window. In ant moments. contrast, however, the When they finally get moving to toll of living the covert, Kuwait, to fight Iraq's 'hardcore' Republi dangerous and lonely can Guard, the men are hungry for action. life of the assassin What they find is more tedium, with the has Avner becoming monotony of marching and making camp Violence increasingly paranoid and unable to occasionally disturbed by the sound of function normally, and this aspect of distant gunfire or gruesome scenes on and retaliation the film borders on being just another the road. The story arc is punctuated by overstated brick through the window-and the surreal, dream-like experiences of Munich, dir. Steven Spielberg. Munich is a just when you think the director might've Swofford, which also mark significant serious and flawed epic, the latest release known that the material was getting out of moments in his mental disintegration. from director Steven Spielberg. Draw hand, it's overdone some more. This is a war film where the soldiers ing on the considerable talents of Tony There is much that is good in Munich never get to battle. They go through the Kushner and Eric Roth (and the book the dialogue is of a high standard, as are motions, ducking for cover and sneak Vengeance: The True Story of an Isra eli the production values. Vi ually the film ing up on enemies, but it's the bombs Counter-Terrorist Team, by George Jonas), is almost flawless, and the tragedy of the dropped from overhead that actually do Munich is about the Israeli retaliation for Munich Massacre-for both sides of the the damage. The real conflict in Jarhead the brutal murders of 11 Israeli athletes conflict, and all who suffer from its vio is the melee in the minds of each soldier, at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics by lence-has now been given the big-budget as they struggle to stay alive and balance Black September, a Palestinian terrorist/ Spielberg treatment, which could very their psychological stability. Jarhead is a paramilitary group. well leave a Munich audience feeling that film of much ambiguity, and offers some Australian star Eric Bana (best known the movie needed a good script edit before food for thought. for his roles in Troy, Black Hawk Down being released. - Gil Maclean and Chopper) plays Avner, assigned to -Gil Maclean M ARCH- APRIL 2006 EU REKA STREET 49 watching brief Eight-legged freak-out Y U CAN'T ReALLY CALL YOURSCU a genuine ""hno What a legend Attenborough is. His exposition of the nat phobe unless you have tried, when a spider ran across the dash ural world is full of wonder and affection. He makes you feel as board, to jump out of a moving car that you were driving at though you're really there with him, especially when he pokes the time. gingerly at the triplines of a Malaysian trapdoor spider's lair. This happened to my sister many years ago but she was not The result was satisfying: the spider pounced (virtually said the spider-fearing driver in question. Is it better to be walked 'Boo!') and Attenborough jumped, just as we all did, watching on by a spider or killed in a driverless car? Luckily Lucille sur him do it. He teaches us to respect the invertebrates who, he vived to ask this question pointedly of her friend. gently reminds us, will surely inherit the Earth after we've 'She was quite unrepentant,' Lu said to me later. 'In fact made it uninhabitable for anyone but them. Invertebrates, to I had to drive back the rest of the way, and she wouldn't even make a shocking pun, are the backbone of the Ea rth's ecosys get back in the car until we'd gone over every nook and cranny tems. We think of plagues of insects, but they are living in with a torch. In the end I pretended to find it and stamp on it balance with nature, not us. Since we have learned to fight so she would get back in.' the balance that nature used to be able to force on us we have Some years later I was driving kids home from kinder in begun to overpopulate and plague the Earth ourselves. peak-hour traffic in Punt Road, South Yarra. Seeing Attenborough with horseshoe crabs in the moonlit 'Aargh, Mummy! Waah'' howled my four-year-old. eastern shores of the United States, talking easily about thou I couldn't pull over in the traffic, and it was pouring rain. sands of millions of years of evolution, there is an unspoken I shouted back to him, 'What's the matter, love?' irony. There, in the birthplace of the oxymoronic term 'intel 'BIG SPIDER'' ligent design', he celebrates both rationality and joy. I shifted my eyes from the road just ahead. Two thick Extraordinary dramas and crimes passionels unfold as he hairy legs were poking from behind the sun visor just above shows us cannibal spider brides, or the female-fatale who visits the steering wheel. the harvestman spider, seduces him and tries to eat one of the Funny how you don't just jump out of a moving car when eggs he is guarding. there are three kids in it. Funny how your eyes kind of uncou Other programs in the series look at dragonflies, mayflies, ple and work independently, one on the road, one on the big caterpillars, milli- and centipedes, gigantic fierce beetles and grey legs behind the sun visor, all the way home. super-organised totalitarian ant or termite societies conduct Pretending a nonchalance to calm the kids makes you ing wars and building cities. feel quite proud of yourself, so when we got home and the kids The camera work is fantastic, all micro and detailed and bolted into the house I swaggered in after them and said to my full of wonder. beloved, 'Oh, darling, by the way, there's a huntsman the size of What else is worth watching? You may well, in March, a chihuahua in the car. Could you get rid of itl' wish to take out a cable subscription for the Commonwealth 'Sure. In a minute.' Games, but I prefer the Roy and H. G. version, if there is to He promptly forgot, as husbands will. An hour later I heard be one. Sometimes the gymnastics or weightlifting are inter a thumping noise and some swearing from the direction of the esting, but saints preserve me from the mind-numbingness of front garden and went out to see. He had got blithely into the hockey or volleyball. Why is it that tennis is interesting while car to go to the shop and been greeted by our hitchhiker, which basketball is boring? Some sports, like curling, hammer-throw was now a rather big splodge on the nature strip. ing, pole-vaulting and diving are at least curious and diverting. (Sometimes a wife can refrain from saying 'I told you so' I will accept no alternative views here. If you watch hockey, and sometimes she can't. We're only human, after all.) basketball, netball or volleyball it must be that you have a This is all really by way of a warning in case you're think close relative on the team, and you're enduring it out of love. ing of watching episode three of David Attenborough's new 'Arabella's got the ball again, Mum,' your child will say. series Life in the Undergrowth. (ABC, Sundays at 7.30pm) 'Hmml' you say, looking up from your book. 'Oh, good. It's entitled 'The Silk Spinners', and there's enough arach Really good. Keep watching and tell me all about it darling. noid action to raise goosebumps on anyone who hasn't been I'm, er, busy with, er .. . ah. Goodness m e, is that the time? I desensitised by searing encounters such as my family's. I loved must varnish the dog's toenails.' it, but if you tend to go 'Eek!' at many-legged critters you might want to read a book instead. Juliette Hughes is a freelance writer. 50 EUREKA STREET MARCH- APR IL 2006 Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM I puzzled Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 139, Mar-Apr 2006 ACROSS 1 & 17. Are they played in the usual capital? (12,5) 8 & 30. Month begins this year with fire residue lent for the day! (3,9) 9. Alien, perhaps, will land inside the outer circle. (9) 10. At first men arrive roughly south of the planet. (4) 12. Hope to see a tower built on the church. (6) 13. With mighty labour, can only possibly reach Lune? (9) 15 . Former British Prime Minister in paradise? (4) 17. See 1-across. (5) 18. With the sun and part of Venus visible, can one possibly go hungry? (6) 21. Sailor returns in time, but still makes mistakes. (6) 22. Fret about the youngsters! (5) 25. Military wing concerned about being seen at a great distance. (4) 27. One more problem is too much! Take a final drink using this! (4,5) 28. Fuss after girl returns from the comic opera. (6) 29. Let out secrets, possibly with idle chatter. (4) 30. See 8-across. 32. Some special elixir to drink? (3) 33. Absolutely extinct, though there seems to be plenty of activity at the end (4,2,1,4) DOWN 1. Hang out dirty linen with this? Only when clean. (7,3) 2. Like ripe cheese? True to a degree! (6) 3. Eggs on players in the Oval. (3) 4. Filled with wonder-and a broad vision. (4-4) Solution to Crossword no. 138, Jan-Feb 2006 5. Utter a primarily rude tirade. (6) 6. Did Shakespeare's play have a stormy reception? (11) 7. Being north of town in Germany. (5) 8. Contained in bizarre arsenal, there are weapons for which payment is still owing. (7) 11 . Help anyone in distress, first of all. (3) 14. Bella, a tuner, somehow judged the instrument to be an old one that could not be changed. (11) 16 . Nevertheless, the shortest routes are sometimes the best. (9) 19. For the dossier, just write a short biography. (7) 20. See, drip unfortunately takes the chair. (8) 23. Was the worm lit up with satisfaction ? (6) 24. Like some banks, the writings were classified. (6) 25. The physician likes to have a drink around, when on a stroll. (5) 26. Abbreviation tells you who's who when pseudonyms are used. (3) 31. Full stop! (3) ...... ~ ...... Your contact details EUREKA STREE I NAME ...... m agazine- online ADDRESS ...... May-June 2006 will be the last printed issue of Eureka Street as we move into a new era of online publishing. CITY/TOWN/SUBURB ...... STATE ...... POSTCODE...... We at Jesuit Communications are looking forward to this new challenge. If you wish to be kept TELEPHONE daytime ( ) ..... informed of our new format and have not yet provided your contact details, please do so or EMAIL ADDRESS .... email us at: [email protected] ES 060304 Send to Reply Paid 553 , Richmond VIC 3121 No postage stamp required if posted in Australia Australian Ethical ® Save with Australian Ethical. 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